Birds in the Natural World
1: The Seasons
2: Weather
3: Time
4: Soundscapes
Birds as a Resource
5: Hunting and Fowling
6: Cooking and Eating
7: Farming
Living with Birds
8: Captivity and Domestication
9: Sports and Entertainments
10: Relationships and Responsibilities
Invention and Discovery
11: Wonders: travellers' tales and tall stories
12: Medicine: folklore and science
13: Observation and Enquiry: the beginnings of ornithology
Thinking with Birds
14: Omens and Auguries
15: Magic and Metamorphosis
16: Signs and Symbols
Birds as Intermediaries
17: Fabulous Creatures
18: Messengers and Mediators
19: Mother Earth
20: Epilogue: then and now
Appendix: some bird lists from ancient sources
Biographies of authors quoted
References
Bibliography
Bibliography
Acknowledgements and picture credits
Shortlisted for the 2019 Wolfson History Prize
Jeremy Mynott is the author of Birdscapes: Birds in Our Imagination
and Experience (2009), a book exploring the variety of human
responses to birds, described by reviewers as 'the finest book ever
written about why we watch birds' (Guardian) and 'a wonderful
rumination on birds and birders through space and time for anyone
interested in our relationship with nature' (THES). He has also
published an edition and translation of
Thucydides in the series, 'Cambridge Texts in the History of
Political Thought' and, more recently, Knowing your Place, an
account of the wildlife in a tiny Suffolk hamlet. He has broadcast
on radio and television, is a regular reviewer for
the TLS and wildlife magazines, a founder member of 'New Networks
for Nature', and is the former Chief Executive of Cambridge
University Press and an Emeritus Fellow of Wolfson College,
Cambridge.
Jeremy Mynott's Birds in the Ancient World is an absolute joy,
beautifully written and gloriously illustrated.
*Peter Thonemann, Books of the Year 2018, The Times Literary
Supplement*
[A] superb book ... Mynott quotes [...] 120 authors in total, some
translated into English for the first time. All the translations
are Mynott's own. The period covered is approximately 700 BC to AD
300 and, since Mynott's approach is thematic, each chapter ranges
pretty freely across those thousand years. It is, without doubt, a
major achievement and a brilliantly sustained exercise in what
Mynott [...] calls 'thinking with birds' ... We are fortunate to
have in Mynott, who is both an ornithologist and a classicist, the
perfect guide for such explorations.
*Mathew Lyons, History Today*
An astonishing combination of knowledge and sheer readability ... a
copiously and richly illustrated review ... I think we should be
grateful to Jeremy Mynott for this wonderful book, which both
illuminates that understanding and broadens our knowledge.
*Roger Riddington, British Birds*
[A] stunning new book ... reading this splendid study, I
experienced some of the excitement that humanists must have felt at
entering into a lost world ... Beautifully produced, informed by
wonderful scholarship, Birds in the Ancient World embodies the
Renaissance spirit, as a model of humane and civilised
learning.
*Mike McCarthy, Resurgence & Ecologist Magazine*
It is [...] thought-provoking, highly readable and exhaustive.
Mynott has made an enormous effort to trawl the whole of the
classics for bird references. The materials unearthed are far
greater than anything previously considered and an appendix
supplying potted biographies of the Greek and Roman authors
discussed in the book includes more than 100 names ... Perhaps the
pre-eminent achievement of the book is not its fastidious
examination of classical birds, but the way it pans backwards from
the avian minutiae to give us a much broader vision of the two
great civilisations.
*Mark Cocker, The Spectator*
This scholarly, yet readable and fascinating book presents a
detailed account of how our current obsession with birds began ...
beautifully produced volume, illustrated throughout with striking
colour images ... Mynotts book brings to life the variety of
ancient scholars and artists who were inspired by birds. The sheer
volume of material must, one feels, have been daunting, yet Mynott
has processed it in a sensitive and logical fashion ... this
definitive and original account of birds in the ancient world will
serve as an invaluable reference for all subsequent historians of
ornithology, and indeed, zoology as a whole.
*Tim Birkhead, Archives of National History*
A book the world has been waiting for, rich, scrupulously
organised, imaginative, beautifully written, and driven by a double
passion. On the one hand, for birds and human interactions with
them. On the other, for the ancient world, especially those Greeks
who 'invented the concept of nature' and the scholarship which
brings their thoughts and observations alive.
*Ruth Padel, author of Darwin - A Life in Poems, The Mara Crossing,
and In and Out of the Mind*
[An] excellent new book.
*Robin Lane Fox, The Financial Times*
A distinguished publisher and writer on both classics and
bird-watching, Mynott has scoured thousands of pages on a literary
nature trail...
*Peter Stothard, The Times Literary Supplement*
With a glorious array of references, vivid images, and his own
astute philosophical commentary, Mynott deftly brings all this into
sharp focus: are all these ancient associations, uses and abuses
really so different from the way we see birds?
