Cities, Gods and Disasters: Warnings from the Ancient Greeks
Atlantis may be the most widely known glorious city that disappeared into the sea, submerged by an angry Poseidon, ancient Greek god of the oceans and storms. The Atlantis story appeared in the Greek antiquity world, but it captured imaginations far beyond the Mediterranean and into the present. Just this year, Hollywood released another Aquaman movie that includes a fictional underwater Atlantis kingdom.
The myth of Atlantis inspired hundreds of years of imagination and storytelling. It also inspired speculation and conspiracies about an actual lost utopia, and in a dark manipulation, some of this speculative theorizing fueled racial and white supremacist theories behind colonialism and Nazism (Blakemore, 2023; Dibble, 2022). Archaeologists accept Atlantis to be fictional (Blakemore, 2023), but it remains a popular story.
Atlantis is not the only case of a natural phenomenon bringing catastrophe to a city in the ancient Greek-speaking world. Ancient Greek historians and philosophers, including Thucydides and Plato, described or mentioned a few cases of cities being destroyed by natural phenomena and/or the wrath of gods. Some of these cases were historical events, and some are most likely myths.
To people today, the total destruction and disappearance of a city and its population may seem like an occurrence of ancient history. Contemporary cities can have millions of residents living in an environment built of steel and cement and other modern materials and construction techniques. The scenario of a flood or earthquake completely wiping out a city today may sound more like a storyline for a superhero or futuristic apocalypse movie, because our cities are much bigger than the cities of the ancient world. We are also far more advanced in our scientific understanding of hazards and our information and communication technologies. (Sadly, we are currently witnessing the utter destruction of entire cities by our own hand; that is, by human aggression and human-made weapons. This happened in the ancient world as well, but I will focus here on events where natural hazards play a key role.) While it seems unlikely that a modern city will suddenly become a lost city because of a natural hazard event, we are seeing or experiencing the destruction of entire towns in floods and wildfires. Worryingly, as urbanization and climate change continue, disasters involving natural phenomena like flood, wildfire and extreme weather occur more frequently and with greater intensity, and their impacts are more costly today than in the 1970s or 1980s (FAO, 2021; Oliver-Smith et al., 2016).
The ancient Greek philosopher-scientists had some important warnings for the leaders and societies of the cities of their world and of the future. These warnings emerged from their observations and thoughts about the intersection of cities, gods, the natural world and catastrophes. They could not have imagined the complexity of our modern urbanism, and the degree of scientific knowledge and data now available to us. Yet many of their warnings still hold up today.
The following sections explore:
- some examples of when and how ancient Greek philosopher-scientists discuss natural hazards and resulting catastrophes on cities,
- why they generally decline to blame the gods for natural hazard events,
- their views on how cities and societies exposed people and made them vulnerable to the impacts of natural hazards, and
- their arguments for reflecting on past catastrophes and possible future catastrophes as we shape our societies for the future.
The concluding discussion explores how the philosophical and socio-political warnings and insights of the ancient Greek philosopher-scientists remain relevant and evident today in the fields of disaster studies, climate change studies, social sciences, urban studies and related fields.
Note: This is based on English translations of these works.
Natural hazards and city destruction in the ancient Greek world
The ancient Greeks tell of floods, earthquakes and tsunamis and the resulting destruction of cities. Despite the magnitude of these events, it appears that most Greek philosopher-scientists were not interested in documenting the damages and people’s reactions. They offer little description on this. Often, they only mention or briefly describe these natural hazard events, but they refer to them in their writings for a few different purposes. In his History of the Peloponnesian War (431 BC), Athenian historian Thucydides indicates when natural hazard events impacted political and military events, strategic decisions and the direction of the war. In Laws, his last and longest work, and in his late dialogues Timaeus (c. 360 BC) and its sequel Critias, Plato refers to disasters where entire cities or humanity is wiped out within a discussion that is primary about the laws, governance and leaders that a polis (city) needs to be the ideal polis.
Thucydides mentions earthquakes, floods and tsunamis or tidal waves happening during the Peloponnesian War, the great war between the Peloponnesians and the Athenians from 431 to 404 BC. His comments about the hazard events are brief as his focus is on the military and political maneuvering, the role of leaders and their rhetoric, and the events that occurred. His mentions of natural hazard events serve a few different purposes throughout this work. In the beginning of History of the Peloponnesian War, he ties natural hazard disasters with his introduction to the war in a way that suggests a supernatural or ominous connection:
“The Peloponnesian War went on for a very long time and there occurred during it disasters of a kind and number that no other similar period of time could match…there were earthquakes of unparalleled extent and violence; eclipses of the sun occurred with a frequency unrecorded in previous history; there were great droughts in sundry places and consequent famines [he does not mention droughts again after this] and that most calamitous and awfully fatal visitation, the plague” (1.23.1-3).
