Chapter 2
The issue of environmental behaviour necessarily raises questions about the opinions and images that ancient people had of nature generally. It appears that the Greeks' relationship with nature was fundamentally conflicting. On the one hand, there was the view of a gentle side of nature, including such images as helpful wood nymphs, springs and meadows, and a happy, carefree country life. On the other hand, there was that of the fearsome powers of nature – dark forests, raging streams, stormy seas and wild animals evoked fear and terror. The divine powers and demons who ruled here needed to be calmed by ritual. Agriculture meant an injury to nature, which required rites of expiation; these were also performed when cities were built. The religious respect for the environment was also expressed in the admiration for the fertility gods such as Demeter/Ceres, and the calendar of feast days, with their offerings of thanks and petition, such as the Thargelia in April/May at which the first-fruits were celebrated. Ritual offerings were also made to such climatic elements as the wind, rain and drought, to ensure good harvests.1
In addition to these more emotional, irrational views, however, there was also an investigation of the laws of nature. Ionian natural philosophy in the sixth century BC went beyond purely mythical thinking, and tried to explain the world rationally. Instead of holding the gods responsible for natural events, geophysical principles were explored. The doctrines of the four elements fire, air, earth and water by Empedocles of Agrigentum (c. 495–435 BC) and of the smallest indivisible elements, the theory of atomism proposed by Leucippus and his pupil Democritus of Abdera (460–370 BC), were important initial approaches. At the same time, a distinct environmental determinism emerged, promoted particularly by the Hippocratic school of the fifth and fourth centuries BC, and especially reflected in Hippocrates' On Airs, Waters, and Places (Peri aeron, hydaton, topon).
This treatise construed a connection between the condition of human health and human environment: illness and health were dependent on habitat. The conditions of life and political constitutions were seen as determined by location, composition of the soil, climate, wind conditions, sunshine, quality of the water and cosmic influences. Asia, it was argued, had a mild, balanced climate and rich vegetation, which supposedly produced soft people who were little suited to battle. Europe by contrast had a harsh and changeable climate, which brought forth tough, industrious people, well conditioned for warfare:
Inhabitants of a region which is mountainous, rugged, high, and watered, where the changes of the seasons exhibit sharp contrasts, are likely to be of big physique, with a nature well adapted for endurance and courage, and such possess not a little wildness and ferocity. The inhabitants of hollow regions, that are meadowy, stifling, with more hot than cool winds, and where the water used is hot, will be neither tall nor well-made, but inclined to be broad, fleshy, and dark-haired [i.e., the Boeotians]; they themselves are dark rather than fair, less subject to phlegm than to bile. Similar bravery and endurance are not by nature part of their character, but the imposition of law can produce them artificially . . . These are the most important factors that create differences in men's constitutions; next come the land in which a man is reared, and the water. For in general you will find assimilated to the nature of the land both the physique and the characteristics of the inhabitants.
(Hippocr. aër. 24; Loeb)
Another two basic attitudes are connected with the ambivalent relationship of people to nature as both a benign and a dangerous force: on the one hand, a feeling of inferiority, based on the subjugation of human beings to their environment; on the other, a sense of superiority which presupposes human dominion over nature, and the idea that the human being can gain control over nature. In Sophocles' Antigone (442 BC), the choir speaks (332ff.):
Many wonders there be, but naught more wondrous than man:
Over the surging sea, with a whitening south wind wan,
Through the foam of the firth, man makes his perilous way;
And the eldest of deities, Earth, that knows not toil nor decay
Ever he furrows and scores, as his team, year in year out,
With breed of the yokèd horse, the ploughshare turneth about.
The light-witted birds of the air, the beasts of the weald and the wood
He traps with his woven snare, and the brood of the briny flood.
Master of cunning he: the savage bull, and the hart
Who roams the mountain free, are tamed by his infinite art;
And the shaggy rough-maned steed is broken to bear the bit.
