Conversing with Chaos in Graeco-Roman Antiquity - (Ancient Environments) by Esther Eidinow & Christopher Schliephake (Hardcover)

About the Book

"Contributors from across the globe examine the transformation and co-construction of ancient landscapes through natural and human processes. Their essays consider a range of evidence, from myths and philosophical treatises to epigraphic evidence and archaeological remains, but they all reveal the ways in which humankind constructs stories about its environment - and how these stories facilitate the construction of ancient environments as living entities, respondent (maybe even vulnerable) to human actions and decision-making"--

Book Synopsis

How did ancient Greeks and Romans perceive their environments: did they see order or chaos, chance or control? And how do their views compare to modern perceptions?Conversing with Chaos in Graeco-Roman Antiquity challenges prevailing ideas that ancient perceptions of the non-human world rested on a profound belief in universal order, and that the cosmos was harmonious and under human control.Engaging with the concept of chaos in both its ancient and modern meanings, and focusing on the ancient Mediterranean and Near East, this book reveals another sense of environmental awareness, one that paid equal attention to chance and chaos, and the sometimes-fatal consequences of human interventions in nature.

Bringing together a team of international scholars, the volume investigates the experience of the interaction of humans with the environment, as reflected in ancient evidence from myths and philosophical treatises, to epigraphic evidence and archaeological remains. The contributors consider the role of the human in the formation of perspectives about the natural world and explore themes of agency, affordances, ecophobia, gender and temporality. Overall, the volume reveals how, in ancient imaginations, environments were perceived as living entities with their own agency, and respondent (or even vulnerable) to human actions and decision-making. It highlights how modern insights can enrich our understanding of the past, and demonstrates the increasing relevance of ancient historical research for reflecting on current relations to the natural world.

Review Quotes

A rich and remarkable union of the latest in environmental theory with texts and cultures from the ancient world, which promises to advance both classics and the environmental humanities.
Will Brockliss, Bradshaw Knight Professor of the Environmental Humanities, University of Wisconsin-Madison, USA

About the Author

Esther Eidinow is Professor of Ancient History at the University of Bristol, UK. She is a series editor for the Bloomsbury series Ancient Environments, co-editor of Cognitive Approaches to Ancient Religious Experience (2022) and author of Envy, Poison and Death: Women on Trial in Classical Athens (2016).

Christopher Schliephake is Assistant Professor of Ancient History at Augsburg University, Germany. He is author of The Environmental Humanities and the Ancient World (2020) and editor of Ecocritisim, Ecology and Cultures in Antiquity (2017).