Shortly after this and still in the beginning of this work, he also writes that an earthquake at Delos served as an omen (2.8.3).
On other occasions Thucydides mentions natural hazard events to describe their impact on political discussions, strategic moves in battles and power struggles between city-states and city-state alliances (2.27.2, 3.87.4, 3.89.2-4, 4.52.1, 5.45.4, 5.50.5, 6.95.1, 8.6.5). He even describes a case of disaster opportunism: an earthquake, “by far the greatest in living memory”, destroyed the city of Caunus (on Anatolian coast, present-day Turkey), the surviving inhabitants fled, and the Spartan admiral Astyochus took advantage of the situation and sacked the city ruins (8.41.2).
Plato mentions natural hazard catastrophes in Laws, but this work is primarily focused on why society needs leaders that draft appropriate laws, and how philosophy can advise leaders for practical, applied political action and a new code of laws for cities. Laws is a long work, written as a conversation between an unnamed Athenian philosopher, a Spartan named Megillus, and a Cretan named Clinias, all working to decide what are appropriate laws for a city and to create a constitution for a new Cretan colony named Magnesia.
Plato writes that the purpose of the discussion in Book 3 is to reexamine the origin of society with a political system (politeia) by looking far into the past and considering the leader of the future. He describes this as the perspective “that embraces an infinite length of time and the changes during that time” and this is the same timeframe “one should always choose in order to see the progression of cities as they change towards virtue and at the same time towards vice” (676A-676B, Pangle translation, 1980). Through the conversation of the three individuals, Plato studies and compares the fundamental needs of humans that exist before civil or political collective life takes hold in large settlements, and the different needs that emerge through developed urban life. This is framed as a discussion on how to educate the future founder of a new city. The Athenian mentions the “ancient sayings…that tell of many disasters [cataclysms, κατακλυσμοῖς]-floods and plagues and many other things-which have destroyed human beings and left only a tiny remnant of the human race” and chooses to focus on a flood story (677A). He uses the story of the flood in the age of Deucalion, a version of the story of the ancient Great Flood destroying most of civilization and humanity. Zeus unleashes a flood to destroy humans and Deucalion and his wife Pyrhha are the only survivors, thanks to an ark and an early warning from his father, the god Prometheus. Aristotle also mentioned the ‘so-called flood in the time of Deucalion’ in Meteorologica.
Now we turn to the well-known and often misunderstood story of Atlantis. In Timaeus and Critias, Plato presented the story of Atlantis as a warning for the Athens of his time. He used Atlantis as a moralistic tale after Athens tried to become an empire, engaged in the war with Sparta (Peloponnesian war) and seemed to be turning authoritarian.
Plato introduces this story briefly in Timaeus. The primary focus of this work is to discuss what kind of person makes a good citizen and what makes a good city-state. He makes it clear that the Athens of his time is the main audience for his message. Timaeus is written as a dialogue among Socrates, Timaeus who is a member of the elite from “the best governed city in Italy”, and Critias and Hermocrates. Critias delivers the story of Atlantis, ‘a story he heard long ago’ that Solon told his grandfather, and his grandfather told him.
Before presenting the story of Atlantis through Solon describing his visit to Egypt and conversation with some Egyptian priests, Plato compares the Greek world and Egypt. The Greek world experiences earthquakes, floods and tsunamis that sometimes result in catastrophes that wipe out civilization. In contrast, Egypt is protected from wildfires by the regular flooding of the Nile, and it does not experience ‘flooding from above’ or excess heat and cold (22E-23A). But, the priest tells Solon, every time Greek civilization advances, it is destroyed, and only the ‘illiterate and uncultured’ living in the mountains survive, and they have no record of the history and knowledge that developed in the city. Because Greek civilization is wiped out by catastrophes repeatedly, Egypt needs to tell them their history. Solon says Athens does not even realize that it once saved the world from Atlantis.
