The Moon in the Greek and Roman Imagination: Myth, Literature, Science and Philosophy – eBook

The Moon exerted a potent influence on ancient intellectual history, as a playground for the scientific imagination. The Moon in the Greek and Roman Imagination, (PDF) studies the history of the Moon in the Greco-Roman imaginary from Homer to Lucian, with an exclusive focus on those accounts of the Moon, its characteristics, and its ‘inhabitants’ given by natural scientists, ancient philosophers, and imaginative writers including Pythagoreans, Plato, and the Old Academy, Plutarch, Varro, and Lucian. ní Mheallaigh demonstrates how the Moon’s enigmatic presence made it the main site for thinking about the gaze (philosophical, erotic, and scientific) and the link between reality and appearance. It was also a site for hoaxes in antiquity as well as today. Central issues discovered include the view from elsewhere (selēnoskopia), the relation of fiction and science, the relations between the beginnings of science in the classical polis and the imperial period, and the limits of knowledge itself.

NOTE: The product only includes The Moon in the Greek and Roman Imagination: Myth, Literature, Science and Philosophy (Greek Culture in the Roman World) in PDF. No access codes are included.