Unveiling Emotions: Sources and Methods for the Study of Emotions in the Greek World 3515102264, 9783515102261

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Unveiling Emotions Alte Geschichte Franz Steiner Verlag

Sources and Methods for the Study of Emotions in the Greek World Edited by Angelos Chaniotis

HABES 52

Unveiling Emotions Edited by Angelos Chaniotis

habes Heidelberger Althistorische Beiträge und Epigraphische Studien Herausgegeben von Angelos Chaniotis und Christian Witschel. Beirat: François Berard (Lyon), Anthony R. Birley (Vindolanda/ Friedberg), Kostas Buraselis (Athen), Lucas de Blois (Nijmegen), Ségolène Demougin (Paris), Elio Lo Cascio (Rom), Mischa Meier (Tübingen), Elizabeth Meyer (Charlottsville), Silvio Panciera (Rom), Michael Peachin (New York), Henk Versnel (Leiden) und Martin Zimmermann (München). Band 52

Unveiling Emotions Sources and Methods for the Study of Emotions in the Greek World Edited by Angelos Chaniotis

Franz Steiner Verlag

Umschlagabbildung: Photography by Miguel Drake McLaughlin. Aquila Theatre. Euripides‚ Herakles 2012. Michelle Vasquez as Megara. Directed by Desiree Sanchez, translated by Peter Meineck.

Bibliografische Information der Deutschen Nationalbibliothek: Die Deutsche Nationalbibliothek verzeichnet diese Publikation in der Deutschen Nationalbibliografie; detaillierte bibliografische Daten sind im Internet über abrufbar. Dieses Werk einschließlich aller seiner Teile ist urheberrechtlich geschützt. Jede Verwertung außerhalb der engen Grenzen des Urheberrechtsgesetzes ist unzulässig und strafbar. © Franz Steiner Verlag, Stuttgart 2012 Druck: Laupp & Göbel, Nehren Gedruckt auf säurefreiem, alterungsbeständigem Papier. Printed in Germany. ISBN 978-3-515-10226-1

TABLE OF CONTENTS Preface ..................................................................................................................... 9 Introduction............................................................................................................ 11 ANGELOS CHANIOTIS Part One: Sources .................................................................................................. 37 Emotions and papyri: insights into the theatre of human experience in antiquity ...................................................................................................... 39 CHRYSI KOTSIFOU Moving stones: the study of emotions in Greek inscriptions ................................ 91 ANGELOS CHANIOTIS Emotions and archaeological sources: a methodological introduction................ 131 JANE MASSÉGLIA Beyond the usual suspects: literary sources and the historian of emotions ......... 151 ED SANDERS Part Two: Emotions in the interaction between mortals and gods ...................... 175 Dream, narrative, and the construction of hope in the ‘healing miracles’ of Epidauros .................................................................................................. 177 PARASKEVI MARTZAVOU Constructing the fear of gods: Epigraphic evidence from sanctuaries of Greece and Asia Minor ............................................................................. 205 ANGELOS CHANIOTIS Sweet revenge: emotional factors in ‘prayers for justice’ ................................... 235 IRENE SALVO Isis aretalogies, initiations, and emotions: the Isis aretalogies as a source for the study of emotions............................................................. 267 PARASKEVI MARTZAVOU

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Part Three: Emotions in the public space ............................................................ 293 Emotionality in the political culture of the Graeco-Roman East: the role of acclamations ................................................................................. 295 CHRISTINA T. KUHN A glimpse into the world of petitions: the case of Aurelia Artemis and her orphaned children.............................................................................. 317 CHRYSI KOTSIFOU Make or break decisions: the archaeology of allegiance in Ephesos................... 329 JANE MASSÉGLIA Part Four: Emotions in interprersonal communication........................................ 357 ‘He is a liar, a bounder, and a cad’: the arousal of hostile emotions in Attic forensic oratory................................................................................. 359 ED SANDERS ‘Being unable to come to you and lament and weep with you’: Grief and condolence letters on papyrus........................................................................ 389 CHRYSI KOTSIFOU ‘Reasons to be cheerful’: conflicting emotions in the Drunken Old Women of Munich and Rome................................................................. 413 JANE MASSÉGLIA Envoi.................................................................................................................... 431 The emotion seeks to be expressed: thoughts from a linguist’s point of view ................................................................................................. 433 MARIA THEODOROPOULOU Abbreviations....................................................................................................... 469 Index .................................................................................................................... 473 List of Contributors.............................................................................................. 489

WEDDING SONG FOR AN ARCHAEOLOGIST Anna Stavrakopoulou ‘Do I exist?’, you ask, and then ‘you do not’ Kostas Karyotakis, Preveza

The tombs and the ruins, the grave offerings and the inscriptions have plenty to offer: they tell us of the rulers and their rulings, of harvests and acts of god, of soul and flesh; lives past, different customs, petrified loves, words of affection that the dead had never heard, inscribed upon demand by a craftsman who may have filled them with spelling mistakes. And he who is moved only by some weathered stones, who gets a shiver from a rock more than from a breath, why does he ask you to become an epigram so that he may read the syllables? Why are his fingers not exploring the rough surface of bodies? Why isn’t he intoxicated from the punch of laughter, instead of trying to hear the whispers of emptiness? Because his marble desire refuses to accept that a ravaged bed is in no way poorer than an unspoiled tomb. Translated by Angelos Chaniotis

PREFACE Angelos Chaniotis This volume presents the first results of the research project ‘The Social and Cultural Construction of Emotions: The Greek Paradigm’ at the University of Oxford. The project is funded with an Advanced Investigator Grant of the European Research Council (2009–2013).1 The title of the project may create the misleading impression that the researchers of this project follow a particular theoretical model – a strict social constructionism. This is not the case. This title was given to the project in 2008, during the application process, and it reflects the project’s starting point. As will become clear from the essays in this volume, we do not claim that emotions and feelings are a social and cultural construct but only that their representation and manifestation in the source material that has survived from Greek Antiquity (literary sources, papyri, inscriptions, archaeological objects) is determined by cultural and social parameters. Also the terms ‘Greek paradigm’ and ‘Greek world’ may be misleading. Under these terms we do not refer to ‘Greek’ texts and images but to texts and images that come from the areas where Greeks lived, almost never alone, and where Greek texts have been found. This broad definition is intentional. It allows us to study the impact of cultural interaction between the Greeks, Hellenised, and other populations on the representation of emotions. Also the chronological range is intentionally broad: from the time of the early epics of Homer and Hesiod to the final establishment of Christianity (early sixth century CE). Broad also is our use of the word ‘emotion’: this term entails both the physiological aspects of emotions and the awareness of emotion (that is, ‘feeling’). All the chapters of the volume have been written by the project’s Research Associates and Research Assistants. Chrysi Kotsifou (January 2009–October 2011) was responsible for the survey of papyri; Christina Kuhn (January–September 2009), Paraskevi Martzavou (October 2009–), and Irene Salvo (January 2009– November 2011) studied the representation of emotions in the epigraphic record; Ed Sanders (January 2009–August 2010) examined selected literary texts; and Jane E.A. Masséglia (née Anderson, January 2009–September 2010) worked with representative archaeological sources. My research assistants in Oxford, Harriet Archer, Katherine LaFrance, Emily Lord-Kambitsch, Jonah Rosenberg, and Katharine Waterfield, and at the Institute for Advanced Study, Michael Anthony Fowler, assisted me in the editing of the 1

Information on the project and its publications can be found in its website: http://emotions. classics.ox.ac.uk.

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volume, proofreading chapters and correcting the English of the many contributors for whom English is not a native tongue. Early drafts of some of the chapters in this volume were presented at a workshop in Oxford (25–27 June, 2010) and were discussed with invited respondents representing various disciplines, to whom the authors of the volume are very grateful for their comments: Eleanor Dickey (University of Exeter, Classics), Ute Frevert (Max-Planck Institute for Human Development, Berlin, History), Barbara Kowalzig (then Royal Holloway, now New York University, Classics), Klaus Krüger (Free University, Berlin, Art History), Robert Parker (University of Oxford, Classics), Luisa Passerini (University of Turin, History), Jan Plamper (MaxPlanck Institute for Human Development, Berlin, History), Lene Rubinstein (Royal Holloway, Ancient History), and Sarah Tarlow (University of Leicester, Archaeology). Maria Theodoropoulou (University of Thessalonike, Linguistics), who organised a seminar on ‘Language and Emotion’ in Oxford (1 June, 2011), provided valuable input and agreed to write an envoi for this volume. I should also warmly thank Anna Stavrakopoulou (School of Drama, Aristotle University of Thessalonike) for allowing me to include my translation of her poem ‘Wedding Song for an Archaeologist’ (p. 7). Peter Meineck (Aquila Theatre and New York University) generously provided the photograph for the cover of the volume. I would like to express my great gratitude to the European Research Council which made this research possible with a generous grant. Oxford, September 2012

UNVEILING EMOTIONS IN THE GREEK WORLD INTRODUCTION Angelos Chaniotis 1 TURNING TO EMOTIONS In 1971, the Society for German Language selected for the first time the ‘word of the year’: aufmüpfig (obstreperous). Words of the year in the last decade have included ‘9/11’, ‘old Europe’, ‘climate catastrophe’, and ‘financial crisis’. The word of the year 2010, announced on 27 December 2010, was a newly coined word: Wutbürger (‘rage-citizen’) – referring to angry protests in Germany caused by the irrationally expensive and ecologically damaging construction of a new railway station in Stuttgart. For the first time in forty years, the Society selected a word that directly addresses an emotional state. The members of the committee did not suspect that a few months later the phenomenon of the angry citizen would dominate public life all over Europe. The Indignados, who gathered in public squares in Spain, found imitators in other European countries, especially those more severely affected by a combination of financial crisis and political incompetence. A basic emotion – anger – and its variants (indignation and rage) suddenly emerged as a major factor in politics, hence as a motor of historical change. Recognizing the historical dimension of such an unusually strong and global demonstration of anger, a future historian might be tempted to speak of an ‘age (or years) of anger’, as historians have spoken in the past of ages of anxiety and more recently of an age of fear.1 Not only historians are unable to resist the temptation to characterise a historical period as an age dominated by a particular emotion. Psychologists have referred to our times as an age of anxiety,2 and popsong-writers announced two decades ago the beginning of a ‘generation of love’.3 Labels such as the above attempt to frame life in a particular time-setting by using emotional terms. We usually pay less attention to the fact that in our world the calendar year is articulated by means of celebrations that highlight particular emotions. In the Western world, the year starts with rituals that highlight hope; Valentine’s Day is dedicated to love; 9/11 has established itself as a day of sorrow; 1 2 3

‘Age of Anxiety’: Dodds 1965; Johnson 2005. ‘Age of fear’: Judt 2010; cf. Stearns 2008a and 2010. E.g. Scioli and Biller 2009. ‘Generation of Love’ by Masterboy, released on 16 July 1995: ‘Boys and girls jump up and down. | Move your body round and round! | Pump the bass up in this place! | Put a smile back in your face! | Take control, don’t waste time! | The heat is on you’re feeling fine. | Feel the power from above! | Call it generation of love!’

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until a few years ago an important holiday in Germany was the Volkstrauertag (the ‘People’s Day of Sorrow’); Thanksgiving Day is a festival of gratitude, Christmas one of joy, Easter a celebration of hope; national holidays, typically commemorations of victory and success, celebrate pride; and the gay community designates its own celebration explicitly and consciously as ‘Gay Pride’. In addition to these days of emotion on an annual basis, single days have often been declared as days highlighting or stimulating a specific emotion. July 24 2010 was a day of Joy in Palestine; in 1981, in New Zealand, the day on which a rugby game with racist South Africa took place was declared to a day of shame; in 2010, citizens’ initiatives in Russia invited the citizens to a day of wrath. Finally in the spring of 2011, the Spanish Indignados, inspired by the popular uprisings in the Arabic countries, introduced the days of indignation all over Europe. But beyond such visible and public demonstrations of emotion, every historical phenomenon – from a war to a financial crisis and an ecological catastrophe –, every text that might fall into the hands of a historian – from a court speech to a recipe –, and every object of material culture – from the Parthenon to a dress – is directly or indirectly related to emotions, either being determined by emotions, aiming to arouse emotions, or stimulating affective memories. Emotion penetrates life, it is there as a subtext to everything we do and say. It is reflected in physiology, expression and behaviour; it interweaves with cognition; it fills the spaces between people, interpersonally and culturally. Above all, emotion is centred internally, in subjective feelings. Like physical pain, emotion provides us with personal information that is 4 integral to our well-being or, in the extreme, to our survival.

The question, therefore, is not why historians should study emotions – they have no choice –, but why they have not done so for the greatest part of the 20th century. This is not the place to survey the history of the study of emotions in historical studies, or even the history of the study of emotions in Classics and Ancient History; and it would require an in-depth study to fully understand the various factors that have determined the ‘emotional’ or ‘affective turn’ that started about three decades ago;5 such factors range from epistemological developments to the influence of pop culture. But at least some of the factors that are responsible for the historians’ reservations towards the study of emotions may increase our awareness of methodological problems and direct our attention to specific issues. One of the reasons for banning emotions from history has been the tendency to dissociate emotion and cognition. However, most contemporary theories of emotion accept a connection between emotion and cognition, although they define their reciprocal relations in different ways.6 According to another widespread con4 5

6

Strongman 2003, 3. Useful discussions: Kasten, Stedman, and Zimmermann 2002, 9–26; Trepp 2002; Przyrembel 2005; Plamper 2010; Matt 2011; Hitzer 2011 (with extensive bibliography). On the ‘emotional’ or ‘affective turn’ see also Athanasiou, Hantzaroula, Yannakopoulos 2008; Frevert 2009, 184–187; Frevert (ed.) 2011 (esp. her introduction). On the study of emotions as part of historical thinking see Rüsen 2008; as part of cultural history: Passerini 2008. See inter alia the summary of relevant theories in Strongman 2003, 75–99, 203–209, 211. See also Schachter 1964; Buck 1983; Lazarus 1984 and 1991; Leventhal and Scherer 1987;

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ception, emotions are ‘in people’; this approach underestimates the communicative and social functions of emotions and emotional display, the impact of emotions on interpersonal relations, and the existence of ‘collective feelings’. As emotions are also ‘between people’7 and determine the relations between people, they are part of a historian’s task to interpret social interactions and almost every aspect of public life.8 Phenomena that are traditionally discussed by the historian of society and religion, such as prayer and benefaction, have interpersonal, emotional, and cognitive dimensions. Emotions are connected with expectancies of reward or punishment and, consequently, they may dictate relevant actions.9 For instance the positive emotional feedback through the fulfilment of a prayer will lead to a process of appraisal and will ultimately enhance religious faith and motivate the worshiper to make a thanks-giving dedication; ancient religious feeling is based on such reciprocity.10 If elite benefaction is received with gratitude, this will encourage further benefactions, whereas an envious response to display of wealth through public works will intensify social tensions. A very common stereotypical formula in ancient decrees is the so-called ‘hortatory formula’, which explicitly associates positive emotional feedback – the visible public display of gratitude – with the motivation of other members of the elite, that is, with judgment and decision-making. 11 An inscription from Eretria in honour of a certain Theopompos, who endowed the substantial sum of 40,000 drachmas for the purchase of olive-oil for the gymnasium, is a good example:12 In order that the people is shown to be grateful in honouring the men who distinguish themselves in virtue and glory, so that when the good and virtuous men are honoured many others zealously pursue the same; ... he shall be crowned with a golden crown and two bronze statues, of which one shall be set up in the sanctuary of Artemis Amarysia in the most Oatley and Johnson-Laird 1987; Lazarus and Smith 1988; Ellsworth 1991; Damasio 1994; Nussbaum 2001; Roseman and Smith 2001; Konstan 2009, 22f.; Hitzer 2011, 3–5. See also below note 21. 7 See esp. de Rivera 1977 and de Rivera and Grinkis 1986. On emotions as a social factor see below note 25. 8 On the communicative function of emotions from the perspective of history, see Althoff 1996, 2005, and 2006; from the perspective of psychology, see e.g. Oatley and Johnson-Laird 1987. 9 Cf. Frijda 1986, 263–332. 10 Reciprocity in Greek religion: Grottanelli 1991; Parker 1998. 11 On the ‘hortatory formula’ and its function see Henry 1996; McLean 2002, 221f.; Luraghi 2010, 249–251; Lambert 2011a, 194–197 and 2011b, 176–178. 12 IG XII.9.236 + Suppl. 553 (c. 100 BCE): ὅπως οὖν καὶ ὁ δῆµος εὐχάριστος φαίνηται τιµῶν τοὺς ἀρετῇ καὶ δόξῃ διαφέροντας ἄνδρας, ζηλωταί τε πολλοὶ τῶν ὁµοίων γίνωνται τιµωµένων {τε} τῶν καλῶν καὶ ἀγαθῶν ἀνδρῶν ... στεφα[ν]ῶσαι αὐτὸν χρυσῷ στεφάνῳ καὶ εἰκόσιν χαλκαῖς δυσίν, ὧν τὴν µὲν µίαν στῆσαι ἐν τῷ ἱερῷ τῆς Ἀρτέµιδος τῆς Ἀµαρυσίας ἐν τῷ ἐπιφανεστάτῳ τόπῳ, τὴν δὲ ἄλλην ἐν τῷ γυµνασίῳ ἐπιγράψαντας· «ὁ δῆµος ὁ Ἐρετριέων Θεόποµπον Ἀρχεδήµου ἀρετῆς ἕνεκεν καὶ εὐνοίας τῆς εἰς αὑτόν»· ἀναγράψαι δὲ τόδε τὸ ψήφισµα εἰς στήλας λιθίνας δύο καὶ ἀναθεῖναι παρὰ τὰς εἰκόνας, ὅπως ἐκφανὴς ὑπάρχῃ τοῖς τε πολίταις πᾶσιν καὶ τῶν ξένων τοῖς παρεπιδηµοῦσιν ἥ τε τοῦ ἀνδρὸς µεγαλοµέρεια καὶ καλοκἀγαθία καὶ ἡ τοῦ δήµου εὐχαριστία εἰς τοὺς καλοὺς καὶ ἀγαθοὺς ἄνδρας καὶ πολλοὶ ζηλωταὶ γίνωνται τῶν ὁµοίων. On envy, see also pp. 374f. in this volume.

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However, the main obstacle for historical research on emotions has been and still is the nature of the source material. The principle medium for the study of emotions in history is the text – contemporary history, which can adduce recorded sound and images, is an exception. The linguistic aspects of feeling, expressing, and arousing emotions are of fundamental importance for the study of emotions in cultural and historical studies.13 To study emotions in history means, first, to overcome the difficulty in translating emotional terms from one language to another14 or from an early phase of a language to a later one. Second, language has the capacity not only to express but also to conceal emotions, and we intentionally exploit this capacity in order either to enhance or to supress manifestations of feelings.15 In direct communication, we have other media to increase the accuracy of the expression of feelings, such as facial expressions, raising or lowering the voice, and body-language. And of course, unintentional physical responses (sweating, blushing, and so on) reveal emotions that we would have liked to conceal. Most of these additional media of understanding or expressing emotion do not exist in the study of written sources, especially when the historian deals with human beings who died twenty centuries ago. Admittedly, the tone of the voice, mimic, and body language can be described by a contemporary witness; mimic and gestures are also represented in art. This information is, however, filtered and sometimes subject to conventions of representation.16 It is only in rare cases that we find linguistic means equivalent to the raising of the voice or the use of gestures, such as the repetition of the same word, the use of synonyms and metaphors, alliteration, etc.17 But when such indicators are missing, the effort of a historian to interpret texts as an expression of emotion resembles the effort of an opera critic to judge a performance by watching it on a TV screen with the loudspeakers turned off and reading the subtitles. Instead of waiting for the invention of a time machine in order to study emotions in the time of the Reformation, the Black Plague, the Crusades, or the Persian Wars, historians, for the largest part the 20th century, regarded emotions as a subject that should not concern them. Except for sporadic 13 14 15 16 17

On language and emotion see the chapter by Maria Theodoropoulou in this volume (pp. 433– 468) and below note 32. Konstan 2009, 16. For this problem in connection with Latin terms of emotions, see Kaster 2005; see also pp. 168f. and 374 in this volume. Buytedjik 1950. See e.g. Lateiner 2009, on the different functions fulfilled by the description of tears and crying in Greek historiography. For a few examples see pp. 68 and 112 (repetition), 112 (alliteration), and 113 (metaphors and metonyms) in this volume. On the gesture of veiling and its connection with the display of grief see Cairns 2009.

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attempts to introduce emotions to historical research, it is since the 80s that an increasing number of historians, especially historians interested in the history of society and mentalities in Mediaeval Europe and in the modern Western world, turned their attention to emotions (see note 5). The study of emotions is now becoming a thriving field of research also in Classics and Ancient History.18 The term ‘history of emotions’ (Emotionsgeschichte, histoire des émotions), which is used in historical studies, might be somewhat misleading. Do emotions as complex neurobiological processes have a history? For instance, have the physiological aspects of fear changed in the last thirty thousand years or so? This is a matter of controversy and it is beyond the competence of the historian to determine this with the tools of his profession. But even if emotions might not have a history, history certainly has emotions. The historian’s task is to examine the very diverse significance of emotions in society and culture in their broadest definitions (including religion, law, politics, etc.), both diachronically and synchronically. The historian’s sources always have an emotional background: they are the product of emotions; they aim to arouse emotions; they describe feelings; or they use emotions in order to explain individual or group decisions and actions. To approach this emotional background is not an easy task; but the historian who choses to ignore it, misses an important part of the sources’ context. Not only history has emotions; also feelings, that is, the perception of emotions,19 have historical dimensions. How emotion is defined and how individual emotions and their causes are perceived differ from culture to culture.20 Beyond their neurobiological origin, emotions entail processes of appraisal,21 which depend not only on individual proclivities but also on social and cultural norms. And as emotions heavily influence social relations and the behaviour of individuals and groups, they are socially relevant and, consequently, subject to scrutiny, judgment, and normative intervention (see note 24). As a social phenomenon emotions fulfil social functions and follow social rules.22 As such they are potentially subject to change and are shaped by the society in which they operate. From simple recommendations prescribing emotions (‘boys don’t cry’,23 ‘rejoice!’) to legal interventions (e.g., amnesty), and from training methods for restraining anger or fear to philosophical and religious teachings concerning desire, hope, or compassion, emotions are continually subject not only to conscious social interventions, 18

19 20 21

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Recent studies: Harris 2001; Braund and Most (eds.) 2003; Konstan and Rutter (eds.) 2003; MacMullen 2003; Rubinstein 2004; Kaster 2005; Sternberg (ed.) 2005; Konstan 2006; Fitzgerald (ed.) 2007; Cairns 2008, 2009, and 2011; Suter (ed.) 2008; Sanders 2008; Fögen (ed.) 2009; Bouvier 2011; Meineck 2011; Munteanu (ed.) 2011; Viano 2011. Cf. notes 50 and 54. On the differentiation between emotion and feeling see Damasio 1994, 127–163. Russell 1991; Konstan 2009, esp. 6, 20, and 25; cf. Shweder 1993; Stearns 2008b. E.g. Frijda 1986, esp. 194f., 268f., 432–436; Lazarus and Smith 1988; Ellsworth 1991; Frijda 1993, 382; Damasio 1994, esp. 165–201, 245–251; Scherer, Shorr, and Johnstone (eds.) 2001; Clore and Ortony 2008. See above note 7 and below note 25. See e.g. Averill and Nunley 1988, on grief and the ways it creates privileges for the grieving party, imposes restrictions and obligations on it, and is connected with requirements. Shamir and Travis (eds.) 2002.

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but also to influences of cultural change beyond the control of social agents.24 The perception of and responses to emotions are to a great extent socially and culturally determined – sometimes socially and culturally constructed –, and as such their evolution responds to changes in society and culture.25 For instance, the fear of death and emotional responses to the loss of loved ones (grief, hope for life after death, pride in self-sacrifice, relief at the escape from the pains of life, etc.) depend on factors such as eschatological beliefs, philosophical ideas about life and the human condition, ritual performances, normative restrictions on mourning and the display of grief, concepts of self-sacrifice (‘sacred war’), and the quality of life. The religious fear of polluted and polluting things (death, menstrual blood, types of food, etc.), disgust, and feeling of privacy are all to a great extent constructs of social, ethnic, and cultural groups, consequently subject to subtle differentiations and changes. And of course, emotions are influenced by specific historical experiences, such as the impact of civil war on friendship, of HIV on (homo)sexual desire, of terrorism on tolerance, of global warming on hope for the future of mankind, of reality shows on the display of emotions. It is, therefore, beyond controversy that the socially and culturally constructed environment, in which emotions are generated, has a history. The historians, the historians of literature, and the art historians cannot directly study neurobiological processes; only in some well documented cases they may have immediate access to psychological reactions. But they do have access to the external stimuli that generated emotions. They also have information concerning the various factors that determine the manifestation of emotions, their linguistic expression, their control and display, their use in communication, and their use as a strategy of persuasion. These factors, ranging from social norms, religious beliefs, and philosophical ideas to gender, age, and education, and from hierarchical relations to the concrete context of communication, are socially and culturally determined and, consequently, they have a history. The starting point for the study of emotions in historical disciplines that only have indirect and filtered access to emotions – and ancient history is one of them – is the study of those parameters that influence the manifestations of emotions in texts and images. Knowledge of these parameters can establish a reliable basis for a departure to more complex and fascinating endeavours, such as the exploration of how emotions and their perception develop over time.26

24

25

26

On emotion management see e.g. Hochschild 1990; Heise and O’Brien 1993; for a useful overview see Strongman 2003, 168–171. On affect control (anger) see Stears and Stearns 1986 and Harris 2001. See also below note 28. On the social aspects in the study of emotions see Kemper 1978, 1991, and 1993; Averill 1982; Denzin 1984; Oatley and Johnson-Laird 1987; Greenwood 1992; the contributions in the volumes edited by Harré (ed.) 1986 and Harré and Parrott (eds.) 1996; Oatley 1993; Johnson-Laird and Oatley 2000; Fischer and Manstead 2008; Stets and Turner 2008. Konstan 2009; Frevert 2009, 202–207.

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This is, therefore, what historians study when they say that they study emotions.27 They study for instance how societies and groups create emotional norms and make their members regard the display of certain feelings (for instance pride) as acceptable, discriminating others (for instance grief or fear);28 how groups of different size and character – an army, a community of worshippers, a political party, a family, a nation, a professional association, members of the same gender or age-class and so on – may define themselves as emotional communities;29 how the perception of one particular emotion changes over time,30 or which specific significance it has in one particular period;31 how language, itself a cultural construct, influences feeling;32 how the manifestation of emotions in a particular society may be connected with a repertoire of actions and expressions (‘emotional scripts’);33 how emotions can be used in the mobilisation of larger groups;34 how under certain conditions a particular ‘emotional climate’ or an ‘emotional style’ characterise a specific historical context;35 how social control is enhanced through arousal of different emotions in different periods;36 how strong emotional experiences shape social and religious norms;37 the functions of emotional display in 27 28

29 30

31

32 33 34

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36 37

On themes and approaches in the ‘history of emotions’ see Hitzer 2011, 11–45, with emphasis on modern history. See especially Stearns and Stearns 1985; cf. Reddy 2001 and his concept of ‘emotional regime’. From the perspective of psychology, see Buck 1983 (emotional education). See also above note 24 on the management of emotion. On ‘emotional communities’ see esp. Rosenwein 2006; see also Chaniotis 2011 and pp. 76– 81 and 195f. in this volume. E.g. the studies of Delumeau 1978, 1983, and 1989, on various aspects of collective fear in mediaeval and early modern Europe; Stearns 1989, on the development of jealousy in American culture; Menninghaus 2002, on the changing perceptions of disgust; Bowman 2006 and Speitkamp 2010, on a history of honour. E.g. Camporesi 1990, on the fear of Hell in early modern Europe; Stearns 1994, on ‘coolness’ in US culture in the 20th century; Frevert 1995, on honour and the culture of duelling in the 19th century; Glassner 1999, on fear in modern American culture; Ambroise-Rendu, Delporte, Dumasy, and Artiaga 2008, on indignation in political culture and social morality of the 19th and 20th centuries; Greiner, Müler, and Walter (eds.) 2009, on fear in the period of the Cold War; Passerini 2009, on concepts of love in European culture of the 20th century. Reddy 2001. Cf. Davitz 1969; Trepp 2002, 88f.; Strongman 2003, 290; see also pp. 433–470 in this volume (with bibliography). Kaster 2005; cf. p. 375 in this volume. E.g. Goodwin, Jasper, and Polletta (eds.) 2001 and Gould 2009, on emotions and social movements; Klimó and Malte (eds.) 2006, on emotions in totalitarian regimes. Cf. Aschmann (ed.) 2005 (emotion in politics in the 19th and 20th centuries); Ciompi and Endert 2011 (collective emotions in politics in the 20th and 21st centuries); Bormann, Freiberger, and Michel (eds.) 2010 (fear in international politics). On the concept of ‘emotional climate’ see de Rivera 1992 (but with reference to social contexts); see also above notes 1 and 2. On ‘emotional style’ see Stearns 1994 and Reddy 2008; the concept of ‘emotional style’ is also used to characterise the relationship between space and emotion; see the contributions in Gammerl 2012. See e.g. Demos 1996, on the change from social control through shame to social control through guilt in New England (17th–19th centuries). E.g. Chaniotis 2010 (on emotions and religious norms).

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public and social life, in different social and cultural spaces, and on different occasions – in the court and in the popular assembly, during a festival and the performance of a ritual, within the family, in the context of economic activities, in diplomatic negotiations and so on; how emotions operate as a ‘persuasion strategy’, for instance in the asymmetrical relations between mortals and gods, elite and masses, masters and slaves, kings and cities; what impact diverse external factors such as exile, invasion, political strife, colonisation, war, multicultural environments, technological development, epidemics, natural catastrophes etc. have on emotions;38 how social change – e.g., the increased or limited visibility of women in public life, changes in their socialisation, and the social goals assigned to them – and the interaction between different genders, ageclasses, and social groups shapes emotional behaviour;39 how different emotions are attached to social roles and functions; how the projection of human emotions on to the gods – or, in Classical Antiquity, the personification and worship of emotions (indignation/Nemesis, fear/Phobos, love/Eros; cf. p. 155 in this volume) – reveals attitudes toward and perceptions of emotions; how emotions are provoked or enhanced through ‘staging’ and conscious placement in spatial and architectural frameworks (processional streets, courts, religious, military, and funerary architecture) or ‘emotional styles’;40 how emotions become a subject of ethnic stereotyping and are reflected in naming practices; how one emotion is consciously aroused in opposition to another – for instance how hope of and gratitude for benefactions outbalances the envy for a wealthy citizen, or how grief for a loss may be overcome through anger; how the character of a literary genre or a type of document determines if, which, and how emotions will be represented. The tasks of the ancient historians and the questions that they ask do not essentially differ from the tasks and questions of historians of other periods, but their source material has specific features as regards availability, diffusion over time and space, and reliability. In the case of Ancient History, the primary medium for the study of emotions is the text. With the exception of the early Greek documents in the Linear B script (roughly in the fourteenth and thirteenth centuries BCE), written evidence continually exists from the eighth century BCE onwards. Images and material remains are invaluable, but for the historical periods for which we have written evidence it is principally with the help of texts that we can place objects of art and other material remains in cultural and social contexts and understand the conventions that determined their production (see pp. 131– 150). Information directly or indirectly concerning emotions, their description, appraisal, control, display, and arousal is found in almost every genre of Greek literature and science, in inscriptions, and in papyri. 38 39

40

E.g., on the impact of technology on fear see Kerner 1997. On gender and emotion see Shamir and Travis (eds.) 2002; Strongman 2003, 227–231; Brody and Hall 2008; Borutta and Verheyen (eds.) 2010; Dutsch and Konstan 2011; Flick and Hornung (eds.) 2011. On ‘emotional styles’ in this context see above note 35. On architecture and space see pp. 329–355 in this volume.

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A modern text, written by a journalist, may exemplify the problems ancient historians face and the questions they ask when they attempt to understand the emotional background and the emotive impact of texts. 2 READING TEXTS, UNDERSTANDING THE DISPLAY OF EMOTIONS While I was flying from London to Frankfurt on June 9, 2010, an article in the Independent caught my eye: ‘“No Drama, Obama” style of leadership is no match for this crisis.’ The article, written by Rupert Cornwell, commented on President Obama’s response to the BP spill in the Gulf of Mexico: For America, measuring the extent of Barack Obama’s anger at BP over the Gulf crisis has become almost as important as measuring the extent of the spill itself. But on one thing everyone is agreed: while the latter is far too high, the former remains too low. Try as he may to ratchet up the public show of fury, a President celebrated for his cool demeanour never seems to do enough. As the weeks since the 20 April disaster passed, the questions multiplied. Did he truly understand how much damage was being done? Did he really care? ... Yesterday, Mr Obama used his heaviest rhetorical artillery yet. ... ‘I don’t sit around just talking to experts because this is a college seminar; we talk to these folks because they potentially have the best answers, so I know whose ass to kick.’ The assumption that this ass in question belonged to BP sent the company’s stock tumbling another 5 per cent yesterday. Whether such bar-room language persuades Americans his outrage has finally reached the appropriate level is another matter. From the start, Mr. Obama has struggled to match his perceived emotions to those of the country. ‘Just plug the damn hole,’ he is said to have fumed to aides, a month into the spill. But that did not suffice. So last week he upped the public exasperation. ‘I am furious at the entire situation,’ he told the CNN host Larry King in an interview. But ‘if jumping up and down and screaming could fix a hole in the ocean, we’d have done that five or six weeks ago.’ But exactly what form did the presidential anger take, reporters wanted to know. How, for instance, did Robert Gibbs know that his boss was, as the White House spokesman claimed, ‘enraged’ by the disaster? The reply alas was less than convincing. Mr Obama had been ‘in meetings – clenched jaw – even in the midst of these briefings, saying everything has to be done’. The problem of course is that histrionics is not the Obama way. Bill Clinton was the acknowledged master of empathy; indeed, the single thing that put his presidency back on course after the November 1994 mid-term defeat was his response to the Oklahoma City bombing five months later. Mr Clinton’s words of grief and compassion, anger and resolve, articulated exactly how his compatriots felt. ... Implicitly, it [this crisis] saps at his authority every day, violating the assumption that the man in the Oval Office is omnipotent. Whatever his loathing of BP, this President knows he is dependent on the company – and a foreign company at that – to solve the crisis. The country is fearful, indignant and frustrated at its impotence, in a mood to lash out at those responsible, even though mere lashing out will change nothing. The reports of BP’s alleged negligence, its readiness to sidestep safety rules, only add to the rage. Some of that rage will be vented next week when Mr Hayward is hauled before a House committee in public session to answer for his sins. For Mr Obama, however, it is harder. He tries to articulate the national exasperation. But fierce emotional words, and the instant gratification they bring, are not his preferred way – and however hard he tries, it shows. The Obama method is a withering fury, steeped in sarcasm. ... But for Mr Obama the dilemma remains. The ‘No Drama, Obama’ style that worked so well on the campaign trail is no match for this crisis. Presidents are expected to work miracles. No miracle can right the damage already done.

