Preface to Special Issue: "The Supernatural and Uncanny in Classical Antiquity"

As this is the first of two issues marking the end of Preternature's first decade and the beginning of what we hope will be many decades to come, the time is right to reflect briefly on what "preternature" means and how we might distinguish it from "supernatural," given that the two terms seem often to overlap. Founding editor Kirsten Uszkalo may expound on this question more thoroughly in issue 10.2, but for the moment, let us take the preternatural as something that is beyond what is normal or expected, so much so that an unknown quantity or force might be involved, and that can be uncanny but that is, ultimately, of this world. "Supernatural" goes further, encompassing the uncanny in a way the preternatural does not, more generally referring to anything above and beyond what can be proven by scientific means, and generally with relation to events and beings that appear to be not of this world. So, for example, holding a séance (with sincere rather than fraudulent intent) could be considered preternatural, while actually receiving a response from the world beyond would be considered supernatural. Self-proclaimed witches in the thirteenth century casting spells could be considered preternatural; if a demon were to actually appear to them, that would be supernatural. Since, in many of the accounts we read in history and literature, a preternatural occurrence is often described as leading to a supernatural event, the articles that appear in Preternature tend to cover both.

We mention this in part because our first issue of 2021 happens to be a special issue on "The Supernatural and Uncanny in Classical Antiquity." The field of classics, having (not unreasonably) earned itself a centuries-long reputation for being overly stodgy and traditional, has seen a substantial shift in the last two decades. Previously self-identified largely as "the study of the ancient Greeks and Romans," including their languages, literatures, histories, philosophies, religions, and material culture, classics has of necessity been in the process of reinventing itself to demonstrate that (1) it is not merely the study of "dead white males," and (2) it is still extremely relevant to the modern world. Consequently, classics now clearly covers the ancient Mediterranean more broadly. While still focused principally on Greece and Rome, the field has gone to greater lengths to illustrate how those two cultures interacted not only with each other but with other societies in the region as well as in the ancient Near East, and to pay more attention to subjects previously considered "lowbrow"—including folk-beliefs about ghosts, witches, magic, and the like. Classics has also—if rather late to the game, as Elaine C. Sanderson and Hannah Burke-Tomlinson point out in the following Introduction—begun to take notice of various theoretical approaches, including the emotional and spatial "turns" in scholarship over the last several years. This reinvention of the field has also resulted in increased interest in classical tradition and reception—how various aspects of classical cultures have been transmitted, adapted, and reinterpreted over the centuries. Fortunately for us here at Preternature, this interest now includes the preternatural and supernatural.

Humans have always been drawn to the idea that the supernatural exists in or alongside our sphere of reality and has the capacity to influence our lives in benevolent or malevolent ways. As readers of this journal know, the supernatural can take many forms: from people and objects demonstrating unusual abilities to entire worlds paralleling ours that are occupied by wonderous creatures both living and dead. But what we now think of as "supernatural"—such as the divine—was considered to be part of the natural world in classical antiquity. As Elbert Hubbard once said, however, "The supernatural is the natural not yet understood." We now realize that many of the past's extraordinary events were simply natural phenomena that were misinterpreted by our predecessors. It is not surprising, then, that Hubbard kept coming back to his statement and repeatedly used it as a reassurance to various friends during discussions of their inability to explain exactly...