Aetna and the Moon: Explaining Nature in Ancient Greece and Rome
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Liba Taub
Preface by Mary Jo Nye
2008. 5-1/2 x 9 inches. 183 pages. Horning Visiting Scholars Series. B&W Illustrations. Notes Bibliography. Index.
ISBN 978-0-87071-196-1. Hardcover, $24.95.
The inaugural volume in the Horning Visiting Scholars Series.
Series editors: Mary Jo Nye and Paul Farber.
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Classical authors used both prose and poetry to explore and explain the natural world. In
Aetna and the Moon, Liba Taub examines the variety of ways in which ancient Greeks and Romans conveyed scientific information. Oregon State University Press is proud to present this inaugural volume in the Horning Visiting Scholars Series.
In ancient Greece and Rome, most of the technical literature on scientific, mathematical, technological, and medical subjects was written in prose, as it is today. However, Greek and Roman poets produced a significant number of widely read poems that dealt with scientific topics. Why would an author choose poetry to explain the natural world? This question is complicated by claims made, since antiquity, that the growth of rational explanation involved the abandonment of poetry and the rejection of myth in favor of science.
Taub uses two texts to explore how scientific ideas were disseminated in the ancient world. The anonymous author of the Latin
Aetna poem explained the science behind the volcano Etna with poetry. The Greek author Plutarch juxtaposed scientific and mythic explanations in his dialogue
On the Face on the Moon.
Both texts provide a lens through which Taub considers the nature of scientific communication in ancient Greece and Rome. General readers will appreciate Taub’s thoughtful discussion concerning the choices available to ancient authors to convey their ideas about science—as important today as it was in antiquity—while Taub’s careful research and lively writing will engage classicists as well as historians of science.
About the Author
Liba Taub is Director and Curator of the Whipple Museum of the History of Science and Reader in History and Philosophy of Science at University of Cambridge. Her research and scholarship focus on the history of early science and the history of scientific instruments. She is the author of
Ancient Meteorology and
Ptolemy's Universe: The Natural Philosophical and Ethical Foundations of Ptolemy's Astronomy.
Mary Jo Nye is Horning Professor of the Humanities and Professor of History at Oregon State University.
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