The Moon in the Greek and Roman Imagination: Myth, Literature, Science and Philosophy (Hardcover) (ISBN-13: 9781108483032)

The Moon exerted a powerful influence on ancient intellectual history, as a playground for the scientific imagination. This book explores the history of the Moon in the Greco-Roman imaginary from Homer to Lucian, with special focus on those accounts of the Moon, its attributes, and its 'inhabitants' given by ancient philosophers, natural scientists and imaginative writers including Pythagoreans, Plato and the Old Academy, Varro, Plutarch and Lucian. n Mheallaigh shows how the Moon's enigmatic presence made it a key site for thinking about the gaze (erotic, philosophical and scientific) and the relation between appearance and reality. It was also a site for hoax in antiquity as well as today. Central issues explored include the view from elsewhere (selēnoskopia), the relation of science and fiction, the interaction between the beginnings of science in the classical polis and the imperial period, and the limits of knowledge itself.

Author: Karen Ní Mheallaigh
ISBN-10: 1108483038
ISBN-13: 9781108483032
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Language: English
Published: 10/22/2020
Pages: 341
Format: Hardcover
Weight: 1.37lbs
Size: 9.00h x 6.00w x 0.81d

Review Citation(s):
Choice 10/01/2021