Plato used natural hazards and the destruction of cities and entire civilizations as a literary tool to tell Athens that it has forgotten to learn from past disasters and to be conscious about what kind of city it wants to be. (He used this approach in Laws as well, as discussed earlier, in a more extended dialogue and analysis.) It appears he really wants this point to sting based on the dialogue between Solon and the priests in Egypt. Solon starts telling the priests about Athens’ earliest history, and brings up the flood in the age of Deucalion as one of the most ancient stories from Athens (22A). One of the Egyptian priests exclaims, rather patronizingly: “O Solon, Solon, you Greeks are ever children!” and calls Solon’s ancient stories “little better than children’s stories”, telling him “you remember only one flood though many occurred before that” (23B).
The comments about Atlantis are brief; the discussion setting the context for Atlantis is far longer. A key point in this discussion is that a city-state should have standards for how it engages other city-states, even when it is deciding to go to war and even during war. These standards include being noble, fair, philosophical and, importantly, not enslaving people.
Atlantis was a great city on an island – described more like a continent (24E-25A) – that “proceeded insolently against all of Europe and Asia”, waging war and trying to enslave them. Athens led the other Greek forces in standing up to Atlantis, and continued even when all the other Greek city-states abandoned the fight. Then ‘in a single day and night’ (25C-D) Atlantis and the Athenian soldiers were swallowed up by ‘an earthquake and a deluge’ (25C) and Atlantis remained submerged in the sea. The majority of the rest of Timaeus elaborates Plato’s philosophical theories about the purpose of the universe, and how the well ordered universe and human beings with rational souls were created by a divine force.
In Critias, the unfinished sequel to Timaeus, Plato described the formation, geography and political system of Atlantis in detail. The island state accumulated wealth through empire, even though “the island itself furnished most of the provisions of life” (114D). Its land was pristine and fertile and it had its own natural resources to the extent that it had extraction or mining activities. Atlantis was populated by demigods that traced their origins to Poseidon, god of seas and oceans. As the Atlanteans’ lust for power grew and their bloodline became more human over the course of generations, they became more unjust and sought power for the sake of power. In the last paragraph of Critias Plato wrote that Zeus decided the Atlanteans should be punished, but the work and this thought remain incomplete.
Researchers widely agree that Plato based the Atlantis myth on the real destruction of Helike that occurred in his lifetime (Blakemore, 2023; Long, 2021; Middleton, 2021). Helike was a Greek polis (city-state) on the north coast of the Peloponnese, in a fertile delta between two rivers. Aristotle and Polybius mention that Helike was destroyed in 373 BC by an earthquake and the sea (tsunami), while later sources, including the historian Diodorus Siculus and geographer Strabo described more details about how the wave that followed the earthquake drowned a large number of people and submerged the city and land (Middleton, 2021). A few centuries later, in the second century AD, Pausanias, who traveled and wrote about Greece, claimed that “you can see the ruins of Helike [underwater]…and mutilated by the sea-water” (7.24.7). Archaeologists and geologists have found some evidence of this catastrophe at the reported location of Helike (Middleton, 2021). Pausanias refers to nine earthquakes in his Guide to Greece, mainly to describe their impact on society and relations among different groups of people.
Blaming the Gods
The ancient Greeks did not use the word disaster, and in fact there is still no Greek word for disaster. The Greek language has the word catastrophe. The word disaster is derived from the Latin roots dis– and astro, meaning ill-starred, or under a bad star, conveying a supernatural meaning of an unfortunate event blamed on the stars. (These root words also come from Greek words, but the compound word appeared in French and Italian around the 1500s.) The Greek katastrophē is from the roots kata- ‘down’ and strophē ‘turning’ (from strephein ‘to turn’), suggesting a meaning of overturning or a sudden downward turn.[1] Thus, the Greek word katastrophē does not imply blame on astrological or supernatural powers. This is not to say that ancient Greeks did not attribute blame to supernatural deities.
People of Greco-Roman antiquity had many gods to whom they attributed control of human social and political behaviors (the crafts, marriage, hunting, reason, love, arts, war, etc.) and of the natural phenomena of the sky, sea, and land. Ancient Greek authors sometimes attributed natural hazard events to the wrath of gods, or referenced people’s belief in the gods and their destructive acts to punish humans (Middleton, 2021; Grandjean et al., 2008). In the Iliad, written down around the late eighth century BC, Homer attributes a tsunami and earth shaking to three gods. The story of the great flood in the age of Deucalion attributes the flood to divine retribution by Zeus towards humanity, though Plato does not mention this attribution in Laws. Plato does not mention divine retribution as the cause of Atlantis’s destruction in Timeaus, but wrote in Critias that Zeus decided to punish the Atlanteans, though that is where the work cut off.
