Otium was more than a general sense of comfort; it carried an almost existential quality of ‘security’ that brought it semantically close to salus. The two concepts were, as we saw, often paired, hinting at the profound nature of the underlying concerns. Indeed, Roman public life could, as Cicero did in the Pro Milone, be conceptualised as a perpetual fight ‘for the salus of the boni against the madness of desperate men’.1 And an official senatorial decree calling for Cicero’s restoration had apparently stated that any obstruction would be ‘contrary to the res publica, to the salus of the boni and to the concord of the citizens’.2 Salus represented personal security in the broadest sense of life, possessions and social standing, and while the boni may have taken little interest in day-to-day politics, they did of course care very much about their personal welfare and prosperity. Attempts at engaging them therefore focused on these concerns, repeatedly warning of threats to their ‘salus et otium’. The key passage of Cicero’s second agrarian speech, quoted above, listed the most important benefits of otium, and as its final crowning reward he placed the protection of the family fortune, which rested on pax, ‘res familaris in pace’; for that reason, Cicero stressed that: ‘you ought to preserve otium by all means’.3