What Did the Romans Know?

What did the Romans know about their world? The author contends that even though many of the Romans' views about the natural world have no place in modern science - that umbrella-footed monsters and dog-headed people roamed the earth and that the stars foretold human destinies - their claims turn out not to be so radically different from our own.

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What did the Romans know about their world? Quite a lot, as Daryn Lehoux makes clear in this fascinating and much-needed contribution to the history and philosophy of ancient science. Lehoux contends that even though many of the Romans' views about the natural world have no place in modern science - that umbrella-footed monsters and dog-headed people roamed the earth and that the stars foretold human destinies - their claims turn out not to be so radically different from our own. Lehoux explores a wide range of sources from what is unquestionably the most prolific period of ancient science, from the highly technical works of Galen and Ptolemy to the more philosophically oriented physics and cosmologies of Cicero, Lucretius, Plutarch, and Seneca. Examining the tools and methods that the Romans employed for their investigations of nature, as well as their cultural, intellectual, political, and religious contexts, Lehoux demonstrates that the Romans had sophisticated and novel approaches to nature, approaches that were empirically rigorous, philosophically rich, and epistemologically complex.