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.
Author(s): Karen ní Mheallaigh
Series: Greek Culture in the Roman World
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Year: 2020
Language: English
Pages: 341
City: Cambridge
Cover
Half-title
Series information
Title page
Copyright information
Dedication
Contents
Acknowledgements
List of
Abbreviations, Text References and Translations
Abbreviations
Note on Text References
DK, G and LM
Translations
Note on Text
Part I The Moon in the Mythic Imagination
Introduction: To the Moon! Journey into the Ancient Scientific Imagination
Chapter 1 The Moon in Ritual, Myth and Magic
The Moon and Time, Ritual, Religion
Selene and Endymion: Desire and the Female Gaze
Lunar Liquid: The Moon-Womb and Proto-philosophy
Moon-Illusions
Simaetha's Love-Spell: Magic, Lamps and the Moon
The 'Thessalian Trick': Magic, Mirrors and the Moon
The Marriage of Selene and Endymion
Conclusion
Part II The Moon in the Scientific Imagination
Chapter 2 Making Sense of the Moon: Philosophy and Science
What Is the Moon? The Lunar Artefact
The Lunar Laboratory: Change and Epistemology
Heliophotism and the Reflecting Eye
The Moon Becomes a World
Metaphysical Moon: The Old Academy and Pythagoreans
Xenocrates, Philip and the Moon in the Middle
The Moon in the Pythagorean Cosmos
Eschatological Moon
Conclusion
Chapter 3 Life on the Moon: Between Philosophy, Science and Fantasy
Pythagorean Moon-Creatures
The Woman Who Fell to Earth: Helen of Troy
The Nemean Lion and Other Lunar Creatures
Conclusion: The Question of Belief
Chapter 4 The Moon of Many Faces: Plutarch's Great Lunar Dialogue De Facie
Plutarch's De Facie and the Duel of the Philosophies
Plutarch's Inter-disciplinary Moon
The Lunar Texture of De Facie
Theon, Lamprias and Life on the Moon
Sulla's Myth: The Moon as Metaphysical Junction
Literary Coordinates and a Map to the Moon
Conclusion: A Landmark in the Selenographical Tradition
Part III The Moon in the Fantastic Imagination
Chapter 5 The Imaginary Moon: Lunar Journeys
The First Man to Go to the Moon? The Dream Hoax in Varro's Endymiones
From Thule to the Moon: Antonius Diogenes's Scientific Fiction
Astro-poetics: Icaromenippus, the Moon and Lucianic Mixis
Disintegration, Dissent and Creative Hybridity: Lucian's Moon as 'Third Space'
Lucian's Scientific Imagination: Cosmic War, Lunar Anatomy and a Proto-telescope
Conclusion: Scientific Fiction and the Moon
Chapter 6 Selenoskopia: The Moon-View from Fiction to Reality
Lucian, Icaromenippus and the Ancient Telescopic Tradition
Modern Selenoskopic Tradition: The First Wave 1966-1972
The Second Wave: Pale Blue Dot and The Day the Earth Smiled
Conclusion: Between Entanglement and Detachment
Envoi: The Legacy of Ancient Selenography
Bibliography
Index
Index Locorum