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A comparison between this article and the source material commonly exploited by ancient historians, classicists, and archaeologists allows some reflections on the study of emotions, what it means, what it can achieve, and what it cannot. First, we observe a tension between what an individual declares that he feels – Obama is quoted: ‘I am furious at the entire situation’ – and how this is perceived by others. Can declarations of what one feels be regarded as genuine expressions of emotion? The phrase ‘language persuades’ rather implies that the function of language is not only to express one’s feelings but also to control the thoughts of others. And even when one is telling the truth about what one feels or has felt in the past, choosing to do so in one case and to conceal a feeling in another is part of a strategy of communication, whose understanding requires the knowledge of context. Two examples, one from the early Reformation Age, the second from antiquity, illustrate this. Anna Büschler, the daughter of the Bürgermeister of Schwäbisch Hall in the early sixteenth century, was involved in a decades-long legal conflict with her father and later with her siblings due to her disinheritance – a result of her love affairs. Most of her correspondence with her lover Erasmus of Limburg is preserved.41 Anna writes in a letter on 14 August, 1522:42 My humble, obedient, and kindest greeting, most darlingly gracious sir. I am letting your grace know that I went crazy [in your absence] and was unable to do virtually anything. As your grace thinks that we are in the same situation, I am letting your grace know that my father is now away and won’t return before St. Michael’s Day or later. So I leave it to your grace to act. ...

If we know that Anna was angry at her lover’s behaviour when writing this letter, it is only because we have Erasmus’ letter to which she was responding. Her declaration of affection (‘I went crazy and was unable to do virtually anything’) is a mockery of what Erasmus wrote (‘I went crazy [while I was away from you] and was unable to do virtually anything’); by inviting him to visit her during her father’s absence Anna was rejecting his invitation to go to his house during his father’s absence (‘as I see from my father’s posted orders that he departs today and won’t be back for two weeks or more, I am letting you know it so that you can come to me when you wish’, was what Erasmus wrote). Placed in the context of a complex interaction between two individuals and viewed as part of a correspondence, an individual’s direct expression of affection appears as part of a strategy of communication. Chrysi Kotsifou presents a very similar case in her introduction to the representation of emotions in papyri (pp. 39–41). The second example concerns the unexpected admittance of fear by a civic community in ancient Greece. A decree of Ephesos composed towards the end the war between the Romans and King Mithridates VI (c. 86 BCE) summarizes the first phase of the war as follows:43 41 42 43

Study of the correspondence and the affair: Ozment 1997. Ozment 1997, 64f. I.Ephesos 8: Μιθραδάτης Καππαδοκί[ας βασιλεὺς παραβὰς τὰς π]ρὸς Ῥωµαίους συνθήκας καὶ συναγαγὼ[ν τὰς δυνάµεις ἐπεχείρη]σεν κύριος γενέσθαι τῆς µηθὲν ἑαυτῶι προ[σηκούσης χώρα]ς, καὶ προκαταλαβόµενος τὰς προκειµένας ἡµῶν πό[λεις ἀπάτ]ῃ,

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The king of Kappadokia Mithridates violated the treaties with the Romans, collected his armed forces, attempted to occupy land that did not belong to him at all, occupied first our neighboring cities with fraud, and also gained control of our city as well, terrifying (us) with the magnitude of his army and the sudden attack ...

The citizens of Greek cities did not often publicly and collectively admit that they were terrified at the sight of a foreign army. Fear is not what all the Ephesians or even their majority felt, when Mithridates’ army approached their city – as a matter of fact it is reported that the Ephesians (or their majority) gladly took his side and participated in the notorious massacre on Romans and Italians. Fear is only an excuse, an emotion displayed in this text, in order to explain why Ephesos did not support the Romans from the very beginning of the war but only after they started winning (see pp. 119f.). Returning to Rupert Cornwell’s article in the Independent, we notice an element of theatrical display in the public manifestation of emotions (‘public show of fury’, ‘histrionics is not the Obama way’). Emotions are expressed linguistically, and the use of language is connected with status and social identity (‘whether such bar-room language persuades Americans his outrage has finally reached the appropriate level is another matter’). Emotions are also connected with bodily responses.44 The reporters asked ‘how did Robert Gibbs know that his boss was “enraged”’, expecting this rage to have manifested itself in a visible manner (words, body language, facial expressions, actions). A metaphor (Obama ‘is said to have fumed’) enhances the representation of emotion (cf. pp. 112f. in this volume). We also notice that the display of emotions reflects different personalities.45 Obama, we are told, is ‘a President celebrated for his cool demeanour’, while ‘Clinton was the master of empathy’; ‘the Obama method is a withering fury, steeped in sarcasm.’ Beyond an occurrent emotional state such as fear, anger, and envy, part of the historian’s task is to study emotional attitudes of longer duration. In the case of individuals they result from personal experiences in childhood and personality features, in the case of groups from education and social and cultural values. Ed Sanders (pp. 151f.) comments on a passage in Thucydides, in which the ancient historian characterises the differences between the Spartans and the Athenians in terms of different emotional attitudes.46 A central theme of Rupert Cornwell’s article is that emotions are subject to conscious manipulation and control, especially when audiences are involved or a discrepancy between individual and public emotions is felt. The journalist claims that Obama ‘struggled to match his perceived emotions to those of the country’,

44

45 46

ἐκράτησεν καὶ τῆς ἡµετέρας πόλεως καταπληξάµενος [τῶι] τε πλήθει τῶν δυνάµεων καὶ τῶι ἀπροσδοκήτωι τῆς ἐπιβολῆς. Discussion: Chaniotis 2012. For an elaborate study of the corporeal dimension of emotions see Gould 2009, 1–47, who developed the notion of ‘emotional habitus’. On emotion and facial expression, see also Ekman 1982, and 1992; Matsumoto et al. 2008. See also p. 134 in this volume. See Strongman 2003, 223–226. Cultural neuroscience examines the impact of cultural parameters on the brain. See http://culturalneuroscience.wordpress.com.

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‘upped the public exasperation’, and ‘tries to articulate the national exasperation’. In this case, one observes how the display of emotion evolves over a longer period of time. Obama’s rage is not an emotion but truly an ‘emotional episode’.47 The study of ‘emotional episodes’ requires some background information, and in ancient history this is only possible when a narrative of some sort exists, especially in historiography, drama, oratory, and in a few documentary sources that contain or allow the reconstruction of narratives (e.g. decrees, petitions, dossiers of letters). During such episodes, emotional display can be increased or decreased; it can be measured (‘measuring the extent of anger’). An audience observes whether the President’s ‘outrage has finally reached the appropriate level’. Emotions are subject to scrutiny, appraisal, and criticism. Without addressing this subject directly, the article implies that the display of emotion is connected with status and authority. When a crisis violated ‘the assumption that the man in the Oval Office is omnipotent’, display of rage connected with actions (‘kicking asses’) expressed a position of power and superiority. The material studied in this volume provides examples of such links between status and emotion. I give here one pertinent example, an inscription from Olbia (North Shore of the Black Sea, c. 200 BCE) which describes calculated display of wrath by a man of power:48 When king Saitaphernes came along to the other side of the river to hold court, and the magistrates called an assembly and reported on the presence of the king and on the fact that the city’s revenues were exhausted, Protogenes came forward and gave 900 gold pieces. When the ambassadors, Protogenes and Aristokrates, took the money and met the king, the king took the presents but became angry (εἰς ὀργὴν δὲ καταστάντος) and broke up his quarters [... treated?] the magistrates [unworthily? and so] the people met together and [were] terrified (περίφ[οβος]) ...

At a first rather superficial reading this text does not tell us anything exciting. It tells us that when kings do not get the gift that they expect, they get angry; it tells us that when they get angry, their subjects are afraid. Do we really need a study of inscriptions to learn this? What is surprising in this text is not that the king was enraged, but that the author of the decree of a nominally free and autonomous city chose to mention it. As the display of rage seen from the king’s perspective expressed his perception of his superior position, from the perspective of the Olbian author of this text, to mention the king’s anger was an admittance of a position of dependency and subordination. By making this admittance, he aimed to maximize the gratitude of the citizens for the man who saved them in that situation. Returning to the article in The Independent, we see that emotions may lead to actions; this is why the reporters wanted to know what form the presidential anger took. In some cases emotional display is effective, in others it is not. Obama observes that the manifestation of emotions does not solve a problem (‘if jumping up and down and screaming could fix a hole in the ocean ...’). The reporter asserts 47 48

On the concept of ‘emotional episode’ see p. 157 in this volume. IOSPE I2 32. For a discussion see pp. 115–119 in this volume. On the association of anger with superiority see pp. 71 and 117–119 in this volume.

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that ‘fierce emotional words bring instant gratification’, but on the other hand he reminds the readers that ‘Clinton’s words of grief and compassion, anger and resolve, articulated exactly how his compatriots felt’. The journalist’s comments also address the co-existence and connection of emotions (‘the country is fearful, indignant and frustrated’; cf. pp. 163f. in this volume). Under certain circumstances grief may generate anger, fear, and shame.49 The display of anger does not exclude the deep feeling of fear, it may be connected with envy, or it may be a strategy to cover embarrassment or guilt. For this reason, when emotions are studied as phenomena of social communication in given historical contexts, they should not be studied in isolation. Finally, a significant observation does not concern Obama’s emotions but the article’s author. The text was not written by an American but by a British commentator, who selected what we get to read. Clearly, the author was equally worried about the spill in the Gulf of Mexico as he was about the stocks of a British company (‘The assumption that this ass in question belonged to BP sent the company’s stock tumbling another 5 per cent yesterday’). Exactly as Obama used his emotions in a persuasion strategy addressing his fellow citizens and attempting to become part of the ‘emotional community’ that they represented – a community of indignation –, in the same way the commentator used Obama’s allegedly theatrical display of emotions, in order to criticize the president. Ultimately, this article does not deal with how Obama really felt, but with the question of what emotions he chose to communicate to others; how his individual display of anger was tuned to match the collective feeling of anger. The methodological problems that we observe in the case of the article in The Independent are far more acute, when we deal with texts and images produced more than fifteen centuries ago. In the case of Obama’s true or theatrical anger and of a British journalist’s comments we know dates, contexts, and persons. In the case of the large majority of the ancient sources we do not. Principally, what these sources allow us to study is how emotions and feelings were observed, described, theatrically displayed, evaluated, and exploited in persuasion strategies; and how the manifestation, display, and representation of emotions changed depending on context, media of communication, and emotional communities. Consequently, the first task of the ancient historian who studies emotions is not to understand how an individual or a group felt, but which social and cultural parameters determined the representation, display, and manifestation of emotions in the source material. What also became clear through the analysis of the article in The Independent is that this text cannot be properly understood if we do not take its emotional background under consideration. Historians have to study emotions, because emotions have shaped all the source material that they have at their disposal. Therefore, the ancient historian does not only – perhaps not even primarily – study texts in order to understand emotions. It is far more urgent for an ancient historian to study emotions in order to understand texts.

49

Strongman 2003, 141.

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3 EXPANDING THE SOURCE MATERIAL The ancient historian does not have at his disposal the archival material for instance of the early modern period, the biographical information for authors and artists of the 19th and 20th centuries, or the recordings of the 20th and 21st century. But this disadvantage can, paradoxically, be an advantage – up to a certain extent. If one ‘googles’ the words ‘anger in politics’, one gets 123 million hits (April 2012); this alone can discourage any attempt to proceed to a thorough study and contextualisation. An ancient historian who studies the same subject has at his disposal a few inscriptions and papyri and a few dozens of passages in literary sources (mainly historical narratives and orations). The ancient historian can study contexts and parameters in detail. Aware of the problems connected with the study of emotions in Greek and Roman antiquity, most Classicists who study emotions direct their research almost exclusively towards the great works of literature and philosophy.50 There are very good reasons for this. Let us take, for instance, the emotion, which I discussed in connection with the article in The Independent: anger. The first word in European literature is one of the Greek words for anger: menis. The main subject of the second epic, the Odyssey, is Poseidon’s anger that prevents Odysseus’ return home. At the other end of antiquity, in Christian Late Antiquity, the concept of ‘God’s wrath’ (orge theou) is often – but not universally – applied to explain the small and big calamities of life, from earthquakes and plagues to barbarian invasions, as the result of sins that have caused divine wrath.51 Between the ‘angry’ beginning (the anger of a man) and the angry end of Classical antiquity (the anger of God), various kinds of anger (anger, wrath, rage, fury, indignation and so on) are often described, displayed, interpreted, or evaluated in the ancient sources. It seems quite natural that the study of emotions in Ancient History was put on a new systematic basis with a book dedicated to anger and its control, primarily in the light of literary sources.52 As became obvious from the comments on Obama’s anger, understanding emotions means to understand the context of the source in which they are manifested. The literary sources indeed offer this possibility. Achilles’ rage in the Iliad can be studied in the context of heroic ideals and notions of honour; it is part of a story with a beginning and an end. Medea’s rage has a cause (Jason’s betrayal) and a socio-cultural context (the reaction of a barbarian princess away from home). Aristotle’s discussion of anger is part of a systematic treatment of feelings in the context of a philosophical system, which can be placed into the philosophical trends of fourth-century Athens.53 The efforts of ancient orators to arouse anger (see pp. 359–387 in this volume) can be studied in the context of speeches with a 50

51 52 53

A selection of recent studies: Sihvola and Engberg-Pedersen 1998; Knuuttila 2004 and 2006; Fortenbaugh 2002; Graver 2007; Kristjánsson 2007; Calame 2009; Schlesier 2009. See also note 18. E.g. Cameron 1985, 42; Kaldellis 2007. Harris 2001. Konstan 2006, 41–76.

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concrete subject, written by orators whose names are almost always known and about whose personality some information survives. In all these cases we are dealing with literary texts composed by the great minds. Therefore, we should not be surprised if the study of emotions in Greek antiquity has primarily been a study of literary sources and in particular a study of epic poetry, tragedy, the orators, and the philosophers.54 Most of these texts were composed in a single city (Athens), in a period of 150 years (c. 480–320 BCE), by men of the elite. The value of these sources, consequently, is as undisputable as are their limits (cf. pp. 151–173). If we go beyond Classical Athens, the overwhelming majority of literary texts originates in or refers to a few major urban centres such as Rome, Alexandria, Rhodes, and Pergamon. Significant progress in research on emotions in ancient Greece requires the exploitation of a larger and more heterogeneous corpus of evidence. One of the aims of the Oxford project ‘The Social and Cultural Construction of Emotions: The Greek Paradigm’55 and of this volume is to draw attention to the large variety of available sources and their particular value. The documentary sources (papyri and inscriptions), that is, the sources which the research team of the Oxford project primarily studies, represent a much larger range of texts as regards content, distribution over time and space, and representation of social groups, age-classes, and genders. Inscriptions, papyri, and ostraka are preserved in large and continually increasing numbers. Greek and Latin inscriptions are found in the entire ancient world, from Britain to Afghanistan and from the Black Sea to Ethiopia. Similarly, the chronological distribution of the relevant epigraphic and papyrological material is extremely broad. We have inscriptions from the eighth century BCE to the sixth century CE and Greek and demotic papyri and ostraka for the entire period in which Egypt was integrated into the Hellenised world and the Roman (and early Byzantine) Empire, from the late fourth century BCE to the seventh century CE; for the late periods we also have Coptic texts. The broad thematic range, dissemination in space, and distribution in time make inscriptions and papyri an excellent source for a comprehensive study of the socio-cultural aspects and role of emotions, in particular in connection with developments triggered by new religions (e.g., Christianity)56 and the contacts between different ethnic groups (Greeks, the native populations of Anatolia, Romans, Jews, Egyptians, Persians, etc.). The first four chapters of this volume provide overviews of the source material, not in the form of lists of authors and works but with references to the main categories of papyri and inscriptions as well as to selected literary and archaeological sources. The authors of these chapters sketch the questions and problems connected with each type of source material. The papyri, to which the overview by Chrysi Kotsifou (pp. 39–89) is devoted, have hitherto hardly been studied in connection with the emotions. As Kotsifou explains, this material is of great value 54 55 56

See above notes 18 and 50. See also Ed Sanders’ overview in this volume (pp. 151–173). For the project’s aims see http://emotions.classics.ox.ac.uk. See e.g. Gemünden 2009; Stroumsa 2009. See also the remarks of Chrysi Kotsifou in this volume (pp. 48, 55–57, and 65).

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because of the very diverse content of papyri (e.g., wet-nursing contracts, marriage contracts and divorce documents, wills, letters, petitions, dream accounts); because of the uniqueness of some genres (e.g. petitions or texts concerning children); and because of the existence of private archives, which allow a researcher to study the development of emotions – or rather, the development and changes of the display of emotions by the same individual, sometimes in one and the same affair. Kotsifou also explains how the genres of papyri and the formulaic language which is associated with each of them (e.g., petitions, wetnursing contracts, or letters of condolence) determine the different manners in which emotions will be displayed. The abundance of the material and its often stereotypical character permits the study of questions directly concerning the historical aspects of emotions: how specific emotions seem to be more predominant or how they are specifically addressed in certain historical periods; how factors such as the emergence of a new religion (Christianity), a cultural development (the spread or decline of literacy and education), a social institution (the use of professional scribes), status, and gender influence the representation of emotions in texts. For instance Kotsifou observes that in Late Antique, possibly because of Christianity’s reluctance to encourage divorce, petitions for divorce had to present plausible justifications. For this reason, they record more sensational details of abuse and emotional pleas for assistance than earlier examples. An important methodological issue is connected with the utilisation of formularies or standardised phrases in many papyri. Taking into consideration this practice, one can study how the use of formulaic language or divergence from it (cf. pp. 110f.), and the choice of a specific vocabulary determine the communication of emotion, at times concealing feelings and at times enhancing their display. As papyri were produced in order to serve interpersonal communication, they are an important source for the study of how emotional communities were constructed and expressed. With the occasional vivid descriptions of human responses, papyri, especially petitions, also contribute to the study of the corporeal expression of emotions. Inscriptions, whose relevance for the history of emotions is summarized by me (pp. 91–128), differ from the papyri inasmuch as their geographical and chronological distribution is much wider; a more significant difference is the monumentality of most inscriptions, the fact that the texts were inscribed in public spaces in order to be visible. For this reason, the emotional and emotive aspects of inscriptions require the careful study of contexts: the space, the form of the monument, the images that decorate it, and the ritual context of the reading of an inscription. Dedications and praises of the goddess Isis (pp. 205–235 and 267–291) are good examples for this sort of context. Other methodological issues connected with the study of inscriptions are very similar to those faced by the student of papyri, especially the use of stereotypical formulations. Because of their function in public communication, inscriptions particularly contribute to the study of how the display of emotions worked as a strategy of persuasion and which linguistic media were used in order to create emotional communities among the readers of

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inscribed texts. The representation of two emotions, anger and fear, in public decrees illustrates the potential of inscriptions in the study of emotions. Unlike papyri and inscriptions, some categories of literary sources – philosophical treatises, epic, dramatic, and lyric poetry, oratory, and novels – have attracted substantial attention in the context of the study of emotions in the Greek world (see note 18). Ed Sanders’ introduction to the study of emotions in literary sources (pp. 151–173) gives a sense of the huge range of ancient Greek literary sources relevant to the study of emotions. The specific value of literary sources can be seen in the fact that we have information on their authors – which we usually lack in the case of inscriptions and papyri –, and in the fact that literary texts are usually longer than inscriptions and papyri, providing a reasonably wide narrative context. Of course, serious methodological issues arise from the fictional character of many literary texts, but as Sanders points out, even fiction can demonstrate for instance the influnce of place (e.g., courtroom, procession, festival, street, agora etc.) on the social acceptability of emotional expression. Because of the importance of oratory, historiography, and biography for historical studies, Sanders focuses on the potential and the problems connected with the study of these genres. He identifies as a major subject for future investigation the extent to which Greek historians, biographers, orators, and philosophers explain decisions and historical facts by ascribing them to emotional motivation. The archaeological material is extremely heterogeneous, ranging from images to organised space and a variety of material remains – human bones, or objects of everyday use. For this reason, it confronts the student of emotions with specific methodological and interpretative problems summarised by Jane Masséglia (pp. 125–144). As Masséglia points out, to avoid archaeological evidence because of the multiple interpretations that the material evidence often allows is a far greater loss than the potential harm in misinterpreting it. The methodological approach recommended by her consists in the joint study of archaeological remains with textual evidence, whenever possible, and with any other contextual information; the collation and comparison of similar archaeological phenomena; the application of models derived from multi-ethnic and diachronic observations of human behaviour; the identification of the emotional communities in which or for which an archaeological object is created. Using these approaches the researcher can study emotional responses to physicality, image, and use. A joint problem in most of the manifestations of emotions in the sources is that we are dealing with products of ‘filtering’, dramatisations, and diverse modifications. The selected case studies explored in the remaining chapters of this book illustrate some of the problems connected with the study of the source material. A common theme is the study of emotions in contexts of communication: between humans and gods; in interpersonal relations; and in public spaces.

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4 STUDYING EMOTIONS, UNDERSTANDING TEXTS AND IMAGES: EMOTIONS IN THE CONTEXT OF COMMUNICATION As becomes clear from the selection of questions that historians ask in connection with emotions in history, emotions can only be studied in clearly defined contexts. In many cases the source material allows such a study, for instance in the context of political discourse in Hellenistic Athens as it is reflected in decrees; in the specific historical contexts of the raids of Celtic tribes in the third century BCE or the Mithridatic Wars in the early first century BCE; in the villages and sanctuaries of Lydia and Phrygia in the second and third centuries CE; in Oxyrhynchus in Roman Egypt; in Aphrodisias in Late Antiquity, and so on.57 In Ancient History, the need to study emotions in contexts of communication is dictated by the textual material itself, which either originates in or serves as communication. This applies to all the major sources: orations, letters, drama, historiography, decrees, dedications, epitaphs, curses, prayers, letters, and petitions. The importance of emotion in communication and interaction has often been stressed in pertinent research. As has been pointed out, emotion communicates information about intentions and probable behaviour.58 For this reason, the case studies selected for presentation in this volume highlight the importance of emotional manifestation and display in three different contexts of communication. One section of the volume is dedicated to the part played by emotions in the interaction between mortals and gods. The authors of this section deal with a variety of emotions and perceptions – fear, hope, gratitude, anger – as they are reflected in different categories of inscriptions: the healing miracles of Epidauros, eulogies of the Egyptian goddess Isis (‘aretalogies’), cult regulations, dedications, records of divine punishment, imprecations, and ‘prayers for justice’ in epitaphs. Paraskevi Martzavou (pp. 177–204) explores how a collection of healing miracles in Epidauros was carefully composed in order to channel the feelings of the worshippers who sought cure in a particular direction: The texts established confidence in Asklepios’ power, justified hope for a cure, and urged the worshippers to feel and express gratitude. The authors of this collection achieved this through narrative devices and linguistic media. Martzavou’s study shows that inscriptions need to be studied as texts which were the result of composition and linguistic elaboration, and at the same time monuments. My own contribution (pp. 205–234) goes along the same lines, focusing on a different genre of religious epigraphy (dedications) and on a different emotion (fear). I explain how a variety of inscriptions set up in sanctuaries and often connected with rituals that took place in sanctuaries constructed a particular image of the divinities: the image of powerful gods who see everything, reward piety, and punish transgressions. Inscriptions that combined texts and images promoted the fear of gods, especially 57

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See e.g. pp. 107 and 119f. for the period of the Mithridatic Wars; pp. 45f., 54–57, 60–68, 72, 73–75 for Roman and Late Antique Oxyrhynchus; pp. 215–227 for the villages of Lydia and Phrygia. Strongman 2003, 67.

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when the reading of the inscriptions and the viewing of the images were embedded in rituals. The anger of humans for injustice that they had suffered and their wish for revenge is the subject of Irene Salvo’s chapter (pp. 235–266). Communication is the main theme of her study. The texts on which she focuses, imprecations set up in cemeteries and sanctuaries, informed the human community of an act of injustice, challenged the gods to demonstrate their punishing power, and assured the deceased victims that they were to expect retaliation. By writing and publicly displaying these texts, their authors on the one hand communicated their feelings and on the other brought closure in a situation of conflict. This section of the book closes with Paraskevi Martzavou’s analysis of a particular group of texts, the praises (aretalogies) of Isis (pp. 267–291). These compositions show how emotional arousal – gratitude and hope – contributed to shaping the profile of the goddess and strengthened the faith of the worshippers. The close analysis of the formulations used in the aretalogies suggests that these texts, which were probably intended for public performance during initiation rituals, emotionally prepared the initiate to anticipate a change of his fate through divine grace. Three essays in the next section examine emotions at work in the public space. Christina Kuhn introduces the political acclamations into the discussion of emotional arousal and emotional display in the Greek cities (pp. 295–316). Although acclamations have a long tradition in political culture and religious rituals, their recording is primarily attested in the Imperial period. Acclamations insinuated unanimity, urged people to join others in ad hoc emotional communities – for instance communities of hope or pride –, and exercised strong psychological pressure on assembled crowds. Their prominence in the specific historical context of the Imperial period invites Kuhn to associate them with the political culture in the urban centres of the Roman East and an increased emotionalisation in the Imperial period. As she argues, acclamations were an important tool in the political communication between civic elites and the people, and in the complex process by which competitive elites secured the support of majorities. In the next chapter Chrysi Kotsifou studies a petition by a widow in late-third-century Egypt (pp. 317–327). Knowledge of the social position and life of the petitioner, Aurelia Artemis, permits Kotsifou to study her persuasion strategies for the arousal of pity in close connection with her gender and her status. Jane Masséglia addresses a very complex and difficult subject: can we recognize and reconstruct the emotive and emotional background of material evidence? As a case study she selected the city of Ephesos, which provides representative source material and allows longue durée studies. Focusing on the dedication of statues and construction in public space (pp. 329–355), she suggests that the association of images and buildings with specific individuals determined the emotional connotations that they acquired. Finally, three essays in the volume’s last section are concerned with the role of emotions in interpersonal communication. Ed Sanders examines a particularly well-documented phenomenon: the arousal of hostile emotions in Attic forensic oratory (pp. 359–387). What emerges from his study of typical emotive strategies

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in courtroom speeches is that the arousal of emotions exploits a certain value system – that of the Athenian demos. Chrysi Kotsifou turns our attention toward a group of papyri that are directly connected with the expression and control of emotions: letters of condolence (pp. 389–411). These letters follow certain traditional conventions but at the same time give their authors the possibility, through the choice of words, to articulate individual feelings. Because of the influence of cultural developments and different philosophical and religious ideas on the composition of condolence letters, the study of these texts is of paradigmatic value for how the manifestation of emotions can be culturally determined. Jane Masséglia studies one of the best known sculptures of the Hellenistic period: the Old Drunk Woman (pp. 413–430). Critically reviewing various attempts to interpret the emotional background of this image – what emotions it is supposed to represent, what emotions potential viewers might understand, and what emotions the statue might have aroused in them – Masséglia presents a very instructive example of the difficulties in interpreting emotions in ancient iconography. The volume closes with a study by the linguist Maria Theodoropoulou (pp. 433–468), who presents an insightful approach to the relationship between language and emotional experience, adducing the results of the current interdisciplinary dialogue on emotions. Taking the constitutive connection between emotion and the body as her starting point, Theodoropoulou argues that metaphor, metonymy, and their interaction are the linguistic areas par excellence, where the subject strives to break through the barriers of generalisation and abstraction imposed by literality and to express the immediacy of his/her experience. As Theodoropoulou argues, the metaphor within metonymy is also the linguistic space wherein pre-linguistic experiences unconsciously emerge; this view supports a perception of language as an interweaving of the social and the subjective. Referring to phenomena discussed in this volume, such as the significance of detailed narratives or the use of acoustic and visual signs, she highlights the interlacement and the tension between the subjective and the cultural, thus pointing to the importance of a dialogue between cognitive linguistics and ancient studies in the study of emotion. The remarks in this introduction and in the following chapters hopefully demonstrate the complex methodological problems faced by historians when trying to approach emotions in antiquity. We can hardly stress enough how complex the subject is and how much information of great relevance has been lost. For instance, we only have indirect access to oral narratives; we hardly ever have comments on images and only limited information on emotional responses to them;59 reports on emotional arousal through sound are of anecdotal character;60 and the study of how emotions develop in the lifespan of an individual is not possible. The image on the cover of this volume, showing Michelle Vasquez as 59 60

Prioux 2011. See, e.g., anecdotes about Alexander the Great’s responses to music: Plutarch, Moralia 335a; Dio Chrysostom 1.1–2. See Chaniotis 2009, 78.

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Megara in the 2012 production of Euripides’ Herakles,61 can be understood as an allegory of these difficulties. Despite its fixed expression, the theatrical mask possessed the ability to communicate different emotions, as Peter Meineck has shown by exploiting the findings of recent research in the neurosciences for the study of how masks work in ancient and modern productions of drama.62 When combined with gestures, body language, and text, even such a seemingly immovable medium of representation can permit the communication of different emotional states to an audience and enhance the audience’s empathy. Similarly, another abstract medium of communication, language, entails endless possibilities of emotional expression and arousal and challenges us to detect them in ancient texts. This image, by alluding to the combination of text, mask, body language, and gesture, reminds us of the need for a holistic approach to emotions in ancient studies – holistic as regards the exploitation of source material, the methods, the approaches, and the exchange with other disciplines. I have selected a poem by Anna Stavrakopoulou (p. 7) as the volume’s epigraph to remind us of the need to combine scholarship with passion and experience. A few years ago HSBC launched a smart advertisement of its services. The ad shows images, which may arouse different responses because they are embedded in different experiences.63 The image of the newlyweds is accompanied by words starting with the same letter: Fate, Fear, Fairy tale (one could think of several other F-words, such as frustration, future, family, fulfilment, fertility, and so on). The image of a carpet is defined as decoration, souvenir, and place of prayer. Pointing to the heterogeneity of experiences and approaches, the bank’s motto is: what we learn from one customer helps us better serve another. This is what historians do, in general; this is what they also do when they study emotions. What we learn about emotions in one culture and one historical period helps us understand another and sharpens our critical mind. BIBLIOGRAPHY Althoff, G. (1996) Empörung, Zerknirschung. ‘Emotionen’ in der öffentlichen Kommunikation des Mittelalters, Frühmittelalterliche Studien 30, 60–79. ––– (2005) Gefühle in der öffentlichen Kommunikation des Mittelalters, in C. Benthien, A. Fleig, and I. Kasten (eds.), Emotionalität. Zur Geschichte der Gefühle, Cologne, 82–99. ––– (2006) Tränen und Freude. Was interessiert Mittelalter-Historiker an Emotionen?, Frühmittelalterliche Studien 40, 1–11. Ambroise-Rendu, A.-C., C. Delporte, L. Dumasy, and L. Artiaga (2008) L’indignation. Histoire d’une émotion politique et morale (XIXe–XXe siècles), Paris. Aschmann, B. (ed.) (2005) Gefühl und Kalkül. Der Einfluss von Emotionen auf die Politik des 19. und 20. Jahrhunderts, Stuttgart.

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Aquila Theatre, Euripides’ Herakles; translated by Peter Meineck, directed by Desiree Sanchez (photo: Miguel Drake-McLaughlin). Meineck 2011. http://welovemediacrit.blogspot.de/2009/09/different-values-make-for-richer-world.html.

