The epic city : urbanism, utopia, and the garden in ancient Greece and Rome /
"As Greek and Trojan forces battled in the shadow of the Troy's wall, Hephaistos created a wondrous, ornately decorated shield for Achilles. At the Shield's center lay two walled cities, one at war and one at peace, surrounded by fields and pasturelands. Viewed as Homer's bluepri...
| Main Author: | |
|---|---|
| Format: | Book |
| Language: | English |
| Published: |
Washington, D.C. : Cambridge, Mass. :
Center for Hellenic Studies, Trustees for Harvard University ; Distributed by Harvard University Press ,
2007
|
| Series: | Hellenic studies ;
21 Hellenic studies ; 21 |
| Subjects: |
| Summary: | "As Greek and Trojan forces battled in the shadow of the Troy's wall, Hephaistos created a wondrous, ornately decorated shield for Achilles. At the Shield's center lay two walled cities, one at war and one at peace, surrounded by fields and pasturelands. Viewed as Homer's blueprint for an ideal, or utopian, social order, the Shield reveals that restraining and taming Nature would be fundamental to the Hellenic urban quest. It is this ideal that Classical Athens, with its utilitarian view of Nature, exemplified. In a city lacking pleasure gardens, it was particularly worthy of note when Epicurus created his garden oasis within the dense urban fabric. The disastrous results of extreme anthropocentrism would promote an essentially nostalgic desire to break down artificial barriers between humanity and Nature. This new ideal, vividly expressed through the domestication of Nature in villas and gardens and also through primitivist and Epicurean tendencies in Latin literature, informed the urban endeavors of Rome."--BOOK JACKET |
|---|---|
| Item Description: | This WorldCat-derived record is shareable under Open Data Commons ODC-BY, with attribution to OCLC |
| Physical Description: | xiv, 204 p. : ill. ; 23 cm xiv, 204 p. : ill., maps ; 23 cm |
| Bibliography: | Includes bibliographical references (p. 161-179) and indexes |
| ISBN: | 0674023749 9780674023741 |