This volume is the second edition of a work originally published 20 years ago exploring the various environmental issues faced in antiquity. H., a prominent professor of environmental history, offers here a revised edition with updated bibliography meant to incorporate the large volume of environmental research carried out since 1994. The result is a mixed bag of insight and anachronism that does not entirely succeed in updating the book to the current status of the field which, indeed, has progressed far since the mid nineties when the work was first published.
The book takes a thematic approach to investigating many different environmental problems in antiquity, divided between twelve chapters plus introduction and conclusion. The chapters cover diverse topics such as deforestation, wildlife loss, agricultural decline, environmental damage through industrial activity and resource extraction, warfare, urban life, natural disasters and climate change. The range of material covered in these chapters is impressive, pulling together textual and archaeological evidence to construct a cohesive narrative. The actual examples discussed tend more towards the Greek East, and those parts of the Roman Empire not located within the Mediterranean basin are rarely mentioned. While the book explicitly focuses on the Mediterranean zone, the exclusion of extensive parts of the Roman world in temperate Europe is a detriment to the reader's true understanding of the Roman environment, as it was not limited to the Mediterranean basin. It is noteworthy that despite this Mediterranean focus, the book does not include any discussion (or indeed, bibliographic mention) of Horden and Purcell's The Corrupting Sea (2000), thereby missing this work's important contribution to the understanding of Mediterranean ecology and its interaction with society in the longue-durée.
The chapters are tied together throughout by the idea of balance between society and nature. The investigation of the relationship between man and nature in the Mediterranean actually starts well before the Classical period, from the Neolithic and development of agriculture. The subsequent intensification of agricultural societies, H. argues, led to an eventual imbalance between man and nature as a result of urbanisation, over hunting, land clearance and irrigation. Citing examples from Egypt and Mesopotamia, this discussion creates a context for later Greek and Roman developments in the same geographical sphere. The Classical world continued this trajectory of environmental decay, and eventually collapsed as a result of their anthropogenic meddling in the ecosystems of the Mediterranean.
This story of decline and fall is heavily deterministic and emphasises a one-sided relationship between humans and their environment where humans are the dominant force. This approach suggests that humans somehow existed outside of their environment, and that they alone were responsible for their surrounding ecological and environmental conditions. There is little appreciation for the fact that humans were simply one component of the natural world. Moreover, the book ignores the fact that both humans and their environment were adaptable and dynamic; there was no constant decline but rather a series of fluctuations.
The study of environmental history has generally progressed past deterministic views that emphasise either the power of man over landscape or landscape over man. Humans exist as a piece of their environment, and therefore we must try to appreciate the complex relationship between people and their surroundings. This relationship is dynamic and rarely only goes in one direction. H. is correct to point out that environmental degradation played a part in societal change in antiquity, but it is misleading to state that anthropogenic factors were the most significant contributors to ecological issues at any point in human history. While H. does dedicate a (short) chapter to climatic change, it does not include reference to recent work on the climatic history of the ancient world. Contrary to the coarse-resolution view that he provides, much recent work has narrowed climatic conditions to decadal and even annual precision. This work demonstrates that there were, in fact, substantial climatic shifts across the ancient world throughout human history and that these shifts could be abrupt and long lasting. We cannot underestimate the role of climate change in ancient ecology, and we cannot easily assign blame for a changing climate to the Greeks and Romans.
This argument is a substantial obstacle for the book under review. If, in fact, the ancient world was vulnerable to changing climatic conditions with causes often located far from the Mediterranean zone, can we believe the narrative of human exploitation and environmental collapse? There is no doubt that the Greeks and Romans caused severe and widespread environmental change through their actions. It is far less certain, however, that their environment was incapable of handling these changes, or that they contributed significantly to the end of antiquity. The effects of systemic change, affecting both humans and their environment, must play a more prominent role in these discussions in the future.
The volume is a rich source of evidence relating to the ancient environment, especially from ancient literature. Yet the narrative constructed around this evidence is, to this reviewer, flawed and out of step with current scholarship that emphasises symbiosis rather than parasitism between man and environment. Twenty years ago, this book may have been well suited to what was known about the ancient environment at that time. The updated second edition has not kept its arguments or material apace with the field, and the reader suffers as a result. For cautious readers able to seek out the primary sources in this discussion, the work has value as a sourcebook. For the less-informed student or layman, the deterministic nature of the argument is dangerous and misleading. There are now more complex and nuanced studies of the ancient environment that better consider the topic.