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Scherer, K. R., A. Shorr, and T. Johnstone (eds.) (2001) Appraisal Processes in Emotion: Theory, Methods, Research, Canary, NC Schlesier, R. (2009) Pathos dans le théâtre grec, in Borgeaud and Rendu Loisel (eds.) 2009, 83– 100. Scioli, A. and H. B. Biller (2009) Hope in the Age of Anxiety, Oxford. Shamir, M. and J. Travis (eds.) (2002) Boys Don’t Cry? Rethinking Narratives of Masculinity and Emotion in the US, New York. Shweder, R. A. (1993) The Cultural Psychology of Emotion, in Lewis and Haviland (eds.) 1993, 417–431. Sihvola, J. and T. Engberg-Pedersen (1998) The Emotions in Hellenistic Philosophy, Dordrecht. Speitkamp, W. (2010) Ohrfeige, Duell und Ehrenmord. Eine Geschichte der Ehre, Stuttgart. Stearns, P. N. (1989) Jealousy. The Evolution of an Emotion in American History, New York. ––– (1994) American Cool: Constructing a Twentieth-Century Emotional Style, New York. ––– (2008a) Fear and History, Historein 8, 17–28. ––– (2008b) History of Emotions: Issues of Change and Impact, in Lewis, Haviland-Jones, and Feldman Barrett (eds.) 2008, 17–31. ––– (2010) Targeting American Fear, Revue Française d’Études Américaines 125/3, 9–12. Stearns, P. N. and C. Z. Stearns (1985) Emotionology. Clarifying the History of Emotions and Emotional Standards, American Historical Review 90/4, 813–830. ––– (1986) Anger: The Struggle for Emotional Control in American History, Chicago. Sternberg, R. H. (ed.) (2005) Pity and Power in Ancient Athens, Cambridge. Stets, J. E. and J. H. Turner (2008) The Sociology of Emotions, in Lewis, Haviland-Jones, and Feldman Barrett (eds.) 2008, 32–46. Strongman, K. T. (2003) The Psychology of Emotion. From Everyday Life to Theory, Chisester (fifth edition). Stroumsa, G. (2009) Les martyrs chrétiens et l’inversion des émotions, in Borgeaud and Rendu Loisel (eds.) 2009, 167–181. Suter, A. (ed.) (2008) Lament. Studies in the Ancient Mediterranean and Beyond, Oxford. Trepp, A.-C. (2002) Gefühl oder kulturelle Konstruktion? Überlegungen zur Geschichte der Emotionen, in I. Kasten, G. Stedmann, and M. Zimmermann (eds.), Kulturen der Gefühle in Mittelalter und Früher Neuzeit (Querelles. Jahrbuch für Frauen- und Geschlechterforschung 7), Berlin, 86–103. Viano, C. (2011) Théorie éthique et pratique judiciaire: passions et délits passionnels chez Platon, Aristote et Lysias, Métis n.s. 9, 101–121.

PART ONE Sources

EMOTIONS AND PAPYRI Insights into the Theatre of Human Experience in Antiquity Chrysi Kotsifou 1

1 INTRODUCTION

Paniskos, to my wife Ploutogenia, mother of my daughter, very many greetings. First I pray daily for your good health in the presence of all the gods. I would have you know then, sister, that we have been staying in Koptos near your sister and her children, so that you may not be grieved about coming to Koptos; for your kinsfolk are here. And just as you desire above all to greet her with many greetings, so she prays daily to the gods desiring to greet you along with your mother. So when you have received this letter of mine make your preparations in order that you may come at once whenever I send for you. And when you come, bring ten shearing of wool, six jars of olives, four jars of honeyed wine, and my shield, the new one only, and my helmet. Bring also my lances. Bring also the fittings of the tent. If you find an opportunity, come here with good men. Let Nonnos come with you. Bring all our clothes when you come. When you come, bring your gold ornaments, but do not wear them on the boat. Salute my lady daughter Heliodora. Hermias salutes you both. Deliver to my wife and 2 my daughter, from Paniskos, her father. Paniskos to his wife and his daughter, many greetings. Before all else I pray before the lord god that I may receive you and my daughter in good health. Already I have written you a second letter that you might come to me, and you have not come. If, then, you do not wish to come, write me a reply. Bring my shield, the new one, and my helmet and five lances and the fittings of the tent. And you wrote to me: ‘I sent to Heraiskos (?)...’ and I gave [a talent] to Antoninos, in order that he may pay it to you: so do not neglect. ... So if you have the materials for clothing bring and cut them here. I send many salutations to my daughter and to your mother and those who love us, by name. I pray for your welfare. Pauni 22. (Postscript:) And you wrote to me that you took twenty[-three?] shields; but Tammon, none of them. Temnas has stayed below. I salute you. 3 Deliver to my wife, from Paniskos in the house of Par[- -]. Paniskos to Ploutogenia, his wife, greetings. I exhorted you when I left that you should not go off to your home, and yet you went. If you wish anything, you do it, without taking account of me. But I know that my mother does these things. See, I have sent you three letters and you have not written me even one. If you do not wish to come up to me, no one forces you. These

1 2 3

The author is very grateful to Prof. James Keenan for his insightful comments regarding this chapter. P.Mich. III 214. P.Mich. III 216.

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letters I have written to you because your sister compels me here to write. But since you find it impossible to write about this matter, then write other things about yourself. I have heard other things which are not connected with you. Send me my helmet and my shield and five lances and my breastplate and my belt. I salute your mother Heliodora. The letter carrier said to me when he came to me: ‘When I was on the point of departing I said to your wife and her mother: “Give me a letter to take to Paniskos,” and they did not give it.’ I have sent you one 4 talent by Antoninos from Psinestes. I pray for your welfare. To Ploutogenia, my [wife - - -].

Between 297 ad 298 CE, over the course of about six months, a certain Paniskos, resident in Koptos in the Thebaid (Egypt), corresponded with his wife, Ploutogenia, who was in Philadelphia in the Fayum. In the three letters quoted above, he repeatedly asks her to join him. In the first letter Paniskos asks Ploutogenia to join him in Koptos. In order to make her feel as comfortable as possible, he notes that he has been staying close to her sister and children. In his letter he claims both that he is longing for his wife and expresses Ploutogenia’s sister affectionate desire to see her as soon as possible. Both of them pray to the gods every day on her behalf. Paniskos also notes his great concern for her safety during her trip. We observe another small display of Paniskos’ affection in the opening of the letter, when he addresses Ploutogenia not only as his wife but also as the ‘mother of my daughter’. Notably, Paniskos wishes that Ploutogenia bring with her some of their household goods, including parts of his military gear. This letter does not reveal any uncertainty on Paniskos’ part that his wife might not act according to his instructions. He writes, for example, ‘Once you have received this letter of mine, do whatever is necessary so that, whenever I send for you, you may come immediately.’ Eventually, Paniskos sent a third letter to his wife – the second one has not survived – urging her to join him and to bring their daughter. He repeats his wish that Ploutogenia bring him his military gear. This communication still displays Paniskos’ eagerness to have his family close to him, but now his surprise and irritation can also be detected in the wording of the letter: Paniskos seems at a loss that his wife has not only not moved to Koptos, but also has not even written a single letter to him despite his repeated invitations. He notes, ‘Already I have written you a second letter that you might come to me, and you have not come. If, in fact, you do not want to come, write back to me.’ The fact that Paniskos still appears hopeful at this stage is illuminated by his comment that she should bring him his military gear. In his fourth letter, Paniskos is completely resigned that Ploutogenia will not join him. Thus, while the first two letters are surprisingly moderate in emotional content, this letter resonates dissatisfaction. Firstly, this is the only letter in which Paniskos does not mention at the very beginning his prayers to the gods for his 4

P.Mich. III 217. All abbreviations of papyri are according to the Checklist of Editions of Greek, Latin, Demotic and Coptic Papyri, Ostraca and Tablets at http://scriptorium.lib. duke. edu/papyrus/texts/clist_papyri.html. The translations of the previously cited papyri are adapted from Rowlandson 1998, nos. 111, 112, and 113 respectively.

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wife’s good health. Secondly, he accuses her of going to her own house despite his explicit wish against it. Then he adds that she has not written to him, even though he has already sent her three letters regarding her coming, and he concludes, ‘if you do not want to come up to me, no one is forcing you’. More importantly, he saves face by claiming that he keeps sending her letters only because her sister is forcing him to.5 His resignation to Ploutogenia’s disregard of his wishes is highlighted by one of his closing comments, when he asks her to ‘send’ him his military gear, not to ‘bring it’, as he had requested in his earlier letters. Finally, the extent of his distress about his wife’s behaviour is also revealed by the irregular structure of this letter. After having expressed his views, Paniskos starts to conclude his letter with the customary salutations (‘I salute your mother Heliodora’). But then he abruptly interrupts this salutation to return to his complaints and harshly tells her of the messenger’s word for word account of her refusing to send him a letter. As was just demonstrated, documents on papyrus often express, display, and use emotions. This chapter will offer an overview of the available papyrological data that relate to the study of the social and cultural factors that determine the representation of emotions in Hellenistic and Roman Egypt. The material spans the Hellenistic period to Late Antiquity and its provenance is all of Egypt, both urban and rural areas.6 The chapter will examine the various types of papyri; the kind of information one can expect to find in each of them; and the questions that are relevant to this specific corpus of material. Letters, petitions,7 wills, contracts, legal proceedings, magical papyri, oracle questions – to name but a few – originate in emotionally loaded situations and may describe the ways people dealt with them. Undoubtedly, papyri come ‘straight from the theatre of human experience’8 and offer a direct contact with the ancient world and its people, at the level of everyday life and business.9 In addition, papyri highlight aspects of the daily life of the masses10 and often preserve the voices of women. Furthermore, besides the narration in these documents and the information it contains about emotions, the 5

6 7

8 9 10

An amusing parallel can be found in P.Oxy. LIX 3994 (Oxyrhynchus, early third century CE): A suspicious husband, Kalokairos, writes to Euphrosyne asking her to find out what his wife is doing, since she would not write to him and is in possession of all the property which he owned. He makes his aggravation, displeasure, and disinterest blatantly obvious by remarking in his letter, ‘Not that I care about her, but all that I possess is under her control.’ In order to fully demonstrate this point, the provenance and date of each papyrus sited will be provided, when possible. For the latest scholarship on letters on papyrus, see Evans 1997; Bagnall and Cribiore 2006; Hutchinson 2007; Papathomas 2007; Vandorpe 2008; Clarysse 2009. For petitions: Feissel and Gascou 2004; Bryen 2008; Keenan 2008; Palme 2009; Stavrianopoulou 2012. Plame 2009, 377, notes that petitions to officials are the commonest type of record except tax receipts. More than a thousand such documents survive. Palme 2007; Worp 2009, 171. Verhoogt 2009 also notes the ways private letters provide a ‘human’ entry into the world of antiquity. Waddell 1932, 2; Trapp 2003, 8. Keenan 2008, 178f., with particular interest in petitions.

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study of the actual creation of these documents as a social practice can yield illuminating insights into their cultural background and the emotional communities11 involved in their conception. Scholars have often stressed this aspect in the past, particularly in relation to letters and petitions.12 In what is to follow, I will focus on the features of papyri that are most pertinent to the study of emotions and on the several ways that papyri can distinctively clarify the representation of them. I will also examine the possible problems that this type of material can pose regarding the interpretation and understanding of emotions. A question that should be posed from the very beginning is whether papyri are representative only of Egypt, and consequently, whether the insight they offer into emotions concerns only the communities of Greek and Roman Egypt.13 Scholars in the past have been rather sceptical about the applicability of the data from Egyptian papyri to the rest of Mediterranean society. Nonetheless, these concerns have been convincingly grappled with and assuaged. Roger Bagnall, for example, notes: 14 We now have papyri in Greek, Latin, Hebrew, Aramaic, Syriac, and other languages from various parts of the Near East, including Negev (Nessana), or the Dead Sea Region, the Middle Euphrates valley, and Arabia. ... Ostraca have been found in Libya and the Dead Sea ... Even if the existence of extensive written documentation outside of Egypt is admitted, however, one may ask how normal either the documentary practices or the institutions and society revealed by papyri are. These questions are much harder, but recent work has tended to suggest the differences in documentary practices were relatively small, with a wide zone of commonality visible at least within the Greek-writing part of the Mediterranean.

Despite the extremely fragmentary condition of the said papyri, we can still get some glimpses of attitudes towards emotions by people outside the Egyptian land. Two letters and a petition are revealing: a letter from Masada (Palestina) is written by a man called Abaskantos, a name that clearly indicates the fear people had of the evil eye (baskanos).15 In the seventh century CE a man from Nessana describes in a letter that he is organising a group to descend in a body in Gaza and complain about heavy taxation and request relief. The writer notes that the taxation so far had caused many people serious distress. 16 Finally, the documents of Babatha and her orphaned son from Maosa (Arabia) are revealing of this phenomenon. Babatha’s petitions to the governor are concerned mainly about the 11 12

13 14 15 16

I use here the term ‘emotional community’ as it has been developed by Rosenwein 2002 and 2006. For letters: Barton and Hall 1999, 1; Trapp 2003, 5; Verhoogt 2009. For petitions: Bryen 2008. Also see Frankfurter 2006, 56–58, who stresses the social setting of magical papyri and how they offer us an insight of ‘a culture of competition, envy, and recrimination’. Keenan 2007, 227, further alerts us to the possibility of papyrological data not being equally representative of all of Egypt. Bagnall 1995, 10f.; Hickey 2009, 500. P.Masada 741 = SB XXIV 15988 (73 or 74 CE). P.Ness. 75 (late seventh century CE).

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guardian of her son and his misconduct.17 They expose that the worries this mother had for the future of her child were exactly the same as the ones women in Egypt shared and were even expressed in a similar manner. 2 DIVERSE GENRES, DIVERSE EMOTIONAL REPRESENTATIONS Understandably, the nature of a source influences the presence and representation of a specific emotion or whether an emotion is expressed at all. Not all papyri mention or relate to emotions in the same degree. For example, because of their small size, ostraca (fragments of clay pots used for writing) can only accommodate very short texts. Consequently, they can only contain limited information about the sentiments of any given individual. Additionally, the more formulaic the documents are, the less they contribute to this discussion. Thus, sale and rent documents are completely void of any reference or allusion to emotions – although they may well originate in emotions (fear of violation of a contract, for example). The layout of invitations to public and private functions is formulaic as well.18 Nonetheless, other types of papyri such as wet-nursing contracts, marriage contracts, and even work contracts can often indirectly refer to emotions or make unexpected allusions to them: in an unusual marriage contract, among her other duties, a woman agrees not to poison her husband when she prepares his food and drinks.19 This contract obviously addresses the husband’s fears more than it expresses the wife’s care and love for him. In another marriage document, drawn after the consummation of marriage and after the bride was found to be a virgin, the man makes uncommon reference to emotions, such as the phrase ‘Lately in accordance with friendly and peaceful disposition, I joined myself to your Propriety by a giving in legal marriage ...’20 In a document concerning a loan, we learn of the story of a man who had pawned his younger daughter due to his abject poverty. Then, once his daughter Prokla reached fifteen years of age, her sister Martha pawned her to a new more favourable master, until she could pay off the rest of her debt. This contract attests to the bonds between the two sisters, with the elder one trying anything in her power to improve the life of her younger sister in the absence of their father. She

17 18

19 20

For example, P.Yadin 13 (124 CE). In general, for Babatha and her dossier of documents, with some new editions of texts, see Cotton 1993; Chiusi 2005; Hanson 2005a. For a publication of some such standard texts, see P.Oxy. LXVI 4539–4543. The introduction of P.Yale I 85 contains useful general remarks on invitations and their layout. See also Palme 2009, 363. PSI I 64 (Oxyrhynchus, first century BCE). Cf. Rowlandson 1998, no. 255. For marriage contracts in general, see Rupprecht 1998 and Yiftach-Firanko 2003. P.Cair.Masp. III 67310 + P.Lond. V 1711 (Antinoopolis, 566–573 CE). Cf. Rowlandson 1998, no. 155.

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explicitly states with vivid language that the reason for changing the master of her sister was because she wished to redeem Prokla who ‘was being overworked’.21 Interestingly, wet-nursing contracts22 are a set of documents that can indicate either affection or disinterest towards another human being. These documents concern the care of freeborn, slave, and exposed children.23 For example, in a contract regarding a freeborn child24 the parents quite exceptionally explain that they need the services of a wet-nurse because the mother fell ill and her milk was no longer of good quality. This unique clause might indicate the affection and care that was felt by this family towards both the mother and the child; or it might hint at some guilt on behalf of the mother for not being able to fulfil her duties. In three contracts from Alexandria (30–13 BCE),25 the name of all three slavechildren who are to be breast-fed is Agalmation (‘the statuette’).26 On the one hand, the choice of such a particular name could be a sign of affection for the child; on the other hand the fact that it seems to be a common name for slave girls in Alexandria in that period may diminish its emotional undertones. The lack of emotional attachment to these slave girls is further illustrated by another clause in one of these contracts,27 which stipulates that if the child dies while in the care of the wet-nurse, the latter is responsible to find another child and hand her over to her employer. 2.1 Wills Despite their standardised layout, wills, marriage contracts, oracles, and dream accounts can still present noteworthy insights into the role of emotions particularly in a familial milieu. In will documents on papyrus,28 emotions rarely feature. Katherine G. Evans notes that although people remembered their friends in their devotions to the gods, they did not remember them in their wills. People were more likely to bequeath friends responsibilities than material goods.29 On a general note, the testator might relate his wish that his or her body be taken care of by his family members. Gaius Longinus Kastor, for example, stipulates that ‘I wish 21 22 23 24 25 26 27 28 29

P.Coll.Youtie II 92 (Antinoopolis, 596 CE): βουλοµένη ἀναλυτρώσασθαι τὴν ἐµὴν καταπονουµένην ἀδελφήν. Masciardi and Montevecchi 1982 and 1984 (= C.Pap.Gr. I). Masciardi and Montevecchi 1984, 10–12. C.Pap.Gr. I 10 = BGU IV 1109 (Alexandria, 5 BCE). C.Pap.Gr. 3, 4, and 11; BGU IV 1153, 1058, and 1110, respectively. Notably, Agalmation is only attested in these three papyri, and it is also extremely rare in the epigraphic material. C.Pap.Gr. I 4. On the possible emotional attachment of women to slave girls, see Chaniotis 2009, 58–60. Montevecchi 1935; Champlin 1991. Evans 1997, 192f. In P.Bodl. I 47 (Hermopolis?, c. 535 CE), a woman becomes a heiress only if she maintains a hospital. The author of this document feels so strongly and worries about this point so much that he/she repeats this clause in the will again and again. It is actually the main body and concern of this will.

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my body to be carried out and wrapped by the care and piety of my heirs’.30 In the same period, inscriptions also place an emotional importance on the personal involvement of friends and relatives in the funerary ceremonies of their loved ones.31 At the most minimal level, an individual addressed his family members in his will in affectionate terms. This is what Aurelius Hermogenes does, when he refers to his children and heirs as ‘my five sweetest children.’32 Furthermore, in wills preserved in papyri, we observe that a testator refers to emotion mainly when he needs to justify his choice of people he left goods with or excluded from his document.33 In certain cases the testator explains that he bequeaths parts of his property to an individual due to the latter’s affections and good treatment of the testator.34 In a second-century CE will, the testator starts his stipulations by conferring freedom upon five of his slaves ‘in consequence of their goodwill and affection’.35 He also notes that he leaves various possessions to his wife because she was ‘well-disposed and showing entire faithfulness’ towards him. Additionally, a certain Ammonia uses the form of the donatio mortis causa to leave equal shares of her fullery to her two sons. She justifies her action by referring to her sons’ good treatment of her.36 Since you, Dionysios, have for a long time since the death of your father remained with me, your mother, and have worked at the fulling trade and have not abandoned me but have treated me kindly, I acknowledge ...

Notably, in several cases the composer of the will specifies that he was extremely content with the support and attention he received during his old age and/or time of illness. In a Latin will, a woman inherits from her husband because of her toils when she nursed him in his final illness. He specifies that37 I give and delegate to Lucretia Octavia, my wife, who has laboured much during the course of my illness, 5½ iugera of land in wheat ...

In another document a man bequeaths his property to his wife because he wants to thank her greatly for her acts of kindness (euergesia) and her care during his old age (gerokomia).38 30 31 32 33 34 35 36

37 38

BGU I 326 (Karanis, 189–194 CE). Cf. Rowlandson 1998, no. 139. Chaniotis 2006, 220–222 for several examples and analysis. P.Oxy.VI 907 (276 CE): γλυκύτατα τέκνα µου. Cf. Evans Grubbs 2002, 249. Montevecchi 1935, 105. For example, P.Oxy. III 490 and 492 (124 and 130 CE). P.Oxy. III 494 (156 CE). For the various ways slaves feature in wills, see Montevecchi 1935, 96f. P.Coll.Youtie II 83 (Oxyrhynchus, 353 CE). Cf. Rowlandson 1998, no. 217. Similar sentiments are also expressed in P.Oxy. XXVII 2472 (third century CE), and in P.Münch. I 8 (Syene, c. 540 CE). In the latter text a woman notes her contentment with her son and heir who took care of her, never upsetting her either by deeds or words (θαλπούσης καὶ ἐπιµελουµένης µου καὶ ἐν οὐδενὶ πώποτε λυπησάσης µε ἔργῳ καὶ λόγῳ). P.Diog. 10 (Ptolemais Euergetis, 211 CE). Cf. Rowlandson 1998, no. 270. SPP I S. 6–7 (Antinoe, 480 CE).

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At the same time disappointment, resentment, and open hate can also feature in wills.39 As Edward Champlin notes, ‘children could always find ways of upsetting parents, from getting divorced to taking bribes, and even the innocent could fall to the wiles of a wicked stepmother.’40 Strong emotions usually led to disinheritance and strong-minded clauses in one’s will.41 Eustorgis unambiguously states in her will that she has suffered in the hands of her daughter-in-law. Thus, she leaves instructions that her daughter-in-law is not to get anything of her property. She is not even to have access to her house using the false pretext of caring for her deceased husband’s body.42 Paham, a monk at the mountain of Jeme, expresses in his Coptic will his distinct displeasure and disappointment in his eldest son Papnute. The latter had married against his father’s wishes and better judgement. So eventually the monk showed no pity to his son when Papnute found out that his bride was not a virgin. Paham repeatedly mentions in his will his grief, sadness, quarrels, and deceit.43 Neglect of someone during an illness also constitutes a reason for discontent in wills.44 However, no text expresses a father’s discontent, hatred, and vengeance as strongly as a disinheritance document from sixth-century CE Antinoopolis.45 Parts of it read:46 39 40 41

42

43 44 45

46

Montevecchi 1935, 105. Champlin 1991, 107. In P.Oxy. XXII 2342 (102 CE), Pasion petitions the authorities because his dead partner’s wife is deceiving him in a business affair. Pasion’s document is filled with harsh words regarding Berenike’s actions. His frustration and anger also show when he bad-mouths his deceased partner’s children for negligence of their duty. He makes a point of noting that due to their appalling behaviour, their father had disinherited them. Cf. Rowlandson 1998, no. 210. P.Lips. 29 (Hermopolis, 295 CE). Cf. Rowlandson 1998, no. 145 Similar emotions are also expressed in inscriptions, as in I.Beroia 445 (fourth to fifth centuries CE): a woman is so angry that her daughters did not contribute at all at the expenses of building a tomb, so she leaves strict instructions that none of them is to be buried there; otherwise they will have to pay a hefty fine to the church of Beroia. I am thankful to Angelos Chaniotis for this reference. KRU 67 (eighth century CE). Cf. Rowlandson 1998, no. 158. P.Strasb. II 122 (Arsinoite nome, 161–169 CE). P.Cair.Masp. III 67353 v (Antinoopolis, 569 CE). Translation and discussion of the legal aspects of this document in Urbanik 2008. Similar feelings of vengeance and disappointment can also be found in P.Ups. 8 (Panopolis, sixth century CE), a prayer for justice by a father against his daughter; see Björck 1938. ... κα̣ὶ̣ τ̣οῦτο διαπέµποµαι τ̣οῖ̣ ̣ς̣ πατρολοοῖς µου υἱοῖς ἕως ὀνόµατ̣ος καὶ µόνου̣, φηµὶ δὴ ∆ιονυσίᾳ καὶ Ἰωάννῃ καὶ Παυλίνῃ καὶ Ἀνδρέᾳ τοῖ̣ς̣ ἀποβο̣λ̣ι̣µα̣ίοις ... οἰόµενος εὑρεῖν ὑµᾶς β̣οη̣θο̣ὺ̣ς̣ ἐ̣ν ἅ̣πασι καὶ γηροκόµους καὶ ὑποτα̣κτ̣ικοὺς κα̣ὶ ὑπηκό̣ο̣υς· ἔκ τε̣ τῶν ἐναντίων ἐ̣ν̣ ἡλικίᾳ γεγένησθε̣ ἀντίπαλοί µοι ὡ̣ς̣ καὶ µέγαιροι ὡς ἐκ πείρας ἔσχον τὴν ἄσπλαγχνον ὑµῶν π̣ατρ̣οκτασίαν καὶ ἀθετη̣τικὴν γνώ̣µην, ἐφ᾽ ὅτι νο̣σοβαρὴς ἐγ̣ε̣ν̣ά̣µ̣η̣ν̣ παρ᾽ ὑµῶν ... ποιότητι καὶ ποσότητι̣ ἀπὸ πολυ̣τ̣ελοῦς µέχρι ἀσσ̣α̣ρ̣ίου ἑνὸς κ̣αὶ ἑνὸς ὀβολοῦ, εἰ µὴ τὸ ἀπὸ νόµω̣ν τυπω̣θὲν µόνον φαλκίδ̣ι̣ον ἤτοι δωδεκάτην µ̣οῖραν τοῦ ὑµῶν ἀκλήρου· καὶ οὐκ ἐξὸν ἔτι ὑµῖν τοῦ λοιποῦ ὀνοµάσ̣αι µε ὡ̣ς̣ πατέρα, ὅ̣σον καὶ ἐγὼ ὑµᾶς ἀπεταξάµην καὶ ἐβδελυξάµην ἀπὸ τ̣ο̣ῦ νῦν κ̣α̣ὶ̣ ἐπὶ τὸν ἀεὶ ἑξῆς̣ ἅ̣π̣αντα παν̣τε̣λ̣ῆ̣ χρόνον ὡς ἀποβολιµαίους καὶ νόθους καὶ δουλοχείρονας ... κορακοβρωσίαν γε̣ν̣έσθαι καὶ ὀµµατωρυξίαν τούτ̣ο̣υ̣ τοῦ τρόπου ὑµᾶς παραχαράττω µηδὲν λήµψασθαι µήτε µὴν δοῦναι ὑπὲρ ἐµοῦ περιόντος τε ἢ καὶ θνήσκοντ̣ο̣ς̣, διὰ τὸ ἐµοὶ ὀρθῶς καὶ δικα̣ίως δεδόχθαι ...

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... And this I transmit to my parricidal children, though children in name only, Dionysia and Ioannes and Pauline and Andreas, the outcast ones ... thinking to find you helpful in all things, a comfort to my old age, submissive and obedient, and on the contrary you in your prime have set yourselves against me like ravenous things, as I learnt through experience of your heartless parricidal conduct and lawless disposition, seeing that I fell grievously ill through you ... in every quantity, from costly things down to one as and one obol, excepting only the Falcidia prescribed by law or the twelfth part of your intestate inheritance, and it is no longer lawful for you in future to call me father, inasmuch as I reject and abhor you from now to the utter end of all succeeding time as outcasts and bastards and lower than slaves ... for ravens to devour the flesh and peck out the eyes, in this manner I debar you from receiving or giving anything on my behalf, whether I be alive or dead, because I have rightly and justly thus resolved ...

Understandably, Jacob Urbanik stresses that when reading this document one should keep in mind the rhetoric employed by the highly educated scribe, Dioskoros of Aphrodito, and that it is unlikely that the children actually tried to kill their father. Quite likely, the ‘lawless disposition’ and ‘falling ill’ allude to the categories summed in two of Justinian’s laws.47 Finally, we should note that, on the one hand, hints of a testators’ interest either in their community or in a smaller group is extremely rare in Hellenistic and Roman papyri.48 On the other hand, inscriptional and literary data indicate that if a person bequeathed part of his property to a city or a group of persons, he was impelled by a desire for remembrance. Memory was a fundamental part of funerary cult, more important than any belief in a personal afterlife.49 In Late Antiquity, though, people regularly bequeathed much of their property to the Church and monasteries out of fear and hope for the afterlife and the salvation of the soul. In his testament50 Theodoros, a childless man, splits his properties among the White Monastery, the monastery of Apa Mousaios, and his grandmother Erain. The White Monastery receives the lion’s share. In this bequest, Theodoros includes all his real property (land and houses) in the Hermopolite, Antinoite, and Panopolite nomes, including all the annual income that this property produces. Jairus Banaji observes that ‘among all the documents of the Byzantine period, Theodore’s will is perhaps the most striking expression of the mentality of the new upper classes and, by implication, of the ruling groups among them,’ namely rich laymen leaving their property to monasteries and churches in order to help the institutions’ charity work, and hoping for the absolution of their sins.51

47 48

49 50 51

The laws are Novels 115.3.4 and 12. See Urbanik 2008, 126f. For more on the context of this papyrus, see MacCoull 1988, 39–41. Champlin 1991, 155f. A possible exception is P.Lips. I 30 (Oxyrhynchus, third century CE) where we find a stipulation for the construction of a pyramid and the sponsorship of a feast in honour of the testator’s god. Cf. Montevecchi 1935, 106. Champlin 1991, 163. P.Cairo.Masp. III 67312 (Antinoopolis, 567 CE). Banaji 2001, 125.

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2.2 Divorce Documents Divorce documents52 or petitions that request a divorce are uniquely preserved in papyri. Such documents seem to be much more fruitful in the study of emotions than marriage contracts. Especially in divorce petitions women often recount with vivid language their trials and tribulations in their marriage and how they wish to escape the suffering that is being inflicted on them. The wording of these documents expresses frustration, hopelessness, and worry. The standard complaints put forward by women include mistreatment by their husband, who during their joint life wasted their dowry, maltreated and offended them, and often physically abused them as well.53 Two cases from the fourth to the fifth centuries CE are most informative. In an affidavit, a woman complains about her violent and abusive husband.54 The other members of her household have also suffered greatly in his hands. He was extremely abusive with his slaves and his children. He is also accused of being a deceitful person as he takes false oaths. The closing of the document shows a substantial amount of hopelessness: ‘God knows this is true.’55 In a petition concerning a turbulent marriage,56 a woman claims that she was forced into marriage and to have a child. Her husband continued to mistreat her and lie to her. Eventually, he abandoned her to live with another woman. She further elaborates on her repeated sufferings. The petitioner also claims that her husband showed her contempt due to her ‘orphan state’.57 It should be stated that Late Antique divorce petitions tend to offer a lot more sensational details of abuse and emotional pleas for assistance than earlier examples.58 This fact could reflect two aspects of early Late Antique society. On the one hand, the law openly discriminated between genders; consequently, it was not as easy for women to get a favourable divorce as it was for men.59 The aforementioned emotional divorce petitions were submitted by women. On the other hand, Christianity’s reluctance to encourage divorce could have been the incentive for the parties involved to plead their case in more emotional terms in order to justify their claim.60 Nonetheless, while these Late Antique documents present an immediate, vivid and emotional picture of charges and complaints brought forward by various wives, ultimately though they are not much more than general arguments along52 53

54 55 56 57 58 59 60

Bagnall 1987; Rupprecht 1998, 69f.; Yiftach-Firanko 2001. BGU IV 1105 (Alexandria, 10 BCE), cf. Rowlandson 1998, no. 257; P.Oxy. II 281 (20–50 CE); cf. Evans Grubbs 2002, 212. Also see Rupprecht 1998, 70, who notes that complaints from husbands against their wives are less frequent; Yiftach-Firanko 2001, 1332f. P.Oxy. VI 903. Cf. Rowlandson 1998, no. 153. P.Oxy. L 3581. Cf. Rowlandson 1998, no. 154. Kovelman 1991, 142ff. Arjava 1996, 183–189. On the emotional differences between historical periods see below pp. 51–57.

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side demands for material support.61 Notably, every now and then there is the occasional complaint from a man regarding the inappropriate behaviour of a woman in her marriage. In a lengthy petition to a praepositus pagus, Sakaon explains in a very passionate style that resonates with irritation and disappointment how one of his daughters-in-law was abducted while his son was on his death-bed. His son’s property was also seized by the perpetrator. Sakaon desires redress. Sakaon also assigns blame to his daughter-in-law as he notes that she did not act in her marriage with the goodwill and natural affection (εὔνοιαν καὶ στοργὴν … πρὸς τὴν συµβίωσίν µου) that was expected from her.62 2.3 Oracle and Dream Accounts Oracle and dream accounts illustrate the need of people to establish a contact with divinities. Mortals approached the gods, including the Christian God, in similar ways and with the same hope for an answer to their predicaments. Fortunately, besides the actual accounts, we also have private letters on papyrus that attest to the importance, faith and expectation supplicants placed on divine answers. Despite the fact that they never state it in full, oracles are particularly informative about the several anxieties that troubled an individual, whether one should undertake a business venture, a journey, or go into a marriage.63 Questions to oracles were brief and stylised, consisting of three elements: the opening address to the god; the petitioner’s question; and the inquiry about an answer to the question.64 Two examples, from the Imperial period and Late Antiquity respectively, illustrate this phenomenon:65 My Lord Sarapis Helios, benefactor. (Say) whether it is better for my son Phanias and his wife not to agree now with his father, but to oppose him and not make a contract. Tell me truly. Good-bye. O God of our patron, Saint Philoxenos, do you command us to take Anoup to your hospital? Show your power and let this request be granted.

A letter from a husband to his wife clearly demonstrates the faith people placed on the oracular answers they received from their priests. Among other issues, Lysimachos informs Taarmiusis that

61 62 63

64 65

Rupprecht 1998, 71. P.Sakaon 48 (Theadelphia, 343 CE). Panini 1990; Palme 2009, 372. Similar sentiments are expressed in oracular enquiries from the sanctuary at Dodone. Some of these texts have been edited by Lhôte 2006, nos. 18–133; see also Eidinow 2007, 72–138 and SEG LVII 536. This material spans the period c. 550 to 167 BCE. See pp. 99f. in this volume. White 1986, 99. The first text is P.Oxy. VIII 1148; cf. White 1986, 100. The second text is in White 1986, 101. For more examples of Roman oracle questions, see Rowlandson 1998, nos. 246 and 249. For an analysis of the Christian oracle questions, see Papaconstantinou 1994.

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it has been determined for me that I should not come down until the twenty-fifth, and as Sok66 nebtunis the Lord God wills it I will come down freely.

