The Routledge Handbook to Identity and the Environment in the Classical and Medieval Worlds

459 Pages·2015·19.62 MB·English

by  Rebecca Futo Kennedy

THE ROUTLEDGE
HANDBOOK OF IDENTITY AND
THE ENVIRONMENT IN THE CLASSICAL
AND MEDIEVAL WORLDS
The Routledge Handbook of Identity and the Environment in the Classical and Medieval
Worlds explores how environment was thought to shape ethnicity and identity, beginning from
developments in early natural philosophy and historical ethnographies. Defining ‘environment’
broadly to include not only physical but also cultural environments, natural and constructed,
the volume considers the multifarious ways in which environment was understood to shape the
culture and physical characteristics of peoples, as well as how the ancients manipulated their
environments to achieve a desired identity. This diverse collection includes studies not only of
the Greco-Roman world, but also ancient China and the European, Jewish and Arab inheritors
and transmitters of classical thought.
In recent years, work in this subject has been confined mostly to the discussion of texts
that reflect an approach to the barbarian as ‘other’. The Routledge Handbook of Identity and
the Environment in the Classical and Medieval Worlds takes the discussion of ethnicity on a
fresh course, contextualizing the concept of the barbarian within rational discourses such as
cartography, medicine, and physical sciences, an approach that allows us to more clearly
discern the varied and nuanced approaches to ethnic identity which abounded in antiquity. The
innovative and thought-provoking material in this volume realizes new directions in the study
of identity in the classical and medieval worlds.
Rebecca Futo Kennedy is Associate Professor of Classics at Denison University.
Molly Jones-Lewis is Lecturer in Ancient Studies at University of Maryland, Baltimore County.
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THE ROUTLEDGE
HANDBOOK OF IDENTITY
AND THE ENVIRONMENT
IN THE CLASSICAL AND
MEDIEVAL WORLDS
Edited by
Rebecca Futo Kennedy and
Molly Jones-Lewis
First published 2016
by Routledge
2 Park Square, Milton Park, Abingdon, Oxon OX14 4RN
and by Routledge
711 Third Avenue, New York, NY 10017
Routledge is an imprint of the Taylor & Francis Group, an informa business
© 2016 R. Kennedy and M. Jones-Lewis
The right of the editors to be identified as the author of the editorial material, and of the
authors for their individual chapters, has been asserted in accordance with sections 77 and
78 of the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reprinted or reproduced or utilised in any
form or by any electronic, mechanical, or other means, now known or hereafter invented,
including photocopying and recording, or in any information storage or retrieval system,
without permission in writing from the publishers.
Trademark notice: Product or corporate names may be trademarks or registered trademarks,
and are used only for identification and explanation without intent to infringe.
British Library Cataloguing-in-Publication Data
A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
A catalog record for this book has been requested
ISBN: 978-0-415-73805-7 (hbk)
ISBN: 978-1-315-68662-2 (ebk)
Typeset in Times New Roman
by Swales & Willis Ltd, Exeter, Devon, UK
CONTENTS
List of illustrations viii
Acknowledgements x
Notes on contributors xi
Map xiv
Introduction: identity and the environment in the classical and
medieval worlds 1
Rebecca Futo Kennedy and Molly Jones-Lewis
PART I
Ethnic identity and the body 7
1 Airs, waters, metals, earth: people and land in Archaic and
classical Greek thought 9
Rebecca Futo Kennedy
2 The ecology of health in Herodotus, Dicaearchus, and Agatharchides 29
Clara Bosak-Schroeder
3 The invention and application of racial deformity 45
Robert Garland
4 Ethnic bodies: physiognomy, identity and the environment 62
Max L. Goldman
5 Health as a criterion in ancient ethnological schemes 75
