Neither ancient Greek nor Latin had words for many of the concepts familiar to us today in connection with environmental issues – the word ‘environment’ itself heads the list. That does not necessarily mean that there was no such thing as environmental awareness in antiquity. It does, however, show that the Greeks and Romans had a different conception of quite a number of phenomena, and that this fact influenced their behaviour towards the environment, and towards nature – for which they did develop a specific term. Let us then examine the origins and the meaning of the particularly important terms nature, the environment, climate, ecology, sustainability, disaster and waste, and how the content of those terms was described in the age of antiquity. That will itself reveal some characteristic basic attitudes of the Greeks and Romans in their dealing with their environment.
Nature actually means ‘that which has come into being or has grown without outside assistance’, and is derived from the Latin natura, which means ‘bringing forth’. The term is a translation of the Greek word physis, which describes both the creative force of nature and the natural order, and the natural essence of an object or of a living being. Nature as a space in its own right is in fact a discovery of the Greeks, who, in the context of the emergence of politically autonomous communities (poleis; sing.: polis), defined it as that which excluded their own achievements, the sum of which constituted ‘culture’ (nomos); this emphasised the value of the latter. However, they also realised that a mere dichotomy of nature vs culture – or physis vs nomos – was a false assumption, since they were to an extent interdependent, and the human, as a component of transitory nature, affected its processes (Plat. leg. 890d, 903c: humankind is not made for its own sake, but for the natural whole). Despite the consciousness of human superiority and achievement which emerged in antiquity, there also existed the demand to allow the physis the freedom to run its course, and to follow nature and live in harmony with it (Diog. Laert. 7.87ff.; Stob. 2.75ff.; Sen. epist. 122.19).
From the sixth century BC the Greeks in various cities along the coast of Asia Minor began to investigate the basic materials and laws of nature. These elements, they believed, were in constant change, so that nature could be seen as undergoing a process. By contrast with our own times, science in antiquity by and large did without experimentation, and engaged instead in the observation (theoria) of the cosmos as an ideal, predestined order. However, despite this rationality with which nature's substances and processes were thus permeated, the need remained to venerate nature religiously. So, as we shall see, the relationship of the Greeks and Romans to nature presented no uniform overall picture; rather, it included elements both of the veneration and of the domination of nature. As the term ‘nature’ had no specific association with protecting the environment, humans had considerable freedom in how they acted.
The English word environment came into common use in the early nineteenth century as a translation of the German words Umgebung – today usually translated as ‘surroundings’ – and Umwelt, the modern word for ‘environment’. The latter is attested since 1800, and means literally ‘surrounding country’ or ‘surrounding world’. By the second half of the nineteenth century it had in Germany replaced the French word milieu as the term for the realm in which life arises and carries on.1 In the biological sense,Umweltwas first used by the Baltic German biologist Jacob von Uexküll in 1909 to mean the surroundings of a living being, which affect that being and influence its conditions of life.2 Since that time, the concept of Umwelt or ‘environment’ has been further developed scientifically, and is today seen as ‘the world surrounding humankind’, as the sum of all phenomena which influence the life situation of a human community.3 In that sense, it is an anthropocentric concept, according to which nature serves humankind. However, the word has since the late 1950s also acquired an ecological, scientific application with regard to environmental protection. Only since the 1970s has an inflationary use of the term been observable, so that ‘Umwelt /environment’ has now degenerated to an empty phrase, a shell.
Thus, there was no distinct term for ‘environment’ in antiquity; it was incorporated in the concept of physis. Environment in the modern sense was only characterised at a general level, at which primarily such climatic factors as wind and water were taken into account. To periechon in ancient Greece generally meant ‘that which surrounds’ the earth, and which could also be seen as a mixture of celestial phenomena, in effect as the climate. Klima, in Greek and Latin, means the curvature of the earth and describes the celestial realm, as a geographical location and zone (Strab. 2.1.35, 5.34). In reference to climate, ancient texts generally speak about the ‘air’, which could have various temperatures and currents, and could also be considerably affected by waters, the rain and the condition of the ground, a prominent example being Hippocrates’ On Airs, Waters, and Places (Hippocr. aër. 1). Here, he uses neither the term periechon nor klima; he does, however, distinguish between European and Asiatic climatic zones, to which he attributes a decisive influence on human physical – and political – constitutions. As this concept was more of general theoretical character, a term for the environment itself was not required.
