The Garden Rules: Gärten in den römischen Rechtsquellen zwischen Muße und Macht

Modern scholarship on Roman law tends to treating the topic of gardens as being a wallflower, picked up along the way when discussing legal issues concerning the colonization of land or neighbourship relations, such as the delimitation of land boundaries or servitudes. However, the Roman jurists explicitly mention gardens also in other contexts, namely on the field of testamentary dispositions. Gathering these sources not only allows for a different perception of the different forms of Roman gardens, but also gives testimony of the division of power between the various land owners and other persons having a mere right of use in the land. Departing from the legal sources, the paper presents the bouquet of the Roman garden between leisure and power.