Oracle questions that relate to the fate of unborn children hold special interest. David Frankfurter views such oracles as a distinct sign that a neonate of ambivalent identity and prospects was transformed into the status of a named or anticipated family member.67 Worried parents expressed their fear by asking the gods things such as ‘Shall my wife miscarry?’ or ‘Will I rear the child?’ The answers they received included statements, such as ‘Your wife will not miscarry, do not worry’ or ‘Don’t rear the child, I advise you.’68 Various dream accounts also survive on papyrus. Recent scholarship has stressed the credit Ptolemaic individuals – both rulers and the rest of the population – laid upon dreams.69 Dreams exposed aspects of their personal psyche and at the same time guided their actions and future plans. As far as papyri are concerned, we have actual dream accounts, a petition, and private letters that can contribute to this discussion. Ptolemy, a recluse in the Serapeum in Memphis, recorded several of his dreams and those of others.70 In two of them, emotions of fondness, joy, and possibly lust are directly and indirectly represented. William Harris explains that whatever Ptolemy’s motives were, his dream descriptions are not distorted by any intention of propagandising for Sarapis; in some cases they exhibit real dream-like qualities.71 Both Ptolemy and his brothers had great faith in predictive dreams. Nonetheless, this faith, besides offering instruction and relief, could also instigate fear or complete disillusionment. In two of the letters that Apollonios sent to his brother Ptolemy in 152 BCE, these feelings are evident. In one communication, Apollonios discusses business affairs but with some urgency and angst; for as he notes, he had ‘a bad dream’.72 In a second letter, his disenchantment with gods, the dreams that they instigate, and Ptolemy’s interpretive abilities is more than palpable. Owing to the letter’s highly emotional content, it is worth quoting most of it here.73

66 67 68 69

70 71 72 73

P.Tebt. II 284 (70 BCE). Cf. White 1986, 99. Frankfurter 2006, 47. These texts are part of the oracular texts in the Sortes Astrampsychi (fifth to sixth centuries CE) contained in P.Oxy. LXVII 4581. Cf. Frankfurter 2006, 47. The most recent publication on dreams in Antiquity with updated bibliography is Harris 2009. On dreams in Ptolemaic Egypt, cf. Harris 2009, 164–173. On papyrological evidence and dreams, see also Weber 2000, 62–64. UPZ I 77 (Memphis, 158 BCE); translated by Rowlandson 1998, no. 80. Cf. Harris 2009, 105. Harris 2009, 102. UPZ I 68 (Memphis). Cf. White 1986, 73f. UPZ I 70 (Memphis): Ἀπολλώνιος Πτολεµαίωι τῷ πατρὶ χαίρειν. ὀµνύω τὸν Σάραπιν, εἰ µὴ µικρόν τι ἐντρέποµαι, οὐκ ἄν µε εἶδες τὸ πρόσωπόν µου πώποτε, ὅτι ψεύδηι πάντα καὶ οἱ παρὰ σὲ θεοὶ ὁµοίως, ὅτι ἐνβέβληκαν ἡµᾶς εἰς ὕλην µεγάλην καὶ οὗ δυνάµεθα ἀποθανεῖν καὶ ἐὰν ἴδῃς ὅτι µέλλοµεν σωθῆναι, τότε βαπτιζόµεθα. ... οὐκ ἔστι ἀνακύψαί µε πώποτε ἐν τῇ Τρικοµίαι ὑπὸ τῆς αἰσχύνης, εἰ καὶ αὑτοὺς δεδώκαµεν καὶ ἀποπεπτώκαµεν

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Apollonios to his father, Ptolemy, greeting. I swear by Sarapis, if it were not that I still have a little reverence (for you), you would never see my face again; because you deceive completely and likewise your gods, for they have thrown us into a great slough in which we may die, and when you see (i.e. have a vision) that we are about to be saved, then we are immersed ... I will never be able to hold up my head in Trikomia because of the shame, that we have given ourselves away and have been deluded, being led astray by the gods and trusting dreams. May you fare well. (Outside address): To those who speak the truth. To Ptolemy, greeting.

The least we can say is that Apollonios wishes to present himself as angry, disheartened, and disgraced. These feelings are also summarised in his sarcastic closing address to his brother as ‘to those who speak the truth.’ Finally for this discussion, a petition of Zoilos to Apollonios, the dioiketes (the head of the fiscal administration under Ptolemy II Philadelphos),74 is relevant. Zoilos has been continually instructed in his dreams by the god Sarapis himself to erect a temple for this god in the Greek quarter near the harbour of Alexandria. But he did not comply with the god’s wishes. Unfortunately, he was no longer in a position to ignore Sarapis. Zoilos carefully displays his emotions of fear and guilt associated with his actions and unfulfilled promises to the god as part of his persuasion strategy. He is definitely guilty because he has not started the construction of the temple yet, and afraid that if he does not do it now, Sarapis will not be as benevolent as he was the last two times. Understandably, it is the prohibitive cost of building a temple that held Zoilos back from fulfilling the god’s demand; and that is also the reason he is requesting Apollonios’ assistance in carrying out the construction. He directly tells him so at the closing lines of the petition, as Zoilos notes that Apollonios should not be afraid of the cost of the building given all the prosperity that Sarapis will grant him in return. Furthermore, Zoilos describes in his petition the emotions of Sarapis, namely those of exasperation, disappointment, and vengefulness, because Zoilos did not pay attention to the god’s requests and signs that Sarapis was repeatedly manifesting to him. Thus, the first thing that Sarapis does is to inflict a sickness on Zoilos. This reciprocity between mortals and gods, the manifestation of a god or saint in the dreams of a believer making requests, and the misfortunes that the believer suffers unless he follows these requests, are themes that also continue well into Late Antiquity, particularly in accounts of miracles that occur in pilgrimage centres.75

74 75

πλανώµενοι ὑπὸ τῶν θεῶν καὶ πιστεύοντες τὰ ἐνύπνια. εὐτύχει. Cf. White 1996, 75f.; discussion in Harris 2009, 169. P.Cair.Zen. I 59034 (Alexandria, 257 BCE). Cf. Austin 2006, no. 301; discussion in Harris 2009, 164f. Some noteworthy examples can be found in the miracle account of Saint Menas or SS. John and Kyros. Cf. Drescher 1946 and Marcos 1975, respectively.

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2.4 Private Letters and Petitions Everyone in writing a letter more or less composes an image of his own soul. One can indeed 76 see the writer’s character in any kind of writing too, but in none so clearly as in the letter.

Letters and petitions are certainly the papyri that contain the most detailed, diverse, and abundant information about emotions. They describe emotions; they show how they were used; they reveal the situations in which emotions are mentioned, and the people involved. Hardly any other ancient sources allow the reader to see a development in the display of feelings and changing responses in a variety of situations as letters do.77 As Raffaella Cribiore notes, 78 Greek private letters on papyrus give one the distinctive pleasure of hearing one of two sides of a spontaneous dialogue from antiquity ... In spite of their brevity and practical concerns, letters can be an invaluable source of information about the life of the average man and woman of the time.

Private letters, of course, also survive in literary accounts but these ones tend to be highly stylised and primarily reflect the lifestyle of the rich and famous. Cicero, for example, clearly explains that he had no interest in letters that are concerned with every day trials and tribulations.79 Similarly, petitions are the most significant documents on papyrus that elucidate the importance of emotions in rhetoric and persuasion strategies. Petitioners usually commence their petition by stating that they know the prefect is a just judge and a protector of all. They then describe the dispute, usually in great detail, assuming that the more details they provide the more credibility they lend to their case. They often contrast the virtues of the poor with the vices of the rich and powerful. Furthermore, in order to provoke the pity of the authorities, they employ strong language such as the verb ‘to despise’ or make repeated references to their unfortunate children, their weak feminine nature (if the petitioner is a woman), or modest lifestyle (if the petitioner is a man). At the end of the document, some petitioners mention their continued gratitude to the prefect should he help them attain justice. Letters and petitions often feature together in archives. Another exceptional feature of the papyrological corpus is the survival of archives and dossiers from the Hellenistic period to Late Antiquity.80 As Katelijn Vandorpe has noted, the action itself of keeping one’s business and private records in an archive or dossier denotes the sentimental value these documents held for their owner, especially in the case of family letters and papers.81 Such collections can elucidate the develop76 77 78 79 80 81

Demetrios, De elocutione 227. In Trapp 2003, 180f. The most recent overview of all types of documentary papyri with updated bibliography is Palme 2009. Cribiore 2002, 149. Cicero, Ad familiares 2.4. Cf. Cribiore 2002, 149. For the latest overview of this material with an extensive bibliography, see Vandorpe 2009. Vandorpe 2009, 230–240.

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ment of an individual and the changes in the display of his or her emotions. Telling examples are the letters of Paniskos that were analysed at the beginning of this introduction (pp. 39–41). In the case of the correspondence among a network of friends or co-workers, they can record the shared emotions and the emotional progress of the whole community.82 Therefore, due to the firm association between these documents and the expression of emotions, the sections that follow relate more to petitions and private letters than to other types of documents on papyrus. 3 SELECTED QUESTIONS 3.1 Can We Discern ‘Emotional Periods’ in Papyri? With material that spans a period of a thousand years, one has to ask if emotional periods can be identified.83 Were there eras in which certain emotions were more often or more strongly displayed? What were the differences and similarities? We will tackle this issue on two levels: we will examine what changes happened to the actual format of the various documents and how these changes might affect the emotional content of documents, and simultaneously we will look at specific emotional expressions and beliefs over the eras. Differences Scholars have repeatedly noted that papyrological documents from Late Antiquity, whether letters, petitions, legal proceedings,84 or contracts, employ a much more emotional language than their counterparts in previous periods. A decisive factor for this phenomenon may be the fact that the prescribed layout for the different types of documents transformed over time. In their study of women’s letters from 300 BCE to 800 CE, Roger Bagnall and Raffaella Cribiore describe various stylistic changes that occurred to the composition of private letters. In the Ptolemaic period, Greek letters are characterised by a formality that is found as much in business as in private letters. Composers of letters knew that a specific style was appropriate for a letter and that this style needed to be modified according to 82

83 84

For example, the archive of Athenodoros, dioiketes, from the middle years of Augustus’ rule, esp. BGU XVI 2606, 2613, 2621, 2622, 2625, 2660, 2663, and 2665. These letters illuminate a community of co-workers whose communications are characterised by anxiety, worry, frustration, and fear about their business affairs. On this subject see pp. 11 and 17 in this volume. For legal proceedings, in general, cf. Palme 2009, 376f.; for their vivid language from the late third century CE onwards, cf. Cole 1966, 22f. P.Mich. XIII 660 (Aphrodito, early sixth century CE) is an excellent case of legal proceedings that are recorded in a highly emotional language. Hellenistic and Roman invitations to public and private celebrations were also very short, asking people to attend the event customarily the following day. P.Apoll. 72 from 703– 715 CE, though, is a very lengthy wedding invitation, containing emotional vocabulary. The text runs for nine lines and the invitation is for the next month.

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the identity and status of the recipient.85 Furthermore it should be noted that in the Ptolemaic period we have more documents that concern official, administrative, and business affairs, and consequently we hear the voices of men rather than those of women.86 A colloquial style is identified in letters of the Imperial period. By now, women seem to be more involved in letter-writing and willing to use it in order to break their isolation by establishing contacts with their loved ones and to improve the quality of their own lives. The style employed is characterised by brevity and efficiency, and writing a letter becomes equivalent to talking.87 Thus, letters throw more light on personal relationships by disclosing the longing that distance created and alluding to the remembrance that the writer kept of the addressee.88 In Late Antiquity, there is a reversion to the formal style of letter writing. Letters contained artificial formulaic expressions, complex sentences in a style well beyond everyday speech, and occasional series of biblical allusions. All these traits made the employment of a professional scribe indispensable. Therefore, finding signs of the author’s personal expressions and vocabulary is much harder than before.89 Understandably, the less stylised the composition of a letter is, the more allowances there are for emotional expressions by the writers. Thus, the papyri and ostraca from the Imperial period are more fruitful in this respect. As far as petitions are concerned, a similar trend can be established. Ptolemaic petitions are primarily addressed to the king. There were precise directions that they should be short and to the point, only concerning the gravest of matters.90 Therefore, petitions from the Ptolemaic and early Imperial period (c. first century CE) state the essence of the business, and, straightforwardly, each conflict was a specific case. By the second to fourth centuries, there are recognisable types in the conflict: the petitioner is always a ‘moderate’, honest, and poor man, while the offender is always a ‘powerful’ man.91 As a result, these petitions also have a very standardised way of appealing for justice and pity. In the later periods of Late Antiquity, the prose of petitions is filled with horrid, detailed, and lengthy descriptions of individual and collective abuse,92 descriptions, a scholar has noted, which can ‘make the blood curdle’.93 They express frustration, anger, fear, tor85 86 87 88

89 90 91 92

93

Bagnall and Cribiore 2006, 16. Bagnall and Cribiore 2006, 15. Bagnall and Cribiore 2006, 16f. Some examples of letter composed by both men and women are: P.Giss. 17 (Hermopolite nome, second century CE); P.Berenike II 129 (Berenike, first century CE); P.Mich. III 203 (Pselkis, Nubia, 114–116 CE); P.Oxy. LXVII 4627 (Oxyrhynchus, late third century CE). Bagnall and Cribiore 2006, 17; Kovelman 1991, 144f. BGU III 1011 (second century BCE). Cf. Palme 2009, 378. Kovelman 1991, 136. Some typical examples of this case are: P.Cair.Isid. 68 (Karanis, 309/310 CE); P.Mert. II 91 (Karanis, 316 CE); P.Oxy. XII 1469 (Oxyrhynchus, 298 CE). P.Cair.Masp. I 67002 (Antinoopolis, 567 CE), is an informative case of collective outrage by a group of villagers, who directly petition the emperor in Constantinople due to the various and repeated miseries that were inflicted upon them by the corrupt pagarch Menas and his associates. Cf. Keenan 2008, and 1985, 257–259. Kovelman 1991, 136.

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ment, neglect, and pity. In a nutshell, while the petitioner of the Imperial period identifies himself with a social type and bases his case on a stable situation, a Byzantine sees in himself an allegory of a character from an epic, drama, or Greek novel.94 Biblical allusions and parallels are also frequent, and influence the emotionality of the narration. Accounts of saints’ Lives and martyrdoms provide helpful equivalents for the suffering that petitioners endured, as well. This latter point brings the discussion to the role of Christianity, its followers and their beliefs, all of which constitute one of the major differences between Late Antiquity and the previous eras. We just referred to the impact of the Bible on the vocabulary of Late Antique petitions, but Christian literature and attitudes distinctively influenced the language of all types of papyri, and the expression of specific emotions in them.95 Private letters are particularly revealing on this issue, especially the ones from a familial milieu. As far as their structure is concerned, it has been remarked that while the opening and closing formulas of Christian letters are the same as the ones of their pagan counterparts, the main body of the Christian letters is a lot longer. Their length seems to be directly related to their function as letters of instruction.96 Furthermore, scholars have commented on various emotional aspects of Christian letters. Friedrich Joxe studied early Christian family letters trying to discern whether the sentiments of familial love and care expressed in them are unique or stronger than the ones found in pagan letters.97 After several comparisons he concludes, quite convincingly, that no change in the feelings, their expression or degree can be established. Mothers do not express more affection for their children; children do not care more or less for their parents; and the same expressions of interest and worry are found in the correspondence among siblings. In Christian letters, the sentiments do not change, only the vocabulary and the formulas.98 In relation to a fourth-century CE letter among family members with a very affectionate opening formula with lots of greetings that communicate love and admiration, Roger Bagnall notes that we find more expressions of family affection in private letters in Christian circles than otherwise, but he similarly attributes them to rhetoric.99 This particular rhetoric is encountered even more in letters from the ecclesiastical and monastic milieu.100 In these we find a language of supplication, full of requests for intervention either in this world or with God, and in this rhetoric the writer’s dependency, wretchedness, and poverty 94 95

Kovelman 1991, 148; and 141f. New Docs. IV 61 offers a commentary of the use of the verb θλίβοµαι (to be oppressed, tormented) in papyri and how its meaning is influenced by its equivalent use in the Old and New Testament; while New Docs. I 38 examines the occurrence of the noun θλῖψις (distress) in epigraphical material and how this affected its usage in the New Testament corpus. 96 White 1986, 19. 97 Joxe 1956, 413. 98 Joxe 1956, 416–419. 99 P.Ant. II 93; cf. Bagnall 1987, 61 note 66. 100 Bagnall and Cribiore 2006, 72f.; cf. Joxe 1956, 416, who also emphasises the servility towards a superior (whether a monastic or not) in Christian letters.

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are strongly emphasized. ... The terms of equality on which the bulk of the letters from the Roman period are written are thus replaced by a language of inequality, and we cannot expect quite the frank discussion of family affairs that we get earlier.

Another thought-provoking trend is found in divorce documents from Late Antiquity. In several divorce documents of mutual consent, the couple claim that they wish to separate, not because of ill feelings among them, but due to the influence of a demon (daimon).101 In one such document, for example, a man states:102 Earlier, I was joined to you in marriage and for a life in common based on worthy expectations and begetting children, expecting to complete with you a peaceful, honourable union; but from enemies of unknown origin, from some jealous base demon, a most stubborn unkindness arose between us both and compelled us to be separated from one another. ...

Friedrich Joxe finds that this use of a demon on whom to blame the divorce is just rhetorical, with no deeper meaning or feeling, while James Keenan more recently noted that this could potentially be an interesting, albeit rare, instance highlighting the mentality of Byzantine villagers.103 Ultimately, despite the possible doubts that have been put forward in the past as to the extent that Christian morals influenced divorce practices,104 I still feel that because of the strong stance of the Church against divorce,105 some people might have chosen to blame an evil spirit for their course of action. It cannot be with no reason that we only find this clause in divorce petitions in Late Antiquity and not before. An even more unexpected occurrence is the fact that in several instances, Christian institutions and their members are presented as the cause of aggravation in Late Antique Egypt. These papyri are surprising, since Church Fathers and hagiographical writings always propagate the charitable feelings, love and understanding, which characterised their religion.106 However, what we find is that when in Late Antiquity different people rose to prominence, their influence was not always viewed as beneficial and their actions often provoked exasperation rather than the appeasement of the sentiments of people. Two petitions and two letters will illustrate this point: besides all the charity and assistance that Shenoute’s monasteries offered to the downtrodden, at the same time we encounter the White Monastery being referred to in a petition as one of the institutions that is 101 Evan Grubbs 2002, 213f.; Yftach-Firanko 2001, 1336; Rupprecht 1998, 69; Bagnall 1987, 55f. 102 P.Cair.Masp. II 67153 (Antinoopolis, 568 CE). Cf. Kovelman 1991, 145f. 103 Joxe 1956, 419 and Keenan 2007, 239, respectively. 104 Bagnall 1987. 105 Arjava 2001, 183f.; and Bagnall 1987, 46f. 106 Keenan (2007, 238f.) refers to the writings of Shenoute from Sohag, the leader of the White and Red Monastery, and all his work and preaching in favour of the oppressed classes of villagers. At the same time, of course, Shenoute is also very famous for his violent and disruptive fight against pagan practices and Christian magic. Cf. P.Ammon 3 (Alexandria, 348 CE), a private letter from a pagan family. A son writes to his mother who is discouraged due to the troubles the family is in. The editors feel that some of these troubles could be due to anti-pagan sentiments in that period.

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responsible for the miseries inflicted on the villagers of Antinoopolis.107 In another petition from the same village, a man appeals to the local authorities owing to his dire financial straits and the illegal taxes that are demanded from him.108 Fascinatingly, he pinpoints the beginning of his sufferings on the day his father joined a monastery and abandoned him to be raised by one of his uncles. In a fourth-century letter of recommendation among high-ranking ecclesiastics in Oxyrhynchus, the writer encourages the addressee to show love and care for the people who bring him the letter. He specifies that these people are not catechumens but already baptised Christians, instead.109 This comment is telling about the life of catechumens in Oxyrhynchus during these years and the situations they were included in or excluded from. Finally, there is a letter from Alexandria:110 a woman writes to her husband, a banker, to let him know primarily of the problems she had been having with a bishop. The latter had approved of a building construction, but after the writer commenced it, the bishop stopped it and destroyed what was built. She notes her concern about these actions and describes the bishop’s words and deeds as being filled with hostility and contempt. To sum up, expression and use of emotion in documents differs through the ages primarily because of the changes in the prescribed formulas of letters and petitions. Furthermore, Christianity was a decisive factor. Christianity influenced the function of emotion in divorce procedures; and the fact that its institutions and members were also causes of aggravation is an interesting – and perhaps surprising – realisation. Similarities One topic that seems to remain constant throughout all periods, is that various persons complain that they are despised due to their ethnicity or express anger because ‘outrages’ happened to them despite their ethnicity.111 Whether Greek, Egyptian, Jewish, or Roman, petitioners in Egypt call upon their ethnic origins in order to protest against the way they have been treated. This is a constant phenomenon in Hellenistic petitions. A striking case is quoted here in full; we will refer to it again in the discussion about issues of gender.112 To King Ptolemy greeting from Herakleides, originating from Alexandros’ Isle, now residing in Krokodilopolis in the Arsinoite nome. I am wronged by Psenobastis, who lives in Psya, in the aforesaid nome. On Phamenoth 21 of year 5 in the fiscal calendar, I went to Pysa in the said nome on a personal matter. As I was passing by [her house] an Egyptian woman, whose name is said to be Psenobastis, leaned out [of a window] and emptied a chamber pot of urine over my clothes, so that I was completely drenched. When I angrily reproached her, she hurled abuse at me. When I responded in kind, Psenobastis in her own right hand pulled the 107 108 109 110 111 112

P.Cair.Masp. I 67002 (Antinoopolis, 567 CE), and Keenan 2008, 174. P.Lond. V 1676 (Antinoopolis, 566–573 CE). Cf. Kovelman 1991, 144f. Cf. Harrop 1962. The letter is quoted in full in the following section on pp. 61f. SB XVIII 13762 (sixth or seventh century CE). On the topic of ethnicity particularly in women’s letters, see Bagnall and Cribiore 2006, 9. P.Enteux. 79 (Magdola, 218 BCE). Cf. Lewis 1986, 61.

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fold of my cloak in which I was wrapped, tore it and ripped it off me, so that my chest was laid quite bare. She also spat in my face, in the presence of several people whom I called to witness. The acts that I charge her with committing are: resorting to violence against me and being the one to start [the fracas] by laying her hands on me unlawfully. When some of the bystanders reproached her for what she had done, she simply left me and went back into the house from which she had poured the urine down on me. I therefore beg you, O king, if it please you, not to ignore my being thus, for no reason, manhandled by an Egyptian woman, whereas I am a Greek and a visitor, but to order Diophanes the strategos … to write to Sogenes the police chief to send Psenobastis to him to be questioned on my complaint and to suffer, if what I say here is true, the punishment that the strategos decrees. Farewell.

Herakleides, a Greek and a visitor in Krokodilopolis, petitions the king because he was physically and verbally abused by an Egyptian woman. In the first part of the petition, which deals with the abuse, Herakleides expresses his astonishment and outrage at the physical abuse he had suffered. In order to express his exasperation, Herakleides uses verbs such as ‘to be wronged’ (ἀδικοῦµαι), ‘angrily reproach’ (ἀγανακτήσαντος δέ µου καὶ ἐπιτιµῶντος), and ‘hurl abuse’ (λοιδορέω). He further employs in his narration emotional words such as ‘unjust’ (ἀδίκων) and ‘beyond reason’ (ἄλογος). It is also safe to assume that he was not only outraged with the abuse but also with the fact that he was mistreated by a woman. In the second part of the petition, Herakleides places more emphasis on his feelings of insult. It is not so much, though, that he is insulted because he was maltreated by a woman, but rather that it was a Greek who was abused by an Egyptian. He mentions with pride the fact that he is a Greek, and he interprets Psenobastis’ abuse as an assault not only against his manhood but also against his race. Maryline G. Parca also notes that the closing of the petition reveals Heracleides’ keen awareness of the role which ethnicity plays in this matter: he takes the superiority of the Greek over the native for granted and expects that the bureaucratic apparatus which will process his complaint will hold similar views.113

Another petition, this time by an Egyptian woman, relates how the Egyptian men whom she wanted to have as her witnesses in court were too intimidated to attend, as the Greek man against whom Tetosiris was petitioning terrorised them with his gang.114 Anti-Greek sentiments are also found in the dossier of Ptolemy, the recluse in the Serapeum in Memphis that we referred to in an earlier section (p. 50). Ptolemy often notes that he is being abused by the Greeks in the sanctuary.115 A letter reveals the trials and tribulations to which Jews were also subjected in the Hellenistic period:116 113 Parca 2002, 287f. 114 P.Enteux. 86 (221 BCE). Cf. Lewis 1986, 60f. 115 UPZ 7, 8, 15 (163, 161, and 156 BCE, respectively.) Cf. Parca 2002, 288. Another example of a petitioner who claims to have been despised due to his Egyptian nationality is P.Yale I 46 (246–221 BCE). One of the most quoted documents is P.Col. IV 66 (Philadelphia, 256–255 BCE). It is a letter addressed to Zenon by one of his Arab employees who complains of mistreatment by his co-worker due to the fact that he cannot speak Greek. Cf. Bagnall and Derow 2004, no. 231; Austin 2006, no. 245. 116 SB VI 9564 (early first century BCE). Cf. Bagnall and Derow 2004, no. 175.

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Herakles to Ptolemaios, the dioiketes, hearty greetings and good health. I asked Iap ... in Memphis on behalf of the priest in Tebtynis to write to him a letter so that I may know what his situation is. I ask you, so that he is not detained, lead him by the hand in the things that he needs, doing the same thing that you do for Artemidoros and do me the favour of furnishing the priest with the same lodging – for you know that they are nauseated by Jews.

This short communication is the earliest testimony of anti-Semitism in the countryside of Hellenistic Egypt. Herakles appeals to Ptolemaios dioiketes for his help regarding a Jewish priest from Tebtynis. The dioiketes is asked to protect the priest from any mishaps and guide him. This papyrus offers the justification why the Jewish priest was in need of such aid from Herakles and Ptolemaios, namely because in the countryside of Fayum and Meµphis the inhabitants were ‘nauseated’ by Jews; they felt disgust for the Jews. Herakles uses a very strong and descriptive verb, βδελυρεύοµαι, in order to portray the feelings of the inhabitants. He probably also uses such a verb in order to convey fully his concern about the fate of the priest. It is also noteworthy that Herakles does not feel he has to justify or further explain these anti-Semitic feelings to Ptolemaios, he just mentions them as a matter of fact. His note ‘for you know...’ points that either these emotions were well-known to everyone from that area or that Herakles had discussed these situations with Ptolemaios before. Further, it should be noted that in this document, the Egyptian chora is seen to act as a distinct emotional community, which regarded the Jews as an element harmful to them; therefore, the expression of disgust towards the Jews was, if not encouraged, certainly tolerated in its midst. At last, a complaint over disputed land to the epistrategos in 163 CE serves to show a Roman army officer’s frustration towards an Egyptian.117 Caius Julius Niger, a veteran of the cavalry and a Roman citizen, petitions the authorities because he has ‘in a violent way suffered an unjustifiable insult by an Egyptian man’. The editor notes that this is exactly the same attitude that Greeks took towards the native Egyptians.118 Niger concludes his request by repeating his outrage: And so, his criminal actions against me being evident, I, a Roman, having suffered such things at the hands of an Egyptian, ask you, if it seems good to you, to order a letter to be written.

Nonetheless, exceptions are always found to these ‘rules’. In her study of expressions of friendship in papyri and inscriptions, Evans has shown that despite the diversity of ethnic groups in Egypt, there is some evidence that points to the interrelations of the various groups and the friendships that existed among them, especially among men.119

117 P.Mich. inv. 2848 + 3000 (Karanis); cf. Sijpesteijn 1996. 118 Sijpesteijn 1996, 186. 119 Evans 1997, 197f. For the use and meaning of the phrase ‘beloved brother’ (ἀγαπητὸς ἀδελφός) in the greetings of letters, see New Docs. IV 124. It is established that the term is used primarily but not exclusively among Christians. Even when the addressee is not a Christian, the writer could still refer to him as ‘beloved brother’.

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To conclude, a small but often repeated belief and sentiment in papyri is the fear of the evil eye. The wish that someone is not touched by the evil eye is especially conveyed in relation to children.120 Even a nun writes to a monk on such a topic.121 Among all problems she has with her abbess, she worries about and fears the evil eye of bad people. She begs for the monk’s prayers so that she can be protected from the evil eye. The eyes of evil people do not allow me to look up. Therefore, I beg you: pray for me, so that God may now become reconciled and I can escape the snares of evil people.

It is noteworthy that this nun willingly admits to such a panic when all Christians, and especially monastics, were strongly encouraged by the Church Fathers not to believe in pagan superstitions, practice magic, or even carry amulets.122 Ultimately, the overriding similarity in the display of emotions from the Hellenistic to the Late Antique period is the association of contempt with ethnicity. Contempt was not evoked exclusively by one ethnicity, but was instead used in arguments by Greeks, Romans, and Egyptians. 3.2 The Relationship Between Education and the Use of Emotion in Papyri In the previously mentioned petition of the Greek who was abused by an Egyptian woman (pp. 57f.), it is stated that halfway through the quarrel, the two parties started to abuse each other verbally. Nevertheless, Maryline G. Parca makes a thought-provoking observation:123 the way Herakleides spells Psenobastis’ name in his petition does not correspond to any known feminine name from that period. Therefore, this leads to the disturbing realization that both parties either argued in their respective native languages (thus engaging in a dangerous dialogue de sourds) or threw about insults tentatively phrased in the language of the other, thus producing the unavoidable sound approximations which foster double entendres and misinterpretations, and invite ridicule.

This incident shows one aspect of how the literacy of a person could influence events, the way they were construed, and the emotions they provoked. The other, not so straightforward, side of the coin emerges when we investigate the different ways in which a person’s education can influence how they articulate their feelings in writing. The employment of a scribe, his education, and the education of the owner of the papyrus, together with the use of formulas and of ancient epistolary theories are crucial factors that influence how emotions are presented in papyrological documents. Is it possible to understand the emotional communities in which these 120 For some examples, see: C.Pap.Jud. II 436 (Hermopolis, 115 CE); P.Giss. 77 (Hermopolis, reign of Trajan); P.Oxy. XLVI 3312 (Oxyrhynchus, second century CE). 121 P.Köln II 111 (fifth or sixth century CE). Cf. Bagnall and Cribiore 2006, 230. 122 Cf. Frankfurter 1998. 123 Parca 2002, 287.

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texts originate, looking beyond the stereotypical formulas? On the one hand in regard to private letters, Bernhard Palme observes that ‘because of the widespread clichés only a few really emotional comments appear’.124 He finds only two eceptions. The first text is a man’s letter to his sister/wife: he urges her not to worry about his stay in Alexandria, and entreats her to take care of their child. He concludes that if a third woman in their household bears a child, and that child is male, she should keep it; if it is a girl she should expose it.125 In the second document a boy writes to his father to tell him how upset and angry he is because he did not take him with him to the city. He threatens never to speak to his father again.126 On the other hand formulas and epistolary theories should not be seen as an obstacle to the study of emotions, but as part of the study of how the manifestation of emotions is culturally determined. Especially in relation to petitions, the influence of a given scribe on the content of the document and its appeal to emotion is a very significant factor, as has already been stressed by scholars regarding the Hellenistic,127 Imperial,128 and Late Antique periods. For Late Antiquity, Diokoros of Aphrodito is the example par excellence (sixth century CE). He was highly educated and this is fully reflected in the way he composed petitions, in the intricate literary allusions that he used, and in the manner these allusions were meant to express the fear and frustration of the petitioner and arouse pity in the reader.129 Private letters can also illuminate issues of literacy and how people employed it in order to express pleasure, happiness, and to stress their friendship to the addressee. A Christian letter of commendation is a prime example:130 To my lord brother Serapion Paul (wishes) well-doing. A man who has acquired a mirror, or holds in his hand something else of that sort, in which faces are seen represented, has no need of one to tell him, or testify about the character that lies upon him, and his complexion, and his appearance, how it is. For he himself has become a witness by himself, and can speak about his own likeness. And when someone speaks to him, or explains about the beauty and comeliness about him, he does not then believe. For he is not like the rest who are in ignorance, and standing far from the mirror that displays the likeness of all. And it is the same with my good friend. For as through a mirror you have seen my implanted affection and love for you ever fresh. Now, concerning the acquaintances of ours who are bringing down the letter to you, there is no need for me to write (knowing as I do) your friendship and affection to all, especially towards our brethren. Receive them therefore in love, as friends, for they are

124 125 126 127

Palme 2009, 362. On these questions see also Evans 2010, 51f. P.Oxy. IV 744. P.Oxy. I 119. Jane Rowlandson (1998, 98–105, esp. no. 79) notes, for example, how different the various copies of the petition of the Serapeum twins against their mother are, due to fact that different scribes composed them each time. 128 For Roman petitions and how scribes are responsible for creating their narrative and emotional appeal to the reader, see Bryen 2008, 182. For letters, see Verhoogt 2009. 129 Cf. Keenan 2008, 178f. and Kovelman 1991, 146f. 130 P.Oxy. XXXI 2603 (Oxyrhynchus, third or fourth century CE); cf. Harrop 1962, 132–140.

