Early Greek and Roman Environmentalists

MUGAES, >: ‘EMvanrsy When Alexander the Great was in India, Plutarch tells us, he tried to pose difficult questions to some Indian philosophers. Of one he asked, vaa “Which animal is the most cunning?” The gymnosophist was quick with his reply: ‘*That one which men have not yet discovered.’ di No modern defender of endangered species could have made thel point more succinctly. The classica writer was aware of an apparent enmity between men and the other ani-r mals in which mankind is dominatoor or destroyer and the others slaves victims. This prevailing attitude toward animals of those who share the tradition of Greece and Rome is only one aspect of the "great divorce"' between mankind and nonhuman nature that looms so large in the history of Western thought. In an earlier article, ‘‘Ecology in Anciente Greece’’ in Inquiry (1975), I hav tried to trace in ancient history some roots of the dominant Western atti-1 tude toward nature. In this essay, will attempt to investigate ideas and practices which, if not dominant, were potentially more constructive. Four sets of attitudes are to be considered here. First, one based on certain conceptions of the gods and their relationship to man will be ex-y amined. A Greek or Roman deit embodied a complex of traditional of attitudes and practices, some them exceedingly ancient and ingrained in the lives of the people of classical times. The gods invested and aspects of nature with sanctity of gave their protection to segments — — ~~ — È === ima — Tu the natural world. <= MU MITE AREAPACON | UCN The Role of the Gods Everyone knows that the gods of were spirits of nature. The god es tim ome ‘‘s who s Zeu the sky was shines brightly, sometimes rains.'’ DePoseidon was god of the sea, and so meter of growing plants, whose forth. But even those gods primary associations were withto asdo pects of human life had much the ed, inde ; with nature as well Greco-Roman traditional religious by J. Donald Hughes ‘ Plutarch hadnspmurinchg inof Aristotle andt was Pythagoras,withHiptodpocay’rats es, the mai logists. Wha common losophy? eco And why were their views ignored? their phi 12 ish perspective did not distinguand ngs bei an sharply between hum Aphrothe rest of the natural world.only in dite stirred passions not rds human beings, but also in y“bi athat fly ín air and all the man cre tures’' of land and sea.” Among her followers were wolves, lions, bears,

and leopards. The music of Apollo's suckling young of every wild creaobserved the proper customs, could - lyre-accompanied voice charmed a ‘‘tawny troop of lions’’ along with ‘dappled lynxes’’ and fawns in the © mountain forest, causing them all to dance with delight.* Asclepius healed by means of snakes. None of the great Greek or Roman gods, and few of the minor ones, lacked identure that roves the field.’’” The cults expect the kindly permission if not of Artemis included dances done by indeed the active aid of the goddess. children called ‘‘bears’’ or ‘‘fawns,’’ probably originally dressed in animal costumes. Here we should emphasize that Artemis’s animals are almost exclusively the wild game Sacred Groves But the careful hunter would never intrude on the sacred territories set aside for the gods. Agamemnon’s species that would engage the attensin, not simply to kill a deer but to do tification with elements of the nattion of hunters, not the domestic so in a sacred precinct, was avoided ural environment. charges of farmers and herders. The by pious Greeks and Romans. Such Some were predominantly gods of nature. Pan was a watcher of the herds who loved ‘‘soft streams,”' possible exception is the goat, but precincts, that creature easily becomes feral, and templa in Latin, were areas set “close thickets,’’ and also ‘‘snowy and there were wild goats on most mountains around the Mediterramountains and rocky peaks.’'* He nean. . aside, usually containing groves of trees and springs or other water, though often mountaintops or other could sometimes offer protection to wild creatures. But the greatest protector of natural things was Artemis, the Roman Diana, the Mistress of Wild Animals (potnia thereon), whose favourite places were ‘‘mountains, and forests green, and lonely glades, and sounding rivers,’’® whose favourite activity was hunting. Let us turn our attention for a while to this goddess and to what she reveals about early attitudes toward hunting as a mode of human relationship to the natural world. Artemis Many of the myths made Artemis something of a game warden; How can we reconcile with Arcalled prominent features topography temis’s protective role the fact that she herself was represented as the huntress par excellence, the ‘‘destroyer’’ who loves hunting wild beasts, accepts the hunters’ gifts of wild game, and even holocausts of wild creatures offered to her, as for numerous, and within them the entemis, Patrae? How mistress of wild can Arcreatures, treated. of were example in so temene in Greek They were very vironment was preserved in something like its natural state, modified usually only by the addition of an image of the god and perhaps a shrine or temple to protect it. To understand the preservation of groves, we must recall the Grecoalso be patron goddess of hunters? - Roman attitude toward trees. Classi- The cal writers recognized that forests, apparent contradiction comes from regarding hunter and prey as the groves themselves, were the