Mary Beagon
Biographic Data
| ID | 5627092 |
|---|---|
| NAME | Mary Beagon |
| GIVEN NAMES | Mary |
| FAMILY NAME | Beagon |
| SIGNATURE | BEAGON M |
| AFFILIATIONS | University of Manchester |
| VERIFIED | No |
| TOTAL WORKS | 20 |
| TOTAL CITATIONS | 23 |
| AUTHOR COUNT | 19 |
| EDITOR COUNT | 1 |
| FIRST PUBLICATION YEAR | 1992 |
| LATEST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2022 |
| H-INDEX | 2 |
Multi-Sited Ethnography Yesterday and Today
Peter Martyr’s Use of Pliny
Wondrous Animals in Classical Antiquity
This is the first attempt to consider the concept of the wondrous in relation to the animal world in classical antiquity, the ways in which this is manifest in ancient thought and society and the effects of aspects of this tradition on subsequent ages, including the New World and later Antipodean discoveries.. In addition, it aims to present an overview of the subject comprehensible to both specialists and non-specialists in the classical field
Encyclopaedism from Antiquity to the Renaissance
There is a rich body of encyclopaedic writing which survives from the two millennia before the Enlightenment. This book sheds new light on that material. It traces the development of traditions of knowledge ordering which stretched back to Pliny and Varro and others in the classical world. It works with a broad concept of encyclopaedism, resisting the idea that there was any clear pre-modern genre of the 'encyclopaedia', and showing instead how t…
Chapter Five. The Curious Eye Of The Elder Pliny
Curiosity, both in classical antiquity and later, had ambiguous connotations. In investigating the world around them, ancient philosophers, including Seneca, tended to advocate the investigation of celestial over terrestrial matters as the road to philosophical fulfilment. Pliny's focus in his 'Natural History' is, however, on the latter. This paper explores the nuances of this terrestrial curiosity, focussing in particular on the extent to which…
Ordering Wonderland
Pythagoras’ speech, which forms the centrepiece of the final book of Ovid’s Metamorphoses, was for long considered a worthy conclusion to a great poem. His disquisition on an ever-changing, animate cosmos formed a fitting climax to the mythical metamorphoses which caused living bodies to be subsumed into a living landscape. Modern reactions have been mixed. For some, it is a philosophical counterpoint to the mythical discourse; for others, a perc…
Situating Nature's Wonders in Pliny's Natural History
Journal Article SITUATING NATURE'S WONDERS IN PLINY'S NATURAL HISTORY Get access Mary Beagon Mary Beagon Search for other works by this author on: Oxford Academic Google Scholar Bulletin of the Institute of Classical Studies, Volume 50, Issue Supplement_100, December 2007, Pages 19–40, https://doi.org/10.1111/j.2041-5370.2007.tb02462.x Published: 20 January 2014
The Elder Pliny on the Human Animal
Of the 37 books of Pliny's monumental natural history, book 7 is pivotal. It is entirely devoted to a survey of the human race, for whose sake, in Pliny's words, "nature appears to have created everything else". It is therefore at once crucial to the understanding of Pliny's enterprise as a whole but also relatively self-contained. Both factors made it eminently suitable for scholarly analysis in its own right. It lies at the heart of Pliny's ten…
Beyond Comparison
The only extant written account of the remarkable exploits of M. Sergius Silus, is to be found halfway through book 7 of Pliny's Natural History. If we think of book 7 as falling into three main sections, Sergius appears in the middle one, among the statistics and achievements of human maturity. This chapter argues that the elevation of Sergius to the status of pre-eminent exemplum virtutis in the Natural History owes a great deal to the cultural…
Roman Nature
Ars Medicinae
The centrality of man in Pliny’s universe suggests that Nature’s most important task is to support the existence of the human race. Much praise is lavished on her provision of remedia which ensure humana salus. Here. it would seem. is a promising field for man̎s activity in nature. To be skilled in the art of healing fellow men should earn Pliny’s highest praise. After all, for man to aid man is, by his own definition. godlike (2. 18). Instead, m…
Editions
Subject Classical Philosophy Ancient Roman History Ancient Philosophy Collection: Oxford Scholarship Online
Abbreviations
Man and the Gods
The only form of deity acceptable to Pliny is divina Natura, the spirit of the universe, an all-embracing unity. Traditional ideas of a multiplicity of gods and goddesses as in the Olympic pantheon are merely examples of imbecillitas humana (2. 14). The diversity of religious ideas only obscures the search for God (2. 22). Some men slavishly worship monstra with externa sacra, while others believe in nothing at all (2. 21). Some invent a deity be…
Land and Sea
Animals in conflict represented for Pliny the idea of a fundamental struggle inherent in Natura. Naturae dimicatio, the conflict of nature, is also to be seen on a much larger scale in the unending conflict between the opposing elements, land and sea. In this struggle, the sea dominates, ’snatching’ and ‘devouring’ land: ‘Ocean ... in its greedy progress (avido meatu), overwhelming all the lands which shrink in terror at its coming, washes also t…
