Was demythologization a response to the Third-Century Crisis? With the empire reeling from the combined pressures of civil war, barbarian invasion, plague, and economic depression, perhaps Rome’s elite were drawn to bucolic, seasonal, and philosophical scenes for the allegorical tranquility they offered, as a form of refuge from the turmoil of real life? This chapter interrogates this thesis, with far-reaching implications for how we understand similar arguments launched about other periods in world art.

The recent renewed reflection on the role of catastrophe in literature and culture has received special attention from scholars in the environmental humanities. In particular, the connection between catastrophe and violence came into focus more prominently in an effort to understand how catastrophes have been framed rhetorically and culturally. This chapter shows how the theatre functions as a laboratory for exploring the Anthropocene by way of a reading of a German Expressionist play that focuses on the connection among catastrophe, violence and the negotiation of environmental risks. It also considers how these consequences and risk assessments might be perceived from a culturally decentred position by focusing on a unique conversation that took place in the 1990s between the German tradition of political theatre and its redaction by an Aboriginal Australian playwright, suggesting the continued need for a post-colonial critique of the concept of the Anthropocene.