orienemies, a view often expressed by ginal temples. Trees were sacred to classical writers, to be sure. But prethe gods: the oak to Zeus, the laurel served in the cults of Artemis and to Apollo, the willow to Hera, the pine tree (or perhaps an oak) to Pan. Diana are survivals of earlier attiin tudes and practices from the time In fact, trees in general were sacred one variant story, Artemis, or posswhen ancestral societies sustained to the gods; Vergil said that every ibly Ge, slew the mighty hunter, Orion, because he boasted that he themselves by hunting, the grove was sacred to Diana. As Pliny animals were seen powerful explained, ‘‘The woods were formwould kill all animals. Artemis did beings endowed away with another hunter, Actaeon, those of human beings, and when now simple country folk dedicate a by the horribly appropriate method tall tree to a god with the ritual of of having his own hounds tear him to hunting was regarded as a ‘‘holy occupation”’ in which both hunter bits, ostensibly because he spied on and game animal participated. The groves the goddess while she was bathing, hunter was expected to propitiate reigns in them no less devoutly than the animal and to treat it, either dead images or ivory.’'” but one suspects that there was an earlier version of the myth in which his crime was hunting the sacred deer of Artemis. That is exactly what Sophocles said Agamemnon did to earn his punishment, when ‘‘taking his pleasure in her sacred grove, he startled an antlered stag with dapalive, with when as with spirits respect. A like certain erly temples of the deities, and even olden times; and we adore sacred and the that very gleam silence in gold that and sportsmanlike survival of this earlier functional attitude can be traced in The Forest’s Protectors the share of the hunter’s bag or fishto Stories were told of the protection of trees by the dryads, the spirits Artemis, as well as in Xenophon’s whose lives were so closely bound to erman’s creel that was offered remark that ‘‘hares below a certain their some careless boast.’’’ Artemis deage are left alone as sacred to the might kill the nymph who lived in it. goddess.’’ Such acts did not go unpunished; manded the of Agamemnon’s sacrifice in somewhat the same light: Erysichthon, own daughter ‘‘in quittance for the ‘‘While men still felt a kinship with Ceres’ sacred forest, found himself cursed with insatiable hunger as a result of the dryads’ complaint. As a punishment for upsetting the balpled hide, shot it, and shooting made life Kenneth Clark sees trees that to cut one down who cut an oak in wild creature’s life.’’ Guthrie calls animals, to eat them was a crime this incident ‘‘perhaps the earliest against example of a game preserve,’’® but I could be achieved only by a would suggest that divine protection feast of wildlife is far older than Agamemvolved.’ In Greek and Roman sacrinon. Artemis was guardian especifice almost all the meat was even- Protection of sacred groves was ally of the young of wild animals; she was ‘‘gracious to the tender whelps tually consumed by the people. The not merely matter for myths; Fragood apzer's Golden Bough notes a number of fierce lions and took delight in the proached the goddess in respect and of cases where cities passed laws forthe group, in “which hunter, all then, and men who expiation ritual were had inance of nature, hunger seems singularly appropriate.

_ bidding the cutting of trees, removal of wood or leaves, the pasturing of could be issued when a although a ‘‘special permit’ eldest of all beings, who feeds all sacrificial creatures.'”"She ‘not only bears the cattle, sheep, or pigs, or planting of victim was desired, There were torcrops for the husbandman, but also - grain in sacred groves under penalty of stiff fines, including mandatory sacrifice, and, in one case involving a toises on an Arcadian peak and, as the Pausanias noted, ‘‘the men of the peoples, and even the wild creatures mountain fear to catch them, and will whose abundance is necessary for slave, fifty lashes. Witnesses were not allow strangers to do so either, men at a still earlier stage of culture, required to report the transgressions for they think they are sacred to who live by hunting and fishing.'”*In flocks and herds for pastoral or suffer similar penalties. The rules Pan.’””No fishing was allowed in the the chthonic view, all life is sacred of the Arval grove of Dia went so far waters of many sanctuaries, and in because it comes from Mother Earth, as to require replacing every tree some was lawful only for priests. herself the that fell with a newly planted one. Even eels were sacred in Arethusa. It would be overstating the case to human beings indicate that precincts were always kept inviolate — no laws would have more like than unlike other animals. been necessary if they had been — of harmony with nature's ways: her cyclical balance, her movements Illegal cultivation of Apollo’s sacred land near Delphi was the announced cause of war. To the Greeks and Romans, the sanctity of holy groves was a practical matter in which local ordinances buttressed the retribution of the gods without necessarily reor that conservation was invariably greatest are deity, and simply some among her many creatures, animals Man goes wrong only by getting out effective in the hands of the gods. through growth to There was an annual Roman festival, gods placing it; Cleomenes of Sparta set the Parilia, in which shepherds