Divining Disaster. Signs of Catastrophe in Ancient Greek Culture /
In a world riddled with earthquakes and plagued by epidemics, how did the ancient Greeks cope with, and make sense of, disaster? As our present-day environment is perceived to be increasingly perilous, this book includes the ancient Greek world in the longue durée of disaster discourse. Drawing on a...
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Format: eBook
Language: English
Published:
Leiden ; Boston :
Brill,
2025.
Series:
Classical Studies E-Books Online, Collection 2025.
Mnemosyne, Supplements ;
496.
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Call Number: Z6207.G7 DE3
Table of Contents:
- List of Figures and Tables
- Abbreviations
- Introduction: "Do You Bring a Sign of Some War, Or ...?" (463 BCE )
- 1 Terrors of the Sign
- 2 Pindar's Terrifying Eclipse
- 3 Divining Disaster
- 4 "What Is Disaster?"
- 5 The Ecocritical Perspective
- 6 Agency, Vulnerability, and Resilience
- 7 Uncertainty
- 8 An Ancient Greek Mentality
- 9 A Comparative Perspective
- 10 Structure and Organization of the Book
- Part 1 Divination and Semiotics: "Those Were the Signs" (494 BCE )
- Introduction to Part 1
- 1 Ancient Divination
- 1 Chian Catastrophe
- 2 Delian Disaster
- 3 "The Theology of the Age"
- 4 Defining Divination
- 5 A Cognitive Turn
- 6 Zeichenbeobachtung
- 2 Classifying the Sign
- 1 Peirce's Triadic Sign
- 2 A Divinatory Paradigm
- 3 Basic Sign Classifications
- 4 Natural vs. Technical Divination
- 5 Interpreting the Sign
- 6 "I Opened Their Eyes to the Signs"
- 3 Naming the Sign
- 1 Tzetzes' Terminology
- 2 Sēma and Sēmainō
- 3 Teras : Signs and Monsters
- 4 Teras : Thunder, Snakes, and Rainbows
- 5 Teras : Monsters and Monstrous Babies
- 6 From Teras to Tekmar : A Cognitive Perspective
- 7 Tekmar : Plotting Paths
- 8 Tekmar : "Conjecture the Invisible"
- 9 Tekmērion : Toward a Secular Semiotics
- 4 Abductive Reasoning
- 1 "We Must Conquer the Truth by Guessing"
- 2 The Divinatory Sign in Action: Chios Revisited
- 3 The Divinatory Sign in Action: Delos Revisited
- 4 The Divinatory Sign in Action: Monster at the Mysteries
- 5 Codes, Conditionals, and Compendia
- 6 Signs and Causes: Soft and Hard Astrology
- 7 Divining Disaster with the Stars: From Hesiod to Berossus
- 8 Divining Disaster with the Stars: Chaldeans and Egyptians
- 9 Divining Disaster with the Stars: Ptolemy
- Part 2 Disasters and Definitions: "Disasters in the Sun" (1601)
- Introduction to Part 2
- 5 Three Modes of Disaster: Plutarch, Shakespeare, Derrida
- 1 A Neologism in Hamlet
- 2 Disaster-as-Sign: Shakespeare's Reception of Plutarch
- 3 Disaster-as-Condition: Edmund the Bastard
- 4 Disaster-as-Event and Derrida's Événement
- 5 Verticality, Apocalypse, and Le Ciel Désastré
- 6 Translating Ancient Disaster
- 1 Un Mot Chaldaique
- 2 Theseus' Advice
- 3 Breaking the Stalk, Felling the Crops
- 4 Accidental and Violent Fallings
- 5 The Semantic Field of Disaster in Ancient Greek
- 6 Military Disaster Lexicon: Sicily and Chaeronea
- 7 Military Disaster Lexicon: Cannae
- 8 Categories of Disaster
- 7 Staging Disaster in Tragedy and History
- 1 Remembering Disaster
- 2 Thucydides' Disaster List
- 3 Divining Disaster on Stage: Darius
- 4 Divining Disaster on Stage: Heracles
- 5 Disasters in the Sun
