Cosmos in the Ancient World

Phillip Sidney Horky

• Publisher: Cambridge University Press
• Year: 2019
• Print ISBN:
  9781108423649
• eBook ISBN:
  9781108542715
• Topic: Philosophy
• Subtopic: Ancient & Classical Philosophy

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.

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half-title page
• Title page
• Copyright page
• Dedication
• Epigraph
• Contents
• List of Contributors
• Acknowledgements
• An Historical Note on Kόσμος – Terminology
• List of Abbreviations
• Introduction
• Chapter 1 When Did Kosmos Become the Kosmos?
• Chapter 2 Ordering the Universe in Speech: Kosmos and Diakosmos in Parmenides’ Poem
• Chapter 3 Diakosmêsis
• Chapter 4 Aristotle on Kosmos and Kosmoi
• Chapter 5 Order and Orderliness: The Myth of ‘Inner Beauty’ in Plato
• Chapter 6 Polis as Kosmos in Plato’s Laws
• Chapter 7 Relating to the World, Encountering the Other: Plotinus on Cosmic and Human Action
• Chapter 8 Tradition and Innovation in the Kosmos–Polis Analogy
• Chapter 9 Cosmic Choruses: Metaphor and Performance
• Chapter 10 All the World’s a Stage: Contemplatio Mundi in Roman Theatre
• Chapter 11 The Architectural Representation of the Kosmos from Varro to Hadrian
• Chapter 12 “The Deep-Sticking Boundary Stone”: Cosmology, Sublimity, and Knowledge in Lucretius’ De Rerum Natura and Seneca’s Naturales Quaestiones
• Chapter 13 Cosmic Spiritualism among the Pythagoreans, Stoics, Jews and Early Christians
• Afterword
• Bibliography
• Index Locorum
• General Index