were chthonic fire to a sacred grove and was visited undercurrent in Greek and Roman by the gods with madness (the fact cleansed ritually for trespass in the groves, and Cata records a prayer to that five thousand Argives burned to be used before cutting down a tree in surface. Had it been the dominant death in that forest fire should also a sacred grove. Xenophon remarked trend, the environmental history of be mentioned). had fruition. chthonic religion Many aspects, was but always an thought, seldom emerging above the that men could hire temene from the the classical age would have been city of Athens, presumably for some different. In actuality, the protection bidding even the carrying away of kind of commercial use, and Juvenal complained that foreigners rented afforded to the natural environment by the gods was limited, circumbroken limbs in some cases, was the groves in Rome. scribed, The practical result of the careful preservation of sacred groves, forsurvival of venerable stands of trees after the surrounding areas had been deforested. These were the classical and often circumvented, particularly as human minds began to throw off the gods’ increasingly Protection Limited “national parks,’’ small ‘‘wilderness And what of nature outside the tenuous hold. areas’’ surrounded by vast tracts of boundaries of the temene, where no “clearcutting'”. Pausanias remarked upon the gigantic size of the trees he special Greek and Latin writers expressed A second set of attitudes we shall saw in these relict forests, some so their admiration for nature through consider here is that of the philolarge as to overshadow hills or to allow people to picnic or sleep in the mouths of the Olympian deities. sophers. The subject is too vast to expand Greek philosophers and of the Rotheir hollow trunks. High mountains were also set aside as sacred localities. Sometimes upon here, but I cannot resist quotmans who followed in their train was ing the Homeric Hymn to Delian to exclude the gods’ Apollo as their account of nature and also to a throne was erected on the summit mountain peaks and high headlands of lofty hills and rivers flowing out to reify nonhuman nature, ers of mountain-born Dionysus posthe deep and beaches sloping seasibly held that the uplands where ward and havens of the sea are your phenomena to be categorized and explained. This approach excluded the they danced in their annual mysterdelight.’""* This certainly implies an participatory sense of identification ies were set aside for special use. Olympian approbation of the entire between human beings and the rest Sometimes natural world. But the gods in Olymof the natural world which, as noted above, often characterized tradifor Zeus or another deity. The followa whole island, Delos, was consecrated as a like temenos. Protection within the sacred limits was, as we have already noticed, extended to animals. Generally speaking, hunters were not allowed to go inside with their dogs and weapons. On Mount Lycaeus, if a hunter saw his quarry go into the precinct of Zeus, he had to wait outside, the belief being that if he entered he would die within the year. In places there protection one was afforded? illustration: ‘‘All pian aspect seem more generally to have functioned boundaries so as between to set the the parts of Philosophical Attitudes A dominant tendency of actions from setting it apart from mankind as a series of tional religious perspectives. But it was not the only posture philosonature that were sacred and those phers that were not, to lay down the disnature. could adopt in regard to per- I am indebted to John Rodman for mitted to mankind and what was not, and to punish those who transgresan article in which he stressed the sed the limits. The result was to leave most of nature without divinely osophers which he calls ‘‘a kind of sanctioned protection. and Empedocles, who ‘‘exhibited in tinctions between what was Besides the Olympian gods there importance of another school of philcounter-culture,’’ that of Pythagoras both theory and practice a deep were deer sacred to Persephone and were gods of the earth chthon sense of the kinship of human with deer and wild goats sacred to Artemis, none of which could be hun- — not the least among whom was Earth herself, great ‘‘mother of all, nonhuman (especially animal) life.'”” 14 — Were these philosophers, these

vegetarians, these almost nature© mystics, the early environmentalists we are looking for? This tradition, said to have charmed an eagle and a often called ‘‘Orphic”’ from its quasiby the Orphic doctrine that all living mythical founder, Orpheus, emphacreatures, plants as well as animals, sized the harmony of nature and the unity of all living organisms, including human beings, and thus was fundamentally pantheistic. In the view beings and also a kind of intelligence. As Empedocles said, ‘‘The soul inhabits every kind of form of of Empedocles, the universe was an endless recycling of elements in a kind of closed ecosystem: ‘‘There is no birth in mortal things, and no end in ruinous death. There is only mingling and interchange of parts, and it is this we call ‘nature.’ ''*The idea was echoed by Lucretius: ‘‘So the sum of things is constantly renewed, all creatures live in symbiosis [mutua vivunt)}:""” Pythagoras The Orphics ' Pythagoreans and taught that all living creatures are related and have a common origin and natural ties. The usual iconographic representation of Orpheus shows him surrounded by animals in whom his song has awakened a sympathetic attraction. Pythagoras was A bear. The sense of kinship is supported have souls like those of human animals and plants.’’ There is no scale of values or hierarchy imposed; all creatures are ensouled and participate in the cyclical development of the world. The result of this view was the practice of kindness to other creatures and the refusal to do them harm. Pythagoras taught respect for life, holding that ‘‘to kill living beings is contrary to both custom were to be shunned as tainted by the shedding of blood. Pythagoras also objected to cutting or damaging trees and to eating some kinds of vegetable foods. Living strictly by Orphic principles would have meant a simple, limited diet, but it would not have been impossible. A number of foods, including some staples of the Mediterranean table, could be obtained without destroying animal or vegetable goras’' Ovid's ‘‘Pythamentioned apples, life; grapes, milk, and honey as examples. Of course, one of the motives adduced by the Orphics against taking lives was that the souls of animals and plants are actually the reincarnated souls of human beings. The and nature [anomon kai para phystory of Pythagoras recognizing his sin]. departed friend's voice in the howls these In the original state of nature, birds, of a beaten dog has been told too beasts, and men had been tame and philosophers held, often. But underlying the dogma can gentle to one another. They urged be detected a genuine sympathy for nature’s creatures in their own right. Pythagoras’ soul, it was said, ‘‘was constantly passing into whatever their followers to abstain from hunting, animal sacrifice, and especially from eating meat. To those who offered animal sacrifice, Empedocles said, '*You are sacrificing your own kin.” Hunters, butchers, and cooks —————— plants or animals it pleased.''’° And Empedocles reported, ‘‘In the past I have been a boy and a girl, a bush, a _ — _— —— ———_—_—_—_—_—

of this view of the body is mitigated elsewhere, as in Empedocles' statement that ‘‘mortals can know and recognize'’ the power of Love in the EvManrsy physical universe, ‘‘for she is implanted in their bodies.’ But one's inescapable impression is that the dualism of soul and body promulgated by this school prepared the way for a crushing indifference to the natural world that became characteristic of much later philosophical religious thought that was touched by it. We will leave Pythagoreanism for now but will return later to see one of its more appealing influences.” In our search for early environmentalists, we might well look at a third set of attitudes to be found in um Ai+>. those few outstanding Greek thinkers who originated inquiries we would call ecological. They might be said to have been the forerunners of the science of ecology even though, as is the case with much Greek e SYANLUN science, interest in pursuing answers to the kind of questions they were asking did not revive until the modern period. The philosophical basis of ecology, which conceived the world as a biological system within which cycles of change and interaction occur, was stated by Empedocles in the quota- N yYU Ta h"©e. tion given above, and repeated here somewhat more fully: a silent water-dwelling Orpheus, Pythagoras, and Empedfish.'’**It was noted above that anocles on environmental thought was, cestral hunting societies regarded animals as having spirits; Orphism might be in some of its aspects a however, even primarily positive, since a salient element was the soul-body dual- There is no birth in mortal things, and no end in ruinous death. There is only mingling and interchange of parts, and it is this we call ‘nature’... When these elements are mingled into the shape of a man living under the bright sky, or into the shape of wild beasts or plants or birds, men call it birth; and when these things are separated into their parts men speak of hapless modified survival of attitudes from ism mentioned above. The soul was death.* those distant times. Dodds, in The Greeks and the Irrational, suggested that the Orphic idea of soul-body dualism might have had its origins in the prehistoric hunter-shaman's experiences of ‘‘soul-flight’’, the soul leaving the body, having various experiences, and returning. Perhaps still another element of the old hunters’ tribal culture also found its way into Orphism; that is, respect for nonhuman life and reluctance to kill captive in the body, they believed, or in a series of bodies (specifically as a result of the pollution entailed in taking life and eating meat); it was in the soul's best interest to be purified needlessly. Hippocrates believed one must understand nature as a whole to understand the human body. bird, and The Dualist Flaw The influence of the tradition of 16 not entirely or perhaps One is reminded also of Anaxagoras’ statement, ‘‘Nothing exists apart; everything has a share of everything else.''” and go free. If this be true, then all bodies, human and nonhuman, are prisons. The world of nature itself must be worse than a prison, indeed, Hippocrates it must be a maze of prisons. Even fects more seriously, that portion of the natural environments on human health, both physical and mental. He believed that ment with which the soul is in closest one must understand nature as a association, the body itself (as some whole to understand the human body Pythagoreans put it, soma = sema, and soul. According to Airs, Waters, the body is a tomb). The harshness Places” the climate, seasons, and Orphism devalued Hippocrates investigated the efof varying natural environ-