Pausanias, in his Guide to Greece, attributed earthquakes to divine retribution from Poseidon. The earthquake that destroyed Helike was ‘unhesitating vengeance’ for the Achaians taking worshippers out of the sanctuary of Poseidon and killing them (7.24.5). Another earthquake that destroyed all the houses at Sparta was a punishment after the Spartans murdered some men in another of the god’s sanctuaries (7.25.1). However, Pausanias also gave credit to nature. He described three types of earthquakes based on their intensity and impact on buildings, and tried to connect earthquakes with related weather and land conditions before and after the shaking. Still, some researchers suggest he may have exaggerated the intensity of some of the earthquakes he describes because he viewed them through the lens of being caused by gods as a punishment or message to humans (Dermitzakis et. al, 1997).
The historian Herodotus described a large wave (tsunami) flooding the Greek city of Potidaea in his famous work The Histories (c. 415 BC). Writing in the late 5th century BC about the war between the Greeks and the Persians, Herodotus attributed the tsunami to the god Poseidon as divine retribution (Middleton, 2021; Stefanakis, 2006). He wrote that the people of Potidaea viewed the sudden large wave as a punishment on the invading Persians that disrespected a temple and statue of Poseidon outside the city. He stated his agreement directly with comment: “Personally, I think their explanation is the true one” (Book 8, 129, de Sélincourt translation). In this case, the tsunami is not a catastrophe for the Greeks because it swept away the Persians who walked onto land exposed by low tide to get to the besieged Potidaea. The wave swept away most of the Persians and allowed the Potidaeans to defeat them. Herodotus did not describe any other impacts of the wave; he only focused on how it impacted Persian soldiers and the battle. Herodotus also mentioned an earthquake at the island of Delos (as did Thucydides in History of the Peloponnesian War, though their timeframes do not match up). Herodotus went further than Thucydides in attributing this earthquake to a god: “It may well be that the shock was an act of God to warn men of the troubles that were on the way…Besides, there was an oracle…” (Book 6, 98). For three generations Greece suffered due to the Persian Wars and “partly from her own internal struggles for supremacy” (Book 6, 98).
Despite the worship of many gods in their time, ancient Greek philosophers, philosopher-scientists and historians are credited as the first to recognize and analyze the distinction between natural and supernatural (Gregory, 2017). In History of the Peloponnesian War, despite his early references to hazard events with suggestions of an ominous nature, it is notable that Thucydides did not attribute the cause of natural hazard events to the gods. He even speculated that earthquakes and tidal waves or tsunamis are connected as a natural event: “without an earthquake I do not see how such an accident [huge wave flooding a city] could happen” (3.89.2-4). Aristotle attempted his own scientific explanation and hypotheses for earthquakes and tsunamis and the destruction of Helike in Meteorologica. His explanation involving wind as the cause of earthquakes and tsunamis was incorrect, but it was a hypothesis in search of a natural rather than a supernatural explanation. Additional sources suggest that people of antiquity were interested to understand earthquakes and tsunamis (Middleton, 2021). As Andrew Gregory (2017) pointed out in his book Eureka! The Birth of Science, the play The Clouds by Aristophanes (c. 450-385 BC) includes philosophers debating whether the clouds or the gods cause lightning, demonstrating that society knew about the debates and theories distinguishing between natural and supernatural causes of natural phenomena.
Humans have a tendency to seek supernatural explanations for the causes of disasters, especially those involving natural hazards. Myths about floods that destroyed entire societies or cultures, or aimed to destroy humanity, “are widespread in ancient human mythology and folklore” (Liritzis, 2019, p. 1317). People seek supernatural causes and create myths around catastrophes for various reasons. Before obtaining the relevant scientific knowledge, people used myth and belief in gods and supernatural forces as they tried to understand the unexplainable. In an article presenting a psychological mechanism that explains this tendency and the role of disaster myths, Grandjean et al. (2008) argue that humans create and hold onto disaster myths in their attempts to search for meaning and to understand why unfair and disproportionately devastating situations happen. Spreading myths and blaming gods also allows individuals and groups to avoid their own direct or indirect responsibility for the negative consequences of disasters. For people of Greco-Roman antiquity, attributing control of natural phenomena to the gods who can wield nature to punish humans was a way to acknowledge that they could not control nature (Long, 2021) but it also let them dodge their responsibility for creating risk by blaming both the natural phenomena and resulting disasters on fickle gods.
