“Debts to Nature” explores Greek myths about overreach and encroachment involving the operational deity the Greeks variously described as Potnia Therōn (“Mistress of the Animals”), the Great Goddess, or Mother of All, whose domain is Nature. It also concerns the implications of some sustainability principlesembedded and at work in Greek cult, especially acts of reciprocity and exchange in sacrificial ritual, which are ultimately explained by way of Albert Schweitzer’s philosophy of “Reverence for Life” (Ehrfurcht vor dem Leben). The poet Hesiod is proffered as an adherent to this kind of worldview and as an early systems thinker, deeply concerned about sustainable living.

“Cynics and Stoics” is an investigation into ecological aspects of both schools’ injunction that individuals should practice “self-sufficiency” (autarkeia) and live “according to Nature.” The relationship of autarky to the sustainability of systems on a global scale is considered in light of Cynic and Stoic cosmopolitanism and virtue ethics. The relationship of subsistence to sustainability is illuminated by Cynic practice and grounded in the modern concept of “appropriate technology.” The Stoic doctrine of oikeiōsis (“proprioception”) is presented as an early instance of an “environmental ethics” that still speaks to the manifold relationships that human beings have to one another and that our species has to the rest of the natural world.

“A City for Pigs” portrays Plato as a systems modeler of a sustainable society. Plato’s argumentative methods, in the Republic especially, are favorably compared to techniques of computer simulation and to the heuristic objectives of game theory. Plato’s views about social cooperation in the use of common-pool resources, for example, are shown to be strikingly similar to conclusions reached via field studies by Nobel laureate Elinor Ostrom in Governing the Commons: The Evolution of Institutions for Collective Action (1990). Plato’s own homology, of city and soul, provides a compelling rationale for both individual and collective action vis-à-vis the environmental and social problems we still face today.

“Anaximander for the Anthropocene” presents a formal sketch of modern complexity theory, then argues that the cosmological propositions of Anaximander of Miletus represent a style of rational thinking in Greek antiquity, founded on analogy, to which modern systems science owes an unacknowledged debt. The systems approach to the world first adumbrated by Anaximander’s natural philosophy, it is suggested further, provides the conceptual basis for any meaningful sustainability ethos, even in the modern age.

The Afterword (“Works and Days and Then Some”) is a miscellany consisting of anecdotes and observations about sustainable living and systems dynamics based on the author's own experiences of raising a family and building a house and a farm from scratch in the midst of intellectual pursuits. It also contains some concluding thoughts on presentisms old and new, and on the enduring ecological value of studying the Classics in an age dominated by the STEM disciplines.

Heraclitus’s doctrine of a cosmogonic unity of opposites held together in harmoniēis the topic of “Heraclitus and the Quantum.” Like Anaximander, Heraclitus posits a self-organizing universe in which objects and agents interact to form relational wholes. It is argued that Heraclitus’s ideas anticipate physicist Niels Bohr’s atomic theory of complementarity and the systems thinking of early cyberneticists. Extended from a description of the cosmos to a prescription for living, Heraclitean harmoniē, it is argued, is tantamount to sustainability, and provides a profounder, more durable alternative to some modern prescriptions circulating under the same conceptual umbrella.

Taking its cue from Thoreau’s Walden, the Introduction characterizes the book’s subject matter and approach as “environmental philology.” This newly minted method of studying issues related to the natural world springs from the better-established, more familiar labels “environmental philosophy” and “environmental humanities.” By philology is meant simply the methods and materials that comprise the multidisciplinary field of Classics, which is the study of ancient Greek and Roman literature and culture in all its facets.

“Roman Revolutions” (the title is an allusion to the classic study by Sir Ronald Syme) celebrates the working landscapes of ancient Italy and Roman agrarian values. Romans in an age of decadence and excess are portrayed in this chapter as the first back-to-the-landers and trust-fund farmers—affluent urbanists yearning, like us, for a simpler, more “sustainable” way of life. Based on personal autopsy and field research at an unusual organic olive grove in the Sabine Hills, at which are preserved substantial remains of a villa rustica connected to Pompey the Great (10648 BCE), the author proposes that the establishment and growth of agriturismi in modern Italy re-instantiates early Roman farm culture and land-use policies, and that the agriturismo movement aligns closely, too, with the United Nations’ Sustainable Development Goals regarding agriculture.

“Mutual Coercion, Mutually Agreed Upon” (the phrase comes from Garrett Hardin's classic essay "Tragedy of the Commons") sees the democratic reforms and social reorganization of Attica by the Athenian statesman Cleisthenes in 508 BCE as a case study in systems leveraging. Cleisthenes’s reforms are situated in a nexus of Presocratic (Pythagorean) thinking about limit (peras) and in the context of ideas that circulated at the time under the banners of isonomy (isonomia) and harmony (harmonia). The ancient Athenians, newly freed from political tyranny and the social upheaval of 508, recognized the intrinsic value of limits and restraint and built them into the structures of democratic life. Their example, I argue further, stands as a challenge to environmental and social problems faced by democratic regimes today.

“Community Rule” considers the reception of Classical ideas about systems and sustainability in Late Antique and early Christian thought with a particular focus on The Rule of St. Benedict. It also probes some of the Rule’s surprising modern legacies, including Scott and Helen Nearing’s homesteading experiments in Vermont and Maine and Pope Francis’s encyclical on climate change and inequality, Laudato Si’.