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not catechumens but belong to the company of Ision and Nikolaos, and if you do anything for them, you have done it for me.131

J. H. Harrop observes132 that the literary style of the letter, so much in contrast with the majority of Christian letters in papyri, makes it likely that Paul was a man of considerable learning, and that the recipient also was a man likely to appreciate his efforts,

while Evans finds that the rhetorical devices in this letter are similar to the ones used in epistolary manuals; the use of the latter is probably indicative of a high level of education since epistolary style seems to have been taught towards the end of secondary education.133 In an earlier letter between two friends, the writer devotes the first eighteen lines of his communication to praise of friendship and to describing how a letter should be structured,134 whereas when a son wishes to offer consolation to his mother because of some serious family problems, he sends her a letter filled with literary allusions.135 Finally, one of the most exemplary cases is a letter sent from a son to his father.136 The papyrus is too long to be quoted here in full, but it has been recently analyzed in detail by Gregory Hutchinson.137 The writer is studying in Alexandria. He is probably in his late teens and has reached the stage of studying rhetoric. He recounts to his father the various mishaps he has been facing while living in the metropolis. Firstly, he reassures his father not to worry about an accident they had in the theatre; secondly, he expresses in vivid language his discontent in not being able to find good tutors; and thirdly, he displays anger at a run-away slave and his indignant behaviour. This letter demonstrates in various ways – through the carefully chosen vocabulary and juxtaposition of phrases – the writer’s high education and skill in employing his rhetorical training to compose a lengthy communication; one which was meant to persuade his father that on the one hand he was very serious about his education in Alexandria, and on the other placate him about all the problems he has been facing while away.138 Keeping these papyri in mind we would, therefore, be justified in stipulating that literary allusions were not mere efforts to imi131 Translated by Evans 1997, 187. 132 Harrop 1962, 137. 133 Evans 1997, 187; cf. Malherbe 1988, 6f., on the high stage of education at which these manuals would be taught. 134 P.David 14 (second or third century CE). The beginning of the letter reads: ∆ῖος Εὐτυχίδηι τῶι τιµιωτάτωι χαίρειν. ἐπίστασαι ὅτι οὐ διὰ λόγων αἱ φιλίαι δείκνυνται ἀλλὰ δι᾽ ἔργων καὶ µάλιστα ἡ πρὸς ἀλλήλους φιλία φανερά ἐστιν ἀµφοῖν καὶ πλείστοις ἀνθρώποις ἡ δι᾽ ἔργων. καὶ αὕτη γε̣ ἀξιόλογός ἐστι καὶ θεοφιλὴς καὶ ἅπασιν ἀνθρώποις ἐπαινετή, ὅτι δὴ τοὺς συνήθεις αὕτη ἀποκατέστησεν ὥστε φιλεῖσθαι ὑπ᾽ ἀλλήλων· οὐδὲν γὰρ µεῖζόν ἐστιν οὐδὲ ἐράσµιον οὐδὲ ἡµ[ερώ]τατον οὐδὲ ἀπολαυστότερόν ἐστιν ἢ ἡ τοιαύτη φιλία ἐν τῶι ἀνθρωπίνωι βίωι. ἐγὼ µὲν δὴ διὰ βραχέων λόγων ἐρῶσοι τὰ µέχρι νῦν ... 135 P.Ammon 3 (Alexandria, 348 CE). 136 P.Oxy. XVIII 2190 (Oxyrhynchus, c. 100 CE). Cf. Lewis 1999, 63f. 137 Hutchinson 2007, 19–28. 138 Hutchinson 2007, 23–28.

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tate the style of high education but were actually indicative of the literary achievements of the authors of these letters. As noted above, closely related to the level of education of the person who composed or dictated a document is their knowledge and use of the various ancient epistolary theories. When it came to the composition of letters, there were several manuals that offered instruction about what was appropriate to be included in a written communication or how and when it should be expressed.139 Making a letter as pleasing as possible for the addressee and appropriate for each occasion was one of the main concerns of the theorists. In the fourth century CE, Julius Victor explains regarding private letters:140 a letter written to a superior should not be droll; to an equal, not cold; to an inferior, not haughty. Let not a letter to a learned person be carelessly written, nor indifferently composed when going to a less learned person; let it not be negligently written if to a close friend, nor less cordial to a non-friend. Be profuse in congratulating someone on his success so as to heighten his joy, but console someone who is grieving with a few words, for a wound bleeds when touched by a heavy hand. When you are light hearted in your friendly letters, reckon with the possibility that they may be reread in sadder times. Never quarrel, especially in a letter! The openings and conclusions of letters should conform with the degree of friendship (you share with the recipient) or with his rank, and should be written according to customary practice.

Accordingly, various papyri specifically mention the attempts of the writers to abide by these rules or the disapproval of some people if the letters they have received are carelessly composed. On the one hand, in a letter about payment of taxes, the writer notes that he keeps his communication short so it would be pleasing to the addressee. On the other, in the beginning of a different communication concerning an abduction of a woman, the writer hints at disapproval of his correspondent’s epistolary methods. He notes with annoyance ‘Nobody wishing to make any charge or complaint writes at the beginning of his letter, lest he who reads should be annoyed and they should not read the letter ...’141 Quite understandably, Michael B. Trapp notes that the balance of functional and aesthetic considerations – getting the message across and securing the required response to it, as against getting it across in a manner that will itself give 142 pleasure and excite admiration – differs from letter to letter.

Pleasure was not only brought to the recipient by having a well-composed letter but also by receiving a letter written in the sender’s own handwriting143 or by just getting a letter, as letters were thought to bring people who shared some affection 139 A useful edition of Roman and Late Antique theorists, both Greek and Roman, can be found in Malherbe 1988. Also discussed in Koskenniemi 1956, 54–63. 140 Julius Victor, Ars rhetorica 27 (De epistolis). Cf. Malherbe 1988, 64f.; Evans 1997, 184. 141 P.Oxy. XVI 1837 and 1841 respectively. Both from Oxyrhynchus, sixth century CE. 142 Trapp 2003, 3. 143 BGU II 423 (Misenum?, second century CE). It is a letter from a soldier to his family where he notes how happy he was to receive a letter written by his father himself. Cf. White 1987, 159; Cribiore 2002, 154.

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much closer together.144 Furthermore, the importance of sending greetings to a person is stressed, and the lack of them caused worry and sadness. In a letter between two women, the sender concludes by pointing out ‘When my little Heraidous wrote to her father, she did not send a greeting to me, and I do not know why.’145 This comment indicates that people did not consider greetings as a standard feature in a letter but as an element that the sender had to keep in mind and make sure to include in his or her correspondence. In addition to illuminating the importance of greetings, this remark is also a strong indication of the significant role of children within certain households.146 Finally, we should briefly mention that education, besides enabling people to express their emotions in more vivid colours, was also a cause of anxiety on a more practical level for both parents and children. The previously mentioned papyrus of the student in Alexandria is a prime example of the worries faced by children during their studies.147 Students express their concern about having the adequate fees, good tutors, and keeping their parents happy in their endeavours, while parents were anxious that their children kept up with their studies and did not waste their money.148 3.3 Formulas As we mentioned above, the composition of papyri was often done by professional scribes; the structure of documents, even private letters, was soon standardised; and there were even written prescriptions available explaining how to structure both official and private documents. Formulas existed for the beginning, middle, and end part of a letter or petition.149 In what is to follow we will consider whether these formulas in papyri restrict or embellish emotional phraseology and expression. Are the references to emotions found in these formulaic openings and closings a reflection of mere rhetoric, or can they also illuminate aspects of reality?150 144 For example, P.Oxy. XXXIV 2728 (Oxyrhynchus, third to fourth century CE) and P.Oxy. XLII 3067 (Oxyrhynchus, third century CE). The writer notes ‘We shall have the impression, through our letters, of seeing each other face to face.’ Cf. Trapp 2003, 39. 145 P.Giss.78 (Hermopolite nome, 113–120 CE). Cf. Rowlandson 1998, no. 95. 146 Cf. Verhoogt 2009 for the importance of naming children in the greetings of private letters. The scholar notes that women tend to identify children who offer greetings by name in their letters, while men mention ‘children’ without a name. 147 P.Oxy. XVIII 2190 (Oxyrhynchus, c. 100 CE). 148 A selection of papyri on this topic can be found in Winter 1933, 64–67; Lewis 1999 63f.; Bagnall and Cribiore 2006, 77; Joyal, McDougall, and Yardley 2009, 180–183. I would also add two Coptic letters from parents to their children from fourth century CE Kellis: P.Kell. Copt. 19 and 35. 149 White 1986, 189–213. 150 Several of the issues tackled in this section have also been addressed in Dickey 1996. Two points should be kept in mind, though: firstly, Dickey is only concerned with forms of address, while we will examine the formulas in the opening, body, and closing of documents.

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One of the most crucial problems when dealing with private letters from all periods in Egypt concerns the titles used in the opening addresses (i.e. ‘patron’) and the extent to which these reflect true relationships and express respect, affection, or other feelings. There is a tendency in the papyri to use familial terms for correspondents who were not blood relations.151 Especially the address between men and women as ‘brother’ and ‘sister’ is difficult to interpret. In the Hellenistic period siblings often married each other, and this complicates the interpretation of these forms of address as literal or metaphorical references to a relation. In Late Antiquity a further problem occurs, as with the establishment of Christianity, monasticism, and other ascetic practices titles such as ‘brother’ and ‘sister’ can indicate both family relationships and monastic ones.152 In a letter from fourth-century CE Oxyrhynchus, for example, the writer greets fourteen ‘brothers’, five ‘sisters’, two ‘mothers’, and one ‘father’.153 According to Evans154 many of these titles in papyri could be explained if we considered that it is possible that the practice of men and women referring to each other affectionately as brother and sister generally took the place of the use of the word friend and so tends to mask the evidence for male-female friendship.

Yet again, archives or dossiers of documents that belonged to specific people can help one better define family relations, in particular those of brother and sister, and mother and father, as there are more documents available to help the researcher establish genealogies. A very common formula which appears to be expressing emotion is that of the proskynema (‘obeisance’). It also exemplifies the ambiguities that can be caused by formulaic language. This formula often appears at the beginning of letters of the Imperial period and refers to an act of obeisance by the writer before a god or gods.155 Its usage in letters of the Imperial period seems to be related to pilgrimage to temples by visitors who left short inscriptions with their names and those of relatives and friends in order to obtain the god’s blessing.156 The majority of these

151 152 153

154 155 156

Secondly, caution should always be exercised when using literary parallels for analyzing papyri. It has been shown, for example, that while the term φίλτατος in Greek literature has an unmistakable emotional connotation, in papyri it does not indicate any family or other close relationship but rather occurs in business and or official correspondence; see Gonis 1997, 148. For the purposes of this study, the works of Exler 2003 and Koskenniemi 1956 are more relevant. Evans 1997, 185 and Koskenniemi 1956, 104–110. Bagnall and Cribiore 2006, 193–197. P.Oxy. LVI 3859. This is one of the most common issues in papyri. Some of the most recent addresses to it can be found in the editions of P.Oxy. XLVIII 3405, 3420; LVI 3858; LIX 3988. Evans 1997, 198. Bagnall and Cribiore 2006, 89. For a thorough study of both the papyrological and inscriptional evidence, see Geraci 1971 and Bernand 1994.

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texts refer to a proskynema made before the god Sarapis,157 but this does not necessarily mean that the pilgrimage took place in Alexandria as previously thought.158 Furthermore, the proskynema formulas may mention obeisance performed not only in front of one god but also in front of many, at some time by the same individual.159 Finally, this formula should not be used as an indication of affection and concern only among the pagans in Egypt, as it can also be found in Christian letters. The proskynema opening formula remains the same but this time it refers to the Christian God.160 It has been noted by scholars that despite the formulaic usage of the proskynema, it can still be maintained that since it was included in one’s letter, it indicates the writer’s remembrance, care, and concern for his parents and friends.161 It is notable, albeit understandable, that although there are numerous references in letters to obeisance performed for the well-being of friends,162 there are none found in letters from masters to their servants.163 It should also be noted that deviations from a standard form may originate in the attempt to express affection strongly. For instance, in his letter to his friend Heliodoros, Nearchos informs him of a possibly imagined proskynema in Syene, not by using the usual formula but instead with a detailed account of it. Nearchos recounts how he imagined sailing to Syene from where the river Nile flows and to Libya where Ammon gives oracles to people. It is there that he made a proskynema and he inscribed his friends’ names on the temples to be remembered for ever.164 Despite the stereotypical use of various formulas, there were still ways to stress one’s feelings in the wording of a text, and in particular in letters. People either diverted from the common and expected formula altogether or modified and enhanced it in order to display their emotions better.165 For example, in two letters from the second and sixth century CE, respectively, we find that the senders indicated their affection and respect by deviating from the usual terms of endearment.166 In a letter between a woman and her ‘brother,’ the writer starts with a remarkable metaphor of affection: ‘Didyme to Apollonius her brother and sun, greetings. You must know that I do not view the sun, because you are out of my 157 For the popularity of the cult of Sarapis, see the lengthy discussion in P.Zaki Aly 7. 158 Koskenniemi 1956, 139–145; Farid 1979. 159 In the letters between Paniskos and Ploutogenia (cf. Rowlandson 1998, 148) we find that one scribe uses the formula ‘to the gods’ while a different one uses the singular ‘to god’. See also Joxe 1959, 414. 160 A possible case is P.Oxy, LIX 3997 (Oxyrhynchus, third to fourth century CE). 161 P.Zaki Aly 7 and Geraci 1971, 163f. 162 Evans 1997, 190f. 163 Clarysse 2009. 164 P.Sarap. 101 (90–133 CE): ... ἐγὼ παρεποιησάµην καὶ̣ ἀρ̣ά̣µ̣ενος ἀνάπλουν παραγενόµενος εἴς τε Σοήνας καὶ ὅθεν τυ̣γχάνει Νεῖλος ῥέων καὶ εἰς Λιβύην ὅπου Ἄµµων πᾶσιν ἀνθρώποις χρησµῳδ̣εῖ ... υτοµα ἱστόρη̣σα καὶ τῶν̣ φ̣ί̣λ̣ων ἐµῶν τ̣ὰ̣ ὀνόµ̣α̣τ̣α̣ ἐνεχάρ̣α̣ξα τοῖς ἱ̣εροῖς ἀε̣ιµνά̣τ̣ως, τὸ προσ̣κ̣ύν̣η̣µ̣α ... 165 For a similar phenomenon in inscriptions, see pp. 109–111 in this volume. 166 Koskenniemi 1956, 95–104.

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view; for I have no sun but you.’167 In a communication from a woman of lower status to a higher ranking recipient (probably her mistress), she addresses her as ‘the lady of my eyes’.168 Other techniques that could enhance the illustration of feelings included the detailed description of an incident (common in petitions in order to strengthen one’s argument and consequently one’s persuasion strategies);169 using words of exclamation;170 and offering word by word quotation of someone’s speech. Paniskos does that in his final letter to his wife (quoting the messenger) in order to demonstrate the extent of his frustration at not having received a letter from her (pp. 39f.). The use of irony was another tool to illustrate one’s contempt and dismay.171 The way a letter is dictated or written and whether its structure is smooth or not can also be an indication of an individual’s emotional state during the composition of the letter, whether they were angry, frustrated, or worried.172 We already mentioned at the beginning of this chapter that the jumbled narration of events in the third letter from Paniskos to Ploutogenia (pp. 39f.) is a sign of his frustration. Another such case is a letter written by a woman to Apollonios the strategos about a theft.173 The letter reads: ... to her brother Apollonios, many greetings. I salute you. From the day I departed from you and was in the Hermopolite, I have been busy with the strategos ... the thieves wanted me to (confirm) the content of the box, swearing about its value. But I did not want to swear before

167 P.Oxy. XLII 3059 (Oxyrhynchus, second century CE). 168 P.Grenf. I 61 (Arsinoite nome, sixth century CE). Cf. Bagnall and Cribiore 2006, 229. 169 On the emotive function of such vivid descriptions in epigrams and honorary inscriptions, see pp. 107f. in this volume. Cf. the remarks of Maria Theodoropoulou (p. 463 in this volume). 170 For some references to the usage of exclamation words in literary sources, see Dickey 1996, 199–206. 171 For example, P.Sakaon 55 (Theadelphia, early third/early fourth century CE); P.Naqlun I 12 (Naqlun, Fayum, mid-sixth century CE); and P.Brem. 69 (Hermopolite nome, c. 100-150 CE). Cf. Cribiore 2002, 158f. For irony in a letter of Antoninus Pius, see p. 113 in this volume. 172 Cribiore 2002, 150 and 154f. 173 P.Brem. 61 (Hermopolite nome, first half of second century CE): Ἀπολλωνίωι τῶι ἀδελφῶι πολλὰ χαίρειν. ἀσπάζοµαί σε. ἀφʼ ἧς ἡµέρας ἐξῆλθον ἀπὸ σοῦ καὶ ἐγενόµην ἐν τῶι Ἑρµοπολεί[τηι, κατε]λαβόµην τὸν στρατηγόν. ἐν [- - ο]ἱ κλῶπες ἠθέλησάν µε [ἐπισφραγ]ίσασθαι 〚µε〛 τὰ ἐνόντα τῆι κ[ίστηι] ὀµνυούση περὶ τῆς τιµῆ[ς. ἐγὼ δὲ] οὐ πρότερον ἐβουλόµην ὀµόσα[ι ἢ ληµ(?)]µατίζεσθαι τὰ ἀργύρια εἰδυῖα [ὅτι χωρ]ὶς ἀπειλῆς στρατηγικῆς οὐδὲν [- -ο]ῦσι ἀλʼ αὐτ̣ὸ µόνον µανιοκοπο[- -]ας. πῶς δʼ ἔχεις; ἐγὼ δὲ ἀγωνι[ῶ κα]θʼ ἡµέραν, µὴ πάλιν νωθ[ρ]ὸ[ς ᾖς. ἐπίστ]ειλον δέ µοι περὶ τῆς σωτη[ρίας σου.] πρὸ παντὸς γὰρ τὴν σωτη[ρ]ία[ν σου] 〚προτέραν〛 ἡγοῦµαι ἢ πάντα ἃ ἐπιζητῶι. οἶδα γὰρ πῶς µε τειµᾶς καὶ µαρτυρῶ πολλάκις πᾶσι ἃ πεποίηκάς µοι. ἄσπασαι Ἀλίνην ἀδελ[φ]ικῶς καὶ Εὐδαιµονίδα τὴν µητέρα [κ]αὶ τὰ ἀβάσκαντά σου παιδία. (hand 2) ἐρρῶσθαί σε εὔχοµαι. Φαρµοῦθι ιϛ. (hand 1) οὐκ ἀγνοεῖς, πῶς πάλιν ὁ µωρὸς διενοχλεῖ µοι χάριν τῆς µητρὸς αὐτοῦ µωραίνων καὶ οὐκ ἔχων σε τὸν ἐκτινάξοντα αὐτοῦ τὴν µωρίαν. µελησάτω σοι δέ, πῶς ἐὰν πέµψω σοι τὰ παιδία Παυσᾶν καὶ Κοττέρωτα περὶ ἐκείνου τοῦ πράγµατος νουθετήσῃς καὶ ἐπὶ πέρας ἄξῃς. Cf. Bagnall and Cribiore 2006, 142f. For metaphors in the epigraphic sources, see p. 112 in this volume.

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(collecting) the money, knowing that without a threat from the strategos they do not ... anything but ... But how are you? I am distressed that you are ill again. Send me news about your well-being. Before all I regard your safety rather than all the things I seek after. I know how you value me and I often testify to all about what you have done for me. Greet Aline in a sisterly way (or who is a sister to me) and mother Eudaimonis and your children free from harm. [Written by a second hand:] I pray for your health. Pharmouthi 16. [Postscript, written by the first hand:] You are not unaware that the fool is bothering me again and is such a fool because of his mother and because you are not here to shake out his foolishness. Take care, when I send you the children, Pausas and Kotteros, to advise them regarding that matter and to bring it to an end.

As Raffaella Cribiore174 has noted, this letter is an indication of the writer’s independent personality. She starts by immediately launching into her story and calamities with the thieves. She then remembers the precarious health of Apollonios with a colloquial ‘How are you?’ Feeling a little guilty for her lack of thoughtfulness the woman connects the problem of the theft with Apollonios’ health saying that, in spite of her worries for the former, she worries much more for him. The letter ends with the customary salutation to relatives and the woman’s own subscription ... But the letter is not finished. The writer suddenly remembers something else and adds a postscript. The man she mentions as pestering her was probably her own estranged husband. In speaking of him, the woman is beside herself in indignation and spits out her words, saying that stupid man (moros), kept on bothering her foolishly (morainein), in his stupidity (moria)!

This papyrus relates to the last point of this section: one of the strongest means of articulating frustration, anger, or fear is the repetition of a word in a single document. In a Hellenistic petition, the petitioner wishing to instil pity and get the authorities involved in his case keeps repeating at short intervals ‘O King, O King, O King,’175 and in a communication from a mother to her son, the woman repeats the adjective meteôros (‘unsettled, in suspense’) four times in the beginning of the letter, so she would convince him of the intricacy of a business affair she is dealing with and the uncertainties and anxiety it is causing her.176 But the case par excellence comes in a letter from a master to his subordinate.177 The letter is about agricultural matters and is filled with exasperation and amazement. The composer notes that he has told the recipient to cut down the vines ‘a thousand times’ (µ̣υ̣ρ̣ι̣ά̣κ̣ι̣ς)̣ . Now, he is asked again what is to happen to the vines: To which I reply: cut them down, cut them down, cut them down, cut them down, cut them down: there you are, I say it again and again!

174 175 176 177

Cribiore 2002, 157f. P.Enteux. 12 (244–243 BCE). Cf. Bagnall and Derow 2004, no. 121. BGU II 417 (second to third century CE). Cf. Cribiore 2002, 154. P.Oxy.XLII 3063 (Oxyrhynchus, second century CE): πρὸς ἣν ἀντιγράφω ἔκκοψον ἔκκοψον ἔκκοψον ἔκκοψον ἔκκοψον· ἰδού, πλειστάκις λέγω.

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3.3 Is There a Relation Between Display of Emotion and Status? More than other ancient sources, papyri are relevant to the study of status as they preserve accounts of events from all social classes. Despite the fact that most papyrological documents are composed by people from the upper classes, the rest of the material still suffices to throw light on issues of status and emotion. Status and specific emotional phraseology are constantly interwoven in private letters and petitions. In recent years, scholars have examined how the status of the writer of a letter, or of the addressee, affects the vocabulary and the tone of the correspondence.178 Willy Clarysse, in particular, remarks that in letters among upper class people and their subordinates, the former is usually addressed with a polite ‘please’ formula, while the latter receives an order with the typical third person imperative. Further, these letters tend to be short and to the point. The shortness of the letters is partly due to the absence of the usual introductory and concluding philophronetic formulas. There is, for example, no interest expressed in the health of the addressee, no proskynemata, no thanks, no allusions to the ideology of friendship, and rarely greetings to third persons. A recurrent theme is that of urgency, and superiors have the right to rebuke inferiors. Sometimes criticism is strengthened by a threat of punishment.179 One letter will be enough to illustrate most of these points. Marres is a topogrammateus (a local scribe in charge of record-keeping for a district) and a superior to Menches who was a village scribe, a komogrammateus. Marres writes to Menches because the latter failed to help a relative of his. Thus, Marres sends a letter filled with exasperation and contempt to Menches:180 Marres to Menches, greeting. My kinsman Melas has appealed to me concerning an alleged injury from you obliging him to complain to Demetrios son of Niboitas. I am excessively vexed that he should have gained no special consideration from you on my account and should therefore have asked assistance from Demetrios; and I consider that you have acted badly in not having been careful that he should be independent of others owing to my superior rank. I shall therefore be glad if you will even now endeavour more earnestly to correct your behaviour towards him, abandoning your previous state of ignorance. If you have any 178 For letters sent particularly from people of high status to those of lower classes, see Clarysse 2009. For both upper and lower class writers, see Papathomas 2007. 179 I am grateful to Willy Clarysse for allowing me to have and quote a pre-publication version of his paper. 180 P.Tebt. I 23 (Arsinoite nome, c. 119–111 BCE): Μαρρῆς Μεγχῆι χαίρειν. Μέλανος τοῦ οἰκείου ἡµῶν µεταδεδωκότος ἡµῖν περὶ ὧν ἀπέφαινεν ἠδικῆσθαι ὑπὸ σοῦ καὶ ∆ηµητρίωι τῶι τοῦ Νιβοίτου ἠναγκάσθαι διαβαλεῖν, καθʼ ὑπερβολὴν βεβαρυµµένοι ἐπὶ τῷ {σε} µὴ διʼ ἡµᾶς ἐπισηµασίας αὐτὸν τετευχέναι προσδεδεῆσθαι δὲ καὶ ∆ηµητρίου οὐκ ὀρθῶς κρίνοµεν πέπρακταί σοι µὴ ἐκ τῆς ἡµῶν προεδρίας πεφροντικέναι ἀπροσδέητον ἑτέρων γενέσθαι. διὸ καὶ ἔτι καὶ νῦν καλῶς ποιήσεις φιλοτιµότερον προθυµηθεὶς ἵνα τὰ πρὸς αὐτὸν [- - -] διορθώσηι µετακαλέσας ἐκ τῶν προηγνοηµένων. εἰ δέ τινα ἕξει[ς] πρὸς αὐτὸν λόγον σὺν αὐτῶι σύντυχε ἡµῖν. ἔρρωσο. κω(µο)γρ(αµµατεῖ) Μεγχῆι. Cf. Bagnall and Derow 2004, no. 85.

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grievance against him apply together with him to me. Good-bye. (Addressed on the verso) To Menches, village scribe.

However, in petitions, the relationship of emotion and status is not as straightforward. Ari Bryen’s article on public violence, petitions, and requests for justice brings together all recent arguments and all relevant sources on this topic.181 He concludes that, ultimately, individuals at all levels of the hierarchy could be damaged by public wounds, therefore an emphasis on rank and status is completely absent in such petitions.182 He specifies that anyone who was publicly attacked and bore easily seen wounds was likely to petition for redress. This possibility turns into a certainty if we consider that visible wounds183 serve as a lasting reminder of personal defeat and humiliation, available to the eyes of others, provoking comment and begetting stigma. When bruises and scars are on public display, the viewing public can wonder what the victim is going to do to save face and preserve his or her integrity; the victim, as part of a face-saving ritual, turns to law and authority, and asks for redress.

Notably, in one of his studies on ‘confession inscriptions’ and ‘prayers for justice’, Angelos Chaniotis stresses almost identical principles. In these inscriptions, the issue is not violence inflicted on the supplicant but the theft of goods. Nonetheless, people appealed to the gods for justice mostly because of loss of face rather than the material damage they had suffered. Some of the examples that are cited include a man who had been cheated and reviled; a woman who had been treated disdainfully; and another person who was afraid that he/she and the goddess whom he/she had invoked would become the laughing-stock of others should a thief remain unpunished. Similarly to Bryen, Chaniotis also notes that ‘The fear of humiliation was rooted in the publicity given to all these affairs.’184 Freeborn versus Slave Additionally, it is worth raising the possibility that in petitions about violence the problems are not so much between upper and lower class people but rather between freeborn citizens and slaves. This distinction is emphasised both in complaints and by local officials, when they adjudicate concerning violence or discuss the penalties that can be imposed on individuals.185 A Hellenistic petition can also illuminate this point. Philista petitioned Ptolemy II Euergetes (although it was ultimately Diophanes the strategos who would have judged her case) to have an 181 Bryen 2008, especially 183f., for references to previous scholarship on this topic. 182 Bryen 2008 only deals with petitions that regard public violence. Petitions for other reasons can paint a different picture. See for example, P.Amh. II 142 (Herakleopolis ?, after 341 CE): A long petition by a man to the prefect regarding an aggression which had been made by a number of persons on his land. The petitioner clearly states that the perpetrators despised him due to their high status and power and because of his moderate lifestyle (apragmatosyne). 183 Bryen 2008, 183–187. 184 Chaniotis 2004a, 20f. 185 Bryen 2008, 188f.

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Egyptian bath attendant punished because he had scalded her. It is quite understandable to expect Philista to be filled with anger, contempt, and vengefulness after she was scalded by a man who was a slave and an Egyptian. Nonetheless, she puts emphasis on her emotions of suffering and anguish. Notably, Diophanes the strategos was also greatly outraged by the behaviour of the bath attendant, since this is the only time that he does not defer the case to someone else and instead orders that the accused be brought immediately to him.186 Furthermore, we have the petition for divorce by a woman who strongly complains that her husband is mistreating her as badly as if she was his ‘bought slave’.187 Contempt, anger, and legal status are also invoked in a private letter by a woman who is refuting some unjust accusations that were made against her. After a considerable amount of venting against her complainant, she concludes ‘... And if we had to be specific about family, this again we show first, who is of better birth, since we utterly deny that we were born from a slave...’188 As already mentioned, petitions that concern disputes over issues other than physical abuse may also show the significance of status and emotion in this type of document. The relation of status and the manifestation of anger in petitions is a fruitful topic, one that certainly deserves a detailed study in the future. An important issue is whether the expression of anger in petitions is related to the high status of the petitioner or depends more on the petitioner’s secure feeling of the outcome of the case, as in cases of extreme violence.189 Here, two petitions suffice to bring this topic to the fore. First, a man writes to the village elders about a theft and petitions for redress:190 To Aelius Numisianus, strategos of the Arsinoite nome, the division of (Themistes) and Polemon from Sotas, son of Heron. On the 20th of the present month, Thoth, Pt-, the son of Psenobastis and grandson of Abetos, being an elder of the village of Phylakitite Nesos, in my ab-

186 P.Enteux. 82 (Magdola, 221 BCE). Cf. Lewis 1986, 59; Rowlandson 1998, no. 130; Bagnall and Derow 2004, no. 140. 187 BGU IV 1105 (Alexandria, 10 BCE). Cf. Rowlandson 1998, no. 257. It has also been noted that the expression τῷ ἰδίῳ (‘to my own’) in the opening of the letters from the Gemellus archive could be a sign of affection or a sign of master-slave relationship; on this subject see Clarysse 2009. 188 W.Chr. 131 (fourth century CE): ἐὰν ἦν δὲ ὀνοµάζειν περὶ γένους καὶ ταῦτα πάλιν φθάνοµεν ἀποδεῖξαι, τίς εὐγενέστερός ἐστι. ἡµεῖς γὰρ οὐκ ἐγενόµεθα ἀπὸ δούλης γεννηθέντες. Cf. Bagnall and Cribiore 2006, 397f. 189 For references to passages in ancient Greek literature which show that anger was the prerogative only of gods and princes and that it helped maintain social hierarchy, see Harris 2001, 139f. For the epigraphic sources, aee pp. 115–118 in this volume. See also note 192. 190 BGU XIII 2240 (Phylakitike Nesos, Arsinoite, 138–142 CE): Αἰλίῳ Νουµισιανῷ στρατηγῷ Ἀρσ̣ι̣νοίτου Θεµίστου καὶ Πολέµωνος µερίδων παρὰ Σώτου τοῦ Ἥρωνος· τῇ κ΄ τοῦ ἐνεστῶτος µηνὸς θὼθ Πτ... υἱὸς Ψενοβάστιος Ἀδήτ̣ου µεσ..̣η ἔτος ὢν πρεσβύτερος κώµης̣ Φυλ̣ακιτ̣ικῆς Νήσ̣ου αὐθάδως παρ(?)α̣τυχὼν(?) κ̣ατ᾽ ἐµ̣ὴ̣ν ἀπουσίαν ἐπῆλθ̣ε̣ ... ἐβάσταξε χιτῶνα ... κ̣αὶ παραγενάµενος καὶ καταλαβὼ̣ν ὀργιζόµενος τῇ περὶ αὐτὸν αὐθαδείᾳ ἐπέστησ̣α τὸν τῆς κώµης ἀρχέφοδον τὸν ἐπ̣έχοντα κ̣αὶ̣ µέχρ̣ι νῦν τὸν δεῖνα ... π̣αρ᾽ ἑαυτῷ· ὅθεν, κύριε, οὐ δυνάµενος̣ καθησυχάζε̣ιν, ἀξιῶ, ἐάν σοι δόξῃ, ἀ̣χ θῆναι αὐτὸν ἐπί σε̣.

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sence boldly set foot on my property, ... and carried off a garment ... Returning and catching him, and (outraged) by his boldness, I summoned the village police who have been guarding (the accused) until now. Since I am, my Lord, not at all (able) to remain calm, I request that he be brought before you (if you think fit) ...

The petitioner, who apprehended the thief red-handed, is filled with anger and makes that explicit in his petition. He also notes that he submits this petition because he cannot control his emotions and remain calm (καθησυχάζω). Secondly, in a petition to the strategos: the petitioner complains that he and his wife have been abused and that his pregnant wife had been brutally mishandled by a herdsman.191 He appeals not to pity, but rather to justice. The wording of the petition reveals anger. The petitioner notes that ... not wishing to pay me but to cheat me, acted insultingly to me and to my wife ... and besides this he also mercilessly inflicted on my wife Tanouris many blows ...

In both cases, the petitioners are from the middle to upper classes and seem to believe that their case and rightful redress could not be disputed.192 Their use of expressions such as ‘outraged,’ ‘boldness,’ ‘not able to remain calm,’ ‘insultingly,’ and ‘mercilessly inflicted’ justifies that these petitions display anger rather than sadness or worry. Notably, both petitioners also close their document by ‘asking’ the authorities for redress and not ‘begging’ or ‘requesting’ for it. 3.4 Emotion and Gender Before considering what papyri can convey about women in Egypt, their lifestyle, and the emotionally loaded situations in which they were involved,193 the issue of whether women composed their own documents, especially letters, should be addressed; if they did not, how likely is it for these letters to record the actual words of their supposed authors?194 Although it is still a matter of dispute whether levels of literacy were low in the ancient world,195 it is very probable that among women 191 P.Mich. V 228 (Tebtynis, 47 CE): ... περὶ ὧν ὀφείλει µοι ὀψωνίων καὶ µετρηµάτων οὗτος οὖν µὴ βουλόµενος ἀποδοῦναι ἀλλὰ καὶ διαπλανῆσαι ὕβριν µοι ἐπετέλεσεν καὶ τῇ γυναικί µου Τανούρει Ἡρωνᾶτος ἐν τῇ δηλουµένῃ Ἄρεως Κώµης. ἔτι δὲ καὶ ἔδωκεν τῇ γυναικὶ Τανούρει ἀφειδέστερα πληγὰς πλήρεις εἰς τὰ παρατυχόντα µέρη τοῦ σώµ̣ατος ἐγκύῳ οὔσῃ ὥστε παρ᾽ αὐτῇ ἐκτέτρωται αὐτὴν τὸ βρέφος νεκρὸν ὥστε αὐτὴν κατακλινῆ εἶναι καὶ κινδυνεύειν τοῦ ζῆν. διὸ ἀξιῶ γράψαι τοῖς τῆς Ὠξυρύνχων πρεσβυτέροις ἐκπέµψαι τὸν ἐνκαλούµενον ἐπὶ σὲ πρὸς τὴν ἐσοµένην ἐπέξοδον. εὐτύχει ... Cf. Rowlandson 1998, no. 229 and Lewis 1999, 79. Also see P.Oxy. XXXIII 2672 (Oxyrhynchus, 218 CE). 192 It should be noted that anger in Antiquity was associated with upper class persons. It was expected and tolerated if it was expressed by individuals of superior status; anger was thought to maintain social hierarchy. Konstan 2006, 73f.; Harris 2001, 140f. See also note 190. 193 For a history of the scholarship of women’s studies and papyrology, see Parca 2005. 194 Bagnall and Cribiore 2006, 6. For the chronological distribution of women’s letters from the Hellenistic period to Late Antiquity, see Bagnall and Cribiore 2006, 19–22. 195 In general, a low level of literacy in the ancient world is supported by Harris 1989, but these theories have been recently challenged by Pébarthe 2006.