*Philip Hoare, New Statesman*
Mynott organises his elegant and thought-provoking book by theme
and deploys a comprehensive range of quotes from throughout the
classical period ... His approach is nuanced and open-minded, and
he writes with a light, often wry touch ... The book is full of
delightful titbits.
*Philip Womak, Literary Review*
Jeremy Mynott's masterful cultural and scientific history tours
their [birds] roles as timepieces, soundscapes, pets, messaging
services even intermediaries with the supernatural. The vivid
artworks and literary passages give this wings...
*Barbara Kiser, Nature*
One of the most beautiful, most engaging and simply most delightful
books I have read in a long time ... Mynott has offered a
masterclass in writing a work that popularizes Classics and
explains the discipline's relevant authority, clearly and memorably
to outsiders ... Among many splendid features of this volume, I
wish to highlight its illustrations ... this is a splendidly
learned and superbly interesting account of the manifold ways in
which birds and humans interacted in antiquity, but it is more than
that: this is a book which incites one to ponder upon fundamental
ecological and environmental issues and to re-examine our own
relationship to the natural world.
*Andrej Petrovic, Greece & Rome*
This is a wonderfully readable book, scholarly but fully
accessible, continually thoughtful, properly sceptical, often
amusing, and culled from knowledge of ancient literature that must
be second to none ... It is nicely illustrated in full colour.
Whether you read the book straight through, or in a series of dips,
it is full of revelation and insight into the ancient mind-set,
which was once familiar and strange ... Thanks to Jeremy Mynott,
the birds of the ancient world have taken flight, and we can go
birding in that magical lost world.
*Peter Marren, British Wildlife*
For Dr Mynott, 'the significance of birds' is his binding theme in
this illustrated cultural history with liberal quotations from some
of humanity's greatest literature at this formative period of
Western history.
*John McEwen, Country Life*
... provides a comprehensive introduction and overview of the role
of birds within ancient society. The book is distinct from previous
scholarship on birds in the ancient world with its approach to the
material ... Mynott's style will no doubt engage non-Classicists,
particularly ornithologists and bird-watchers, through his
intelligent use of modern comparisons and presentations of extracts
of ancient texts. However, I also believe his book could work as a
set-text for undergraduate students, particularly for modules that
discuss the interaction between ancient societies and the natural
world.
*Ben Greet, The Classical Review*
Jeremy Mynott's new book is by far the most erudite book on birds I
have ever read. It is a compelling combination of the history of
birds and the ancient world that throws both into new relief ...
this original guide comes highly recommended.
*Alexandra Henton, The Field*
Birds in the Ancient World is a welcome and important resource for
the scholar working on any aspect of birds in all spheres of
medieval life ... Mynott's erudite discussions, though, will make
an excellent companion for those wishing to explore the classical
legacy in medieval 'nature' paradigms.
*Michael Warren, Medium Aevum*
This publication can be considered an essential sourcebook for
those who want to delve deeper into how birds were appreciated by
the Greeks and Romans.
*Antiqvvs*
At a time when we need to be listening to the messages from birds
from declining puffins losing their sand eels from warming seas, to
Mediterranean Great White Egrets now breeding each year in Somerset
this book offers brilliant insights into an earlier human culture's
intimate relationship with another species.
*Terry Glifford, Green Letters: Studies in Ecocriticism*
The history lover inside me drew me to this title but I was pleased
to find my ecologist's curiosity satisfied many times whilst
reading this book ... From the earliest images and writings that
birds can be identified from, you will find yourself amazed at what
can be discovered from sources well over 1000 years old that can be
linked with present day species and their distributions. It is such
a richly detailed book that you might not be able to read it from
start to finish in one go, but the chaptering allows you to dip in
and out and discover something new each time you pick it up.
*Katharine Bowgen, British Trust for Ornithology (BTO)*
Classical literature is a rich source of bird-related forteana, as
this superb study reveals ... a delightfully easy read, thanks to
Mynott's stylistic panache: fluent, quasi-Herodotean, jargon-free,
consistently witty ... Not many writers can claim to have the last
word on their subject. Mynott though, is that - have to say it -
rare bird ... For naturalists, scientists, social historians,
twitchers, this superlative study will surely fly...
*Barry Baldwin, The Fortean Times*
A beautifully produced volume, with full-colour illustrations,
acknowledgements, a bird index and a general index, a very full
bibliography, detailed references, footnotes and lists of the bird
species found in the sources. These academic accoutrements only add
a flourish, though, to the approachable and enjoyable nature of the
actual read.
*Liz Dexter, Shiny New Books*
Mynott provides a detailed picture of ancient understandings of
birds-whether as food source or literary symbol - in the context of
the literary passages and the social order of the time ... He
includes a time line of ancient writers and historical events as
well as a biographies section, which summarizes the contributions
of various ancient authors in documenting birds. Further scholarly
apparatus include a general index, a bird index, and extensive
endnotes. This title complements Birds in the Ancient World A-Z
(2012) and belongs in robust classical studies collections and in
ornithology departments.
*CHOICE*
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