Cosmos in the ancient world / edited by Phillip Sidney Horky, University of Durham.

Format:

Book

Contributor:

Horky, Phillip Sidney, editor.

Language:

English

Subjects (All):

Cosmology, Ancient.

Physical Description:

xxii, 348 pages : illustration ; 24 cm

Place of Publication:

Cambridge, United Kingdom ; New York : Cambridge University Press, 2019.

Summary:

How did the ancient Greeks and Romans conceptualise order? This book answers that question by analysing the formative concept of kosmos ('order', 'arrangement', 'ornament') in ancient literature, philosophy, science, art, and religion. This concept encouraged the Greeks and Romans to develop theories to explain core aspects of human life, including nature, beauty, society, politics, the individual, and what lies beyond human experience. Hence, Greek kosmos, and its Latin correlate mundus, are subjects of profound reflection by a wide range of important ancient figures, including philosophers (Parmenides, Empedocles, the Pythagoreans, Democritus, Plato, Aristotle, the Stoics, Lucretius, Cicero, Seneca, Plotinus), poets and playwrights (Sophocles, Euripides, Aristophanes, Plautus, Marcus Argentarius, Nonnus), intellectuals (Gorgias, Protagoras, Varro), and religious exegetes (Philo, the Gospel Writers, Paul). By revealing kosmos in its many ancient manifestations, this book asks us to rethink our own sense of 'order', and to reflect on our place within a broader cosmic history.

Contents:

When did kosmos become the kosmos? / Phillip Sidney Horky

Ordering the universe in speech : kosmos and diakosmos in Parmenides' poem / Arnaud Macé

Diakosmêsis / Malcolm Schofield

Aristotle on kosmos and kosmoi / Monte Ransome Johnson

Order and orderliness : the myth of 'inner beauty' in Plato / George Boys-Stones

Polis as kosmos in Plato's Laws / Luc Brisson

Relating to the world, encountering the other : Plotinus on cosmic and human action / Pauliina Remes

Tradition and innovation in the kosmos

polis analogy / Carol Atack

Cosmic choruses : metaphor and performance / Renaud Gagné

All the world's a stage : Contemplatio Mundi in Roman theatre / Robert Germany

The architectural representation of the kosmos from Varro to Hadrian / Gilles Sauron

"The deep-sticking boundary stone" : cosmology, sublimity and knowledge in Lucretius' De Rerum Natura and Seneca's Naturales Quaestiones / W.H. Shearin

Cosmic spiritualism among the Pythagoreans, Stoics, Jews and early Christians / Phillip Sidney Horky.

Notes:

Includes bibliographical references and index.

ISBN:

9781108423649

1108423647

OCLC:

1076549478

Publisher Number:

99983467713

40029338881