SUBJECTS

 

• First section: What is 'the future'? Ancient conceptions of time
  • General conceptions of time: time can be considered as cyclic, linear, alternate, or as 'no time'.
  • Closely connected with the foregoing are ideas about progress or decline. Is there a notion of technological progress?
  • Every individual has a life-course. There are the phases of life, and all the rites of passage in between. How was the future seen in terms of growing up and growing old in the Graeco-Roman world?
  • An individual is seen as, and considers himself to be, part of a chain of generations: on the one hand there are the ancestors, on the other the obligation to carry on the line.
  • How do people perceive the future? Do they face the future or is it behind them? Do they look towards the (unknown) future, or at a past that is already known?
  • How is the future handled linguistically?
  
  - G.E.R. Lloyd, 'Views on time in Greek thought' in: L. Gardet et al. (eds.), Cultures and time (Paris 1976)
  - S. Stern, Time and process in ancient Judaism (Oxford 2003)
  - M. Bettini, Anthropology and Roman culture. Kinship, time, images of the soul (Baltimore 1991) (http://bmcr.brynmawr.edu/1992/03.02.02.html)
  - E.R. Dodds, The ancient concept of progress, and other essays on Greek literature and belief (Oxford 1973)
  - M. Harlow & R. Laurence, Growing up and growing old in ancient Rome: a life course approach (London 2002)
  - E. Bethe, Ahnenbild und Familiengeschichte bei Römern und Griechen (München 1935)
  

• Second section: Can we know or predict the future?
  • Prognostication is a term that is applicable to both divination and medicine. Are there any differences in the way prognostication is practiced? And where do they overlap? One can think of dreams and of physiognomy.
  • Is divination primarily concerned with the future? What is 'the future' to the immortal gods?
  • Is divination such a reliable way to get to know the future? If so, are there ways that are more suitable than others? And how would you know? Are there aids that would help the individual?
  • In how far is astrology a way of divination, or something completely different, regarding prediction of the future?
  
  - L. Edelstein, 'Hippocratic prognosis' in: O. Temkin & C.L.Temkin (eds.), Ancient medicine: selected papers of Ludwig Edelstein (Baltimore 1967) 65-85
  - K. Brodersen (ed.), Prognosis: Studien zur Funktion von Zukunftsvorhersagen in Literatur und Geschichte seit der Antike (Münster 2001)
  - H. Frankfort et al. (eds.), Before philosophy: the intellectual adventure of ancient man. An essay on speculative thought in the ancient Near East (Harmondsworth 1951)
  - T.S. Barton, Power and knowledge: astrology, physiognomics, and medicine under the Roman Empire (Ann Arbor 1994)
  - Swain, S. (ed.), Seeing the face, seeing the soul: Polemon's 'Physiognomy' from classical antiquity to medieval Islam (Oxford 2007)
  

• Third section: Can we influence the shape of things to come?
  • Can the individual influence his own future, or is he subject to fate? Deterministic views are opposed by ideas of free will, freedom to act. How about being lucky, or having bad luck?
  • Is magic the way in which religion can be used to secure one's future?
  • What consequences does the notion of fate have for the ways in which the future can be known (divination, medicine, history) and shaped (magic)?
  • How about utopian views? Are utopias possible worlds that one could realize? See also the idea of (technological) progress as mentioned under section I above.
  
  - B.C. Dietrich, Death, fate and the gods. The development of a religious idea in Greek popular belief and in Homer (London 1965)
  - W.C. Greene, Moira. Fate, good, and evil in Greek thought (Cambridge, MA 1963)
  - E. Sarischoulis, Schicksal, Götter und Handlungsfreiheit in den Epen Homers (Stuttgart 2008)
  - J. Ferguson, Utopias of the classical world (London 1975)
  - B. Gatz, Weltalter, goldene Zeit und sinnverwandte Vorstellungen (Hildesheim 1967)
  

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