[Authors and titles are listed at the end of the review.]
The environmental humanities thrive, and so does ecocriticism, a central sub-strand focusing on literary expressions of the relationship between the human and the non-human, which, only recently, also found its way into classical scholarship.[1] This sixth book in the Bloomsbury Academic Ancient Environments is the most recent major product of this development. It presents the results of a panel brought together by the editors for the International Environmental Humanities Conference in Sweden (August 2020), later reorganized into three online workshops because of the pandemic. Ironically, this disruption only added to the sense of urgency of the panel’s topic: ancient imaginations of the environment as a domain of chance and chaos.
The central aim of this volume is “to challenge the prevailing view that, in Antiquity, the cosmos was generally understood to be stable and harmonious and under mortal control” (p. 1), reconsidering “the idea that ancient perceptions of the non-human world rested on the profound belief in universal order and therefore paid little attention to variety, irregularity and change” (p. 7). Instead, the twelve essays each reveal and examine awareness of environmental disorder and limits of human control in ancient literature, across diverse genres and time periods.
To set the stage, the editor’s introduction offers a relevant overview of earlier scholarship. It provides a theoretical framework (useful for graduate students and others new to the field) by tracing the history of ecocriticism and convincingly advocating for the indispensability of the study of the premodern world, following lines of argumentation in Christopher Schliephake’s earlier works.[2] The editors specify two key subthemes on which the essays draw and, in turn, hope to contribute to: first, ‘material ecocriticism’, with its focus on the agentic, communicative role of the environment and the interconnectedness of the human, non-human and more-than-human. Second, the role of ‘affect’ in human responses to their surroundings.[3]
The twelve contributions are organized under four main headings. The first section (‘Control’) discusses texts addressing humanity’s efforts to control the environment, ultimately highlighting their inevitable failure. In a comparative essay (chapter 1) on the Hellenistic didactic poetry of Aratus and Nicander, Leonardo Cazzadori explores the presentation of the rustic countryside as an ‘intermediate environment’ of hope and danger. He argues that both poets present chaos as coexisting with order as a key feature of this environment (although it could perhaps be stressed more that in Aratus, this is more an experience of disorder caused by human cognitive limits instead of chaos as an inherent part of nature). Innovative is his combination of narratological analysis with ‘affective ecology’, and his reading of Nicander’s chaos-mythology suggesting that human environmental challenges ultimately derive from the battles for cosmic order.
On a more explicit level, Aaron M. Seider’s environmental reading of Virgil’s Aeneid (chapter 2) too exposes the ultimate inability of humans to order their surroundings. He examines the scenes in which the Trojans attempt to resettle in Thrace and Crete but meet with environmental resistance (book 3), and the battle between Aeneas and the Latins (book 12) as part of a series of repeatedly frustrated human attempts at environmental modification. The conclusion briefly touches upon the implications for the larger imperialistic aspirations of Rome. Seider’s lens of ‘niche construction’ combined with a close reading of book 12 is a particular methodological strength.
Simona Martorana (chapter 3) re-examines Seneca’s Thyestes’ fourth choral ode and ensuing final act through an ecocritical and posthuman lens. She challenges traditional ‘sympathetic’ interpretations that the natural collapse central to the ode is directly related to Thyestes’ and Atreus’ crimes. Instead, she argues for a more complex view of nature as an ‘apathetic’, independent system that may appear chaotic and unpredictable to man. She thereby engages with existing scholarship that highlights how Seneca’s dramas complicate Stoic principles presented in his philosophical writings.[4]
The second section (‘Connection’) presents essays that “interrogate the relations or potential relations between different entities, and foreground the idea of the human-non-human-more-than-human network” (p. 10). In chapter 4, Maria Combatti proposes a reading of Euripides’ Bacchae informed by interconnectedness and interdependence, focusing on the ways in which “the royal palace, animals, dresses, plants and human bodies within the play are interlinked under the Dionysiac destructive force” (p. 64).
Chapter 5 shifts focus to prose. Esther Eidinow takes a novel relational and affective approach to Thucydides’ use of terms for ‘darkness’. Tracing the semantic networks of σκότος and σκοτεινός and their affordances, she argues that darkness is not just a visual descriptor but carries a set of embodied, affective experiences, often associated with threat, cognitive confusion, supernatural danger or death. She demonstrates how Thucydides presents (and participated in constructing) an entanglement of the human, non-human and more-than-human. Part of this entanglement, she convincingly argues, is language itself, as it shapes the reader’s perception and experience of described events.
