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The Moon exerted a powerful influence on ancient intellectual history, as a playground for the scientific imagination. This book explores the history of the Moon in the Greco-Roman imaginary from Homer to Lucian, with special focus on those accounts of the Moon, its attributes, and its 'inhabitants' given by ancient philosophers, natural scientists and imaginative writers including Pythagoreans, Plato and the Old Academy, Varro, Plutarch and Lucian. ní Mheallaigh shows how the Moon's enigmatic presence made it a key site for thinking about the gaze (erotic, philosophical and scientific) and the relation between appearance and reality. It was also a site for hoax in antiquity as well as today. Central issues explored include the view from elsewhere (selēnoskopia), the relation of science and fiction, the interaction between the beginnings of science in the classical polis and the imperial period, and the limits of knowledge itself.

Karen ní Mheallaigh, The Moon in the Greek and Roman Imagination. Myth, Literature, Science and Philosophy, Cambridge University Press, Cambridge 2020 (Greek Culture in the Roman World), DOI 10.1017/9781108685726, ss. 322

Karen ní Mheallaigh's study The Moon in the Greek and Roman Imagination (Cambridge 2020) aims to discuss how the Moon was present in ancient Greek culture, literature, and science. The subject is examined through the lens of literary studies, yet the author remains open to the perspectives offered by the history of science. The book analyzes the motif of the Moon in Greek literature and natural philosophy: myths, various opinions about its physical nature, deliberations about its inhabitants, and imaginary lunar journeys. The subjects addressed in the book are thoroughly examined in the context of the era. The author, however, does not define the scope of the book precisely and tacitly omits the Moon in Roman literature and the history of astronomy unless it relates to natural philosophy. She also makes groundless guesses about scientific instruments in antiquity and compares ancient literary fiction to modern scientific knowledge.