The horti were a place of pleasure, almost a small palace, and offered the rich owner and his court the possibility of living in isolation, away from the hectic life of the city but close to it.

The results were celebrated in a song by Maecenas' friend, Horace: —Horace, Satires 1, VIIIMany of the burial pits of the ancient necropolis, attested to predate the gardens, have been found near the north-west corner of the Piazza Vittorio Emanuele, that is, outside the porta Esquilina and the Servian Wall and north of the via Tiburtina vetus.

"[12] This negative reception of the gardens as a weak hermit's retreat is rooted in an indictment of the overarching effeminacy, illiberalism, and intoxication of the class and time which they symbolised.

In addition to his surviving correspondence with Marcus Aurelius, which boasts of a special connection to Horace forged by owning the land of Maecenas,[14] nine lead water-pipes inscribed with his name were found adjacent to the so-called auditorium.

In 1914, another notable building nucleus, including both reticulatum structures and brick walls was found a few metres from the Auditorium of Maecenas at the intersection of via Merulana and via Mecenate during the reconstruction of the Politeama Brancaccio Theatre.

The Latin all-encompassing term for gardens, horti, is an effective misnomer, as in antiquity it referred generally to luxury villas on the outskirts of Rome, so-named for especially prominent vegetation and urban removal.

[22] The Aqua Marcia, an essential aqueduct for the city, delivered high-quality water directly past Maecenas's property on the Esquiline, making the grounds uniquely poised to be maintained as one of the first private, landmark Roman gardens.

[26] The Late Republican-era room preserved on the grounds of the horti, termed the "auditorium of Maecenas" in modernity, was most likely a triclinium, functioning as a private banqueting hall attached to residential quarters.

Verse of Horace attests to the domestic architectural takeover of the Servian Wall in Esquiline garden estates, as when he writes of a "stroll on the sunny rampart.

[32] Evidence as to the social and chronological context of the building includes an erotic epigram by the Greek poet Callimachus, painted onto the interior wall, which entreats a male lover to forgive misbehavior caused by lust and wine.

[33] A visually prominent Hellenistic precedent reinforced the individualistic emotionalism and witty experimentation valued by Augustan neoteric and elegiac writers,[34] who would have frequented the weighty functions of Maecenas, a renowned cultivator of culture.

[38] Painting motifs evocative of the Dionysian Mysteries, such as drunken processional scenes with thyrsi and maenads prominent, match the early imperial fascination with cult initiation rites.

[40] The numerous works of art found at the end of the 19th century testify to the collecting taste of Maecenas and the luxury lavished in the furnishings of this suburban residence, like other horti.

[43] The "Charioteer of the Esquiline" group, a work from the early imperial age created in the style of the 5th century BC, together with the statue of Marsyas, are examples of a successful recovery reassembled with fragments found in the same area.