In chapter 6, Christopher Schliephake turns to Plutarch’s Pythian Dialogues to investigate the author’s conception of divination as both environmental and embodied. The novelty of this contribution lies in its focus on the spatio-environmental aspects of the sense of change pervading De defectu oraculorum. Schliephake explores how Plutarch connects the decline in oracular activity of his time to physical and material processes, and how Delphi itself emerges as a material, relational space shaped by human, non-human and divine agency. Particularly strong is the alignment of Plutarch’s multi-perspectival understanding of the world with modern ecological thought (Latour’s relationality on pp. 96-96 and material ecocriticism on pp. 97-100). This makes it one of the volume’s most successful contributions in explicitly demonstrating the relevance and potential of classical literature to modern environmental (literary) theory.
The third section (‘Contact’) shifts focus to the way humans attempt to communicate with the entities in the sort of networks traced in the previous section. In chapter 7, Michiel van Veldhuizen uses semiotic and cognitive theory to examine how cultural constructs shaped ancient religious interpretations of environmental disaster. He reexamines the disaster discourse on the Poseidon-induced earthquake destroying Helike (373 BCE) in Strabo, Pausanias and Diodorus. He argues that understanding this discourse requires situating it within a broader pattern of how Poseidon’s environmental agency was perceived in other historiographical and mythological accounts of natural disaster (also—particularly compelling—on Attic vase imagery). The emerging picture is remarkably consistent: Poseidon’s ‘mode of action’ is typically characterized by acts of concealment and exposure. A suggestion would be to include A.P. 9.423, a Greek epigram featuring Helike, which seems to fit Van Veldhuizen’s model.
In chapter 8, Krešimir Vuković proposes an ecocritical and ecofeminist interpretation of the myths surrounding the Tiber, reading the river not merely as a narrative setting but as an active, agentic and gendered presence shaping Rome’s foundational mythology. Although largely convincing, the chapter sometimes misses precision. For instance, I agree with the highlighted significance of the parental role of the Tiber in the salvation of Romulus and Remus and the claim that this myth is “an attempt to conceptualize Rome’s natural environment in relation to the city and its founding” (p. 123). Yet, the claim that the twins “are only one item in the rich web of life that he [Tiberinus] facilitates” (p. 122) and are merely the object of action, may understate the myth’s implicit but crucial emphasis on the exceptional nature of the twins themselves, who survive “a destructive event that could kill thousands” (p. 123).[5] The claim that “Roman conquerors certainly perceived the natural world as separate from culture” (p. 128) may overlook more nuanced interpretations, for instance Hardie’s (1986) alignment of urbs and orbis in the Aeneid. Still, drawing on a wide array of sources, the careful analysis of (and innovative application of queer theory to) the Tiber-myth reveals the extent of ecological knowledge that these stories convey.
Eris B. Williams Reed (chapter 9) provides an excellent contribution that expands the geographical and generic scope of the volume. She explores how the Safaitic inscriptions of ancient North Arabia—a body of personal texts carved on rocks by nomadic pastoralists between the 1st century BCE and 3rd century CE – preserve their author’s lived experience of ecological grief. More explicitly than others, her chapter foregrounds the emotional response to environmental change among real, non-elite communities, and while carefully acknowledging risks of anachronism, she even suggests how this ancient practice may offer a model for coping with environmental grief in the present.
With this suggestion, she paves the way for the fourth section (‘Change’) featuring essays that “explicitly raise the question of how reflecting on ecological perspectives in the ancient world can inform our approaches in the modern world” (p. 12). In chapter 10, Jason König examines expressions of ecological grief in rhetorical and philosophical texts from Aelius Aristides and Philostratus focusing on the 178 CE earthquake in Smyrna. Drawing attention to the generic and textual context of these works, he analyses the value (and limitations) of drawing comparisons between their reactions to ecological disaster and contemporary ones. Particularly stimulating is his interpretation of Aristides’ apparent lack of attention to human suffering as a rhetorical and philosophical exploration of the difficulty of adequately expressing human grief for more-than-human objects and environments.
While the editors encourage a plurality of viewpoints beyond the four-part structure (p. 10), Κönig’s chapter (on earthquake responses as in chapter 7 and on ecological grief as in chapter 9) inevitably prompts the question whether the volume might have benefited from a more explicit comparative reflection between several essays. As it is, some pairings are only briefly alluded to (pp. 8-9), like König with Williams Reed—arguably the most closely aligned essays—but a more elaborate comparison (in their case, a contrast between elite rhetorical literature and non-elite epigraphy) could have further strengthened the volume’s coherence and depth.
The last two essays are more conceptual and abstract, exploring how ancient texts can function as allegories and metaphors for modern environmental thinking. In chapter 11, Marco Formisano diverges from traditional readings of Claudianus’ De raptu Proserpinae that aim to reconstruct a unified authorial intention. Instead, he embraces the poem’s incompleteness, interpreting its narrative fragmentation and textual instability as allegorical of the Anthropocene.
In chapter 12, M.D. Usher presents a rich and ambitious essay that “back-fills” Latour’s Facing Gaia with a wide array of mythological, philosophical, and ritual material from ancient Greece—especially centered on Delphi. He demonstrates how ancient myth and ritual can be read not only to understand past ecological awareness, but also to inform and shape contemporary environmental thinking, for instance by reading Hesiod’s Dikē as a metaphor for ecological balance.
