Usher - Plato’s Pigs and Other Ruminations

Plato s Pigs and Other Ruminations

The ancient Greeks and Romans have been charged with destroying the ecosystems within which they lived. In this book, however, M. D. Usher argues rather that we can find in their lives and thought the origin of modern ideas about systems and sustainability, important topics for humanity today and in the future. With chapters running the gamut of Greek and Roman experience from the Presocratics and Plato to Roman agronomy and the Benedictine Rule Plato s Pigs brings together unlikely bedfellows, both ancient and modern, to reveal surprising connections. Lively prose and liberal use of anecdotal detail, including an Afterword about the author s own experiments with sustainable living on his sheep farm in Vermont, add a strong authorial voice. This is a unique, first-of-its-kind book that is sure to be of interest to anyone working in Classics, environmental studies, philosophy, ecology, or the history of ideas.

M. D. USHER is Lyman-Roberts Professor of Classical Languages and Literature and a faculty member in the Environmental Program at the University of Vermont. He is the author of academic books and articles in the field of Classics, including A Student s Seneca (2006), and has also written books for children, poems, and two opera libretti. With his wife he also built, owns, and operates Works & Days Farm in Shoreham, Vermont, where he has been engaged in farming for over twenty years.

Plato s Pigs and Other Ruminations

Ancient Guides to Living with Nature

M. D. Usher

University of Vermont

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Information on this title: www.cambridge.org/9781108839587

DOI : 10.1017/9781108884518

M. D. Usher 2020

This publication is in copyright. Subject to statutory exception and to the provisions of relevant collective licensing agreements, no reproduction of any part may take place without the written permission of Cambridge University Press.

First published 2020

Printed in the United Kingdom by TJ International Ltd, Padstow Cornwall

A catalogue record for this publication is available from the British Library.

ISBN 978-1-108-83958-7 Hardback

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To a Mouse,

On Turning Her up in Her Nest with the Plough,

November, 1785

I m truly sorry Man s dominion

Has broken Nature s social union,

An justifies that ill opinion,

Which makes thee startle,

At me, thy poor, earth-born companion,

An fellow-mortal !

Robert Burns

*

Rerum natura, hoc est vita, narratur.

My subject is the world of Nature, or, in other words, Life.