People in classical Greece and Rome knew a lot about botany. As Hardy and Totelin explain, modern readers just need to adjust their understanding of botany to fit the lenses through which the ancients were looking.
This book plumbs the works of an amazing number of Greek and Roman authors for descriptions of and references to plants. Hardy and Totelin place this information in the social, economic and cultural context of the times the texts were written, using an impressive multidisciplinary approach.
Ancient Botany is organized into chapters on how ancient authors knew about plants (for instance, by reading previous authors, personal observations, and hearsay); how they understood the organization of the plant world; how they named and described plants; how they described a plant’s life cycle; and how they understood the connection between a plant and its location. Each chapter is clearly organized, well developed, and supported by copious attribution of sources.
Hardy and Totelin make clear throughout where there are problems with the sources. They note when a text uses an older text for its information, and where previous scholars have assigned a text to the wrong author.
They also note where ancient scholars warn readers about earlier authors’ incorrect information. In one example, Theophrastus, a major Greek source of plant information, notes that the idea that it is necessary to dig peonies at night to avoid being attacked by woodpeckers “seems ludicrous and far-fetched” (p. 45).
Ancient Botany includes brief discussion of modern controversies related to the study of botany. The text also includes many places where questions are still unanswered and more work needs to be done – helpful hints for Ph.D. candidates looking for dissertation topics.
Another helpful aspect of this book is how it connects ancient understanding to modern. For instance, some ancient texts include lichens and fungi in the plant world. Hardy and Totelin explain why modern science has removed them, partly because of our knowledge of chemistry the ancients did not have. The book makes a good case for the value of the ancients’ organization and description of plants, given the information available at the time.
For the ancients, plants were valued and described primarily for their practical value. These texts focus on the medical value of plants, their usefulness as food sources, and as sources of construction material and fuel. An example of this value is that the Romans were “fascinated (obsessed even)” (p. 134) by grafting to improve fruit production. Several authors use sexual analogy to describe the process, common anthropomorphizing in ancient writing about plants.
Of particular interest to ornamental gardeners, the section on Roman gardens describes serious competition among gardeners. The wealthy developed very elaborate gardens as symbols of their wealth and power. Pliny the Elder attacked these “useless” gardens because they produced no food and thus robbed the poor of the food that might have been grown there. Martial praised a farm for its focus on crops and animals. He wrote approvingly that it “Is not ordered with idle myrtle-groves,/Widowed plane trees, and clipped box-rows” (p. 165). Here he alludes to topiary art, reportedly perfected during the reign of Augustus Caesar.
Much intriguing detail can be mined from this book. It provides a convincing picture of how the Greeks and Romans understood the plant world. The reader can learn about what people knew then, where their knowledge differed from modern understanding, and where traces of that classical knowledge remain with us.
Published in the Leaflet for Scholars, April 2022, Volume 9, Issue 4.