winds of a place, the drinking water found there, and the topography and “ exposure determine to a great extent the physique, temperament, intelligence, and therefore even the culture of the people who live there, along with the characteristic diseases to be expected among them. In addition, he maintained that the same environmental factors affect the growth of domestic and wild animals and plants in each region. Hippocrates’ environmental studies were based as far as possible on careful observation of the regions discussed and are not applications a priori of the theory of humors. If ecology is in part the study of how environments affect organisms, then Hippocrates was a pioneer of ecology. ; Aristotle Aristotle, whose ‘philosophical emphasis is clearly the natural world’’ and whose ‘‘starting point... was biology and the notion of organismic development and function,''?° was interested not only in individual organisms but also in the relationship among living things and between them and the physical environment. In the Metaphysics, he said, ‘‘All things are ordered together somehow, but not all alike — both fishes and fowls and plants; and the world is not such that one thing has nothing to do with another, but they are connected.’ This principle clearly makes the study of ecology possible, and Aristotle’s own observations on ecological relationships, contained in his biological writings, were so intelligent that he has been given credit for introducing ‘‘ecologic considerations into scientific literature,’’ and called the ‘‘Father of Animal Ecology.’’TM In the Historia Animalium, he notes carefully the preferences of various species in food and competition for food ‘‘between such animals as dwell in the same localities or subsist on the same food, particularly when supplies run short. The lion and civet will compete for meat, and the kite will steal food from the raven. ‘‘Thus we see in the creatures above mentioned their mutual friendship or enmity is due to the food they feed on and the life they lead.’’*? Modern ecologists have explained fluctuations of animal populations as resulting from interactions between availability of food, rapidity of reproduction, and predation. Arisother animals can be discerned traces of the psychical modes which attain their clearest differentiation in totle gave a classic description of a spectacular population increase among mice and subsequent popuman.''*° still ‘‘there is one ultimate lation ‘‘crash’’ in which he noted all the important factors (although he did not attain the complex explanation that would now be regarded as satisfactory). At the beginning of the passage, he described what might be called an experiment in population ecology. A female mouse ‘‘in a state of pregnancy was shut up by acciruler, and each lower level is subordinate to the next higher level, as in an army.''* Anthony Preus, in a very useful discussion of Aristotle's biological writings, uses a political analogy, calling Aristotle’s ecology ‘‘aristocratic.’’ As Preus points out, Aristotle in the Politics ‘‘argues not only for natural slavery but also that plants exist ‘for the sake of’ animals, and animals exist ‘for the sake of’ man.” “But scientific ecology sees nature as a reticulum, a web or net of complex inter-relationships that are neither hierarchical, pyramidal, nor “To kill living things is contrary to both custom and nature.” Pythagoras. aristocratic. Scientific ecology sees the existence of each species as depending upon and supporting a series of inter-actions with other species and non-living components of the environment. In such a view, questions as to whether one species is ‘‘more valuable’’ than another can dent in a vessel containing milletseed, and after a little while the lid of the vessel was removed and upwards of 120 mice were found inside it.*** He went on to describe a plague of mice that appeared suddenly, devouring a whole crop. The predators, namely pigs, foxes, and ferrets, were active but ineffective in thinning the numbers, until a rapid disappearance of the mice ‘‘after heavy rains.”' Other ecological relationships described by Aristotle include territoriality among mammals and birds and animal behaviour such as competition and dominance within species, migration, and hibernation. only be answered in terms relative to a particular problem chosen for study. Any system that imposes a structure of values a priori will inevitably distort the network of relationships discovered and described by scientific ecology. Aristotle’s ecology is therefore unscientific unsofar as it is ‘‘aristocratic,’’ whether its apex value is man or something beyond man. A More Democratic View Theophrastus, the student of Aristotle who extended his teacher's researches into botany, adopted an ecological model that was more “‘democratic’’ than Aristotle's. When Theophrastus looked for the Symbiosis, including parisitism and is discussed by commensalism, means of several examples including perpetuation of the same species, the noted one of the sea creature not in producing food for animals or called the pinna and a small crab, the '*pinna-guard.'' ‘‘If the pinna be deprived of this pinna-guard,’’ he said, “it soon dies.'