Man and the Animals
So far, the discussion of Pliny’s thought has centred on man and the powers that are greater than man. Man has been portrayed contemplating the divine cosmos in approved Stoic fashion, ‘leaving the ground and fixing the mind’s eye upon questions about the nature of God and ... the principle which governs the universe’ (Sen. De Brev. Vit. 19. 1-2). The uniqueness of the conception of the Natural History becomes more apparent only when Pliny turns …
Title Pages
Man in Nature
Despite the limitations on c described in the last chapter, man’s central position in Pliny’s view of the cosmos remains in no doubt. The works of man as well as of Natura may be included in a description of mundus and it is the sculpture, paintings, and buildings of man rather than the natural materials themselves that dominate the last five books of the HN (Ch. I. 5). Man emerges as a partner of Natura; his works are worthy to be set beside tho…
Divina Natura
The world ... is fitly believed to be a deity, eternal and immeasurable, a being that was never born and will never perish. What lies outside it does not concern men to explore and is beyond the capability of the human mind to guess. It is sacred, eternal, immeasurable, wholly within the whole, or rather itself the whole, finite and resembling the infinite, certain of all things and resembling the uncertain, holding in its embrace all things that…
Roman Nature
Pliny̓s Natural History has too often been regarded as simply a quarry for quaint stories-a view which has tended to overshadow its overall structure and purpose. Dr Beagon redresses the balance and illuminates the Natural History as the work of an author with an identifiable mode of thinking and a coherent attitude towards his clearly-stated theme, Nature. Taking its cue from Pliny, the book examines his cosmology and in particular his portrayal…
Roman Nature
Pliny̓s Natural History has too often been regarded as simply a quarry for quaint stories-a view which has tended to overshadow its overall structure and purpose. Dr Beagon redresses the balance and illuminates the Natural History as the work of an author with an identifiable mode of thinking and a coherent attitude towards his clearly-stated theme, Nature. Taking its cue from Pliny, the book examines his cosmology and in particular his portrayal…
Situating Nature's Wonders in Pliny's Natural History
Journal Article SITUATING NATURE'S WONDERS IN PLINY'S NATURAL HISTORY Get access Mary Beagon Mary Beagon Search for other works by this author on: Oxford Academic Google Scholar Bulletin of the Institute of Classical Studies, Volume 50, Issue Supplement_100, December 2007, Pages 19–40, https://doi.org/10.1111/j.2041-5370.2007.tb02462.x Published: 20 January 2014
Peter Martyr’s Use of Pliny
Wondrous Animals in Classical Antiquity
This is the first attempt to consider the concept of the wondrous in relation to the animal world in classical antiquity, the ways in which this is manifest in ancient thought and society and the effects of aspects of this tradition on subsequent ages, including the New World and later Antipodean discoveries.. In addition, it aims to present an overview of the subject comprehensible to both specialists and non-specialists in the classical field
Ars Medicinae
The centrality of man in Pliny’s universe suggests that Nature’s most important task is to support the existence of the human race. Much praise is lavished on her provision of remedia which ensure humana salus. Here. it would seem. is a promising field for man̎s activity in nature. To be skilled in the art of healing fellow men should earn Pliny’s highest praise. After all, for man to aid man is, by his own definition. godlike (2. 18). Instead, m…
Editions
Subject Classical Philosophy Ancient Roman History Ancient Philosophy Collection: Oxford Scholarship Online
Abbreviations
Man and the Gods
The only form of deity acceptable to Pliny is divina Natura, the spirit of the universe, an all-embracing unity. Traditional ideas of a multiplicity of gods and goddesses as in the Olympic pantheon are merely examples of imbecillitas humana (2. 14). The diversity of religious ideas only obscures the search for God (2. 22). Some men slavishly worship monstra with externa sacra, while others believe in nothing at all (2. 21). Some invent a deity be…
Land and Sea
Animals in conflict represented for Pliny the idea of a fundamental struggle inherent in Natura. Naturae dimicatio, the conflict of nature, is also to be seen on a much larger scale in the unending conflict between the opposing elements, land and sea. In this struggle, the sea dominates, ’snatching’ and ‘devouring’ land: ‘Ocean ... in its greedy progress (avido meatu), overwhelming all the lands which shrink in terror at its coming, washes also t…
Man and the Animals
So far, the discussion of Pliny’s thought has centred on man and the powers that are greater than man. Man has been portrayed contemplating the divine cosmos in approved Stoic fashion, ‘leaving the ground and fixing the mind’s eye upon questions about the nature of God and ... the principle which governs the universe’ (Sen. De Brev. Vit. 19. 1-2). The uniqueness of the conception of the Natural History becomes more apparent only when Pliny turns …
