An Environmental History of Ancient Greece and Rome

Lukas Thommen. (2012). Trans. Philip Hill. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

Thommen’s focus is placed on the relationships between ancient Romans and Greeks and their landscapes, particularly how landscapes were affected as these societies developed and expanded over time. In the introduction, key terms (climate, disaster, ecology, environment, nature, sustainability, waste) are carefully defined so that they best reflect how ancient societies would have understood and discussed their content, thus avoiding the anachronism of placing modern issues into ancient sources. From there the book falls into two parts – “Greece” and “Rome” – that each feature the same order of chapter headings (e.g. “The Geographic Space”, “Animals”, “Earthquakes and Volcanoes”) to allow for direct comparison between the two civilisations and how each approached environmental issues, so that the ‘ancient Mediterranean world is […] not treated as a geographically closed space in a historically uniform era’ (p. 15). The section on Rome features two additional chapters (“Urban Problems and Rural Villa Construction” and “The Environment in Roman Britain”) which show how the wider ideas discussed in this book can be applied to more specific case studies.