This website was produced by Jason König and Dawn Hollis, both members of the School of Classics at the University of St Andrews.
Jason’s previous work has focused broadly on the Greek literature and culture of the Roman empire, from the late Hellenistic period into late antiquity (i.e. 200 BCE to 500 CE approx.) He has published widely on the history and representation of athletic festivals and athletic training in antiquity, on ancient scientific and encyclopedic writing, and on imperial and early Christian traditions of writing about food and feasting. His recently published book from this project (The Folds of Olympus: Mountains in Ancient Greek and Roman Culture, Princeton University Press, 2022) surveys ancient engagement with mountains from archaic Greece into late antiquity, looking among other things at religious engagement with mountains, ancient ideas about viewing mountains, mountains as places of military engagement and their representation in historical and geographical writing, and mountains as places of work and habitation. Current projects include further work on images of landscape and human-environment relations in a wide range of Greek authors from the Roman empire.
Dawn completed her PhD in the School of History at St Andrews in 2016, with a thesis entitled ‘Re-thinking Mountains: Ascents, Aesthetics, and Environment in Early Modern Europe’. As part of this project she has worked on a series of articles exploring the influence of classical ideas relating to mountains on the engagements of later periods, with a particular focus on the seventeenth through to the nineteenth centuries. She is particularly interested in considering the ways in which the Renaissance and early modern period provided a ‘bridge’ for classical ideas to enter modern categories of mountain appreciation. Her book, Mountains Before Mountaineering: The Call of the Peaks Before the Modern Age will be coming out with The History Press in 2024.