Chapter 4 - Ecocritical Readings in Late Hellenistic Literature

Summary

This chapter draws on approaches from the environmental humanities in exploring the hypothesis that late Hellenistic literature was unusually positive in its representations of landscape alteration. It first sketches out the predominantly negative tradition of representing landscape alteration in ancient literature from Herodotus onwards, before examining the more celebratory versions that we find in Strabo and Diodorus Siculus. At the same time it points out, with special reference to the work of Diodorus, that even the most positive treatments of that theme tend to show signs of equivocation and ambiguity. That conclusion has implications for our understanding of the long history of human interaction with the environment: it helps to expose the risks of over-simplification involved in any account that seeks to generalise about the idea that ancient culture either anticipates or stands in contrast with modern anthropocentrism. In the process the chapter also explores some of the similarities and differences between ancient and modern representations of environmental damage, pointing out especially that ancient accounts anticipate in some respects modern concerns with the impact of environmental alteration on human populations.