If the book poses any challenge, it is the breadth of theoretical approaches employed across its chapters. Each framework is explained clearly and applied effectively, but the accumulation – sometimes within one chapter, like Combatti’s mix of Morton’s mesh’, Deleuze and Guattari’s ‘rhizome’, and Alaimo’s ‘trans-corporeality’ – can feel conceptually dense, especially when reading from cover to cover. However, this diversity of subtly distinct yet overlapping theories is also a strength, as the many forms of ‘disorder’ in antiquity call for multiple lenses.
The volume is highly recommended: to scholars of classical literature with ecocritical interests, classicists new to ecocriticism (cf. also Formisano’s helpful methodological observations, pp. 164-165), and scholars seeking new perspectives. It also succeeds in demonstrating to non-classicists (by adequately introducing authors, works and contexts) the relevance of antiquity for understanding contemporary ecological concerns, and in contributing to ecocritical theory. Conversing with Chaos succeeds on every front and establishes itself as a landmark in the ecocritical study of the ancient world.
Authors and Titles
Introduction (Esther Eidinow and Christopher Schliephake)
I. Control
- Perilous Environs: The Rustic World in Aratus and Nicander (Leonardo Cazzadori)
- Shared Suffering and Cyclical Destruction: Failures of Environmental Control in the Aeneid (Aaron M. Seider)
- Chaos and Kosmos: An Ecocritical Reading of Seneca’s Thyestes (Simona Martorana)
II. Connection
- The Interspecies and Trans-Corporeal Mesh in Euripides’ Bacchae (Maria Combatti)
- The Relationality of Darkness in Thucydides (Esther Eidinow)
- The Only Constant Is Change – The Environmental Dimension of Plutarch’s De defectu oraculorum (Christopher Schliephake)
III. Contact
- Poseidon’s Mode of Action: Divine Agency and the Helike Disaster ( Michiel van Veldhuizen)
- River, Agency, and Gender: An Ecocritical Reading of the Myths of the Tiber (Kresimir Vukovic)
- Ecological Grief and the Safaitic Inscriptions of Ancient North Arabia (Eris Williams Reed)
IV. Change
- Ecological Grief in Aelius Aristides and Philostratus (Jason König)
- An Allegory of the ‘Anthropocene’: Environmental and textual disorder in Claudian’s De Raptu Proserpinae (Marco Formisano)
- The Environmental Ethics of Delphi: Back-filling Latour’s Facing Gaia (Mark D. Usher)
References
Armstrong, R. 2019. Vergil’s Green Thoughts: Plants, Humans, and the Divine. Oxford.
Austen, V. 2023. Analysing the Boundaries of the Ancient Roman Garden: (Re)Framing the Hortus. London.
Bladow, K. and Ladino, J. (eds.) 2018. Affective Ecocriticism: Emotion, Embodiment, Environment. Lincoln.
Bosak-Schroeder, C. 2020. Other Natures: Environmental Encounters with Ancient Greek Ethnography. Oakland.
Felton, D. 2018. Landscapes of Dread in Classical Antiquity: Negative Emotion in Natural and Constructed Spaces. London.
Hardie, P. 1986. Virgil’s Aeneid: Cosmos and Imperium. Oxford.
Iovino, S. and Oppermann, S. (eds.) 2014. Material Ecocriticisim. Bloomington.
König, J. 2022. ‘Ecocritical Readings in Late Hellenistic Literature: Landscape Alteration and
Hybris in Strabo and Diodorus’, in J. König and N. Wiater (eds.), Late Hellenistic Greek Literature in Dialogue. Cambridge, 119-148.
Martelli, F. and Sissa, G. (eds.) 2023. Ovid’s Metamorphoses and the Environmental Imagination. London.
Schliephake, C. 2017. Ecocriticism, Ecology and the Cultures of Antiquity. Lanham.
Schliephake, C. 2020. The Environmental Humanities and the Ancient World: Questions and Perspectives. Cambridge.
Schliephake, C. 2022. ‘Profile: Ecocriticism and Acient Environments’, The Classical Review 72.2, 393-396.
Notes
[1] A selection of recent examples: Felton 2018; Armstrong 2019; Bosak-Schroeder 2020; König 2022; Martelli and Sissa 2023. For an overview, see also Schliephake 2022.
[2] Schliephake 2017 and 2020.
[3] The editors draw on the works of, respectively, Iovino and Oppermann 2014 and Bladow and Ladino 2018.
[4] Austen 2023, 141-150 on the garden in the Thyestes would deserve mention, but was perhaps published too late for this book.
[5] Part of Livy’s translation is missing (Romularem uocatam ferunt, p. 121).