Overview

The Moon exerted a powerful influence on ancient intellectual history, as a playground for the scientific imagination. This book explores the history of the Moon in the Greco-Roman imaginary from Homer to Lucian, with special focus on those accounts of the Moon, its attributes, and its 'inhabitants' given by ancient philosophers, natural scientists and imaginative writers including Pythagoreans, Plato and the Old Academy, Varro, Plutarch and Lucian. ní Mheallaigh shows how the Moon's enigmatic presence made it a key site for thinking about the gaze (erotic, philosophical and scientific) and the relation between appearance and reality. It was also a site for hoax in antiquity as well as today. Central issues explored include the view from elsewhere (selēnoskopia), the relation of science and fiction, the interaction between the beginnings of science in the classical polis and the imperial period, and the limits of knowledge itself.

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9781108716284

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Reviews

'The book will interest historians of ideas, scholars of ancient science and philosophy, and anyone engaged with science fiction. Recommended.' P. Nieto, Choice

Author Information

Karen ní Mheallaigh is Professor of Greek in the Department of Classics and Ancient History at the University of Exeter. She is the author of Reading Fiction with Lucian: Fakes, Freaks and Hyperreality (Cambridge, 2014).

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