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Ancient Weather Signs: Texts, Science and Tradition ANCIENT WEATHER SIGNS: TEXTS, SCIENCE AND TRADITION Michael Ian Beardmore A Thesis Submitted for the Degree of PhD at the University of St Andrews 2013 Full metadata for this item is available in St Andrews Research Repository at: http://research-repository.st-andrews.ac.uk/ Please use this identifier to cite or link to this item: http://hdl.handle.net/10023/4103 This item is protected by original copyright Ancient Weather Signs: Texts, Science and Tradition Michael Ian Beardmore This thesis is submitted in partial fulfilment for the degree of PhD at the University of St Andrews September 2013 i 1. Candidate’s declarations: I, Michael Ian Beardmore hereby certify that this thesis, which is approximately 80,000 words in length, has been written by me, that it is the record of work carried out by me and that it has not been submitted in any previous application for a higher degree. I was admitted as a research student in September 2010 and as a candidate for the degree of PhD in 2011; the higher study for which this is a record was carried out in the University of St Andrews between 2010 and 2013. Date…………… Signature of Candidate ………………………………………….. 2. Supervisor’s declaration: I hereby certify that the candidate has fulfilled the conditions of the Resolution and Regulations appropriate for the degree of PhD in the University of St Andrews and that the candidate is qualified to submit this thesis in application for that degree. Date…………… Signature of Supervisor………………………………………….. 3. Permission for electronic publication: (to be signed by both candidate and supervisor) In submitting this thesis to the University of St Andrews I understand that I am giving permission for it to be made available for use in accordance with the regulations of the University Library for the time being in force, subject to any copyright vested in the work not being affected thereby. I also understand that the title and the abstract will be published, and that a copy of the work may be made and supplied to any bona fide library or research worker, that my thesis will be electronically accessible for personal or research use unless exempt by award of an embargo as requested below, and that the library has the right to migrate my thesis into new electronic forms as required to ensure continued access to the thesis. I have obtained any third-party copyright permissions that may be required in order to allow such access and migration, or have requested the appropriate embargo below. The following is an agreed request by candidate and supervisor regarding the electronic publication of this thesis: Access to all of printed copy but embargo of all of electronic publication of thesis for a period of five years on the following ground: publication would preclude future publication. Date…………… Signature of Supervisor………………………………………….. Signature of Candidate …………………………………………… ii Acknowledgements First thanks must, of course, go to my supervisor, Dr. Emma Gee. Her help has been utterly invaluable and without it, this project would have undoubtedly suffered both in quality and in the timely manner of its completion. Dr. Jason König has provided constantly helpful advice and comments throughout, often at short notice, for which I am genuinely grateful. I must also thank Prof. Adrian Gratwick for his input regarding Geminus and Latin parapegmata, Prof. Greg Woolf for his thoughts when this thesis was in its final stages, and Dr. Stephen Green for giving me access to a chapter from his forthcoming work on Roman astrology. I must also thank Dr. Alice König and Prof. Liba Taub for acting as my examiners and providing volumes of useful advice for the future. On a personal level, this PhD would simply not have been possible without my wife, Peggy. Her continual support and encouragement has been offered with true generosity and received with thorough appreciation. Similarly, my parents and family have remained an important constant and have treated my work with the good humour it warrants. My fellow St Andrews postgraduates have, through both my MLitt and PhD, provided me with much-valued friendship and those with whom I have shared an office have always been willing to listen to me talk at them about the weather, for which I am immensely grateful. Finally, I dedicate this thesis to two enthusiastic supporters of academic pursuits, Bill Hurst and Joyce Over. Their immeasurable influence on me continues. iii Thesis Abstract This thesis offers a new contextualisation of weather signs, naturally occurring terrestrial indicators of weather change (from, for example, animals, plants and atmospheric phenomena), in antiquity. It asks how the utility of this method of prediction was perceived and presented in ancient sources and studies the range of answers given across almost eight hundred years of Greek and Roman civilisation. The presentation of weather signs is compared throughout to that of another predictive method, astrometeorology, which uses the movement of the stars as markers of approaching weather. The first chapter deals with the presentation and discussion of weather signs in a range of Greek texts. It sees hesitant trust being placed in weather signs, lists of which were constructed so as to be underpinned by astronomical knowledge. The second chapter assesses how these Greek lists were received and assimilated into Roman intellectual discourse by looking to the strikingly similar practice of divining by portents. This lays the foundations for the final chapter, which describes and explains the Roman treatment of weather signs. Here, the perceived utility of weather signs can be seen to reduce rapidly as the cultural significance of astronomy reaches new heights. This thesis provides new readings and interpretations of a range of weather- based passages and texts, from the Pseudo-Theophrastan De Signis, to Lucan’s Pharsalia, to Pliny’s Natural History, many of which have previously been greatly understudied or oversimplified. It allows us to understand the social and scientific place of weather prediction in the ancient world and therefore how abstract and elaborate ideas and theories filtered in to the seemingly commonplace and everyday. I argue that between the 7th century BC and the end of the 1st century AD, the treatment of weather signs changes from being framed in fundamentally practical terms to one in which practical considerations were negligible or absent. As this occurred, astrometeorology comes to be seen as the only predictive method worthy of detailed attention. These two processes, I suggest, were linked. iv Ancient Weather Signs: Texts, Science and Tradition Contents Introduction and Preliminary Questions .......................................................................... 1 1. Thesis Scope and Structure ............................................................................................ 1 2. Divisions in Ancient Predictive Traditions ..................................................................... 5 3. Past Weather Sign Scholarship ..................................................................................... 11 4. A Methodological Objection ........................................................................................ 17 5. ‘Practicality’ and ‘Reality’ ........................................................................................... 18 6. Who Predicts? .............................................................................................................. 21 Part 1: The Greek Weather Sign ..................................................................................... 24 1. The Changing Agricultural Sign .................................................................................. 25 The Role(s) of Natural Signs ....................................................................................... 25 The Practicality of the De Signis ................................................................................. 29 Time-reckoning in Weather Sign Lists ........................................................................ 31 2. Using Weather Signs ................................................................................................... 36 The Astrometeorology of Weather Signs ..................................................................... 39 The Structure of the De Signis and the Phaenomena .................................................... 46 ‘The Best’ Weather Signs ............................................................................................ 49 An Alternative System?............................................................................................... 51 3. Understanding Weather Signs ...................................................................................... 54 Why Astrometerology?: Regularity ............................................................................. 55 Accuracy ..................................................................................................................... 59 Explaining Weather Signs I ......................................................................................... 63 Weather Signs in Geminus’ Isagoge ............................................................................ 77 Why Weather Signs? ................................................................................................... 79 4. Depicting Weather Prediction ...................................................................................... 85 Hesiod........................................................................................................................
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