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in Egypt reading and writing were rare and valued qualities.196 Roger Bagnall and Raffaella Cribiore197 add that some women, it turns out, were able to write with ease, but they are also those most likely to have been able to afford to own or hire an amanuensis. It is, ironically, those most capable of writing who are least likely to do so.

For instance, the letters of women in the archive of the strategos Apollonios (early second century CE) provide evidence for the employment of various scribes.198 Bagnall and Cribiore are confident, though, that despite the fact that a palaeographical study of letters cannot disclose which ones were composed or dictated word for word by women, a study of the language of letters can prove to be much more informative on this topic. Furthermore, we should keep in mind that many papyri involving women derive not from archives compiled by women themselves, but from archives collected by their men-folk, for men appear to have been the more ready to intersperse personal letters among their business papers.199 Nonetheless, in the case of those archives which were certainly compiled by women, it is evident that whether these women were literate or not, they were more likely than men to separate out private letters from their business papers, and to store the personal letters they wished to keep in different and perhaps more private places.200 This phenomenon could be due to emotional reasons, such as the feelings these women had for the family members and friends who sent them these letters. Ultimately these documents – letters,201 contracts, accounts, and petitions – serve to illustrate women as agents in Egyptian society and stress their visibility in many communal activities, whether in business ventures, religious pursuits, or the bringing-up of their children.202 One of the most stimulating subjects is that of ‘feminine weakness’, the way in which it is invoked by women in their documents, and how it reflects the perceptions of men about them and of women about

196 On literacy in the papyrological material see Rowlandson 2004, 158 and 160. Hanson 2005b notes that illiterate women probably depended on non-verbal signals, such as the arrangement of the sheets and the particular format of a specific document, in order to distinguish one document from another in their archives. See also Barton and Hall 2000, 3. 197 Bagnall and Cribiore 2006, 6. 198 Cribiore 2002. 199 Hanson 2005b. 200 Hanson 2005b. 201 Regarding specifically private letters composed by women, Cribiore 2002, 161, claims that they can often demonstrate ‘the existence of a group of women tied by strong bonds of love, friendship, loyalty and social relationships. ... In spite of notable differences in social and economic status and education, all these women were literate to a degree: their letters show that their world was penetrated through and through by the written word.’ 202 For cases in which women are involved in physical, verbal, economical, and psychological violence, see Parca 2002, 284–287. See also Eitrem and Amundsen 1954 for an edition of SB VI 9421 (Oxyrhynchus, third century CE), which is one such case.

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themselves.203 A lucid example is Didyme’s petition to the prefect against her uncles, whom she accuses of stealing part of her property. She explains:204 It is a difficult matter to be wronged by strangers, but to be wronged by kin is worst of all. My mother’s father Dioskoros had three children in all – Theon, Dioskoros, and Ploutarche, my mother – who inherited from him when he died. After some time, my mother also died, while I was underage and already an orphan. My lord prefect, you know well that the race of women is easy to despise, because of the weakness of our nature. For all things from the inheritance devolving upon us (for it was a single household and one family) were in the house there in which they were living – that is, the slaves, the immovables, the furnishings, and movable goods were all there undivided. ... Now, at any rate, I have recovered, due to your ever-alert spirit, and I am beginning to realise that I should approach no one but you, the benefactor and guardian of me and everyone else. Thus I hurry to ask you, since you have seen me bereft, to command, whenever it seems good to you, that my uncles, brothers of my mother, be compelled to return to me what belongs to me, as heiress of my mother, together with the increments from that time until now from the slaves and rents and everything else. I shall eternally confess my gratitude to your spirit, once I take back my inheritance from my mother through your trustiness and your nobility.

The verb ‘to despise’ (καταφρονέω) plays an integral part in the persuasion strategies of the female composers of these documents. Through exaggeration they try to manipulate the emotions of the addressee. As Ari Bryen205 notes, petitioners had to compose within the bounds of a certain legal genre and present legally actionable issues if magistrates were to take their complaints seriously. At the same time, their narratives had to be rhetorically effective, conveying sufficient pathos to substantiate petitioners’ claims that they did, in fact, need immediate legal attention.

Women petitioners often combined references to their ‘womanly weakness’ with the claim that they are orphaned or that they are responsible for orphaned 203 See pp. 317–327 in this volume. 204 P.Oxy. XXXIV 2713 (Oxyrhynchus, 297 CE): τὸ ὑπὸ ξένων ἀδικῖσθαι χα[λεπόν, ἀλλὰ τὸ ὑπὸ] καὶ ξυγγενῶν χαλεπώτατον. γεγόνασιν τῷ παν[τ]ὶ̣ [πάππ]ῳ τῷ κατὰ [µη]τέρα ∆ιοσκόρῳ παῖδες τρῖς, Θέων καὶ ∆ιόσκορος καὶ Πλουτάρχη ἐµὴ µήτ[ηρ, ἐ]φʼ οἷς κληρονόµοις τὸν βίον µετήλλαξεν· ἀλλὰ χρόνου µετοξὺ γενοµένου τ̣[ὸ χρε]ῶν ἀποδέδωκεν ἡ ἐµὴ µήτηρ, ἐµοῦ καταδεοῦς τὴν ἡλικίαν καὶ ἐν ὀρφ[ανίᾳ] καθεστώσης· ἄµεινον δὲ ἐπίστασε, ἡγεµὼν δέσποτα, ὅτι τὸ γυναικεῖον γ[ένος] εὐκαταφρόνητον πέφυκεν διὰ τὸ περὶ ἡµᾶς τῆς φύσεως ἀσθενές· πά̣[ ντα] γὰρ τὰ καταλειφθέντα ἑαυτοῖς ἀπὸ τῆς προσπεσούσης κληρονοµί[ας] ἑνὸς ὄντος οἴκου καὶ µιᾶς ξυνγενείας, ἐπʼ αὐτῆς τῆς οἰκίας ἦν ἐν ᾗ̣ [ἐκεῖ]σαι συνδίετοι ἦσαν – λέγω δὴ ἀνδροπόδων καὶ οἰκοπέδων καὶ ἐνδοµ[ενίας] καὶ κεινουµένων ἀδειαιρέτων ὄντων· ... νῦν γοῦν ἀνασφήλασα, τῆς σῆς ἐπαγρύπ[νου] τύχης συναραµένης, ἀρχο̣[µένη τε] ἐµαυτὴν γνωρίζιν οὐδενὶ ἐπανε[λθεῖν] ἤ σοι τῷ ἐµῷ καὶ πάντ̣ω̣ν̣ [εὐεργέτ]ῃ καὶ κηδεµόνι ἔσπευσα δεηθῆναί σου ὅπ[ως νο]ήσας µε στερουµένην κελεύ[σῃ]ς̣ [ὁ]π̣ό̣τε ἄν σοι δ[οκῇ] ἐπαναγκασθῆνα[ι τοὺς] πρὸς µητρός µου θείους τὰ ἐπιβάλλοντά µοι µέρ[η ἀ]πὸ διαδοχῆς τῆς µη[τρὸς] εἰς ἐµὲ καταντήσασα ἀποκατάστησέ µοι µετὰ καὶ τ[ῶ]ν ἐκ τότε µέχρει νῦν δ̣[ιαφό]ρων τῶν ἀνδραπόδων καὶ ἐνοικίων καὶ τῶν λοι[πῶ]ν πάντων καὶ ἐξῆς π̣[ίστε]ως καὶ καλοκαιαγαθείας τὰ µητρῷα ἀπολαβοῦσα διὰ π[α]ντὸς τῇ τύχῃ σου χ[άριτας] ὁµολογήσω. Rowlandson 1998, no. 75. Cf. Grubbs 2002, 53f.; Kotsifou 2009, 358f. 205 Bryen 2008, 182f.

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children. Orphanhood seems to be used primarily by women in order to provoke pity. They usually commence their petition by stating that they know that the prefect is a just judge and a protector of all. Then they describe the dispute, usually in great detail, assuming that the more details they provide the more credibility they lend to their case. Furthermore, in order to provoke the pity of the prefect, they employ strong language such as the verb ‘to despise’ (καταφρονέω) or make repeated references to their unfortunate children and their weak feminine nature. Despite what is stated in these petitions, ultimately these women came from wellto-do families and may not have been as vulnerable as they claim. Most interestingly, statements in Roman Law about feminine nature are openly used to these women petitioners’ advantage in their legal actions.206 Finally, by presenting themselves as unprotected they also oblige the prefect to become their protector. Additionally, a small dossier of documents (a will, an account, and a petition)207 that refer to Berenike, a business woman, are extremely informative for the divergent ways men viewed and treated women, and the emotions they associated with them. This petition (see p. 46 note 41) refers to the disinherited children of her husband and how they were deceiving their mother because of their evil ways. If we only had this petition, we would certainly have thought that Berenike was, indeed, a poor woman who could not run her property properly due to her sons’ bad influence. Fortunately we also have the will and the account. The will is that of Berenike and her husband. It is clearly stated in this document that the children are not disinherited but that Berenike’s husband simply preferred his wife to take over the family business after his death. Furthermore, the account proves that Berenike was a successful business-woman, well capable of handling large amounts of money. Thus, it seems that Apion, the petitioner against Berenike, is misrepresenting or misinterpreting the facts. He assumes that a ‘weak’ woman would not have been able to resist his demands unless she was manipulated by male relatives, such as her sons.208 It is safe to say that his contempt for Berenike, although not stated in the petition, is demonstrated by the petitioner’s actions. This is yet another example of how the nature of papyrological data, i.e. archives and dossiers, can uniquely highlight aspects of social and emotional interactions.

206 For more examples of petitions by women who refer to their weak womanly nature and an analysis of these texts, see Kotsifou 2009, 258–262. In her analysis of P.Oxy. II 237 (Oxyrhynchus, 186 CE), Parca 2002, 296, points out that the law ‘... not only unequivocally acknowledges but also legally validates a woman’s right to emotional happiness.’ The document is a petition from a daughter against her father who was trying to forcefully take her out of her happy marriage. 207 P.Oxy. III 493, VI 985, and XXII 2342, respectively. The dossier is discussed in van Minnen 1998. 208 Van Minnen 1998, 70.

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5.3 Papyri and the Elucidation of Familial Emotional Communities Private letters from Egypt offer the reader a detailed insight into ‘emotional communities’, notably that of a family, extended or not. Letters from parents to their children, from children to their parents, and among siblings themselves reveal what they presented as valuable or harmful to their family and the type of emotional expression they expected, encouraged, or tolerated under varied circumstances. With the three letters of Paniskos to his wife quoted at the beginning of this chapter (pp. 39–41), we already caught a glimpse of marital relations and strifes.209 This section will now discuss certain issues that are evident in papyri and relate to the emotional attachment of parents to their children, and the reciprocal relationships between parents and their grown-up offspring. Private letters among family members offer numerous occurrences of parental and familial affection towards children.210 Tenderness, elation, and consequently worry about one’s well-being is expressed with both small and grander articulations. Some of the examples are widely known while others have never been discussed in the context of the study of emotions. In a letter from a daughter to her mother, the writer notes that she is sending the addressee various articles and specifies that she is also sending ‘…a little cup for little Theonas and another for the daughter of your sister’.211 In a different communication, between a soldier and his wife, the sender worries about family and debts and among other things he tells his wife: ‘As for the child, keep an eye on him as you would on an oil lamp, since I am worried about you.’212 The use of a simile (‘like an oil lamp’) in this and in similar texts enhances the expression of affection. The longing for a child is also visible in the letter of a woman to her daughter. Ptollis’ mother sends her a letter to congratulate her on her newborn daughter. The mother expresses her happiness in being informed that her daughter delivered her child in safety. She asserts that she prayed to the gods on a daily basis for that. This demonstrates the mother’s great concern and fear for her daughter’s life. Given that childbirth often resulted in the death of the mother or the child or both, this feeling seems quite justified and not exaggerated. The relationship of the grandmother to her new granddaughter is also indicated by the

209 Some more examples are: P.Petr. III 42 H (8f) (Arsinoite nome, 262–259 BCE); UPZ I 59 (Memphis, 168 BCE); P.Dubl. 16 (second or third century CE); PSI VIII 895 (Oxyrhynchus, late third to early fourth century CE). 210 In the earlier section on formulas and papyri, we discuss the role and importance of referring to children in the opening and closing of a letter; and in the section of variables between the eras, we mentioned the frequency with which children are associated with the saying ‘may the evil eye not touch them’ in letters. For an updated bibliography on the Roman and Late Antique family and emotional attachments among its members, see Kotsifou 2009, 340–344. 211 P.Fay. 127 (Bakchias, Arsinoite nome, second or third century CE). 212 New Docs. I 13 (reign of Trajan): τὸ παιδὶν ἐπείµβλεψον ὡς λύχνον, ἐπιδὰν ἀγωνιῶι περὶ ὑµῶν.

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fact that the grandmother suggested a name for the child and urged her daughter not to delay the naming.213 The voice of children can also be heard in these letters, albeit not as frequently, and it can express how much children depended on their family’s fondness. A boy, for example, writes to his father to tell him how upset and angry he is because the father did not take him with him to the city. He threatens never to speak to him again. At least, he had better send him some gifts.214 In a letter that demonstrates the harsher side of children’s lives in antiquity, a mother complains to Zenon about the mistreatment of her son during his apprenticeship. She describes the great extent to which her son was physically abused to the point that she had to take him back to their house, and how she has not been paid for a whole year for the child’s labours. She starts her account quite forcibly by expressing her feelings of alarm as she had heard that her boy was being mistreated.215 By contrast, in some communications we may observe emotional detachment, disinterest, and even abuse. A famous case is a letter from Oxyrhynchus (1 BCE),216 with which a husband instructs his wife not to worry about his well-being. He then expresses his concern and caring about their child. He concludes by telling her that when she gives birth, to keep the child if it is male and to expose it if it is female.217 As we mentioned previously, giving one’s child a specific name can be a sign of hope or fear, but simultaneously, it was very common to name a child after a 213 P.Münch. III 57 (second century BCE). Cf. Bagnall and Cribiore 2006, 109; Rowlandson 1998, no. 225. Noteworthy is also P.Flor. I 93 (Antinoe, 569 CE), a divorce contract that leaves property also to an unborn child; see Frankfurter 2006, 49. BGU II 665 (Arsinoite nome, first century CE) also displays in detail the anxiety felt by two men as the wife of one of them was about to have a child and he could not be with her. Cf. Lewis 1999, 80. 214 P.Oxy. I 119 (Oxyrhynchus, second/third century CE). The phraseology of the letter is so childish that quite probably it reflects the feelings of the boy. On the topic of difficult children, we should also mention P.Mich. III 219 (Koptos, 296 CE). It is a letter by the same Paniskos that we have referred to before (pp. 39–41) but this time instead of his wife it concerns his daughter. He requests his brother to care and provide for his daughter. Interestingly enough, Paniskos stresses to his brother to impose his commands on her ‘gently even if she contradicts you’. We know from Paniskos’ other letters to his wife that he was used to being contradicted and to dealing with difficult women (both his wife and mother), so he obviously expected his daughter to act similarly. 215 P.Col. III 6 (Philadelphia, 257 BCE). Cf. Bagnall and Cribiore 2006, 100. For an epigraphic parallel see Jordan 2000 (SEG L 276); cf. Harvey 2007; Chaniotis 2012, 303. It is a letter from a boy who complains to this family about the abuse he suffers in his workplace and requests to be removed as soon as possible. See p. 98 n. 39 in this volume. 216 P.Oxy. IV 744. Cf. Rowlandson 1998, no. 230. 217 For the fine nuances of the wording of this letter and the complications in understanding exactly what this letter refers to, see West 1998. To contrast these two documents, see UPZ I 2 (Memphis, 163 BCE), which is a petition to the king regarding an uncaring mother who cheated her young daughter out of her circumcision and marriage money and left her at the care of the personnel of the Serapeion in Memphis.

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grandparent, a parent or another family member. So, for example, a father writes to his mother that if his child had been a boy, he would have been named after his brother, but since ‘it was a little girl, she was called after your name’.218 A third-century CE letter reveals a conflict between what could be expected from mothers and grandmothers regarding the appropriate way to take care of a child, and the specific expectations associated with the high status of a woman. A woman writes to her son-in-law about her daughter and in a firm tone specifies to him: ‘I hear that you are compelling her to nurse. If she wants, let the infant have a nurse, for I do not permit my daughter to nurse.’219 This letter can either demonstrate a conflict between affection for a child and status expectations or indicate that the grandmother was emotionally detached from her grandchild and more concerned about her daughter’s well-being. It also relates to the reasons and the time a mother could feel ‘compelled’ to breast-feed her child. Although we cannot answer this question with certainty, this text still sheds light on the context of wetnursing contracts. An under-studied topic is that of the reciprocal rapport between parents and their grown-up children. Quite often children express great gratitude even for small items received or for a small assistance. Even the gift of a chair could be the grounds for a very emotional thank-you letter.220 Furthermore, the concept of gerotrophia, the child nourishing an old parent in return for all the care he or she received during infancy, was very strong in the Greek world.221 The archive of letters of Satornila and her sons is representative of this tradition.222 The letters are mainly sent from Sempronios to his brothers and mother. Sempronios repeatedly insists to his brothers that it is their duty to take care of their mother and not distress her in any way. The second letter best represents these feelings:223 218 P.Mil. II 84 (fourth century CE). Cf. Rowlandson 1998, no. 226; Rowlandson 2004, 156. Another example is BGU II (Arsinoite nome, second century CE), a letter from a soldier to his family where we read that both his son and nephew are named after him. 219 P.Lond. III 951 V: [ἤκουσα] ὅτι θηλάζειν αὐτὴν ἀναγκάζεις. εἰ θέλει, τὸ βρέφος ἐχέτω τροφόν, ἐγὼ γὰρ οὐκ ἐπιτρέπω τῇ θυγατρί µου θηλάζειν; cf. Bagnall and Cribiore 2006, 213. Also see, Masciardi and Montevecchi 1984, 153 and C.Pap.Gr.31. 220 P.Oxy. VI 963 (Oxyrhynchus, second/third CE); cf. Bagnall and Cribiore 2006, 333. Understandably, daughters depended on their parents for a lot more than the acquisition of furniture. P.Tebt. II 334 (Tebtynis, 200/201 CE) is a petition from a woman who notes that her husband started seriously harassing her after her parents died and she was left alone to fend for herself. Cf. Yiftach-Firanko 2001, 1333. 221 Rowlandson 1998, 144 no. 2. In P.Oxy.VIII 1121 (Oxyrhynchus, 295 CE) a daughter states it clearly about her mother: ἡ προκειµένη µου µήτηρ Τεχῶσις νόσῳ καταβλ̣ηθεῖσα κατὰ τὴν ἐµαυτῆς µετριότητα ταύτην ἐνοσοκόµησα καὶ ὑπηρέτησα καὶ οὐκ ἐπαυσάµην τὰ πρέποντα γείνεσθαι ὑπὸ τέκνων γονεῦσι ἀναπληροῦσα. 222 For a discussion of the archive and translation of some of the letters, see Rowlandson 1998, 143–147. 223 Sel.Pap. I 121 (Alexandria, ca. 100–150 CE): Σεµπρώνιος Μαξίµωι τῷ ἀδελφῷ πλεῖστα χαίρειν. πρὸ τῶν ὅλων ἐρρῶσθαί σε εὔχοµαι. µετέλαβον, ὅτι βαρέως δουλεύετε τὴν κυρίαν ἡµῶν µητέρα. ἐρωτηθείς, ἄδελφε γλυκύτατε, ἐν µηδενὶ αὐτὴν λύπει. εἰ δέ τις τῶν ἀδελφ̣ῶν ἀντιλέγει αὐτῇ, σὺ ὀφείλεις αὐτοὺς κολαφίζειν. ἤδη γὰρ πατὴρ ὀφείλει καλεῖ-

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Sempronios to Maximos his brother, many greetings. Before all I pray for your health. I learned that you are treating our revered mother harshly. Please, dearest brother, do not distress her in anything. If anyone of the brothers talks back to her, you ought to box their ears. For now you ought to be called father. I know that without my letter you are able to please her. But do not take amiss the advice of my letter. For we ought to reverence her who bore us as a god, especially when she is so good. This I have written to you, brother, since I know the sweetness of dear parents. Please write to me about your health. Farewell, brother.

A letter from the Hellenistic period echoes these sentiments. Philonides is worried about his father Kleon and encourages him to retire from his post so he can take care of him. Philonides clearly displays his emotions of caring and affection towards his father by mentioning the verb ‘to care/protect’ (προστατέω) twice in his letter and by stressing that the act of caring for his father would be something worthy of both Kleon (and consequently worthy of Kleon’s deeds and good upbringing of his children) and of Philonides himself.224 The repetitions continue as Philonides describes in detail all the ways he would like to take care of his father, during his liftetime and after his death; he twice states that he would show all due honours to Kleon after his death, and also uses καλός twice in these sentences. All of these wordings are employed by Philonides in order to underline the sincerity and depth of his feelings. Helplessness in old age is undeniably the issue that disheartened parents emphasise in their petitions when they request redress from their children who are not offering them their dues. A certain Ktesikles opens his petition to the king by claiming225 [I] am wronged by Dionysios and Nike, my daughter. For though I raised her, my own daughter, and educated her and brought her to maturity, when I was stricken with bodily illhealth and was losing my eyesight, she was not disposed to furnish me with any of the necessities of life.

His daughter was refusing to take care of him. According to Greek and Egyptian law, Nike was obliged to do that. Ktesikles starts by saying that he had fulfilled all his duties as a father. He not only had brought up his daughter but had also educated her. Then his tone and feelings are those of neglect, and of disappointment as he explains that when he found himself old and sick, his daughter did not carry σθαι. ἐπίσταµαι, ὅτι̣ χωρὶς τῶν γραµµάτων µου δυνατὸς̣ εἶ, αὐτῇ ἀρέσαι. ἀλλὰ µὴ βαρέως ἔχε µου τὰ̣ γράµµατα νουθετοῦντά σε. ὀφείλοµεν γὰρ σέβεσθαι τὴν τεκοῦσαν ὡς θε̣όν, µάλιστα τοιαύτην οὖσαν ἀγαθήν. ταῦτά σοι ἔγραψα, ἄδελφε, ἐπιστάµενος τὴν γλυκασίαν τῶν κυρίων γονέων. καλῶς ποιήσεις γράψας µοι περὶ τῆς σωτηρίας ὑµῶν. ἔρρωσό µοι, ἄδελφε. Translation and commentary: Winter 1933, 48f. 224 P.Petr. III 42 H (5) (Arsinoite nome?, 252 BCE). Cf. Lewis 1986, 44f. 225 P.Enteux. 26 (Magdola, 221 BCE). Cf. Bagnall and Derow 2004, no. 152. For similar complaints towards an ungrateful nephew see an inscription from Axiotta (SEG LIII 1344; Chaniotis 2012 and p. 222 in this volume). Part of it reads: ‘For the son of my brother Demainetos made me his captive. For I had neglected my own affairs and helped you, as if you were my own son. But you locked me in and kept me a captive, as if I were a criminal and not your paternal uncle.’

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out her duties and take care of him. We notice here an association between age and emotion. The father also describes his daughter’s emotion towards him as that of loathing; he finds that it is his old age and ill health that provoke this emotion in her. The letter of Haychis to Zenon is also relevant. Haychis was anxious because her daughter had been helping her run her brewery; now that she is gone, Haychis is suffering loss. In order to instil pity in Zenon and get him to help her, Haychis continues with a number of quite probable exaggerations and portrayals of feelings of suffering, neglect, and worry. Ultimately, despite the emotions of insecurity that Haychis expresses in her letter, given the all-commanding and even bitter tone and in particular her closing request that the girl be returned to her regardless of the daughter’s wish, scholars have been led quite rightly to view Haychis as not so helpless, and even to go as far as to suggest that the mother was treating the daughter as her own property.226 It may be significant for the socio-cultural attitudes towards women that in both papyri the daughters are portrayed by a mother and a father respectively as naive and impressionable, thus easily persuaded to run away with inappropriate suitors at a moment’s notice without considering the irritation they could cause.227 Since we do not have as many documents complaining about men, this type of letters and petitions may indicate that it was self-evident that men provided for their old parents. Maryline G. Parca228 uses documents like the ones just quoted to note that there is more to violence than assault and battery, but the emotional distress which undoubtedly lay behind and oftentimes motivated complaints and petitions leaves but few traces in the papyrological documentation ... Compensation for profound anxiety and its sequels was wholly unheard of in ancient Egypt.

Such a statement holds much truth, but we must consider that psychological abuse was a two-way ‘prerogative’. Parents could definitely also exercise it on their children, and a letter sent by Terentianos to his father is a superb illustration of this.229 With this letter Terentianos seeks to win his father’s consent to a plan for bringing a woman into his household. Anticipating strong opposition, however, he redoubles his affirmation of filial obedience. He starts his letter by demonstrating his affection for his father as he mentions to him that he offers prayers to the gods 226 P.Lond. VII 1976 (Philadelphia, 253 BCE). Cf. Rowlandson 1998, no. 209; Bagnall and Cribiore 2006, 102. 227 On the discontent of mothers, also see W.Chr. 131 (fourth century CE), where a woman describes with disgust and frustration the behaviour of two girls she was probably taking care of: ‘... If you want to draw conclusions about the fornications of your daughters, do not question me but the Elders of the church, how the two of them leapt up saying, “We want men” and how Loukra was found beside her lover, making herself a courtesan. Therefore, they are full of grudge because we handed them to Soucharos ...’ Translation in Bagnall and Cribiore 2006, 397. See also Winter 1933, 157–159, with commentary. 228 Parca 2002, 293f. 229 P.Mich.VIII 476 (Karanis, early second century CE).

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for his father’s good health on a daily basis. He also notes that his bride will take better care of his father than of him. With such an exaggeration of his emotions of concern and affection, he attempted to secure his father’s approval. This exaggeration and the repeated assurances that he will make sure his bride will be an appropriate one are also signs of his eagerness to marry. Terentianos promises his father that the woman he will bring as his bride will certainly offer satisfaction to her father-in-law. Finally, in order to fully drive his point home and to make sure that his father understands that he will never go against his wishes, Terentianos remarks that if his father wishes so, he will never marry! In the previous section, we saw that the verb ‘to despise’ (καταφρονέω) is crucial in the persuasion strategies of petitioners. In the case of familial private letters, the verb to consider is ‘to be distressed or worried’ (ἀγωνιάω). Yet again, this verb is often used in the context of exaggeration and expresses a will to manipulate the emotions of the addressee.230 In such letters, anxiety is primarily related to distance between family members, health issues and dire financial straits. These types of letters are numerous and a fifth-century CE Christian letter will suffice at this point.231 A husband sends his wife (addressed as ‘my lady’) a letter filled with anxiety. He has serious and urgent debts to settle so he asks her to pledge their little slave as soon as possible. The writer clearly states his anxiety and grief but also his hope that God will care for them. Apparently in this letter there is no relation between gender and emotions. Both men and women may equally express the same emotions of distress, frustration, fear, and caring when it comes to issues of their household. They equally use and abuse their feelings in their attempts to achieve a desired goal. 3.5 Papyri and the Physical Manifestation of Emotions In petitions and letters, more often than not we have vivid descriptions of a physical manifestation of emotions. Besides the obvious acts of sheer violence,232 these manifestations mainly include dramatic hand gestures or the use of someone’s nose (via snorting and heavy breathing) in order to indicate anger and contempt. These descriptions are usually found in petitions. In private letters we have the equally remarkable reference to someone’s neglect of his personal hygiene in order to express grief. Starting with the petitions, it is noteworthy that the nose of a person could be the locus of anger and contempt.233 The first petition concerns a violent encounter

230 For the use of some words as ‘acoustic signals’ for emotional arousal see pp. 114 and 229 in this volume. 231 P.Amh. II 144. 232 For several cases of tearing someone’s clothes, for example, in accounts of physical violence, see Parca 2002, 286 note 11. 233 Bryen 2008, 193f. For the ancient Greek literary sources that refer to the nose as an index of mood, specifically of contempt, anger, distress and terror, see Gow 1951.

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in which a woman was involved due to a dispute over some property (5 May 381 CE).234 She specifies that her opponent spoke to my face through his nose, wishing to end my life. And if I had not obtained help from Pamoun my fellow villager, he would long since have reached (the end) of my life.

Similarly, in a document that was probably part of a dossier of divorce proceedings, a woman describes – along with many more graphic details – that during one of the aggressive disputes she had with her husband, he angrily attacked her ‘... speaking many terms of abuse into my face and through his nose’. 235 In his discussion of this papyrus, John Winter notes that all the detailed descriptions of abuse, besides lending ‘a vivid reality to ancient life,’ also indicate that ‘only the indignant memory of an angry and tortured soul could have added the supreme touch about talking through the nose’.236 Finally, a fifth-century petition also refers to the nose of a person as the organ he used to express his contempt. The petitioner claims237 238

and in fact yesterday, I had (so-and-so) flung before the kephalaiotes for collecting a certain sum of money. When I attempted to collect from this man, he snorted his contempt for me and wanted to attack me.

Furthermore, petitions present accounts of people expressing their anger with extreme physical movements – that is, with hand gestures – and actions. Physically attacking someone, and especially stripping that person of his clothes, was meant to humiliate the person attacked. Additionally, if the assault happened in public in the presence of various witnesses, then the shame and insult were even greater.239 Interestingly, we even have some cases where gestures, especially the ones asso-

234 P.Mich. XVIII 793: λέγων εἰς πρ̣όσω̣π̣όν µ̣ου δ̣ιὰ τῆς ἑαυτ̣ο̣ῦ ῥινὸς βουλ̣όµενο̣ς µὲ τοῦ ζῆν̣ ἀπαλλάξαι, καὶ εἰ µὴ βοηθείας τε̣τυχήκειν ὑπὸ Παµοῦν ὁµοκωµήτου µου πάλαι ἂν ε̣ἰς ψ̣υ̣χ̣ήν µου ἔφθακεν. For a commentary, see Bryen 2008, 193f. 235 P.Oxy. VI 903 (Oxyrhynchus, fourth century CE): πολλὰ ἀσελγήµατα λέγων εἰς πρόσωπόν µου καὶ διὰ τῆς ῥινὸς αὐτοῦ. Cf. Rowlandson 1998, no. 153; Winter 1933, 126f.; see also above p. 48 n. 54. 236 Winter 1933, 127. Cf. Bryen 2008, 194. 237 P.Col. VIII 242 (Arsinoite nome): καὶ γὰρ ἐν τῇ ἐχθὲς ῥιφθείς µοι η... πα̣ρ̣ὰ τῷ κεφαλαιωτῇ πρὸς µεθοδίαν φανεροῦ κέρµατος τ̣οῦτον ζητήσας µ̣εθοδεῦσαι περιερρόγχασέν µοι καὶ ἐβουλήθη µοι ἐπελθεῖν. Rea 1994, 271, notes that the rare verb used in this papyrus seems to be related to ῥέγκος or ῥέγχος, a noise made in the nose or the throat, in this case a sneer of some sort. 238 An official involved in the process of requisitioning supplies; exacting money; and in charge of transporting grain from a granary to a port. See Rea 1994, 270. 239 Bryen 2008, 195f. See above p. 57, on P.Enteux. 79 that refers to an Egyptian woman who physically and verbally assaulted a Greek, including stripping him of his cloak. See also the comments of Chaniotis 2004b, 250, on a petition of a Jew, who was insulted by a Greek in the presence of non-Jews (Herakleopolites, 135 BCE; Cowey und Maresch 2001, 35–39 no. 1).