- 6 Polybius on Pity and Folly
- Part 3 Agency and Punishment: "How Can I Have Lunch?" (1799)
- Introduction to Part 3
- 8 The Sunken City of Helike
- 1 Spectacle of Absence
- 2 Divining the Helike Disaster: Scrofani
- 3 Helike's Ancient Testimony
- 4 "The God Is Wont to Send Signs"
- 5 Interpreting the Helike Disaster: Religion vs Science
- 6 Divining the Helike Disaster: Aelian
- 7 Hermeneutic Disaster Management
- 9 Moral Agency and Punitive Disaster
- 1 Agency Reconsidered
- 2 From Angry Poseidon to Bessie's Hurricane
- 3 Punishment, or "A Blessing in Disguise"
- 4 Acts of Nature, Acts of God
- 5 Helike Revisited: Anger and Survival
- 6 Helike Revisited: Signs and Meaning
- 10 Poseidon's Disaster Agency
- 1 Signs, Symbols, Myth
- 2 "God of Brute Force"
- 3 Poseidon's Mode of Action
- 4 Breaking Open the Earth
- 5 Leveling the Achaean Wall
- 6 Covering with Mountains: Phaeacia and Polybotes
- 7 Rooting the Phaeacian Ship
- 8 Immobilizing Alcathoos
- 9 Divining Disaster: Alcinous
- 10 Divining Disaster: Polyphemus
- Part 4 Uncertainty and Suffering: "Hell, Upside Down" (1971)
- Introduction to Part 4
- 11 Imagining Disaster aboard The Poseidon
- 1 From New York to Athens
- 2 "We've Turned Over": Imagining Disaster
- 3 "Robinson Crusoe on a World-Wide Scale"
- 4 The Banality of Disaster
- 5 "There Were No Landmarks"
- 12 The Disaster Geography of the Argonauts
- 1 Finding the Way Out
- 2 Rocks and Currents
- 3 "In the Grip of Perfect Calm"
- 4 Divining Disaster: Restoring Sights and Sounds
- 5 Divining Disaster: Decoding the Sign
- 6 The Black Emptiness of Katoulas
- 7 The Sibyl Divines Disaster
- 8 Vesuvius, Giants, and Cosmic Disaster
- 13 Negative Cosmology: Titans, Typhoeus, and Tartarus
- 1 Soundscapes of Divine and Human Strife
- 2 Crashing Gaia and Cosmic Conflagration
- 3 Typhoeus and Athena
- 4 Typhoeus as Cosmic Teras
- 5 The Disastered State of Tartarus
- 14 Bound and Adrift: Prometheus, Io, and the Island of Delos
- 1 Hesiod's mega pēma : Erratic Winds
- 2 Hesiod's mega pēma : Coma and Exile
- 3 God in Exile
- 4 Prometheus Bound, Io Adrift
- 5 "Tangled in Disaster's Endless Net"
- 6 The Floating Island
- 7 The Polysemy of Delos
- 8 The Mobility of Delos: akinēton teras
- 9 Home to Octopuses and Seals
- 10 Divining Disaster: An Island and an Oracle
- Part 5 Vulnerability and Contagion: "A Protean Disease" (2020)
- Introduction to Part 5
- 15 The Plague as Semiotic Monster
- 1 Dr. Fauci Goes to Marseille
- 2 The Bees of Aristaeus
- 3 The Disaster Triad
- 4 Disaster in Hesiod's Wicked City
- 5 Sterility and Strife
- 6 Divining Disasters with Monsters: The Sphinx and the Kētos
- 7 Divining Disasters with Monsters: The Minotaur
- 8 A Typology of the Monstrous
- 16 Oracles and Plague in Historical Narrative
- 1 Divining Loimos and Oracular Divination
- 2 Herodotus: Loimos for the Chians
- 3 Herodotus: Loimos for the Cretans and Persians
- 4 David's Dilemma: Plague, Famine, or War?
- 5 Josephus' Plague-as-Plague
- 6 Divining Disaster: David and Epimenides
- 7 Curing the Plague: From Abaris to Hippocrates
- 8 Thucydides Divines Disaster
- Conclusion: "A Strange Stillness" (1962)
- 1 Andrà Tutto Bene
- 2 Divining Disaster for the Modern Ecocritic
- 3 The longue durée of Disaster Discourse
- Bibliography
- Index.