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Otium

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  05 January 2009

W. A. Laidlaw
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Extract

The Romans have always been regarded as a rugged and energetic people. Originally farmers and fighters, they established a world-empire. It must therefore strike many people as curious that the Latin word indicating business, negotium, is primarily of negative connotation; it indicates the lack of leisure, leisure being semantically prior. The word otium itself, like many Latin abstract terms, bears many meanings, some relevant to the conditions of the time.

Type
Research Article
Information
Greece & Rome , Volume 15 , Issue 1 , April 1968 , pp. 42 - 52
Copyright
Copyright © The Classical Association 1968

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References

page 42 note 1 Facciolati and Forcellini s.v. otium noted: ‘in adsignanda notatione valde laborant etymologi’. For an extended discussion of otium, see now André, J. M., L'otium dans la vie morale et intellectuelle romaine (Paris, 1966).Google Scholar

page 44 note 1 Cf. Livy, xxiii. 18. 11Google Scholar ; Seneca, , Ep. 51. 5.Google Scholar

page 44 note 2 Cicero assures his hearers that not only will they enjoy the public peace (otium) they desire, but those who hate peace he will make as peaceful as possible, ‘quibus odio est otium, quietissimos atque otiosissimos reddam’, i.e. they will find no way of being insurgent.

page 45 note 1 Often Cicero links otium with synonyms, e.g. pax, tranquillitas, otium (de leg. agr. ii. 37. 102).Google Scholar

page 47 note 1 Tacitus too uses the word to signify political inaction with reference to Classicus in A.d. 70, ‘segne plerumque otium trahens velut parto imperio fruebatur’ (Hist. iv. 70).Google Scholar

page 49 note 1 In this passage there is Empire Latin for the practice of crooning, also for sunbathing—excoquendi in sole corporis cura.

page 49 note 2 Procrastination is condemned: ‘audies plerosque dicentes, a quinquagesimo in otium secedam: sexagesimus annus ab officiis me demittet. et quern tandem longioris vitae praedem accipis?’

page 50 note 1 ‘at ille latere sciebat, non vivere; multum autem interest utrum vita tua otiosa sit an ignava…otiosum enim hominem seductum existimat vulgus et securum et se contentum, sibi viventem, quorum nihil ulli contingere nisi sapienti potest.’

page 50 note 2 ‘nullus mihi per otium dies exit, partem noctium studiis vindico’ (Seneca, , Ep. viii. 1)Google Scholar

page 51 note 1 A Stoic is always at his post—‘nobis quoque militandum est, et quidem genere militiae quo numquam quies, numquam otium datur’ (Seneca, , Ep. li. 5)Google Scholar ; ‘vivere, mi Lucili, militate est.’ (ib. xcvi. 5)