Warm Soil, Westerly Wind, and Wet Feet: Feeling and Measuring Ecological Time in the Roman World

Although climate change, pollution, and environmental degradation are contemporary problems, these are also challenges with deep historic roots in antiquity. 2,000 years ago, during the Roman Climate Optimum, a period of unusually warm, wet, and stable temperatures in the Mediterranean from roughly 200 BCE to 150 CE, the Romans altered the natural environment so greatly that they produced a level of pollution that was unparalleled until the Industrial Revolution. It is precisely in this contradictory time of unusually productive growth and destruction that we discover a blossoming of textual and visual ecological calendars illustrating how the Romans experienced the changing Mediterranean seasons. Roman agricultural treatises instruct us on specific agricultural tasks based on celestial movement, the arrival of particular winds, and on corporeal sensations, such as the warmth of the soil. Literary texts from the period portray kinship and shared corporeality between farmers and plants, with parent farmers listening to and assisting plant-children in achieving their desires. The concept of measuring time by means of the human body and its sensations is most explicit in the agricultural mosaics of the Late Roman period, which depict enslaved workers laboring, sweating, stomping, plowing, and performing seasonal tasks. While much of the conceptualization of indigenous ecological calendars is framed within the context of modern states, juxtaposing ancient predecessors and contemporary practices offers a new perspective on this topic.