** purpost (telos) of a plant, he found it in the production of seeds for the man. He was interested in efficient causes, not in final causes, and thus much closer to the spirit of modern science. As he expressed it in his Metaphysics, ‘‘We must try to find a Nature's Hierarchy Aristotle's systematic view of natcertain limit . . . both to ‘final causation’ and to the ‘impulse to the ure, however, falls short of being ecological in the scientific sense. His scheme is hierarchical and pyramidal. Although each level of nature intergrades into the next so that sharp distinctions between classes are difis, of the effort to determine ‘‘the conditions on which real things depend and the relations in which they stand to one another.'” Since he ficult, for example, ‘‘in most of the was also a careful observer of nature, better.’ '*For this is the beginning of the inquiry about the universe, that

he was able to provide ecological explanations of many natural pheno- MEvarnys mena. He stressed the importance of observing plants both in undisturbed ecosystems (since where a plant grows unaided best reveals the environment to which it is best adapted) and under cultivation (which he holds to be an environmental change that operates in fundamentally natural ways). He speculated on the interplay between the ‘‘tendency of the plant’s nature’’ (which would today be called ‘‘genotype’’) and the environment, giving importance to both. We would call much of Theophrastus’ writings a botanical Airs, Waters, Places, if by that we mean that he considers these environmental factors and do not impute to him quite as ardent a belief in environmental determinism as Hippocrates expressed. Theophrastus noted the influences of long-term climate, the growing season, and short-term changes in the weather, including temperature, wind, and rain, on the distribution and growth habits of plants. He observed the effects of changes in climate brought about by changes in the size and location of bodies of water due to natural or human agency. He distinguished among plants adapted to conditions of aridity (xerophytes), moisture (hydrophytes), and salinity (halophytes), and to various types of soil. He provided extensive discussion of the effects of slope, exposure to wind and sun, and elevation on environmental conditions in small areas (microclimates) and the plants that grow in them, and he noted correctly that mountains provide an unusual variety of these. He saw that plants of limited distribution (narrow endemics) can be associated with particular mountains or isolated marshes. Theophrastus used certain classiPythagoras. His followers split into two schools; a ‘scientific’ school that neglected biology and therefore ecology, a ‘religious’ school that emphasized purity of soul and rejected any concern with physical nature. The more ‘environmentalist’ of his teachings were gradually abandoned as the Pythagoreans accommodated themselves to the general attitude of Greco-Roman culture. The objections to animal sacrifice, and to most plants as food, were dropped. The divorce of body and soul in later Pythagorean thought, wherever its influence was strong, brought with it indifference not only to the body but to all the rest of the natural environment. (See: Hughes, The Environmental Ethics of the Pythagoreans, Environmental Ethics, Fall 1980, for further discussion of the Pythagoreans.) 18 fying terms that are still important to ecologists; for example, he distinguished among trees, shrubs, and undershrubs. He knew that plants compete with each other for food, water, and sunlight, and he distinguished between shade-tolerant and shade-intolerant trees. He described the spread of weeds and cases of symbiosis and parisitism. He understood that legumes enrich the soil

that decomposing leaves provide a seedbed. and to advocate their elimination. Vitruvius, the Roman architect, But the urban environment received the most graphic criticism, at and The interaction between animals plants, through grazing and was aware of water pollution caused by mining and the resulting danger smoke, other means, received his attention. to health. He advised methods of Rome, '"“repelled Horace, who also Insects, he pointed out, are often testing water for purity and particularly warned against lead pipes as a species-specific or limited to certain least during the Roman period. ‘‘The the wealth, the noise of objected to the city’s suburban enhave source of contamination harmful to croachment on fertile farmlands. Martial catalogued the many sources odours that repel them. Cultivation and other human interactions with the human body. He also described of sleep-preventing noise pollution in lead poisoning caused by industrial air pollution: ‘‘We can take example by the workers in lead who have Rome, including traffic, hammers, and loud schoolteachers. Juvenal expanded the list of urban ills, decrying traffic congestion, fires, public works projects that destroyed natural beauty, chamber pots emptied out of upper storey windows, and ever increasing crime and vandalism. Seneca joined him in criticizing the ‘towering tenements, so dangerous regions, and some plants plants form a major theme. He knew that human beings affect plants in positive and negative ways, on the one hand through manuring and other forms of tendance and on the other hand through burning, cutting, and even the trampling of armies. He recorded regulations governing the harvest of wild plants and the felling of trees and had