An imperialist king ordering his men to scream insults at a river is an excellent image for the absurd extreme of this tendency to blame gods and nature (often regarded as interconnected). In the climax of The Histories, Herodotus provides this image with an account of Xerxes’ attempt to expand his Persian empire by taking over Greece and dominating nature. This does not involve the destruction of a city, but it is an illustrative example of how megalomania drove Xerxes to blame nature for not letting him engineer his control over it. Herodotus describes Xerxes’ efforts to cross the Hellespont River connecting Asia and Europe (the Dardanelles strait in present day Turkey) and his rage against obstacles presented by the river and storms. Xerxes had his engineers build two bridges across the Hellespont for his massive army to cross. They were completed and a storm promptly destroyed them. Xerxes was furious and issued literal “punishments” against the river, forcing his likely bewildered and terrified men to whip the river with 300 lashes, drop fetter [shackles] in it, brand with hot irons, and, of course, yell mean things at it (Book 7, 35). The engineers then built two pontoon bridges and as these were completed, a total eclipse turned day into night. He managed to cross his army into Europe, but Herodotus attributed his failure to conquer the Greeks partly to his hubris and audacity in trying to make nature submit to his aspirations of empire.
Cities and humans creating disaster risk
Ancient Greeks were not ignorant of the human responsibility for creating risk, particularly the responsibility of political and military leaders and others with power. As large settlements with many people and families living together, cities inherently create risk and incentives for men to abuse power and engage in conflict. People choose where to locate cities based on natural elements such as soil and water for agriculture. And yet, human desires, motivations and relations with each other and with nature lead to trouble. The writings of ancient Greeks included considerations and analysis that reflect what in today’s disaster studies terminology is called disaster risk.
From the second paragraph of History of the Peloponnesian War, Thucydides notes that poor soil is why Athens flourished in Attica, arguing that good soil creates a situation where certain individuals benefit, and this leads to competition (“faction”), war and ruin: “The goodness of the land [in other parts of present day southern Greece] favored the enrichment of particular individuals and thus created faction which proved a fertile source of ruin. It also invited invasion” (1.2.4-6). Athens was located on poor soil, so it experienced stability for a long time, and people from other areas experiencing conflict “took refuge with the Athenians as a safe retreat.” At the same time, Thucydides writes that because of this growing population, the Athenians colonized other regions. In another example of the troublesome dynamics among environmental resources, settlements and human motivations, he describes how two groups (the Mantineans and Tegeans) fight over water, divert it, and fight over the flooding and damage that occurs (5.65.4-5). Herodotus also recognized the role of good soil. He linked it to arrogance and aspirations for empire, writing that the Lacedaemonians “flourished like a sturdy tree” thanks to good soil, but “no longer content to let things be, they took it into their heads that they were better men than the Arcadians, and consulted the oracle at Delphi with a view to the conquest of the whole of Arcadia” (Book 1, 66).
In Laws, Plato argues that the very existence of cities creates risk based on power. Cities allow humans to engage in learning and gain more knowledge, and more knowledge gives them more power that they inevitably abuse. Pangle summarizes this in his analysis of Book 3:
“The fullest raison d’etre of the city is then to awaken and satisfy the natural human desire to know [to have knowledge and wisdom]. Yet very few men live mainly for the sake of knowledge…In giving men the power that goes with knowledge of the arts [including the “arts of war” (679d)] and of nature, the city makes it possible for human behavior to become much less decent than it was prior to the emergence of cities” (Pangle, 1980, p. 427)
Some Greek and Roman Stoic and Epicurean philosopher-scientists elaborated more on human culture and natural hazard catastrophe, and effectively revealed an understanding of natural hazard, exposure and risk. The Stoics believed the goal in life was to live a life of happiness, or a life worth living, through moral virtue, rational understanding and living in harmony with nature, which they understood as the entire rationally organized cosmos or universe. Epicureans also believed that the point of life should be to attain pleasure or tranquility by limiting desires and freeing oneself from the fear of gods and of death, and they accepted the existence of the gods but denied their involvement in the world.
