The Stoic philosopher Seneca disapproved of roof gardens. (How astonishing that even the Romans had roof gardens. They had a talent for urbanism, but surely they weren’t short of space.) Seneca asked: “Is it not living unnaturally to plant orchards on the top of towers, or to have a forest of trees waving in the wind on the roofs and ridges of one’s mansions, their roots spring at a height which it would have been presumptuous for their crests to reach?” (Quoted by Lesley Chamberlain in article called High Life in the current edition of Prospect Magazine)
Roof terraces, for those who don’t have copious countryside on all sides of their houses, are a wonderful boon, bringing the country into the town and offering a small oasis away from the traffic. And to think that until fairly recently the London authorities frown on gardens in the sky. Shame about the weather, though!
Seneca was mistaken. (Whoa! take that Classicists). It’s the most natural thing in the world for human beings to seek out nature and, as in the case of roof gardens, quite ingeniously.
What Seneca should have criticized was the utter failure of Italian agriculture and the Roman “upper” class ignorance of what even the Greeks had known — for example, the soil restorative powers of clover and much else. Some of those old Roman Stoics (e.g., Cicero) are most annoying in their pseudo-wise sermonizing about this-and-that when the entire problem was the rotten political game in which they were willing players.
Thank you. Though left in a non-ataraxia mood, I do feel better at having delivered that morsel.