Title Pages
Man in Nature
Despite the limitations on c described in the last chapter, man’s central position in Pliny’s view of the cosmos remains in no doubt. The works of man as well as of Natura may be included in a description of mundus and it is the sculpture, paintings, and buildings of man rather than the natural materials themselves that dominate the last five books of the HN (Ch. I. 5). Man emerges as a partner of Natura; his works are worthy to be set beside tho…
Divina Natura
The world ... is fitly believed to be a deity, eternal and immeasurable, a being that was never born and will never perish. What lies outside it does not concern men to explore and is beyond the capability of the human mind to guess. It is sacred, eternal, immeasurable, wholly within the whole, or rather itself the whole, finite and resembling the infinite, certain of all things and resembling the uncertain, holding in its embrace all things that…
Roman Nature
Pliny̓s Natural History has too often been regarded as simply a quarry for quaint stories-a view which has tended to overshadow its overall structure and purpose. Dr Beagon redresses the balance and illuminates the Natural History as the work of an author with an identifiable mode of thinking and a coherent attitude towards his clearly-stated theme, Nature. Taking its cue from Pliny, the book examines his cosmology and in particular his portrayal…
Roman Nature
Beyond Comparison
The only extant written account of the remarkable exploits of M. Sergius Silus, is to be found halfway through book 7 of Pliny's Natural History. If we think of book 7 as falling into three main sections, Sergius appears in the middle one, among the statistics and achievements of human maturity. This chapter argues that the elevation of Sergius to the status of pre-eminent exemplum virtutis in the Natural History owes a great deal to the cultural…
The Elder Pliny on the Human Animal
Of the 37 books of Pliny's monumental natural history, book 7 is pivotal. It is entirely devoted to a survey of the human race, for whose sake, in Pliny's words, "nature appears to have created everything else". It is therefore at once crucial to the understanding of Pliny's enterprise as a whole but also relatively self-contained. Both factors made it eminently suitable for scholarly analysis in its own right. It lies at the heart of Pliny's ten…
Situating Nature's Wonders in Pliny's Natural History
Journal Article SITUATING NATURE'S WONDERS IN PLINY'S NATURAL HISTORY Get access Mary Beagon Mary Beagon Search for other works by this author on: Oxford Academic Google Scholar Bulletin of the Institute of Classical Studies, Volume 50, Issue Supplement_100, December 2007, Pages 19–40, https://doi.org/10.1111/j.2041-5370.2007.tb02462.x Published: 20 January 2014
Ordering Wonderland
Pythagoras’ speech, which forms the centrepiece of the final book of Ovid’s Metamorphoses, was for long considered a worthy conclusion to a great poem. His disquisition on an ever-changing, animate cosmos formed a fitting climax to the mythical metamorphoses which caused living bodies to be subsumed into a living landscape. Modern reactions have been mixed. For some, it is a philosophical counterpoint to the mythical discourse; for others, a perc…
Chapter Five. The Curious Eye Of The Elder Pliny
Curiosity, both in classical antiquity and later, had ambiguous connotations. In investigating the world around them, ancient philosophers, including Seneca, tended to advocate the investigation of celestial over terrestrial matters as the road to philosophical fulfilment. Pliny's focus in his 'Natural History' is, however, on the latter. This paper explores the nuances of this terrestrial curiosity, focussing in particular on the extent to which…
Encyclopaedism from Antiquity to the Renaissance
There is a rich body of encyclopaedic writing which survives from the two millennia before the Enlightenment. This book sheds new light on that material. It traces the development of traditions of knowledge ordering which stretched back to Pliny and Varro and others in the classical world. It works with a broad concept of encyclopaedism, resisting the idea that there was any clear pre-modern genre of the 'encyclopaedia', and showing instead how t…
Peter Martyr’s Use of Pliny
Wondrous Animals in Classical Antiquity
This is the first attempt to consider the concept of the wondrous in relation to the animal world in classical antiquity, the ways in which this is manifest in ancient thought and society and the effects of aspects of this tradition on subsequent ages, including the New World and later Antipodean discoveries.. In addition, it aims to present an overview of the subject comprehensible to both specialists and non-specialists in the classical field
Multi-Sited Ethnography Yesterday and Today
Classical Antiquity Studies (16 works) · History (15 works) · Art (14 works) · Literature (11 works) · Classical Philosophy and Thought (10 works) · Philosophy (10 works) · Classics (9 works) · Archaeology (7 works) · Epistemology (7 works) · Historical, Religious, and Philosophical Studies (6 works)