The Stoic and Epicurean philosopher-scientists writing about natural hazard catastrophes argued that human culture creates risk and makes people and communities vulnerable to the impacts of natural events. These philosophers go a step further from recognizing natural hazard catastrophes as caused by natural events. They argue that environmental and personal catastrophe occur when humans ‘infringe on nature’s laws’ (Long, 2021, pp. 67-68).
Remembering past disasters to plan for the future
The ancient Greek philosophers observed that people and societies in their time often forgot past disasters but emphasized that we must factor them in as we think about the future. This is especially important for current and future leaders. For example, in Laws, Plato mentions the people of Ilium who left the mountain and located their city in a floodplain, being ‘forgetful’ of the great flood in the age of Deucalion in the distant past (682C). Speaking of Ilium, the unnamed Athenian in the conversation says that “they were separated by a great interval of time” from the suffering of the disaster and with all this time having passed, “It’s likely that they were possessed by an amazing degree of forgetfulness regarding the disaster [the flood in the age of Deucalion], when they thus set up a city close to a lot of rivers flowing down from the heights, putting their trust in some hills that were not very high” (682C, Pangle translation). This is a brief but interesting commentary on collective memory and collective forgetting related to disaster.
It may be a human survival tendency to put aside or deliberately forget a disaster as we try to rebuild lives and settlements where we find the natural resources we need. Throughout history, humans rebuilt cities after disasters; few cities were abandoned after a major disaster or destruction (Vale & Campanella, 2005). For individuals and groups, remembering and forgetting may be important elements of recovery because they help people process the trauma of the disaster, find meaning in the experience, and move forward with their lives (Moulton, 2015).
Political leaders have a responsibility to remember. As discussed earlier, looking to the past and examining how society originated or developed again after a catastrophe, even in a theoretical exercise, is crucial for future leaders establishing new cities or governance systems, according to Plato in Laws. For Plato, the thought exercise was focused on the blank slate and the process of shaping a political society after a catastrophe.
Seneca, the Stoic philosopher of ancient Rome, wanted leaders to think about disaster events that could happen, and consider how quickly and suddenly the societies and structures we develop can be destroyed. He essentially urged leaders to apply a disaster risk lens in thinking about the future to have a more holistic perspective on long-range development and progress. In a letter about the complete destruction of the city of Lyons by fire in 65 AD, Seneca writes:
“The reality is that it takes time for things to grow but little or no time for them to be lost…Therefore we must think of everything and fortify our minds to face every possible contingency…We should set before our eyes the entire range of human fortunes, and calibrate our thoughts about the future not by the usual scale of events but by the magnitude of what could happen. If we wish not to be overwhelmed, stunned by rare occurrences as if they were unparalleled, we must take a comprehensive view of fortune.” (Seneca, Moral Letters, 91.1-9, Graver & Long translation).
It takes so much effort, time and resources to build our cities and make social and economic progress. A disaster can undo years or generations of efforts and achievements in a painfully short time – a “single night” even, as in the case of this fire that destroyed Lyons. Seneca highlights this, and argues that this should factor into our thinking about the future.
Our own reckless ways
In the opening of the epic The Odyssey, Homer has Zeus complain to the other gods: “Ah how shameless the way these mortals blame the gods. From us alone, they say, come all their miseries, yes, but they themselves, with their own reckless ways, compound their pains beyond their proper share” (31-40, Fagles 1997 translation).
The ancient Greeks warned that cities and human societies create risk and vulnerability, and we should not blame the gods for natural hazards and catastrophes. They insisted that leaders and governance systems play a key role in shaping society, and leaders should consider past catastrophes in thinking about the future. Urban development, science, technologies, and our social, political and economic systems have changed and greatly increased in complexity since antiquity. Yet the insights and warnings of the ancient Greek philosopher-scientists and historians are still relevant today. Their focus on leaders and governance is even more relevant today, as humanity has increased exponentially its impact on the natural environment and the climate. The modern approach to studying and understanding disasters is very different from the way ancient Greeks addressed natural hazard catastrophes in their writings, but modern scholars expanded and deepened their exploration of these fundamental issues.
The ancient Greeks were not focused on recording the impacts of disasters. They did not elaborate extensively on the causes or drivers of the disaster event and the exposure and vulnerability of people and cities. A practical explanation for this is that there was little scientific knowledge and data and few written accounts available for them to analyze events that happened before their time or that they themselves did not experience or witness. Yet they contemplated and wrote about catastrophes – real and mythical – to explore the meaning of the destruction of a city or city-state.
