Otium

Otium, a Latin abstract term, has a variety of meanings, including leisure time in which a person can enjoy eating, playing, resting, contemplation and academic endeavors. It sometimes, but not always, relates to a time in a person's retirement after previous service to the public or private sector, opposing "active public life". Otium can be a temporary time of leisure, that is sporadic. It can have intellectual, virtuous or immoral implications. It originally had the idea of withdrawing from one's daily business (negotium) or affairs to engage in activities that were considered to be artistically valuable or enlightening (i.e. speaking, writing, philosophy). It had particular meaning to businessmen, diplomats, philosophers and poets.

Etymology and origin

In ancient Roman culture otium was a military concept as its first Latin usage. This was in Ennius' Iphigenia.

Iphigenia (241–248)

According to historian Carl Deroux in his work "Studies in Latin literature and Roman history" otium appears for the first time in a chorus of Ennius' Iphigenia. Ennius' first use of the term otium around 190 BC showed the restlessness and boredom during a reprieve from war and was termed otium negotiosum (free time to do what one wanted) and otium otiosum (idle wasteless free time).Aulus Gellius, while discussing the word praeterpropter ("more or less") quotes a fragment of Ennius's Iphigenia, which contrasts otium with negotium repeatedly. Ennius imagined the emotions of Agamemnon's soldiers at Aulus, that while in the field and not at war and not allowed to go home, as "more or less" living.