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ciated with magical spells, are connected with the physical manifestation of malice and envy. A second-century CE petition illustrates this point:240 To Hierax also called Nemesion, strategos of the division of Herakleides of the Arsinoite nome, from Gemellos also called Horion, son of Gaios Apolinarios, Antinoite. I appealed, my lord, by petition to the most illustrious prefect, Aemilius Saturninus, informing him of the attack made upon me by a certain Sotas, who held me in contempt because of my weak vision and wished himself to get possession of my property with violence and arrogance, and I received his sacred subscription authorizing me to appeal to his excellency the epistrategos. Then Sotas died and his brother Iulios, also acting with the violence characteristic of them, entered the fields that I had sown and carried away a substantial quantity of hay; not only that, but he also cut dried olive shoots and heath plants from my olive grove near the village of Kerkesoucha. When I came there at the time of the harvest, I learned that he had committed these transgressions. In addition, not content, he again trespassed with his wife and a certain Zenas, having with them an infant (brephos), intending to hem in my cultivator with malice/envy (phthonos) so that he should abandon his labour after having harvested in part from another allotment of mine, and they themselves gathered in the crops. When this happened, I went to Iulius in the company of officials, in order that these matters might be witnessed. Again, in the same manner, they threw the same infant (brephos) toward me, intending to hem me in also with malice/envy (phthonos), in the presence of Petesouchos and Ptollas, elders of the village of Karanis who are exercising also the functions of the village secretary, and of Sokras the assistant, and while the officials were there, Iulius, after he had gathered in the remaining crops from the fields, took the infant (brephos) away to his house. These acts I made matters of public record through the same officials and the collectors of grain taxes of the same village. Wherefore of necessity I submit this petition and request that 240 P.Mich. VI 423 (Karanis, 197 CE): Ἱέρακι τῷ καὶ Νεµεσίωνι στρα(τηγῷ) Ἀρσι(νοΐτου) Ἡρακ(λείδου) µερίδος παρὰ Γεµέλλου τοῦ καὶ Ὡρίωνος Γαΐου Ἀπολιναρίου Ἀντινοέως. ἐνέτυχον, κύριε, διὰ βιβλιδίου τῷ λαµπροτάτῳ ἡγεµόνι Αἰµιλίῳ Σατουρνείννῳ δηλῶν τὴν γενοµένην µοι ἐπέλευσιν ὑπὸ Σώτου τινὸς καταφρονήσαντος τῆς περὶ τὴν ὄψιν µου ἀσθενείας βουλοµένου αὐτοῦ τὰ ὑπάρχοντά µου κατασχεῖν βίᾳ καὶ αὐθαδίᾳ χρωµενος καὶ ἔσχον ἱερὰν ὑπογραφὴν ἐντυ̣χεῖν τῷ κρατίστῳ ἐπιστρατήγῳ· τοῦ δὲ Σωτου τελευτήσαντος, ὁ τούτου ἀδελφὸς Ἰούλιος καὶ αὐτὸς τὴν περὶ αὐτου βίᾳ χρησάµενος ἐπῆλθεν τοῖς ἐσπαρµένοις ὑπʼ ἐµοῦ ἐδάφεσει καὶ ἐβάστασε οὐκ ὀλίγον χόρτον οὐ µόνον ἀλλὰ καὶ ἐξέκοψε ἀπὸ τοῦ ὑπάρχοντός µου ἐ[λ]αιῶνος ὄντος περὶ κώµην Κερκεσοῦχα ἐλαέϊνα φυτὰ ἀπεξηραµµένα καὶ ἐρίκινα, ἅπερ παραγενάµενος ἐνθάδε πρὸς τὸν καιρὸν τῆς συνκοµιδῆς ἔµαθον ταῦτα ὑπὸ αὐτοῦ πεπρᾶχθαι, ἐφʼ οἷς µὴ ἀρκεσθεὶς πάλειν ἐπῆλθεν µετὰ τῆς γυναικὸς αὐτοῦ καὶ Ζηνᾶ τινοςς ἔχοντες βρέφος βουλόµενοι τὸν γεωργόν µου φθώνῳ περικλῖσαι ὥστε καταλεῖψε τὴν ἰδ[ί]αν γεωργίαν µετὰ τὸ θερίσαι ἐκ µέρους ἀπὸ ἑτέρου µου κλήρου, καὶ αὐτοὶ σσυνεκοµίσαντο. τούτων γενοµένων ἐγενόµην πρὸς τὸν Ἰούλιον µετὰ [δ]ηµοσίων ὅπως αὐτὰ ταῦτα ἐνµάρτυρον γένηται. πάλιν τῷ αὐτῷ τρόπῳ προσσ[έ]ριψάν µοι [τὸ] αὐτὸ βρέφος βουλόµενοι καὶ µε φθόνῳ περικλῖσαι πα[ρό]ντων Πετεσούχου καὶ Πτολλᾶ πρεσβυτέρων κώµης Καρανίδος διαδεχο[µ]ένων καὶ τὰ κατὰ τὴν κοµµωγραµµατείαν καὶ Σωκρᾶ ὑπηρέτου, καὶ τῶν δηµοσίων παρόντων τὸ βρέφος ὁ Ἰούλιος συνκοµισάµενος τὰ περιγενόµενα ἐκ τῶν ἐδαφῶν γένη ἀπηνέγκατο εἰς τὴν οἰκίαν αὐτοῦ, ἅπερ φανερὰ ἐποίησα διά τε τῶν αὐτῶν δηµοσίων καὶ πρακτόρων σιτικῶν τῆς αὐτῆς κώµης. διὸ κατὰ τὸ ἀναγκαῖον ἐπιδίδωµι καὶ ἀξιῶ τάδε τὰ βιβλίδια ἐν καταχωρισµῷ γενεσθο πρὸς τὸ µένειν µοι τὸν λόγον πρὸς αὐτοὺς ἐπὶ τοῦ κρατίστου ἐπιστρατήγου περὶ τῶν ὑπʼ αὐτῶν τετολµηµένων καὶ τῶν ὑπὲρ τῶν ἐδαφῶν δηµοσίων ἐκφορίων τῷ κυριακῷ λόγῳ διὰ τὸ αὐτοὺς οὐ δεόντως συνκεκοµικέναι. Cf. Rowlandson 1998, no. 107; Lewis 1999, 79.

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it be kept on file so that I may retain the right to plead against them before his excellency the epistrategos concerning the outrages perpetrated by them and the public rents of the fields due to the imperial treasury because they wrongfully did the harvesting.

Gemellus reports being harassed by two brothers who wanted to get hold of his property. According to the petition, the accused party publicly displays its contempt and envy by performing magic and by repeatedly using a brephos that was probably a still-born baby. Notably, the gesture of throwing the brephos again and again shamelessly demonstrates the perpetrators’ envy, while simultaneously this same gesture instils such fear in Gemellos and the public authorities he has brought along to help him that they are rendered completely incapable of moving or acting in any way, and thus allow the accused to walk away unobstructed with the stolen goods.241 Finally, we will refer to four private letters, which mention the neglect of one’s hygiene as a demonstration of someone’s grief. Grief and neglect are mainly expressed among family members and regard actions that have caused pain or worry to each other. A son writes to his mother:242 I wish you to know that I did not expect that you would come up to the metropolis. On this account I did not go to the city. Furthermore, I was ashamed to come to Karanis as I am going about in rags. I write to you that I am naked. I beseech you, mother, be reconciled to me. For the rest, I know what I have brought upon myself. I have been punished in every way. I have sinned.

In the long letter of a son to his father regarding his trials and tribulations during his studies, the son, wishing to express regret, fear, and grief because of some misconducts on his part, notes that ‘it is depression about this situation that forces us to neglect our bodies’.243 In addition, when Eudaimonis writes to her son about some family business, wishing to note her extreme worry and fear about some troubles her son is facing, she claims that I have already done my part, and have neither bathed nor worshipped the gods through fear 244 about your unfinished business, if indeed it is still unfinished.

241 Aubert 1989, 437f.; Frankfurter 2006, 41. 242 BGU III 846 (Arsinoite nome, second century CE): γιγνώσκειν σε θέλω, ὅτι̣ οὐχ ἤλπι̣ζον ὅτι ἀναβαίνεις εἰς τὴν µητρόπολιν, χάριν τούτου οὐδ᾽ ἐγὼ εἰσῆλθα εἰς τὴν πόλιν ... δὲ ἐλθεῖν εἰς Καρανίδα ὅτι σαπρῶς περιπατῶ. ἔγραψά σοι, ὅτι γυµνός εἰµι. παρακαλῶ σε, µήτηρ, διαλάγητί µοι. λοιπὸν οἶδα τί ἐµαυτῷ παρέσχηµαι, πεπαίδευµαι καθ᾽ ὃν δὴ τρόπον, οἶδα ὅτι ἡµάρτηκα. Translation in Winter 1933, 106. 243 P.Oxy. XVIII 2190 (Oxyrhynchus, c. 100 CE): ἡ δ᾽ ἐπὶ τούτοις ἀθυµία ἐστὶν ἡ ὀλιγωρεῖν τοῦ σώµατος ἡ̣µ̣ᾶς ἀναγκ̣άζουσα. Cf. Hutchinson 2007, 25, and the previous reference to this letter (p. 62). 244 P.Flor. III 332 (Hermopolis, early second century CE): ἤδη µὲν τὸ ἐµὸν ἐποίησα, καὶ οὔτε ἐλουσάµην οὔτε προσεκύνησα θεοὺς φοβουµένη σου τὸ̣ µετέωρον, εἴπερ ἐστὶ µετέωρον, µὴ τοίνυν γενέσθω µετέωρον. Cf. Rowlandson 1998, no. 96; Bagnall and Cribiore 2006, 147f. For more comments on the context of Eudaimonis’ letter and her attitude towards the gods, see Cribiore 2002, 154.

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Ultimately, similar sentiments and similar manifestations of them are recorded in a letter, which is a plea of a husband eager to take back the wife who has left him. Among other things Serenos explains to Isidora: I want you to know that ever since you left me I have been in mourning weeping at night and mourning during the day. Since I bathed with you on 12 Phaophi I have not bathed or anointed myself up till 12 Hathyr, and you sent me letters that could move a stone, that is how 245 much your words have moved me.

4 CONCLUSIONS Throughout this chapter we have discussed the various ways in which evidence from papyrological data illuminates the representation of emotions; and how these emotional expressions in turn inform us about the people who composed these documents, and the social and cultural factors which influenced them during the composition of their texts. We also referred to the particularities of this corpus of material and the ambiguities it can cause in both the presentation of emotions and the way we understand these sources. We started by examining the emotional content of the different types of papyri, concluding that private letters and petitions are the ones that can prove most fruitful in this study. Furthermore, we identified how the education of a writer of a papyrus and the formulas he or she uses can hinder or embellish emotional expression. In 2006, Roger Bagnall and Raffaella Cribiore246 claimed that the habit of analyzing society in terms of affinity groups is characteristic of modern Western thought; class, ethnicity, and gender have been the most salient of such group classifications. It is doubtful that people in antiquity thought of such group identifications.

This view needs to be reconsidered. The study of the social and cultural parameters that influence the manifestation of emotions in papyri may illuminate aspects of a world that was much more multi-faceted than often conceived in studies of ancient history. As it was demonstrated there is a direct relation between gender, status, age, and ethnicity, on the one hand, and emotion, on the other. Private letters and petitions from the familial milieu are most representative of this association. However, two issues should always be kept in mind. First, many groups are clearly underrepresented in the papyri – inter alia Egyptians, women, children,

245 P.Oxy. III 528 (Oxyrhynchus, second century CE): γινώσκειν σε θέλω ἀφ᾽ ὡς ἐξῆλθες ἀπ᾽ ἐµοῦ πένθος ἡγούµην νυκτὸς κλαίων ἡµέρας δὲ πενθῶν. ιβ΄ Φαῶφι ἀφ᾽ ὅτε ἐλουσάµην µετ᾽ ἐσοῦ οὐκ ἐλουσάµην οὐκ̣ ἤλειµµαι µέχρι ιβ΄ Ἁθύρ, καὶ ἔπεµψάς µοι ἐπιστολὰς δυναµένας λίθον σαλεῦσαι, οὕτως οἱ λόγοι σου κεκίνηκάν µε. Cf. Trapp 2003, 72–75; Winter 1933, 130f. 246 Bagnall and Cribiore 2006, 8.

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and servants; wealthy property owners are the primary subject of this corpus.247 Secondly, although this chapter analysed a series of papyri that often described highly amusing, fearful, anxiety-filled or violent events, ultimately as Alan Bowman has noted ‘the inexorable litany of birth, marriage and death was, if relatively brief in span and straitened in circumstance, usually more tranquil’.248 The vast majority of papyri is usually bereft of straight-forward references to emotions and to stories of great drama or hilarity. Nonetheless, in the light of the material studied in this chapter, I feel inclined to agree with Maryline G. Parca and Mark Golden when they discuss emotionally loaded events in papyri and our ability to identify the emotions of the ancients, respectively. The former notes that the texts just outlined will have recalled the harsh complexity of social intercourse in Hellenistic and Roman Egypt. They will also, I hope, recall men and women struggling to define their identities and articulate their perceived rights in the face of an ethnically and culturally 249 diverse and rapidly evolving environment – not in many respects, unlike our own.

The latter stresses: My own view owes as much to convenience as to conviction, inasmuch as speculation about interpersonal relations must inevitably be sterile if we cannot assume some similarity or at least comprehensibility in the feelings of those long since beyond direct appeals for clarification. ... I proceed on the premise that the ways different societies (and different individuals and groups within them) demonstrate and express their emotions vary more widely than the 250 emotions themselves.

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Kotsifou, C. (2009) Papyrological Perspectives on Orphans in the World of Late Ancient Christianity, in C. B. Horn and R. R. Phenix (eds.), Children in Late Ancient Christianity, Tübingen, 339–373. Kovelman, A. B. (1991) From Logos to Myth: Egyptian Petitions of the 5th–7th Centuries, Bulletin of the American Society of Papyrologists 28, 135–152. Lewis, N. (1986) Greeks in Ptolemaic Egypt, Oxford. ––– (1999) Life in Egypt under Roman Rule, Atlanta. Lhôte, É. (2006) Les lamelles oraculaires de Dodone, Geneva. MacCoull, L. S. B. (1988) Dioscorus of Aprhodito: His Work and his World, Berkeley. Malherbe, A. J. (1988) Ancient Epistolary Theorists, Atlanta. Marcos, F. N. (1975) Los thaumata de Sofronio: Contribucion al estudio de la incubatio cristiana, Madrid. Masciardi M. M. and O. Montevecchi (1982) Contratti di baliatico e vendite fiduciare a Tebtunis, Aegyptus 62, 149–161. ––– (1984) I contratti di baliatico, Milano. Melaerts, H. and L. Mooren (eds.) (2002) Le rôle et le statut de la femme en Égypte hellénistique, romaine et byzantine, Leuven. Montevecchi, O. (1935) Richerche di sociologia nei documenti dell’Egitto greco-romano: I. I testamenti, Aegyptus 15, 67–121. Palme, B. (2007) Papyrologie und Mentalitätsgeschichte der Antike, in K. Strobel (ed.), Von Noricum nach Ägypten: eine Reise durch die Welt der Antike. Aktuelle Forschungen zu Kultur, Alltag und Recht in der römischen Welt, Vienna, 193–220. ––– (2009) The Range of Documentary Texts: Types and Categories, in Bagnall (ed.) 2009, 358– 394. Panini, L. (1990) Struttura e prassi delle domande oracolari in greco su papiro, Analecta Papyrologica 2, 11–20. Papaconstantinou, A. (1994) Oracles chrétienes dans l’Egypte byzantine: le témoignage des papyrus, Zeitschrift für Papyrologie und Epigraphik 104, 281–286. Papathomas, A. (2007) Höflichkeit und Servilität in den griechischen Papyrungsbriefe der aursgehenden Antike, in B. Palme (ed.), Akten des 23 Internationalen Papyrologenkongresses, Wien 22–28 Juli 2001, Vienna, 497–512. Parca, M. G. (2002) Violence By and Against Women in Documentary Papyri from Ptolemaic and Roman Egypt, in Melaerts and Mooren (eds.) 2002, 283–296. ––– (2005) Papyrology, Gender, and Diversity: A Natural ménage à trois, in M.B. Skinner (ed.), Gender and Diversity in Place: Proceedings of the Fourth Conference on Feminism and Classics, May 27th–30th 2004, University of Arizona, Tucson, http://www.stoa.org/diotima/ essays/fc04/ Parca.html. Pébarthe, C. (2006) Cité, démocratie et écriture. Histoire de l’alphabétisation d’Athènes à l’époque classique, Paris. Rea, J. R. (1994) P.Col. VIII 242: Karanis in the Fifth Century, in A. Bülow-Jacobsen (ed.), Proceedings of the 20th International Congress of Papyrologists, Copenhagen, 23–29 August 1992, Copenhagen, 266–272. Rosenwein, B. H. (2002) Worrying About Emotions in History, American Historical Review 107, 821–845. ––– (2006) Emotional Communities in the Early Middle Ages, Ithaca, NY. Rowlandson, J. (ed.) (1998) Women and Society in Greek and Roman Egypt: A Sourcebook, Cambridge. ––– (2004) Gender and Cultural Identity in Roman Egypt, in F. McHardy and E. Marshall (eds.), Women’s Influence on Classical Civilization, London, 151–166. Rupprech, H.-A. (1998) Marriage Contract Regulations and Documentary Practice in the Greek Papyri, Scripta Classica Israelica 17, 60–76.

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Sijpesteijn P. J. (1996) Complaint to the Epistrategus Vedius Faustus, Zeitschrift für Papyrologie und Epigraphik 110, 183–187. Stavrianopoulou, E. (2012) Τοῦ δικαίου τυχεῖν, oder: die Macht der Bitte, in C. Kuhn (ed.), Politische Kommunikation und öffentliche Meinung in der antiken Welt, Stuttgart, 123–149. Trapp, M. (ed.) (2003) Greek and Latin Letters. An Anthology with Translation, Cambridge. Urbanik, J. (2008) Dioskoros and the Law (on Succession): Lex Falcidia Revisited, in Fournet (ed.) 2008, 117–142. Vandorpe, K. (2008) Archives and Letters in Greco-Roman Egypt, in La lettre d’archive (Topoi, Suppl. 9), Cairo, 155–177. ––– (2009) Archives and Dossiers, in Bagnall (ed.) 2009, 216–255. Van Minnen, P. (1998) Berenice, a Business Woman from Oxyrhynchus: Appearance and Reality, in A. M. F. W. Verhoogt and S. P. Vleeming (eds.), The Two Faces of Graeco-Roman Egypt: Greek and Demotic and Greek-Demotic Texts and Studies Presented to P. W. Pestman, Leiden, 59–70. Verhoogt, A. (2009) Dictating Letters in Greek and Roman Egypt from a Comparative Perspective, at http://sitemaker.umich.edu/verhoogt/files/dictating1.pdf. Waddell, W. C. (1932) The Lighter Side of Greek Papyri: a Talk to the St. Andrew’s Society, Cairo, Egypt, Newcastle. Weber, G. (2000) Kaiser, Träume, und Visionen in Prinzipat und Spätantike, Stuttgard. West, S. (1998) Whose Baby? A Note on P.Oxy. 744, Zeitschrift für Papyrologie und Epigraphik 121, 167–172. White J. L. (1986) Light from Ancient Letters, Philadelphia. Winter, J. G. (1933) Life and Letters in the Papyri, Ann Arbor. Worp, K. A. (2009) A Pivotal Contribution to Egypt’s Past: the PSI, in G. Bastianini and A. Casanova (eds.), 100 anni di istituzioni fiorentineper la papirologia 1908. Società Italiana per la ricerca dei Papiri 1928. Istituto Papirologico ‘G. Vitelli’. Atti del convegno internazionale di studi Firenze, 12–13 giugno 2008, Florence, 159–171. Yiftach-Firanko, U. (2001) Was There a ‘Divorce Procedure’ Among the Greeks in Early Roman Egypt?, in I. Andorlini, G. Bastianini, M. Manfrendi, and G. Menci (eds.), Atti del XXII Congresso Internazionale di Papirologia, Firenze 23–29 Agosto 1998, Florence, 1331–1339. ––– (2003) Marriage and Marital Arrangements: a History of the Greek Marriage Documents in Egypt, 4th century BCE–4th century CE, Munich.

MOVING STONES The Study of Emotions in Greek Inscriptions Angelos Chaniotis Μὲ δυσκολία διαβάζω στὴν πέτρα τὴν ἀρχαία. «Κύ[ρι]ε Ἰησοῦ Χριστέ». Ἕνα «Ψυ[χ]ήν» διακρίνω. «Ἐν τῷ µη[νὶ] Ἀθύρ» «Ὁ Λεύκιο[ς] ἐ[κοιµ]ήθη». Στὴ µνεία τῆς ἡλικίας «Ἐβί[ωσ]εν ἐτῶν», τὸ Κάππα Ζήτα δείχνει ποὺ νέος ἐκοιµήθη. Μὲς στὰ φθαρµένα βλέπω «Aὐτό[ν] ... Ἀλεξανδρέα». Μετὰ ἔχει τρεῖς γραµµὲς πολὺ ἀκρωτηριασµένες· µὰ κάτι λέξεις βγάζω — σὰν «δ[ά]κρυα ἡµῶν», «ὀδύνην», κατόπιν πάλι «δάκρυα», καὶ «[ἡµ]ῖν τοῖς [φ]ίλοις πένθος». Μέ φαίνεται ποὺ ὁ Λεύκιος µεγάλως θ’ ἀγαπήθη. Ἐν τῷ µηνὶ Ἀθὺρ ὁ Λεύκιος ἐκοιµήθη. C. P. Cavafy, In the Month of Athyr (1917).

1 BIG DIFF? WHAT CAN INSCRIPTIONS OFFER TO THE STUDY OF EMOTIONS? A mother in Aphrodisias mourns the death of her son: ‘How did you die? In which places? Whom were you following?’1 A generous benefactor in Oinoanda addresses the envy of his countrymen: ‘Now give up your carping criticism, all of you who are in thrall to dread envy, and gaze at my statue with eyes of imitation.’2 A woman in Knidos curses those whose gossip had caused strife between her and her husband: ‘I dedicate to Demeter and Kore the one who accused me of using potions/poisons against my husband.’3 A cuckold in Cumae beseeches demons to make him hate his treacherous wife and forget his desire for her:4 1 2 3 4

Petrovic 2010 (late second century CE): πῶς ἔθανες; ποίοισι τόποις; τίνος ἦς ἀκόλουθος. Cf. Chaniotis 2012a, 360–362 no. 15. SEG XLIV 1182 B (c. 238 CE): τοιγὰρ µῶµον ἀνέντες ὅσοι φθόνον αἰνὸν ἔχουσ[ιν] | µειµηλοῖς ὄσσοις εἰσίδετ᾿ εἰκόν᾿ ἐµήν. For a discussion see below p. 119f. I.Knidos 150 (c. 100 BCE): [Ἀνα]τίθηµι ∆άµατρι καὶ Κούραι τὸν κατ᾿ ἐµο[ῦ ε]ἴπ[α]ντα, ὅτι ἐγὼ τῶι ἐµῶι ἀνδ[ρὶ] φάρµακα ποιῶ. Cf. pp. 253f. in this volume. SEG LIII 1075 (third century CE): ... διάκοπτ[ε τὴ]ν στοργήν, τὴν φιλίαν· δῇ̣ς αὐτὴ̣ν [εἰς Τάρ]ταρα· τοῖς δὲ ἐν φωτὶ δὸς α̣[ ὐτὴν µ]εισεῖν· εἰς χόλον θεῶν, εἰς φόβον, εἰσ[ε]λθέτω [ἡ Οὐαλερία Κοδράτιλλα, ἣν ἔτεκ]εν Β[αλερία Εὔνοια], ἣν ἔ[σ]πειρε Βαλέριος Μυστικός· µεισε[ίτω] αὐτήν, λήθην αὐτῆς λαβέτω Βετρούβιος Φῆλιξ, ὃν ἔτεκεν Βετρουβία Μαξίµιλ[λα, ὃ]ν ἔσπει[ρε Βετρού]βιος Εὐέλπιστος ... δότε {εἰς µ[εῖ]σος} Βετρουβίῳ Φήλικι, ὃν ἔ[τεκ]ε Βετρουβία Μαξίµιλλα, ὃν ἔσπειρε Β[ετ]ρούβιος Εὐέλπιστος, εἰς µεῖσος ἐλθεῖν

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Angelos Chaniotis ... stop the affection and the love; bind her in the Tartaros; and make that those who are in the light hate her; let Valeria Quadratilla, whom Valeria Eunoia bore and Valerius Mystikos begot, enter the anger of the gods and the fear; let Vitruvius Felix, whom Vitruvia Maximilla bore and Vitruvius Euelpistos begot, hate her and forget her; ... make it happen that Vitruvius Felix, whom Vitruvia Maximilla bore and Vitruvius Euelpistos begot, gets to hate Valeria Quadritilla, whom Valeria Eunoia bore and Valerius Mystikos begot, and forgets the desire for her; --- for she betrayed her husband Vitruvius Felix first ---.

An orator in the assembly in Olbia describes the panic caused by barbarian threat: the people met in an assembly in deep despair, as they saw before them the danger that lay ahead.5 The assembly in Xanthos (Lycia, Asia Minor) expresses its pity for the calamities that have befallen the city of Kytenion, in central Greece:6 ‘all the Xanthians felt the same grief with you for the misfortunes which have befallen your city.’ King Attalos II admits to the priest of Kybele in Pessinous that he was afraid of the envy of the Romans at his success or of their Schadenfreude at his failure:7 To launch an undertaking without their participation began to seem fraught with great danger; if we were successful the attempt promised to bring us envy and detraction and baneful suspicion – that which they felt also toward my brother – while if we failed we should meet certain destruction. For they would not, it seemed to us, regard our disaster with sympathy but would rather be delighted to see it, because we had undertaken such projects without them.

A man in Dodona asks Zeus whether he is being poisoned: ‘Did he use a potion against my offspring or against my wife or against me? – from Lyson.’8 A decree in Alipheira forbids the citizens to feel anger in remembering past disputes (µνασιχολεῖν):9 After Kleonymos removed the garrison, drove the pirates away, and gave the city its freedom, let no one feel anger because of memories and let no one start lawsuits for bloodshed that occurred before the time Kleonymos drove away the garrison of Aristolaos and the pirates.

5 6 7

8 9

καὶ λήθην λαβεῖν τῶν πόθων Οὐαλερίας Κοδρ[α]τίλλης, ἣν ἔσπειρε Βα[λέριος Μυστ]ικ[ό]ς, ἣν ἔτεκε Βαλερία [Εὔνοια c. 7]το· ... ὅτι πρώτη ἠθέτησε [Βετρούβιον Φ]ήλικα τὸν ἑαυτῆς ἄνδρα .... IOSPE I2 32 (c. 200 BCE). The text is discussed below (pp. 115–120). SEG XXXVIII 1476 (205 BCE): τοῖς περὶ τὴν πόλιν γεγενηµένοις ἀκληρήµασιν πάντες Ξάνθιοι συνηχθέσθησαν. Cf. Chaniotis 2013a. Welles 1934, no. 61 = I.Pessinous 7 (c. 158–156 BCE; inscribed in the late 1st cent. BCE/early 1st cent. CE): ... τὸ προπεσεῖν ἄνευ ’κείνων µέγαν ἐδόκει κίνδυνον ἔχειν· καὶ γὰρ ἐπιτυχοῦσιν φθόνον καὶ ἀφαίρεσιν καὶ ὑφοψίαν µοχθηράν, ἣν καὶ περὶ τοῦ ἀδελφοῦ ἔσχοσαν, καὶ ἀποτυχοῦσιν ἄρσιν πρόδηλον. οὐ γὰρ ἐπιστραφήσεσθ’ ἐκείνους, ἀλλ’ ἡδέως ὄψεσθαι, ὅτι ἄνευ ἑαυτῶν τηλικαῦτ’ ἐκινούµεθα. On the possible date of the publication (c. 23 CE) see Mileta 2010, 111. Lohte 2006, no. 125 bis (fourth century BCE): Ἐπήνεικε φάρµακον ἐπὶ τὰγ γενεὰν τὰν ἐὰν ἢ ἐπὶ τὰ γυναῖκα [ἢ ἐ]π᾿ ἐµὲ παρὰ Λύσωνος; Eidinow 2007, 116 and 118 no. 8. IPArk 24 (273 BCE): [ἐπεὶ] Κλεώνυµος ἐξάγαγε τὰν πρωρὰν καὶ τὸς πειρατὰς ἐξέ[βαλ]ε καὶ ἐλευθέραν τὰν πόλιν ἀπέδωκε, µηδένα µηδενὶ µνα[σ]ιχολῆσαι τῶν πρότερον γεγο[νό]των ἀµφιλλόγων πὸς ἀλλάλ̣ος µηδὲ δικάσασθαι µηδένα µηδὲν εἴ τι µ̣ί̣ασµα γέγονε πρότερον ἢ Κλεώνυµος τὰν πρωρὰν ἐξέγαγε τὰν Ἀριστολάω̣ καὶ τοὺς πειρατὰς ἐξέβαλε.

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A soldier in Cyprus writes on a sling bullet to be hurled against an enemy: ‘(get this and) get pregnant!’10 A Roman magistrate orders the population in Messene to show joy during the celebration of an annual festival for Caius Caesar:11 When he [Scipio] was informed that Caius, the son of Augustus, who is fighting against the barbarians for the rescue of all mankind, is in good health, has escaped the dangers, and has taken revenge on the enemies, full of joy for the excellent news, he issued the order that all shall wear crowns and offer sacrifices, free of business and calm. ... He also commanded us to spend this day every year with sacrifices and wearing crowns, as cheerful and [---] as possible.

Full of fear of divine punishment, a sacred slave at Silandos confesses that he had sex with a flutist in the sanctuary.12 The assembled crowd in Aphrodisias cries out: ‘envy will not prevail over fortune!’ (Figure 1).13

Figure 1. Acclamation in honour of the benefactor Albinus, Aphrodisias (c. 480 CE): ‘envy will not prevail over fortune!’

10 11

12 13

Pritchett 1991, 46: κύε. Cf. Chaniotis 2005, 102. SEG XXIII 206 (Messene): ἐπιγνοὺς δὲ καὶ Γάϊον τὸν υἱὸν τοῦ Σεβαστοῦ τὸν ὑπὲρ τᾶς ἀνθρώπων πάντων σωτηρίας τοῖς βαρβάροις µαχόµενον ὑγιαίνειν τε καὶ κινδύνους ἐκφυγόντα ἀντιτετιµωρεῖσθαι τοὺς πολεµίους, ὑπερχαρὴς ὢν ἐπὶ ταῖς ἀρίσταις ἀνγελίαις, στεφαναφορεῖν τε πάντας διέταξε καὶ θύειν, ἀπράγµονας ὄντας καὶ ἀταράχους. ... διετάξατο δὲ ἁµῖν καὶ καθ᾿ ἕκαστον ἐνιαυτὸν τὰν ἡµέραν ταύταν µετὰ θυσιᾶν καὶ σταφαναφορίας διάγειν ὅσοις δυνάµεθα ἱλαρώτατα καί [- -]τατα. Chaniotis 2011, 263. Petzl 1994, no. 5; Chaniotis 2009a, 131–133, 137f., 141 (with further bibliography); see also pp. 219f. in this volume. Roueché 1989, 128f. no. 83 xiv; IAph2007 4.21.1 xiv (c. 480 CE): ὁ φθόνος τύχην οὐ νικᾷ.

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These references to emotions in epigraphic documents have some things in common: they have never been discussed in connection with the history of emotions in antiquity; none of these inscriptions was found in Athens; none of them belongs to the Classical period. The literary sources and especially the works of philosophers – not the inscriptions – have traditionally formed the basis for the study of emotions in antiquity,14 and this is hardly surprising. The authors of literary texts depict emotions in a context, they show them at work, they reflect on them (cf. pp. 24f. and 170 in this volume). By contrast, the precise date of most inscriptions cannot be determined and their context is hard to reconstruct. Admittedly, the picture that literary sources present is at times distorted, but in this respect there is no big difference between literary, epigraphical, and papyrological texts. The epigraphical texts have, exactly like the literary texts, authors, and audiences. The use of non-perishable material and the erection of inscriptions in public places – markets, sanctuaries, cemeteries, gymnasia – aimed to reach these audiences in large numbers and permanently. Of course, many public inscriptions (decrees, laws, honorary inscriptions) present themselves as the result of collective agency (of ‘the people’, the council, other bodies) and so indirectly they postulate a higher degree of authority and objectivity than that of the individual author of a literary text – unless the latter claims that the words had been dictated to him by the Muses. But the fact is that the epigraphic texts are the product of selection and composition; the manner of presentation serves specific intentions.15 In this respect, the methodological approaches applied to the study of literary texts are useful also in the study of epigraphic texts. The big difference is that the literary texts originate in or refer to a few major urban centres and were composed by an educated minority of men (and very few women) who represent the higher strata of society. By contrast, inscriptions are more diverse in their geographical distribution and more heterogeneous in their social profile. It is primarily for this reason that inscriptions are a valuable source of information for the study of emotions. Naturally, they should not be studied instead of the literary sources but in addition to and in comparison to literary sources. And of course their study should be combined with that of papyri and archaeological sources. Emotions are socially relevant and, consequently, subject to scrutiny, judgment, and normative intervention. Emotions fulfil social functions and follow social rules, and as such their display and their perception are potentially subject to change. Also they manner in which emotions are represented in the source material is influenced by cultural change, sometimes beyond the control of social agents. Although the ancient historian cannot study what people really felt, he or she can study the external stimuli that generated emotions as well as the cultural and social parameters that determined when and how emotions were represented 14

15

See especially Cairns 1993, 2003, and 2011; Harris 2001; Konstan 2001 and 2006; Munteanu (ed.) 2011. For futher bibliography see p. 15 note 18, pp. 24f. notes 50 and 54, and pp. 151– 173. Chaniotis 2013b; cf. Lurgahi 2010 (on Athenian decrees).

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in texts and images (cf. pp. 15–19 in this volume). These stimuli and parameters are social and cultural constructs and as such they have a history. In order to write this history, ancient historians need to read inscriptions.

Figure 2. The dedication of the gladiator Sarpedon in Aphrodisias (third century CE): ‘Sarpedon (dedicated this) to the goddess who listens in fulfilment of a vow.’ The two ears that flank a branch represent the willingness of the goddess Nemesis, patron of gladiatorial combats, to listen to his prayers. The branch in the middle and the wreath on the right allude to his victory (pride, joy). Later, another gladiator added his dedication: ‘Hermos (dedicated this) in fulfilment of a vow.’ Even later, a Christian engraved a small cross (top left).16

2 ALL INSCRIPTIONS ARE EMOTIONAL BUT SOME INSCRIPTIONS ARE MORE EMOTIONAL THAN OTHERS Despite the importance of inscriptions for the study of emotions, systematic studies of the representation and perception of emotions in the epigraphic material are lacking, with the exception of grave epigrams and, to some extent, curses. 17 And yet, there is hardly an inscription that does not directly or indirectly originate in emotions or reveal emotions. Even as simple a text as a dedication with the formula εὐχήν or κατ᾿ εὐχήν (‘in fulfilment of a vow’; figure 2) is an expression 16 17

SEG LVI 1191: Σαρπηδὼν θαιᾷ ἐπηκόῳ εὐχήν· Ἕρµος εὐχήν. Discussion: Chaniotis 2010a, 240f., 246 no. 18. Epigrams: e.g. Lattimore 1942, 172–265 (lamentation and consolation); Griessmair 1966; Robert 1974a, 240–242 and 1974b, 389f.; Tsagalis 2008. Curses: Versnel 1999 and 2003; Eidinow 2007, 226–223.