Today, there is an academic field of study that focuses on disasters and overlaps with many other fields. Disaster studies is a relatively recent research discipline, beginning from the disciplines of geography and sociology around the 1920s, and growing more from the 1950s.[2] In recent decades, the focus on managing disasters through prevention, preparedness, response and recovery has expanded to include an understanding of disaster risk and a push to reduce it in our societies. Disaster risk is the likelihood and potential negative impacts of hazards to people, communities, social and economic activities, and built environment. Our proximity and exposure to hazards contributes to disaster risk. The economic, political and social systems of our societies also drive risk and make people vulnerable or susceptible to negative impacts, and they can block the ability of individuals or communities to adapt in order to reduce their vulnerability and risk.
So for example, when a natural hazard event takes place, the disaster may occur when people’s lives, homes, livelihoods, and entire communities are exposed to these hazards, like when we build cities in floodplains. The disaster happens when we are not prepared, or our own societies, economies and politics make people vulnerable to the impacts of these hazards, or make it difficult for some communities to live in safe places, or be prepared, or to respond during emergencies.
There is extensive study of natural (and human-made) hazards, and technology continues to improve the data available to allow us to understand past and current events and to make future projections. But increasingly, scholars in disaster studies accept that disasters are a social construct, or a phenomenon involving social, political and ecology dynamics that shape risk, vulnerability and adaptation (Perry, 2018; Wisner et al. 2004; Kelman, 2020) and drive maldevelopment (Chmutina & von Meding, 2019). Understanding disaster as a social construct involves recognizing that a disaster is more than a specific event of one type or another with measurable physical impacts. The social construct approach focuses on how social systems and societal conditions cause the social disruption more than the natural hazard or other triggering event (Perry, 2018; Tierney et al., 2001). Many of the negative consequences of a disaster are a result of our social systems, our societal conditions and our built environments (where they are located and how they are constructed). There is also an ongoing shift from thinking of disasters in terms of somewhat distinct phases of prevention/mitigation, preparedness, response and recovery to understanding these conditions as part of a complex and overlapping cycle that also involves vulnerability, adaptation, resilience and the creation, reduction or management of disaster risk. At the international level, this shift is reflected in the increasing emphasis on disaster risk reduction (DRR) outlined in the United Nations (UN) Sendai Framework for Disaster Risk Reduction (2015-2030).
Understanding that disaster is a social construct and that we need to reduce disaster risk in our urban, rural and natural environments is essentially an acknowledgement that as humans, we compound our pains through our own reckless ways, to use the words of Homer. Disasters are becoming more frequent, more intense, and their impacts more costly, yet human activities continue to contribute to climate change, environmental degradation, built environments exposed to hazards. These activities, along with the political, economic and social systems in our societies also create, maintain or amplify inequality, poverty and precarity, making many people more vulnerable to negative impacts of various hazard events. All of this increases the risk of compounding and chronic consequences from natural hazards like fire, flood and drought (Haque & Etkin, 2007). Scientists, scholars and professionals in the fields of disaster studies, climate science and urban studies emphasize that our governments and societal institutions need to reduce disaster risk and address systemic inequities. Our options to respond to this era of disasters are to: a) take action to transform our way of life and societal systems, b) remain in denial, or c) pin our responsibility on the gods. Based on what we see around us today, all these reactions persist in various degrees – even a form of ‘blaming the gods’.
Belief in disasters as caused by gods or one god as divine retribution has declined in the Western world but it is not totally absent. Most people today accept and understand the natural causes of natural hazards, as well as the complex and interconnected causes and drivers of disaster that are rooted in human decisions, behaviors and systems. However, many people still turn to religion to make sense of the devastating impacts and trauma of disasters involving natural phenomenon, or as they try to rebuild their lives and grapple with the fear of future events. In a study of religious reactions to earthquake and volcanic eruptions in countries with a predominantly Christian ethos, Chester and Duncan found that “even today notions of divine wrath are still embraced by a small minority of biblical literalists and conservative evangelicals” (2009, p. 319-320). In studies of firsthand accounts from survivors of Hurricane Katrina in 2005 and the Chilean earthquake in 2010, Stephens et al. (2013) found that people that personally experienced extreme hardship through the disaster were more likely to explain the event in religious terms – as an act of God with religious meaning. In Aceh, Indonesia after the 2004 Indian Ocean earthquake and tsunami, Muslim survivors attributed the tsunami to God but perceived the purpose and meaning of the catastrophe in different ways, ranging from punishment for the sins of people to seeing it as an opportunity for people to improve their faith and society (Feener & Daly, 2016). As people struggle to cope in societies with growing inequality, exploitation and instability, and suffer more frequent disasters, more people may interpret natural hazard disasters through a religious lens.