heard that the cedars of Lebanon grew to great size where they were protected in ‘paradises’' under Persian supervision. Since, as noted above, Aristotle has been called the ‘‘Father of Animal Ecology,'' it might be plausible to distinguish Theophrastus as complexions affected by pallor. For when, in casting, the lead receives the current of air, the fumes from it occupy the members of the body, to the persons who dwell in them’TM Few Disciples Unfortunately, these Greek forerunners of scientific ecology had few followers. No ancient thinkers expanded on their ecological contributions, and they cannot be shown to have had any effect on practice. In medieval times, Theophrastus was known only as the author of the satirical Characters, and Aristotle's biological writings were generally ignored in favour of the Politics and The polarity between city and country provided a major theme in Greek and Latin literature, and the comparison was almost always favtogether... and the world is not such that one thing has nothing ourable to the country. From Theocritus on, writers glorified pastoral and bucolic life as closer to nature and therefore to be preferred. Dio Chrysostom devoted his Euboean Discourse to a demonstration of the moral superiority of a hunter’s clan to do with another, but they are connected.” "Father of Plant Ecology.’’ But while Aristotle provided us with a few outstanding descriptions and insights, Theophrastus adopted a consistent ecological viewpoint supported by observations of greater extent, variety, and importance. His philosophical stance is more congenial to ecological discoveries. Theophrastus is clearly the most important early ecologist. through imminent collapse. “All things are ordered Aristotle. to town dwellers. Those who shared and burning them thereupon, rob the limbs of the virtue of the blood.'"* He further suggested a method of testing air in mines for dangerous pollutants. Strabo, the geographer, also obindustrial air pollution. In Iberia, he noted, ‘‘They build their served silver-smelting furnaces with high chimneys, so that the gas from the ore may be carried high into the air, for it is heavy and deadly.''* Soil erosion due to deforestation was described by Plato in a noted passage in the Critias. That the soil had become increasingly exhausted since earlier, better days was a comwere a number of Greek and Roman monplace among Greek and Roman agricultural writers. Lucretius and others believed this was inevitable, as Mother Earth was growing old, but more practical farmers, such as Xenophon and Columella blamed the neglect of careless human beings: “Land, as all men know, responds to writers who recognized some envirgood treatment.’ Horace scorned Ethics. Ecological Protests Fourth and last, let us consider the attitudes of those who might loosely be called the ancient world's environmental protest movement. There onmental problems caused by human beings. A few of them went so far as to speak out against the practices that caused the problems ‘‘the owner land.” contemptuous of the The major role of goats in destroying trees and other vegetation was noted by Varro. such a view of the urban and rural environments might well be expected to ‘‘protest with their feet” by leaving the city and to advise others to do the same. Horace, Martial, Juvenal, and others did just that, in the firm conviction that in so doing they were not simply shunning human society (as Heraclitus and Menander's title character in the Dyscolus had done by retiring into the mountains) but were enabling themselves to choose their company more wisely and giving themselves enough living space to recover their essential humanity. ‘‘There’s no place in the city for a poor man to get a little peace and a chance to talk.” Survival of Pythagorean Views Another line of protest represented the survival of some of the Pythagorean ideas discussed above, Maintaining the sanctity of all life and the possession of rational souls by animals, some writers in the Roman period objected to hunting, a meat diet, animal sacrifice, and the slaughters for public entertainment in the arenas. Pythagoras himself

was given a voice in Ovid's Metamorphoses, where he advised King word on the subject is a brief dialogue was not just a set piece is evilogue between dent from his serious objections voiced elsewhere to hunting, animal Odysseus, Gryllus, Numa against animal food, since it is and through eating the flesh of living changed many men into beasts of creatures that the Golden Age came various Circe. Circe, kinds. the witch, Odysseus won had the to an end, and against animal sacriright to have his own sailors re-transfice as making the very gods the partners of men in wickedness. formed and then asked Circe to release the other Greeks from their animal forms. Circe agreed on one slaughter, and the excesses of the Roman arena. Plutarch, rejecting the argument of Hesiod and the Stoics that ‘‘human beings have no compact of justice with irrational ani- Plutarch also voice Pythagorean protest. In his dialogue, Whether condition: that Odysseus convince a Land or Sea Animals are Cleverer, spokesman for the beasts to return sympathy for the myriad forms of living things and was an early deostensibly a learned debate among cultured huntsmen, Plutarch actually argues that animals possess reason to support his contention. He admits that animals have only a degree of willingly to human form. The one fender of animal rights. chosen to speak for the animals was In society today, we can identify groups and individuals whose ideas reason but notes that this is also true of human beings. If what we want is ‘‘true reason and wisdom, not even man may be said to exercise it.'’