Hero under the weather

mood disorder and the emergence of civic space

pp. 67-79

in: Abraham Akkerman, Phenomenology of the Winter-city, Berlin, Springer, 2016

Abstract

In the carving of streetscapes in ancient Greece, slowly accreting cities but also new colonies, more often than not, disregarded atmospheric patterns, such as wind directions, as the subtle critique of Hippocrates in his short fifth century BCE treatise, On, Airs, Waters and Places, suggests. But against the chaotic streetscapes of the old Greek cities, a city of Miletus, disposed on a rigorous plan of a strict grid pattern, had emerged in 442 BCE. It is hardly coincidence that an orderly, harmonious plan was applied onto the city of Miletus, the home of the pre-Socratic philosophical school of Thales, by then some 300 years old.