When political leaders and other individuals and institutions with power and influence attempt to blame the gods or ‘mother nature’, it becomes a concern for persistent and increased disaster risk. Today there is a global campaign to get people to stop using the term ‘natural disaster’. The #NoNaturalDisasters campaign builds on decades of research in disaster risk reduction, and is even promoted by the United Nations Office for Disaster Risk Reduction (UNDRR). A disaster is not natural. Hazards like earthquake, flood, fire, landslide are natural phenomenon. Changing this terminology is important because when people, particularly those with authority and influence, describe a disaster as ‘natural’, it suggests that there is little that humans could have done to prevent or reduce the negative impacts. When political and economic leaders and decision-makers use this term, it helps them avoid responsibility for contributing to the climate crisis, expanding our urban areas in areas exposed to hazards, abandoning or mismanaging rural and ecological areas, creating growing inequality and economic precarity, and for marginalizing people or forcing them to live in places or conditions that make them vulnerable to impacts. Referring to ‘natural disasters’ or ‘mother nature’s fury’ is a modern day equivalent of blaming the gods of Olympus.
The ancient Greeks and some Romans employed a philosophical treatment of natural hazard catastrophes for a range of purposes: to advise on how we structure and govern our societies, how cities should develop, the role of future leaders, and the quality of collective life; to comment on international relations and caution city-states against imperial and exploitative aspirations; and to warn that we cannot infringe on nature’s laws and dignity and avoid accountability forever.
The philosopher-scientists of ancient Greece and Rome would perhaps be disappointed to discover that the field of Western philosophy has shown “surprisingly little” concern or work in defining and conceptualizing disaster (Sandin, 2018, p. 13). But the insights and warnings from the philosophical perspective of natural hazards, cities and catastrophes from antiquity provide value well into our time and into the future. Today, as our cities and societies are more complex, evolve rapidly, and create increased or new risks, the enduring relevance of warnings from antiquity also remind us why we need social scientists and philosophers to be involved in advancing disaster, climate and urban studies along with experts from the natural sciences, engineering and technology. Disasters reveal a great deal about our societies’ values, foundations and functioning, and they should teach us –as societies of varying political-cultural profiles and as humanity – to address our hubris, divisions, exploitative greed and even our complacency. There are changes we need to make urgently in our societies to reduce disaster risk. We cannot afford to keep blaming god(s) or ‘mother nature’, or continue idealizing a mythical Atlantis that was never a utopia to begin with.
[1] Today, the difference between catastrophes and disasters is that catastrophes are generally considered to have a more extensive and significant impact at the community and societal levels, and in terms of organizational functions and political implications (Quarantelli, 2006).
[2] The organized and systematic study of natural hazards and disaster began in the disciplines of geography and sociology. Specifically, the field of social science research examining and conducting theoretical analysis about disasters (excluding conflict situations) really began to grow during the 1950s, in terms of research findings, developing definitions of disaster, and funding for research and application (Perry 2018). Disaster research examining and developing the concepts of vulnerability and resilience began appearing from the 1970s to 1980s (Kelman et al., 2016). Scholars in the social sciences and engineering also began working together in the 1970s and more in the 1990s, a decade designated by the United Nations as the International Decade for Natural Disaster Reduction, to understand hazards and disasters. These partnerships between social scientists and engineers occurred predominantly in the U.S. and for initiatives at the research and policy nexus (Kendra & Nigg, 2014).
Acknowledgements
I thank my dear friend Clay Cofer for encouraging my interest in the many stories and lessons of the ancient Greeks that are still relevant today, and for sharing insights that helped me expand my understanding and improve this piece.
I thank Dr. Lelan E. McLemore, whose undergraduate honors course “The Invention of Democratic Thinking”, focused primarily on Thucydides’ History of the Peloponnesian War, was one of my favorite courses and sparked a lasting interest in Thucydides.
I also thank Dr. Kathryn Morgan. A conversation after her presentation “Plato and the Historical Imagination” and her suggestions to look at Plato’s Laws and his writings about Atlantis motivated me to finally explore this topic of how the ancient Greeks addressed natural hazards and the destruction of cities.
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