The environmental determinism established by the Greeks was also adopted by the Romans, albeit with Rome now replacing Athens as the centre of ideal environmental conditions (Vitr. 3.9–10). Pliny the Elder observed the effects of the soil and the climate in the form of the ‘sky’ (caelus) on the trees, which, he claimed, loved the north wind the most, as they grew thicker and stronger under its influence (nat. 17.9–10). The environment was thus analysed pragmatically, with an eye to economic gain, and at the same time reduced to certain external phenomena, and used for political propaganda. No comprehensive, systematic discussion of environmental factors occurred, so that neither any real concept of the environment nor any profound ecological studies emerged.
The concept of ecology (German Ökologie) is of more recent vintage, and is the product of the scientific research of the nineteenth century. In 1866 the German natural scientist Ernst Haeckel described the Umwelt (environment) as the ‘surrounding outside world’, and defined the concept of ecology as ‘the body of knowledge concerning the economy of nature – the total relations of the animal to both its inorganic and organic environment, including in the broader sense all “conditions of existence”’.4 He saw ecology as a complete science which included all factors surrounding an organism, and interpreted it as part of the surrounding system. To this day, ecology is still the ‘interdisciplinary scientific study of the interactions between organisms and their environment’, but also ‘of the distribution and abundance of organisms and the interactions that determine distribution and abundance’.5 Ecology is also the study of ecosystems, which describe the web of relations among organisms at various scales of organisation.
While the term ‘ecology’ is derived from the Greek, it is notable that it did not exist in antiquity. Oikos means ‘house’ or ‘the household’, and by derivation, its budget, so that oikonomia/economy means the science and the laws of budget management, from which modern economics is derived. The word combination oikologia connects oikos with logos, rationality or intellect, and thus describes a kind of budget science of nature. In antiquity there were only modest initial approaches towards this concept.
The philosopher Theophrastus (c. 370–287 BC) for example determined the climatic zones in which certain plants were indigenous, and diagnosed climatic changes due to certain interventions in nature (caus. plant. 5.14.2–3). In Roman times Pausanias ascertained that the Meander (the Menderes in modern Turkey), which flowed through the cultivated country of the Phrygians and Carians, and therefore carried a large quantity of sediments, was silting up the bay between Priene and Miletus into which it emptied, while the Achelous, which flowed through the deserted country of the Aetolians, did not carry any comparable amount of silt (8.24.11; cf. 7.2.10–11). Nevertheless, the Echinades islands off its mouth were partially silted up (Hdt. 2.10; Thuc. 2.102), so neither was more reliable information available in this area, nor were more detailed investigations undertaken. Important observations of the human influence on habitat were widespread, yet more weight was given – not only terminologically – to economy than ecology, which was not yet established as a subject of research in its own right.
Only thanks to the knowledge of modern ecology did the demand for ‘sustainability’ or ‘sustainable activity’ emerge during the late twentieth century. Sustainability and sustainable as a concept are a creation of the 1970s, derived from the Latin sustinere, ‘to uphold’. The English word includes two key concepts, that of being able to bear a load and that of being able to continue at a certain level over time; it is also used in the term ‘sustainable growth’.6 (The German word Nachhaltigkeit is derived from Nachhalt, which originally meant something to be stored for hard times. It is first attested in 1713, and was used in the area of forestry,7 and came into general usage around 1800. The German word conveys only the second of the two meanings of its English equivalent, so that there are instances in which ‘sustainable’ is translated into German as zukunftsfähig – literally ‘future-capable’.)
Strictly speaking, the concept of sustainability demands that only such a quantity of energy and raw materials be used as will be restored through natural processes during the same period. Moreover, only as many pollutants may be passed on to the environment as it can cope with during the same time period. The term ‘sustainability’ came into widespread use especially as a result of the UN's Brundtland Commission Report of 1987, the Report of the World Commission on Environment and Development: Our Common Future, which contained the following definition: ‘Sustainable development is development that meets the needs of the present without compromising the ability of future generations to meet their own needs.’ Unlike traditional concepts of environmental protection, sustainable development tries to incorporate existing social needs adequately. However, this also risks diminishing or neglecting negative impacts upon nature. In today's parlance, moreover, ‘sustainable’ often loses any direct reference to environmental issues, and is used in all kinds of contexts to simply mean ‘effective in the longer term’ or ‘long-lasting’, and hence ‘high quality’.