‘ Gryllus, a hog granted the power of speech by Circe. Gryllus refused the chance to return to human form, since animals, he maintained, are superior to mankind in every virtue; mals,’’*° exhibited admiration and and efforts are analogous to the sets of attitudes here studied. It is a sobering observation that none of the Greeks and Romans we have menintellitioned, whether the approaches they gence. Moreover, animal virtues are adopted were religious, philosophical, scientific, or literary, were markcourage, temperance, and But if animals are rational, then we are unjust to kill them when they have not injured us. Plutarch is not natural; fully a Pythagorean; he denies plants Having maintained that beasts can- Mediterranean souls, and elsewhere he would pernot be rational if they have no intimes. mit killing animals sorrow, “as well as eating meat as born knowledge of God, he was reminded by Gryllus that his own an unfortunate necessity. father But Plutarch’s ‘‘in most pity and delightful humans SNomnmEnac suasive arguer, was lost the Sisyphus, 38. 39. 40. 108-12. 29. 30. Empedocles, fragment 117. Diogenes Laertius, Life of Pythagoras 8.4. Empedocles, fragment 137. Empedocles, fragment 17. Empedocles, fragments 8-9, translated in Philip Wheelwright, The Presocratics (New York, 1966), p.127. Anaxagoras, fragment 6. Here I have ignored the question of authorship, simply Footnote: Reprinted with permission from Historical Ecology, ed. Lester J. Bilskey, Kennikat Press, Port Washington, New York, 1980. (681a 12 ff). 37. Homeric Hymn to Delian Apollo 3.22-24. Homeric Hymn to Earth the Mother of All 30.1-4. Guthrie, p.58. Empedocles, fragment 8, Lucretius, De Rerum Natura 2.75-79. Diogenes Laertius, Life of Empedocles 12. lamblichus, Life of Pythagoras 186. classical Ibid. 8.1 (588a 13-b17); see also De Partibus Animalium 4.5 Pausanias 8.54.5. John Rodman, “The Other Side of Ecology in Ancient Greece: Comments on Hughes,” Inquiry, 19 (Spring 1976); in 36. 32. Kenneth Clark, "Animals and Men: Love, Admiration, and 21. 28. famous basin 33. 34. 35. Plutarch, Alexander 64.2. Theocritus 4.43, quoted in W.K.C. Guthrie, The Greeks and Their Gods (Boston, 1954), p.38. Homeric Hymn to Aphrodite 5.3-5. Euripides, Alcestis 578 ff. Homeric Hymn to Pan 19.5-11. Catullus 34.9 ff. Sophocles, Electra 563-72. Guthrie, p.100. Aeschylus, Agamemnon 135-43, Xenophon, Cynegeticus 5.14. Another survival from hunting and gathering societies may be seen in the offerings of fruit and meal-cakes left by Greek rhizotomists to “pay” for certain herbs (Theophrastus, Historia Plantarum 9.8.7). Outright War," Smithsonian, 8 (September 1977); 55. Pliny, Natural History 13.3. 24, 25. 26. a edly successful in preventing the environmental deterioration of the George Sarton, A History of Science: Ancient Science Through the Golden Age of Greece (Cambridge, Mass., 1952), p.565; Friedrich S. Bodenheimer, “Aristotle, the Father of Animal Ecology,” Homenaje a Millas-Valliciosa (Barcelona, 1954), pp. 165-81. Aristotle, Historia Animalium 9. 1 (609b 19-25). bid. (610a 34-35). Ibid. 6.36 (508b 10-29). Ibid. 5.15 (547b 15-32). 31. rituals. 21. 22. 23. contest. atheist. That Plutarch’s clever dia- American Indian medicine men and women had similar 18. 19. 20. cultivate theirs. Odysseus, the famous per- References: — must 41. Anthony Preus, Science and Philosophy in Aristotle's Biological Works (Hildesheim, 1975), p. 217. Ibid., Aristotle, Politics 1.5 (1254b 18-19), (1256b 15-26). Preus attributes to “some modern scientists” belief in a “democratic” theory of ecology "which supposes that all living things have an intrinsic value which is absolute, that the value, merit, or worth of any living thing is to be regarded as intrinsically equal to that of any other; living things are not arranged in a scale of value” (p. 324, n. 48). Neither the "aristocratic" or “democratic” theory is scientific; they are philosophical models which might, perhaps, serve as guides for human technology. But the pure structure of the democratic model is more similar to the reticulum disclosed by scientific ecology and seems, therefore, better to reflect reality. Theophrastus, Metaphysics 9.32-34. quoted in Clarence J. Glacken, Traces on the Rhodian Shore (Berkeley, 1967), p. 51. I am indebted to Glacken for his exegesis of Theophrastus. Vitruvius, De Architectura 8.6.11; see also 8.3.5, 8.4.1-2, 8.6.10-13. 42. 43. Strabo, Geography 3.2.8 tc. 147). Xenophon, Oeconomicus Rustica 1. pref. 1-3. 2.10-15. See Columella, De Re 44. 45. Horace, Carmina 3.1.36-37. Ibid. 3.29.12. 46. 47. 48. 49. 481-528. Seneca, Epistulae Morales 90.7-13. Martial 1257.46. Plutarch, Moralia 962-D. Ibid. 996F. Ibid. 999A, referring to Hesiod, Works and Days, 277-79. But Plutarch could be conventional; see his Life of Pericles, 1. For a review of recent writings on animal rights, see John Rodman, “The Liberation of Nature?” Inquiry, 20 (Spring Aristotle, Metaphysics 12.10.2 (107a 17-20). 1977); 83, 131. postulating my “Hippocrates” as the author of this one work. These quotations are from George Sessions, “Spinoza and Jeffers: An Environmental Perspective,” Inquiry, 20 (1977), 50. E COLSGiST MAN AND THE ENVIRONMENT u (648 )