CLCV 327 - Human and Environment in Greco-Roman Antiquity: shaping and being shaped by the Natural World

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The Greek thinker Protagoras had famously remarked that “Man is the Measure of all things”-thus, the Greeks had, on some intellectual level, banished the “natural” world from their self-conception. Nonetheless, every human society must interact with the physical surroundings, each other, and other organisms, both animal and plant. In this course we shall investigate the ecology of the ancient Greco-Roman Mediterranean world. We shall explore the interaction of humans with the physical environment and their dependence upon it, including questions of climate, how human activity impacted the natural world, species loss, ancient initiatives to address these changes.