Eran Almagor
v
Contents
6 The fixed and the fluent: geographical determinism, ethnicity, and
religion c. 1100–1300 ce 93
Claire Weeda
7 The Greek theory of climate in medieval Jewish thought: absorption,
influence, and application 114
Abraham Melamed
PART II
Determined and determining ethnicity 131
8 Colonisation, nostos, and the foreign environment in Xenophon’s Anabasis 133
Rosie Harman
9 The world in a pill: local specialties and global remedies in
the Graeco-Roman world 151
Laurence M. V. Totelin
10 Vitruvius, landscape, and heterotopias: how ‘otherspaces’ enrich
Roman identity 171
Diana Spencer
11 Tribal identity in the Roman world: the case of the Psylloi 192
Molly Jones-Lewis
12 Overcoming environmental determinism: introduced species,
hybrid plants and animals, and transformed lands in the Hellenistic
and Roman worlds 210
Jared Secord
13 Who reads the stars? Origen of Alexandria on ethnic reasoning and
astrological discourse 230
Kathleen Gibbons
14 Climate and courage 247
Georgia Irby
15 Nationality, religious belief, geographical identity, and sociopolitical
awareness in Abraham Ibn Ezra’s astrological thought 266
Shlomo Sela
16 The lost origins of the Daylamites: the construction of a new ethnic
legacy for the Buyids 281
Christine D. Baker
vi
Contents
PART III
Mapping ethnicity 297
17 Location and dislocation in early Greek geography and ethnography 299
Philip Kaplan
18 The terrain of autochthony: shaping the Athenian landscape in the late
fifth century bce 315
Jacquelyn H. Clements
19 Modeling ethnicity: patterns of ethnic evaluation in the Indian records
of Alexander’s companions and Megasthenes 341
Daniela Dueck
20 Those happy people: Arabia Felix and the astrological oikoumenē of
Claudius Ptolemaeus 353
Joanna Komorowska
21 ‘Ugly as sin’: monsters and barbarians in late antiquity 373
Maja Kominko
22 “Their lands are peripheral and their qi is blocked up”: the uses of
environmental determinism in Han (206 bce–220 ce) and Tang
(618–907 ce) Chinese interpretations of the ‘barbarians’ 390
Shao-yun Yang
23 The monstrous races of India in the early stages of reconnaissance 413
Galia Halpern
Index 434
vii
ILLUSTRATIONS
Map 1 The world according to Strabo and Eratosthenes xiv
Figures
9.1 Collection of medical instruments from various parts of the
Graeco-Roman world. British Museum 159
18.1 The Acropolis of Athens c. 180 ce 318
18.2 The Erechtheion, as seen from the Propylaia to the east 319
18.3 The Erechtheion frieze on display in the New Acropolis Museum 323
18.4 Two overlapping figures from the Erechtheion frieze,
Acropolis Museum 324
18.5 Seated female figure holding a child in her lap from the
Erechtheion frieze, Acropolis Museum 325
18.6 Group of horses and a male figure from the Erechtheion frieze,
Acropolis Museum 326
18.7 Female figure in flight, from the Erechtheion frieze,
Acropolis Museum 327
18.8 Corinthian helmet from the Erechtheion frieze, Acropolis Museum 327
18.9 The Presentation of Erichthonios. Attic kylix by the Codrus Painter 328
18.10 View of the North Porch of the Erechtheion from the Panathenaic
Way in the Athenian Agora 331
20.1 The world according to Ptolemy 357
23.1 Fra Mauro, World Map, c. 1450 416
23.2 Imago Mundi, (after) Pierre d’Ailly, c. 1410 423
23.3 Cresques Abraham, Catalan Atlas, c. 1375; Detail, Isles of the Blessed 425
23.4 Fra Mauro, World Map; detail, Andaman Island 427
23.5 Fra Mauro, World Map; detail, Ireland 428
viii
Illustrations
Tables
4.1 Controllable vs. involuntary somatic signs 65
9.1 Local specialities listed in the Hippocratic corpus 154
9.2 Local specialities listed in the works of Galen on compound remedies 155
9.3 Two versions of Aelius Gallus’ theriac recipes, from Galen’s
De Antidotis 163
11.1 Appendix: Surviving testimonia of the Psylloi 203
20.1 Ptolemy’s triplicities with their connections to geography and
ordinal directions 353
20.2 Distributions along axes 354
20.3 The astrological distribution of nations 357
ix