The demand that raw material extraction be restricted to the renewable products of the earth's surface was already formulated by Pliny the Elder in the first century AD, albeit more as a moral appeal than as a conservationist demand (nat. 33.1ff.). Faith in the infinity of resources, or the regenerability both of surface and subsurface materials, was dominant (Xen. vect. 1.4, 4.2ff.; Strab. 3.2.8–10). The ancients had not yet addressed the issue of the planned management and distribution of resources, and thus could develop no real concept of sustainability. The question, too, of equal access to goods and social justice was completely beyond the pale.
Disaster comes from the Italian disastro, ‘ill-starred’, a calamity due to an unfavourable planetary position. ‘Hazard’ means a threatening calamity stemming from nature, while ‘disaster’ describes natural phenomena which become a catastrophe only owing to the vulnerability of society; A. Oliver-Smith speaks of ‘failures of human systems’.8 ‘A disaster is the tragedy of a natural or human-made hazard (a hazard is a situation which poses a level of threat to life, health, property, or environment) that negatively affects society or environment … disasters are seen as the consequence of inappropriately managed risk.’9 In German, Katastrophe simply means a serious accident, generally sudden and unexpected, which causes major damage and requires outside help. The problem there is the question of predictability, as well as the subjective and objective effects of the event on people and/or the environment, and the question of dealing with the event. Modern catastrophe research therefore addresses the natural and social conditions existing prior to extreme events, while also analysing the actual process and the consequences, according to certain patterns. People in antiquity were still a long way from any such considerations, inasmuch as divination (fortune-telling) was the principle strategy and form of communication with the environment, and allowed no effective access to catastrophic contingencies.
Catastrophe in Greek and Latin means a reversal, an unexpected change, but did not refer explicitly to nature. Natural devastation was seen as misfortunate and ruinous – kakon (Dio 77.2), pestis (Tac. ann. 2.47), clades (Sen. nat. 6.2.9) – and a divine punishment for bad moral behaviour (Cic. nat. deor. 2.14; Plin. nat. 33.1–2). In Seneca's view, natural events such as catastrophic floods occurred according to a predefined plan which humans could hardly counteract (nat. 3.27.1ff.). Scientific investigations into the natural causes of such events, modest as they were, concentrated on supposed underground winds, fires and waters. Both precautionary measures and rescue strategies were conceived only rudimentarily. In classical times Greek cities helped each other out during catastrophes; in the Hellenistic period the kings emerged as the major donors at such times, and such activity then became a regular task of the Roman emperors.10 Nevertheless, a largely fatalistic attitude prevailed in this area throughout antiquity. There was a readiness to suffer the vagaries of nature and its hazards, since they were seen as possessing an overarching significance.
Waste is from the Latin vastus (bleak, barren, void) and refers to unusable or unwanted material. This has become a growing problem only with the age of industrialisation, since the nineteenth century. Since the 1950s the rubbish of consumer society has been added to the problem, giving rise to the recycling of materials and the energy contained in them. In antiquity certain craft products were indeed already manufactured serially in industrial production; nonetheless, waste in the modern sense was still unknown. Accordingly, only early forms of recycling emerged, primarily the reuse of materials which were either valuable or of limited availability, such as metals, stone blocks and timber. Even in classical Greece such non-degradable substances as ceramic fragments ended up in rubbish pits and landfill deposits.
The Greek word for waste is apostasis, meaning abandonment of a political faction or regime. Otherwise, waste products are known only from handicrafts, under product-specific names – such as the waste products of sawing, wood-carving or planing. There were, however, several terms for trash (skybala, skoria, pelos). Kopros describes dung and fertiliser, and faeces and dirt. For the Romans the only term other than those for the waste products of crafts was stercus, which can be translated as ‘dirt’, and also includes faeces in the form of dung and fertiliser. Urine was collected in the city of Rome and used by fullers for leather processing, while animal dung was used in the countryside as fertiliser. In addition, efforts were undertaken at various places to remove filth from residential settlement areas under the supervision of officials. Much waste was nevertheless left lying around in ancient cities, often resulting in their contamination and pollution on a scale which no modern concept of hygiene would tolerate.