Plato's Pigs and Other Ruminations

M. D. Usher is Lyman-Roberts Professor of Classical Languages and Literature and a faculty member in the Environmental Program at the University of Vermont. He is the author of academic books and articles in the field of classics, including A Student's Seneca (2006), and has also written books for children, poems, and two opera libretti. With his wife he also built, owns, and operates Works and Days Farm in Shoreham, Vermont, where he has been engaged in farming for over twenty years.

• Introduction. Environmental philology; 1. Debts to nature; 2. Anaximander for the anthropocene; 3. Heraclitus and the quantum; 4. A city for pigs; 5. Mutual coercion, mutually agreed upon; 6. Cynics and stoics; 7. Roman revolutions; 8. Community rule; Afterword. Works and days and then some.

'… rich and ambitious … this is a work of remarkable erudition, displaying a mastery not only of a rich array of ancient philosophers, poets and politicians, but also of modern physics, philosophy, economics, agronomy and theology.' William Brockliss, Bryn Mawr Classical Review