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 anthropological disaster studies, ecocriticism, and cognitive studies, this study considers disaster as a semiotic phenomenon marked by uncertainty. Divining disaster, then, functions as a hermeneutic form of disaster management that alleviates uncertainty and assigns agency, not only in religious practices such as oracle consultation but also in historical and mythological narratives.
List of Figures and Tables
Abbreviations
Introduction: Do You Bring a Sign of Some War, Or ? (463BCE)
1Terrors of the Sign
2Pindars Terrifying Eclipse
3Divining Disaster
4What Is Disaster?
5The Ecocritical Perspective
6Agency, Vulnerability, and Resilience
7Uncertainty
8An Ancient Greek Mentality
9A Comparative Perspective
10Structure and Organization of the Book
Part 1 Divination and Semiotics: Those Were the Signs (494BCE)
Introduction to Part 1
1 Ancient Divination
1Chian Catastrophe
2Delian Disaster
3The Theology of the Age
4Defining Divination
5A Cognitive Turn
6Zeichenbeobachtung
2 Classifying the Sign
1Peirces Triadic Sign
2A Divinatory Paradigm
3Basic Sign Classifications
4Natural vs. Technical Divination
5Interpreting the Sign
6I Opened Their Eyes to the Signs
3 Naming the Sign
1Tzetzes Terminology
2Sma and Smain
3Teras: Signs and Monsters
4Teras: Thunder, Snakes, and Rainbows
5Teras: Monsters and Monstrous Babies
6From Teras to Tekmar: A Cognitive Perspective
7Tekmar: Plotting Paths
8Tekmar: Conjecture the Invisible
9Tekmrion: Toward a Secular Semiotics
4 Abductive Reasoning
1We Must Conquer the Truth by Guessing
2The Divinatory Sign in Action: Chios Revisited
3The Divinatory Sign in Action: Delos Revisited
4The Divinatory Sign in Action: Monster at the Mysteries
5Codes, Conditionals, and Compendia
6Signs and Causes: Soft and Hard Astrology
7Divining Disaster with the Stars: From Hesiod to Berossus
8Divining Disaster with the Stars: Chaldeans and Egyptians
9Divining 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
1A Neologism in Hamlet
2Disaster-as-Sign: Shakespeares Reception of Plutarch
3Disaster-as-Condition: Edmund the Bastard
4Disaster-as-Event and Derridas Événement
5Verticality, Apocalypse, and Le Ciel Désastré
6 Translating Ancient Disaster
1Un Mot Chaldaique
2Theseus Advice
3Breaking the Stalk, Felling the Crops
4Accidental and Violent Fallings
5The Semantic Field of Disaster in Ancient Greek
6Military Disaster Lexicon: Sicily and Chaeronea
7Military Disaster Lexicon: Cannae
8Categories of Disaster
7 Staging Disaster in Tragedy and History
1Remembering Disaster
2Thucydides Disaster List
3Divining Disaster on Stage: Darius
4Divining Disaster on Stage: Heracles
5Disasters in the Sun
6Polybius 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
1Spectacle of Absence
2Divining the Helike Disaster: Scrofani
3Helikes Ancient Testimony
4The God Is Wont to Send Signs
5Interpreting the Helike Disaster: Religion vs Science
6Divining the Helike Disaster: Aelian
7Hermeneutic Disaster Management
9 Moral Agency and Punitive Disaster
1Agency Reconsidered
2From Angry Poseidon to Bessies Hurricane
3Punishment, or A Blessing in Disguise
4Acts of Nature, Acts of God
5Helike Revisited: Anger and Survival
6Helike Revisited: Signs and Meaning
10 Poseidons Disaster Agency
1Signs, Symbols, Myth
2God of Brute Force
3Poseidons Mode of Action
4Breaking Open the Earth
5Leveling the Achaean Wall
6Covering with Mountains: Phaeacia and Polybotes
7Rooting the Phaeacian Ship
8Immobilizing Alcathoos
9Divining Disaster: Alcinous
10Divining Disaster: Polyphemus
Part 4 Uncertainty and Suffering: Hell, Upside Down (1971)
Introduction to Part 4
11 Imagining Disaster aboard The Poseidon
1From New York to Athens
2Weve Turned Over: Imagining Disaster
3Robinson Crusoe on a World-Wide Scale
4The Banality of Disaster
5There Were No Landmarks
12 The Disaster Geography of the Argonauts
1Finding the Way Out
2Rocks and Currents
3In the Grip of Perfect Calm
4Divining Disaster: Restoring Sights and Sounds
5Divining Disaster: Decoding the Sign
6The Black Emptiness of Katoulas
7The Sibyl Divines Disaster
8Vesuvius, Giants, and Cosmic Disaster
13 Negative Cosmology: Titans, Typhoeus, and Tartarus
1Soundscapes of Divine and Human Strife
2Crashing Gaia and Cosmic Conflagration
3Typhoeus and Athena
4Typhoeus as Cosmic Teras
5The Disastered State of Tartarus
14 Bound and Adrift: Prometheus, Io, and the Island of Delos
1Hesiods mega pma: Erratic Winds
2Hesiods mega pma: Coma and Exile
3God in Exile
4Prometheus Bound, Io Adrift
5Tangled in Disasters Endless Net
6The Floating Island
7The Polysemy of Delos
8The Mobility of Delos: akinton teras
9Home to Octopuses and Seals
10Divining 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
1Dr. Fauci Goes to Marseille
2The Bees of Aristaeus
3The Disaster Triad
4Disaster in Hesiods Wicked City
5Sterility and Strife
6Divining Disasters with Monsters: The Sphinx and the Ktos
7Divining Disasters with Monsters: The Minotaur
8A Typology of the Monstrous
16 Oracles and Plague in Historical Narrative
1Divining Loimos and Oracular Divination
2Herodotus: Loimos for the Chians
3Herodotus: Loimos for the Cretans and Persians
4Davids Dilemma: Plague, Famine, or War?
5Josephus Plague-as-Plague
6Divining Disaster: David and Epimenides
7Curing the Plague: From Abaris to Hippocrates
8Thucydides Divines Disaster
Conclusion: A Strange Stillness (1962)
1Andrà Tutto Bene
2Divining Disaster for the Modern Ecocritic
3The longue durée of Disaster Discourse
Bibliography
Index
Michiel van Veldhuizen (PhD 19, Brown University) is Assistant Professor at the University of North Carolina at Greensboro. His research interests include ancient Greek literature, religion and ecocriticism. He has published on such topics as sacrifice, animals, oracles, and eclipse poetry.
