How to Care about Animals: An Ancient Guide to Creatures Great and Small

How to Care about Animals is a collection of classical Greek and Roman writings on animals and our relationships with them, presented in lively new translations with the original texts on facing pages. It includes passages from Aesop to Ovid, Pliny the Elder, Plutarch, Aristotle, and Aesopian fables, making a compelling argument for vegetarianism and asserting that the just treatment of animals makes us better people.

Format: Hardback
Length: 248 pages
Publication date: 10 October 2023
Publisher: Princeton University Press

How to Care about Animals is a captivating anthology of classical Greek and Roman writings on animals and our essential relationships with them. Drawing on ancient writers from Aesop to Ovid, classicist and farmer M. D. Usher has assembled a delightful collection of selections that reveal some of the ways Greeks and Romans thought about everything from lions, bears, and wolves to birds, octopuses, and snails—and that might inspire us to rethink our own relationships with our fellow creatures. Presented in lively new translations, with the original texts on facing pages, these pieces are filled with surprises—anticipating but also offering new perspectives on many of our current feelings and ideas about animals.

In his essay, Porphyry makes a compelling argument for vegetarianism and asserts that the just treatment of animals makes us better people. Pliny the Elder praises the virtuosity of songbirds and the virtuousness of elephants. Plutarch has one of Circes pigs from the Odyssey make a serio-comic case for the dignity of the beasts of the field. Aristotle puts the study of animals on par with anthropology. We read timeless Aesopian fables, including "The Hen That Laid the Golden Egg" and "The Fox and the Grapes." And there is much, much more.

How to Care about Animals is a Noah's Ark of a book, guaranteed to charm and inspire anyone who loves animals.

Weight: 308g
Dimension: 123 x 179 x 23 (mm)
ISBN-13: 9780691240435