(Loeb)
These two divergent basic attitudes had an effect too on the doctrine of the emergence of culture, which also existed in two different versions. The ‘Descendancy Theory’ was based on the legend of the golden age, as reflected in Hesiod's Works and Days (Erga kai hemerai), in which nature grants a paradisiacal life which, however, becomes ever more arduous, as a result of which people intrude sinfully upon nature. This corresponds to the old Near Eastern view of four eras, each less well endowed with the good things in life than its preceding period: a golden age, followed by a silver, and then a bronze age, and finally the iron age, the contemporary period, filled as it was with tribulations. The ‘Ascendency Theory’, on the other hand, was connected with the doctrine of the emergence of culture, as professed by Plato and Protagoras, which was rooted in a belief in progress. It taught that humankind has escaped from its pitiful original state, in which it was at the mercy of nature and its hardships. Through the development of technology, arts, morals and political community, an ordered system of cohabitation, in which justice and law prevailed, had emerged. These two contrary positions were brought closer together through an awareness of the cycles of life, to which animals and plants, too, were subject.2
Such a cycle is shown as early as Homer's parable of the leaves in the forest, which appear and pass away again, like the generations of people. Glaucus of Lycia, fighting on the Trojan side in the Iliad, addresses his opponent Diomedes, the companion of Odysseus (Il. 6.146–9):
Great-hearted son of Tydeus [Diomedes], why do you inquire of my lineage? Just as are the generations of leaves, such are those also of men. As for the leaves, the wind scatters some on the earth, but the luxuriant forest sprouts others when the season of spring has come; so of men one generation springs up and another passes away.
(Loeb)
The two finally discover that their families are connected in friendship, and refrain from doing battle.
From today's point of view, the positive conclusion to be drawn from such attitudes would be a call for appropriate treatment of nature. Admittedly, this would not reflect the modern idea of environmental protection, but rather a wish for compliance with a divine order, and for moderation. The philosopher Heraclitus of Ephesus (c. 545–480 BC) wrote that, ‘Wisdom consists of speaking the truth, listening to nature, and acting in accordance with her’ (D/K 22 B 112 = fr. 109 M). The tragedians of the fifth century BCheld the opinion that man must adhere to the place provided for him, and perform his task in the world order.
By contrast, Plato's doctrines in the fourth century BC saw intellectual being (logos) as superior to material being (physis). That brought a new dimension into play: the liberation of the soul from its inferior, material cloaking. Nature (physis) thereby became an expression of the incomplete and the transitory, by contrast to the eternally existing. Observation of nature served the purpose of cognition of the harmonious world order embodied in the cosmos. Natural law also implied the right of the stronger (Gorg. 483c–d). Humankind, by means of technology (techne) and culture (nomos), intervened in a nature created independently of it. This was explained by the ‘demiurgos’, who, according to the Platonic creation myth, had formed the world using the existing predefined matter, and in accordance with a primeval ideal (Tim. 28c, 29a).
Aristotle (384–322 BC) by contrast upheld the concept of an eternal world, of a nature constantly in the process of creation, and existing from within itself. At the same time, however, he also gave reasons for the superiority of humans over animals (pol. 1254b 10ff., 1256b 15ff.). Thus, he viewed a part of nature as an object of exploitation, as spoils, although humankind itself nevertheless remained a part of the natural whole. He also supported the principle of considered moderation, or the postulate of the balanced mean, from which a certain restraint in the use of natural resources could be inferred, although it did not attain the principle of protection from ruinous intervention. As can be seen in Xenophon, faith in the inexhaustibility of resources prevailed (vect. 1.4, 4.2ff.).
Finally, in the Hellenistic philosophy of the Stoics, nature became a rational nature, so that dispassionate, sensible life was seen as natural. Humankind, while fatefully connected to nature, could, however, through reason (logos; Lat. ratio) also find moral fulfilment. Since its intellect empowered it to shape and control the fate of plants and animals, it was possible for it to assume its role as the master of nature. Around the same time, the philosophy of Epicurus (342/1–271/0 BC) intended, by explaining physical processes, to free people from their fear of nature and death, and from superstition, so as to enable them to lead happy lives. Moreover, the Hellenistic period saw the emergence of pastoral poetry, which expressed admiration for country life, thus providing a literary counterbalance for the urban life of the expanding cities, a tradition which was to continue during the imperial Roman era, in the idyllic landscape images in the novel Daphnis and Chloe (2.3) by Longus, around the turn of the second to third century AD.
1 Panessa 1991, I.499–541.
2 Vögler 1997, 14ff.