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of gratitude, a proud announcement that a dedidicant has succeeded in his communication with a god;18 it is at the same time also an expression of fear that if the thanks-giving dedication is not offered, this may provoke the god’s anger. This fear is clearly expressed in the healing miracles from Epidauros (see pp. 177–204 in this volume) and in ‘confession inscriptions’ in Asia Minor.19 Even a mason’s mark indicating in what sequence stones should be placed in a building originates in the fear that something may go wrong.20 Even an apparently unemotional text such as a law regulating inheritance21 is based on some negative experience; it therefore originates in the fear that this negative experience may be repeated. Every single grave stone, even if only laconically stating the name of the deceased person, originates in an emotion, even though in many cases we cannot identify it: is it affection? Is it fear that neglect of this obligation will invite the anger of the deceased individual or the criticism of the community? Is it the fear that too great a monument may cause envy?

Figures 3–4. Ostraka used in ostracisms in Athens in the fifth century (c. 471 BCE), against Kallias (figure 3, left) and Megakles (figure 4, right). The drawing of a Persian archer (figure 3) alludes to the sympathies of Kallias ‘the Mede’ and the fear of treason. Under the name of Megakles, son of Hippokrates (figure 4), the drawing of a man lying dead (?), perhaps wishful 22 thinking.

There is more to see in the hundreds of Athenian ostraka, the remnants of fifthcentury ostracisms, than just the names of Athenian aristocrats.23 These ostraka are the result of the collective action of hundreds of emotional men who wished to inflict pain on an influential man because of fear, envy, anger, indignation, or 18 19 20

21 22 23

Chaniotis 2005, 143f. E.g. Petzl 1994, nos. 45, 65, and 101. Such mason’s marks usually consist of individual letters (numerals, abbreviated names), but there are also cases in which the instructions are more clearly phrased: e.g. Paton 1991, 299– 306 (SEG XLI 761). E.g. the ‘law code’ of Gortyn (c. 450 BCE): I.Cret. IV 72 col. IV 23–col. VI 2; Koerner 1993, 495–506 no. 169; van Effenterre and Ruzé 1995, no. 49. Discussion: Brenne 2002, 141 no. T1/156 (Kallias) and 143f. no. T1/159 (Megakles). Ostraka from Athens: Brenne 2002 (with the earlier bibliography).

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contempt. The emotionality of ostracism is clearly revealed by textual and pictorial graffiti found on potsherds used for this type of vote.24 Some of them are unambiguous expressions of hatred, indignation, and contempt: ‘get this!;’ ‘the traitor;’ ‘Kimon, son of Miltiades; let him take (his sister) Elpinike and go;’ ‘Menon of Gargettos, the king of the idiots;’ ‘this ostrakon says that of all the accursed prytaneis, Xanthippos, son of Arrhiphron, does most wrong.’25 Others are more difficult to interpret (figures 3 and 4), although they certainly are emotional and emotive. All inscriptions are emotional, but some inscriptions are more emotional (describing and expressing emotion) and emotive (arousing emotion) than others. Naturally, epitaphs and grave epigrams take the lead. They are a form of ‘social sharing,’ which often derives from the experience of a strong emotional event. 26 But the way a feeling is shared with others is to a great extent determined by social, cultural, and literary conventions. Epigrams and epitaphs do not only deal with pain and sorrow (see below pp. 103–114) but cover the whole range of emotions: pride for extraordinary achievements,27 envy,28 love, friendship, and affection,29 anger for a violent or undeserving death (see pp. 235–266 in this volume), hope for a good afterlife; they offer consolation; they advise the reader to feel joy in life; they restrain the expression of grief: ‘I ask you to shed as many tears as is right (or customary), for such fortunes are common to all mortals.’30 But decrees also increasingly use emotional language and display emotion from the late fourth century BCE onwards. The earliest decree that uses a word of emotion (φόβος),31 is a posthumous honorific decree for the orator Lykourgos of Athens (308/7 BCE); after that, the use of emotional language becomes quite common in decrees of the Hellenistic period (see below pp. 113f. and 115–120). This shows that the public manifestation of emotion is subject to change. A variety of cultural and social factors triggered the stronger emotionality that one 24 25

26 27 28 29 30 31

Ostraka with textual and pictorial graffiti: Brenne 2002, 80–166. Brenne 2002, 87 no. T1/45: hέχε; 91 no. T1/65: [hο προ]δότες; 92 no. 1/67: Κίµων Μιλτιάδο, Ἐλπινίκην λαβὼν ἴτω; 124 no. T1/121: Μένον [Γ]αργέτιος, ἀφελν βασιλύς; 134–139 no. T1/153: Χσάνθ[ιππον τόδε] φεσὶν ἀλειτερν πρ[υτ]ανείον τὄστρακ[ον Ἀρρί]φρονος παῖδα µά[λ]ιστ᾿ ἀδικν. See Rimé et al. 1992 and 1998. E.g. Merkelbach and Stauber I 18 no. 01/02/01 (Tymnos, c. 250 BCE; the pride of a warrior); I 68 no. 01/15/04 (Mylasa, Imperial period; the pride of an athlete). E.g. death as result of the envy of Hades is a common-place: Lattimore 1942, 147–149; cf. Vérilhac 1982, 191–201. E.g. Merkelbach and Stauber I 60 no. 01/12/20 (Halikarnassos, Hellenistic period); for the text see below note 96. IG II2 2035+add. (Athens, first century BCE): παρακαλῶ δακρύειν ὅσον θέµις, κοιναὶ γὰρ ἀνθρώποισιν αἱ τοῖαι τύχαι. IG II2 457 fr. b1 lines 9–12: καὶ φόβων κ|[αὶ κινδύνων µεγάλων τοὺς] Ἕλληνας περιστάντων Ἀλε|[ξάνδρωι Θηβῶν ἐπικρατήσα]ντι καὶ πᾶσαν τὴν Ἀσίαν κ|[αὶ τὰ ἄλλα τῆς οἰκουµένης? µ]έρη καταστρεψαµένωι (‘when great fears and dangers surrounded the Greeks, after Alexander had defeated Thebes and had subdued all of Asia and other parts of the inhabited earth’).

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can observe in Hellenistic decrees: rhetorical training, the use of decrees as a medium for the construction of memory, and a general interest of the Hellenistic period in display.32 It has been observed that the use of words of emotion reinforces the emotive impact of a text,33 and for this reason it is reasonable to assume that decrees that drew on an emotional vocabulary not only reflect emotional overtones in the assemblies that ratified them but in their turn also contributed to emotionality in public life. Naturally, there are groups of decrees in which emotional expression is more likely to be found than in others; they include consolatory decrees (ψήφισµα παραµυθητικόν) and decrees concerning public funerals,34 long biographical decrees that express a community’s gratitude for an individual’s achievements and services, which sometimes contained dramatic descriptions;35 and decrees concerning the relations between two Greek cities, a city and a king, or Greek communities and Roman authorities; the latter decrees concerning diplomatic contacts often highlight emotions such as the relationship of affection based on kinship (συγγένεια, οἰκειότης), gratitude (χάρις), benevolence (εὔνοια), courage, and hope.36 Emotion was occasionally the subject of legal texts, especially of cult regulations that aimed to restrain emotion in rituals (funerals, processions)37 and of decrees and agreements concerning amnesty and reconciliation.38 Private letters, testaments, and petitions are far less numerous than in the papyrological record,39 but the epigraphic sources include three groups of inscrip32 33 34 35

36

37 38 39

For emotional expression and emotional language in Hellenistic decrees see Chaniotis 2012c, 2013a, and 2013c. An Ephesian decree of the Imperial period: Chaniotis 2011, 272–276. Strongman 2003, 47. Consolatory decrees: Buresch 1894; Strubbe 1998. Decrees concerning funerals: e.g. Jones 1999a; Chaniotis 2006, 223–226. 2 E.g. the honorary decrees for Diophantos in Chersonesos in Tauris (IOSPE I 352; Chaniotis 1987); Protogenes (IOSPE I2 32; see below pp. 115–120) and Nikeratos in Olbia (IOSPE I2 34); Polemaios und Menippos in Kolophon (Robert und Robert 1989; SEG XXXIX 1243 and 1244); Pyrrhakos in Alabanda (Holleaux (1898), Moschion in Priene (I.Priene 108); Orthagoras of Araxa (SEG XVIII 570); Apollonios of Metropolis (I.Metropolis 1; Chaniotis 2013b). Kinship: Curty 1995, 1999, and 2005; Jones 1999b. Gratitude towards a king: e.g. SEG XLI 1003 II; Chaniotis 2007. Benevolence in the relations between Greek communities and Rome: e.g. SEG III 710; Sherk 1969, nos. 18, 35. Courage: Sherk 1969, nos. 17–18; Reynolds 1982, nos. 2 and 7 (IAph2007 8.3 and 8.26); CIG 2222; SEG LIII 659 A. Hope: GIBM 894; Sherk 1969, no. 65; I.Assos 26; Agora XV 460. See below pp. 121f. Chaniotis 2010b. Chaniotis 2013d. For an example, the letter of a boy to his mother (Athens, early fourth century BCE) see SEG L 276; Jordan 2000; Harvey 2007: Λῆσις {ΙΣ} ἐπιστέλλει Ξενοκλεῖ καὶ τῆι µητρὶ µηδαµῶς περιιδν | αὐτὸν ἀπολόµενον ἐν τῶι χαλκείωι, ἀλλὰ πρὸς τὸς δεσπότας αὐτ ἐλθν | καὶ ἐνευρέσθαι τι βέλτιον αὐτῶι· ἀνθρώπωι γὰρ παραδέδοµαι πάνυ πονηρῶι· | µαστιγόµενος ἀπόλλυµαι· δέδεµαι· προπηλακίζοµαι· µᾶλλον µᾶ[λ]ον (‘Lesis is sending (this letter) to Xenokles and to his mother by no means to overlook that he is perishing in the foundry but to come to his masters and find something better for him. For I have been handed over to a man thoroughly wicked; I am perishing from being whipped; I am tied up; I am treated like dirt –

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tions with great value for the study of emotions: acclamations,40 painted and engraved inscriptions on vases (dipinti and graffiti),41 and graffiti in public places. Dipinti and graffiti express a variety of emotions, such as affection (‘Sosippe, my golden lady’), admiration and desire (‘Leagros is beautiful, yes, indeed’), pride (‘Euthymides painted this, the son of Pollios, as Euphronios has never painted’), and hatred (‘the boy is hateful’).42 Sometimes they prescribe emotions to the reader, as a graffito in the public toilets of Ephesos:43 If we do not catch the runaway life with drinking, luxury, and bathing, we always cause ourselves pain, as we see others undeservingly being happier than we.

Since the context of most graffiti is elusive, they must always be studied in large groups.44 Emotionality is often and directly expressed in texts of religious significance. I have already mentioned the dedications (pp. 95f.). In addition, oracular enquiries are expressions of an individual’s worries and hopes.45 In the largest group of such texts, found in the oracle of Zeus in Dodona, we encounter, for instance, the fear of poisoning (see p. 92 with note 8), the fear of angry gods, the hopes and anxieties of slaves, the desire of men to have legitimate children, the fear that they may be abandoned in old age:46

40 41 42

43

44 45 46

and more and more’). For the verb περιοράω, common in texts of high emotionality, see below note 102. For repetitions see below note 92. Private letters in inscriptions: Cordano 2005; Dana 2007. For petitions see Herrmann 1990 and Hauken 1998; for testaments (usually associated with foundations) see: Laum 1914; Herrmann and Polatkan 1969. For private letters, petitions, and testaments in papyri see pp. 39–86 in this volume. See the study by C. Kuhn in this volume (pp. 295–316), with further bibliography. Large collections of dipinti and graffiti: Immerwahr 1990; Wachter 2001. IG XII.6.1213 (graffit, Korassia, third century BCE): Σωσίππη δέσποινα ἐµή, χρυσῆ. Immerwahr 1990, 11 no. 21 (dipinto on Athenian pelike, late sixth century BCE): Λέαγρος καλός, ναίχι. Immerwahr 1990, 65 no. 369 (painted inscription on Athenian amphora, late sixth century BCE): Εὐθυµίδες ἔ(γ)ραφσεν hο Πολ⟨λ⟩ίο, hὸς οὐδέποτε Εὐφρόνιος. Immerwahr 1990, 11 no. 21 (dipinto on Athenian cup, c. 675–650 BCE): µισετὸς hο π̣α[ῖς] or µίσετος hο π̣α[ῖς] (‘the boy is lewd’). I.Ephesos 456.2 (Ephesos, Late Antiquity): ἂν µή γ᾿ ἕλωµεν τὸν βίον τὸν δραπέτην | πίνωντες ἢ τρυφῶντες ἢ λελουµένοι, | ὀδύνην ἑαυτοῖς προξενοῦµεν πάντοτε | ἀναξίους ὁρῶντες εὐτυχεστέρους. On the study of graffiti see Langner 2001; Baird and Taylor 2010; Chaniotis 2010c; Taylor 2010. For a discussion of oracular enquiries in connection with anxieties and uncertainties in the daily life of the Greeks see Eidinow 2007. On the anxiety for care in old age, in light of the papyrological material, see pp. in this volume. The texts from Dodona are the following: 1) Lhôte 2006, 64f. no. 14 (fourth century BCE): ἐπερωτῶντι ∆ωδωναῖοι τὸν ∆ία καὶ τὰν ∆ιώναν ἦ δι᾿ ἀνθρώπου τινὸς ἀκαθαρτίαν ὁ θεὸς τὸ⟨ν⟩ χειµῶνα παρέχει. 2) Eidinow 2007, 102 no. 5; SEG LVII 536.14 (c. 375–350 BCE): [- -]ν ἐπερωτῆ τὸν θεὸν τί κα ποι|[έων] περὶ ἐλευθερίας ἔστι αὑτῶι | [παραµο]νὰ πὰρ τὸν δεσπότα. 3) Lhôte 2006, 119–122 no. 49; Eidinow 2007, 120 (fifth century BCE): ἐρωτῇ Λυσανίας ∆ία Ναῖον καὶ ∆ηώνα ἦ οὐκ ἔστι ἐξ αὐτοῦ τὸ παιδάριον ὃ Ἀννύλα κυεῖ. 4) Lhôte 2006, 129–131 no. 52; Eidinow 2007, 82 and 84 no. 6 (Hellenistic period):

100

Angelos Chaniotis 1) The citizens of Dodona ask Zeus and Dione if it is because of the impurity of a man that the god brings the bad weather. 2) [- -] asks the god, by doing what in respect to his manumission will he have the right to stay with his master? 3) Lysanias asks Zeus Naios and Dione if the child with whom Annyla is pregnant is not his (Idiomatically I would say ‘his’ here, but I can see that ‘from him’ follows the Greek). 4) He asks if it will be good and advantageous if he gets married and if he will have children that will take care of him in old age, and if he should stay in Athens being one of those who exercise their citizenship in Athens.

Other categories of inscriptions of religious significance with an emotional background include confessions and records of divine punishment (see pp. 215– 223 in this volume); prayers and hymns;47 and healing miracles (see pp. 177–204 in this volume). But it is in curses that we find the clearest expression of emotion (cf. pp. 91f. with notes 3–4 and pp. 235–266 in this volume): fear of an opponent, indignation at injustice, envy, sense of honour and pride.48 One of the best examples of an emotional and emotive curse tablet is the prayer of an anonymous man to Demeter found in Amorgos (c. 100 BCE):49 Mistress Demeter, queen, as a suppliant I throw myself before you, I, your slave. He received my own slaves; he taught them evil; he counselled them; he gave them advice; he corrupted them; he felt joy; he encouraged them to go to the agora; he incited them to run away – a certain Ephaphroditos (did all this). He charmed my slave girl, so that he might have her as his wife against my will. It is for this reason that she has run away, together with the others. Lady Demeter, I who have suffered all this, being abandoned/having no other support, I flee

47 48

49

[ἐρωτ]ᾶι εἰ λ[ῶ]ιον γυναῖκα λαµβάνοντι [κ]αὶ ἄµε⟨ι⟩νον καὶ παῖδες ἔσονται [γη]ροτρόφοι Ἰσοδήµωι [κ]αὶ Ἀθήνησι ἐπιδηµοῦντι [τῶ]ν πολιτευοµένων Ἀθήνησι. Hymns: Furley and Bremer 2001; Kolde 2003. Prayers: Pulleyn 1997. Emotions and emotional language in curses: Versnel 1999 and 2003; Chaniotis 2009b, 63–68; see also pp. 240–255 in this volume. Curses and their connection to anxiety: Eidinow 2007, 139–231. Love magic: Faraone 1999. IG XII.7 p. 1, A. Κυρία ∆ηµήτηρ, βασίλισσα, ἱκέτης σου προσπίπτω δὲ ὁ δοῦλος σου· τοὺ⟨ς⟩ ἐµοὺς δούλο⟨υ⟩ς ὑπεδέξατο, τοὺ⟨ς⟩ κακοδιδασκάλησε, ἐγνωµοδότησε, συνεβούλευσε, ὑπενόθευσε, κατέχαρε, ἀνεπτέρωσε ἀγοράσαι, ἐγνωµοδότησε φυγῖν τις Ἐφαφρόδ[ει]τ[ος], συνεπέθελγε τὸ παιδίσκην αὐτός, ἵνα, ἐµοῦ µὴ θέλοντος, ἔχειν αὐτὸν γυναῖκα αὐτήν. δι᾿ ἐκείνην τὴν αἰτίαν δὲ αὐτὴν πεφευγέναι σὺν καὶ τοῖς ἄλλοις. Κυρία ∆ηµήτηρ, ἐγὼ ὡ ταῦτα παθὼν ἔρηµος ἐὼν ἐπί σε καταφεύγω σοῦ εὐγιλάτου τυχεῖν καὶ ποῖσαί µε τοῦ δικαίου τυχεῖν· ποιήσαις τὸν τοιαῦτά µε διαθ[έ]µενον µὴ στάσιν µὴ βάσιν, µηδ⟨αµ⟩οῦ ἐµπλησθῆναι µὴ σώµατος µήτε {Ο} νοῦ, µὴ δούλων µὴ παιδισκῶν µὴ δουλεύθοιτο, µὴ ὑπὸ µυ[κρ]ῶν µὴ ὑπὸ µεγάλου, µὴ ἐπιβαλόµενός τι ἐκτελέ{σε}σαιτο, καταδε{ε}σµὸ⟨ς⟩ αὐτοῦ τὴν οἰκίαν λάβοιτο, ἔχ[ο]ι, µὴ παιδὶν κλαύσετο, µὴ τράπεζαν ἱλαρὰν θῦτο, µὴ κύων εἱλακτήσαιτο, µὴ ἀλέκτωρ κοκκύσαιτο, σπείρας µὴ θερίσαιτο, καταντίσας καρποὺς µὴ ἐπί[στα]ιτο ΕΤΕΡΑΝ, µὴ γῆ µὴ θάλασσα καρπὸν ἐνένκαιτο, µὴ χαρὰν µ[ακ]αρίαν ἔχ[ο]ιτο, αὐτός τε κα[κ]ῶς ἀπόλοιτο, καὶ τὰ παρ᾿ αὐτοῦ πάντα. B. Κυρία ∆ηµήτηρ, λιτανεύω σε παθὼν ἄδικα, ἐπάκουσον, θεά, καὶ κρῖναι τὸ δίκαιον, ἵνα τοὺς τοιαῦτα ἐνθυµουµένους καὶ καταχαίροντε⟨ς⟩ καὶ λύπας ἐπιθε⟨ῖ⟩ναι κἀµοὶ καὶ τῇ ἐµῇ γυναικὶ Ἐπικτήσι καὶ µισοῦσιν ἡµᾶς ποιῆσαι αὐτοῖς τὰ δινότατα καὶ χαλεπώτατα δινά. Βασίλισσα, ἐπάκουσον ἡµῖν παθοῦσι, κολάσαι τοὺς ἡµᾶς τοιούτους ἡδέως βλέποντας. This text has been discussed by Versnel 1999, as an example of ‘prayers for justice’; see also Eidinow 2007, 419f. (but with wrong attribution to Sicily and some inaccuracies in her translation).

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to you for refuge, asking you to be merciful and make me obtain justice. May you make the one who did all this to me able neither to stand nor to walk; to find no fulfilment either in the body or in the mind; to be served neither by a male nor by a female slave, neither by young nor by old; if he has a plan in mind, let him not be able to accomplish it; may a curse seize and take hold of his household; let him never listen to the cry of a baby; let him never prepare a table of joy; neither shall a dog bark nor a cock crow for him; when he sows, let him not harvest; when he arrives (?), let him see no fruit (earnings?); neither the earth nor the sea shall bring him fruit; let him have no blessed joy; let him perish in a bad way together with everything he owns. Lady Demeter, I implore you, because I have suffered injustice; listen to my prayer, goddess, and pass a judgment of what is just, so that you give the most terrible and harsh sufferings to those who think of this (affair) with joy, those who have given me and my wife, Epiktesis, sorrow, those who hate us; listen to us, for we have suffered, and punish those who take pleasure in seeing us in this misery.

The anonymous man claims that his opponent, a certain Ephaphroditos, a slave, had seduced a slave girl and had persuaded her to run away together with other slaves. From the fact that the owner of the slaves could do nothing about it, I infer that the runaway slaves had sought asylum, probably in a shrine or altar in the agora – if ἀνεπτέρωσε ἀγοράσαι is to be understood as ‘he encouraged them to go to the agora’ –, requesting to be sold to another owner. This is procedure is well attested in Greek law.50 As his runaway slaves had supplicated the gods, he in his turn supplicated Demeter. One may suspect that the slave girl was the object not only of Epaphroditos’ but also of the anonymous man’s sexual desires. Whether he was motivated by jealousy or not, we cannot tell, but loss of face clearly was a major concern.51 The anonymous man clearly spelled out his frustration at becoming the laughing stock of his community; what he requested was not the return of the slaves but the suffering of both Epaphroditos and those who felt Schadenfreude at his humiliation and loss. It should be noted that most inscriptions were usually read aloud, and this performative aspect adds to their significance as reflections of emotionality.52 Depending on the character of the epigraphic text (grave epigram, decree, magical invocation, acclamation, and so on), different means were applied in order to express, display, and arouse emotion, and some of these means will be discussed exempli gratia in the light of decrees and epitaphs in the next section.

50 51 52

Chaniotis 1996, 79–83; Thür 2003, 31–34. On loss of face as the emotional background of ‘prayers for justice’, see Chaniotis 2004a, 242–246 and 249; in the context of petitions: see p. 82 in this volume. Day 2000; Chaniotis 2012b, 300–302.

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3 STRATEGIES OF EMOTIONAL AROUSAL AND EXPRESSION: THE CASE OF EPITAPHS AND DECREES 3.1 Inscriptions matter The inscribing of a text was a costly business. According to the Delphic accounts of the late fourth century BCE, a stonemason received an honorarium of one drachma for 100 letters,53 that is the equivalent of the daily honorarium of a mercenary soldier in the same period. To this cost we may add the cost for the material and, sometimes, the sculpted decoration of the stele or monument. Inscriptions were set up in valuable public space, and this was subject to the approval by civic authorities. Inscriptions mattered; they had value; they were scrutinised, read, corrected, and destroyed.54 Let us take as an example an Athenian honorary decree for Neapolis, a colony of Thasos. As faithful allies of the Athenians in the Peloponnesian War the Neapolitans fought against their own mothercity. The original decree explains (410/9 BCE):55 We shall praise the Neapolitans near Thasos, first because although they were colonists of Thasos, when they were besieged by the Thasians and the Peloponnesians, they did not wish to defect from the Athenians, and they proved to be virtuous men as regards the campaign, the Athenians, and the allies. ... For this benefaction let the Athenians be grateful to them now and also in the future, because they are virtuous men.

Two years later (407/6 BCE), a new decree was passed to honour these faithful allies:56 We shall praise the Neapolitans who are in Thrace because they are virtuous men as regards the campaign and the city of the Athenians, and because they campaigned against Thasos in order to besiege it together with the Athenians, and because they were victorious in a seabattle that they fought together with the Athenians, and because they were always their allies on land, and because they aid the Athenians; for these good things let them receive the gratitude of the Athenians, as has been voted by the people.

Interestingly, the new decree amends the earlier one:

53 54 55

56

CID II 74 col. II Z. 8; 98 B 7f. Examples for the destruction/erasing of inscriptions in Flower 2006, 26–34. IG I3 101 lines 6–11 and 35–37: [ἐπ]αινέσαι τοῖς Νεοπ[ολίταις] παρὰ Θάσον [προ̑τον µ]ὲν [⟦ὅτι ἄποικοι ὄντες Θασίον⟧ καὶ πολιο]ρκόµενοι ⟦ὑπ αὐτο̑ν⟧] καὶ Πελο[πονν]ησίον οὐκ ἠθ[έλησαν ἀπο]στῆνα[ι ἀπ Ἀθηναί]ον, ἄνδ[ρες δ᾿] ἀ̣γ̣α̣θ̣ο̣ὶ̣ ἐγένο[ντο ἔς τε τὴν στρα]τ[ιὰν καὶ τὸν δῆ]µον τ[ὸν Ἀθηναίον κα]ὶ το[ὺς χσυµµάχους - -] ... καὶ ἀντὶ τῆς εὐεργε[σίας ταύτης τὸ νῦν εἶν]αι καὶ ἐν το̑ι λοιπο̑ι χρόνο[ι] παρ Ἀθηνα[ίον χάριτας εἶναι αὐτ]ο̣ῖς ὁς ἀνδράσιν οὖσιν ἀγαθο[ῖ]ς ... IG I3 101 lines 48–52: ... ἐπαινέσαι τοῖς Νεοπολίταις τοῖς ἀπὸ [Θράικες hος σιν ἀνδράσιν ἀγαθοῖς] ἔς τε τὲν στρατιὰν καὶ τὲµ πόλιν τὲν Ἀθεναίον καὶ hότ[ι ἐς Θάσον ἐστρατεύοντο χσυµπολιορ]κέσοντες µετὰ Ἀθεναίον καὶ hότι χσυνναυµαχο̑ντ[ες ἐνίκον] καὶ [κατὰ γε̑ν χσυνεµάχον τὸν πά]ντα χρόνον καὶ τὰ ἄλλα hότι εὖ ποιο̑σιν Ἀθεναίο[ις, καὶ ἀντὶ τ]ο̣ύτον [το̑ν ἀγαθο̑ν χάριτας παρὰ Ἀ]θεναίον εἶναι αὐτοῖς καθάπερ ἐφσέφισται τ[ο̑ι δέµο]ι.

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and let the secretary of the council make a correction in the earlier decree and replace the reference to the colony of the Thasians with a reference to the fact that they fought the war 57 together with the Athenians.

There is not doubt that the original decree was read – otherwise there would be no reason to change its content. Although some scholars have expressed doubts on whether inscriptions (especially funerary epigrams) were read, there is substantial evidence that supports the assumption that inscription were read, and indeed read aloud.58 This reading was sometimes part of a ritual. In Philadelpheia (Lydia) the members of a cult association were obliged to touch the stone on which the association’s purity regulation was inscribed, thus confirming that they were pure;59 this presupposes that the content of the inscription was read by them or to them. There is no doubt that during the rituals of the funerary cult, performed on a regular basis, the inscriptions of the funerary monument were read. Inscriptions are texts – a more appropriate term would be ‘epigraphically transmitted texts’ – and as such they are the product of composition. Admittedly, texts inscribed on stone are shorter than literary texts, although there are a few exceptions (mainly epigrams, hymns, and narratives of miracles). The limited space sets some boundaries to the possibilities of expression. Nonetheless, inscriptions were an important medium of communication in ancient Greek communities and as such they were an important medium for the expression and arousal of emotion. In the following pages I present a few of the strategies applied by the authors of epigraphic texts, in order to achieve this aim. But it should be remembered that inscriptions are more than texts: they are monuments whose impact on audiences is connected with their exact setting (sanctuary, cemetery, etc.), their decoration (e.g. reliefs and painted decoration), and the part they played in rituals (see pp. 223–227 in this volume). 3.2 Emotion as a strategy of persuasion In epigraphic texts – as in literary texts – emotions appear in different forms: they are mentioned, alluded to, described, or prescribed; they can be the object of criticism and control; and the use of language may aim to arouse specific emotions. When the authors of epigraphic texts describe emotions, either their own and those of others, they often do so as a strategy of persuasion. The mention of fear in Hellenistic public inscriptions is a case in point. The authors of decrees mention fear in order to contrast the behaviour of the courageous man who is to be honoured with the panic of others; or in order to bring to memory the emotional state from which a generous benefactor has freed his countrymen; or in order to present excuses for a wrong political decision (see below pp. 118f.). 57

58 59

IG I3 101 lines 58–60: ἐς δὲ τὸ φσέφισµα τὸ πρό[τερον ἐ]πανορθο̑σαι τὸγ γραµµατέα τε̑ς βολε̑ς κ̣[αὶ ἐς αὐτὸ µεταγρά]φσαι ἀντὶ τε̑ς ἀποικία̣[ ς τε̑ς Θασί]ον hότι συνδιεπολέµεσαν τὸµ πόλεµον µ[ετὰ Ἀθεναίον]. Day 2000; Chaniotis 2012e (with further references). TAM V.3.1539 (c. 100 BCE). See also pp. 213f. and 224 in this volume.

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Another instructive example is provided by grave inscriptions in which the deceased individual is presented as speaking from the grave. The voice of the dead is manipulated to fulfill different tasks. Sometimes the deceased describes the grief and mourning of his or her relatives, friends, or the entire city. The deceased’s authoritative voice thus gives testimony to their pain – and at the same time confirms that they had fulfilled their duties and indirectly serves as a medium of social control.60 Sometimes the deceased describes a blissful life after death, thus directly or indirectly offering consolation and hope to the living.61 My name was Philostorgos. Nike raised me to be an anchor for her old age. I was twenty years old. After viewing something, of which one is not allowed to speak, I became the object of abduction by sudden fate, fulfilling the threads of divine fate. Mother, do not shed tears for me. What is the use of such kindness? Instead, treat me with reverence. For I became a divine star, shining at nightfall.

Philostorgos, whose very name (‘the affectionate’) expressed his mother’s expectation, deceived her hopes, dying suddenly, perhaps after a vision. Now speaking from his grave, Philostorgos offers consolation and closure, implicitly inviting his mother to turn her gaze to the sky whenever the evening approaches, to see him among the stars. Sometimes the voice from the grave implores the passer-by to stop, read the inscription, and shed tears (see below pp. 105f.). In this way, the relatives make sure that the commemoration of a beloved person will continue despite their own mortality, embracing a continually and eternally enlarging emotional community of mourners. But sometimes the deceased describes in detail the conditions of his or her life and death with bitterness, as in the epigram of a man who had been cuckolded by his wife and murdered by her lover, and in the grave inscription of a woman who unknowingly married a eunuch and was deprived of motherhood, dying alone in a foreign country: Passer-by, Aphrodeisios is my name, and I am a citizen of Alexandreia, leader of the chorus. I die a most wretched death because of my wife, the dirty adulteress, whom Zeus will destroy. Her secret lover, a member of my own family, Lychon, slaughtered me and threw me from the heights like a discus, still a young man. In my twentieth year, full of beauty, the Destinies, 62 who have spun (my fate) sent me as a delight to Hades.

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E.g. IG II2 3756 (Athens, early third century CE): ἀµφὶ δ’ ἐµῆς µοίρης πᾶς ἐδάκρυσε λεώς (‘the entire people shed tears for my fate’); 7447 (Athens, late second century CE): ἀµφὶ δ’ ἐµεῦ καὶ δῆµος ἅπας ἐδάκρυσεν Ἀθήνης (‘the entire people of Athens shed tears for me’); SEG XL 653 (Macedonia, ): οἰκτρὰ δ’ ἐδάκρυσεν Νικόστρατος ὧι µε τοκεῖες | τὰν ἑκκαιδεχέτιν δῶκαν ὁµευνέτιδα (‘Nikostratos, to whom my parents gave me as a wife, seventeen years old, shed tears, full of misery’). On the manipulation of the voice of the deceased idividual see Casey 2004; cf. Vestrheim 2010 (on the use of the first and second person). On references to grief and mourning in Archaic epigrams see e.g. Bowie 2010, 336. IG XII.7.123 (Arkesine, first/second century CE): οὔνοµά µοι Φιλόστοργος ἔην· Νείκη µ’ ἔθρεψεν | ἄνκυραν γήρως· εἴκοσι δ’ ἔσχον ἔτη. | ἄρρητον δὲ θέαµ’ ἐσιδών, ἅρπασµ’ ἐγενήθην | αἰφνιδίου µοίρης, κλώσµατα θεῖα τελῶν. | µήτηρ µή µε δάκρυε· τίς ἡ χάρις; ἀλλὰ σεβάζου· | ἀστὴρ γὰρ γενόµην θεῖος ἀκρεσπέριος. I.Alexandreia/Troas 90; Merkelbach and Stauber 1998, 632f. no. 07/05/04 (Alexandreia in Troas, third century CE): [ἔστ]ιν τούνοµά µοι Ἀφροδείσιος, ὦ παροδεῖτα· | [ε]ἰµὶ δ᾿ Ἀλε-

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Thessalonike was my fatherland and Hyle was my name. Aisos, the son of Batallos, conquered me with love potions, although he was a eunuch. And so my wedding bed was 63 ineffectual. And now I lie here, so far away from my fatherland.

In texts such as the above, the deceased does not only appeal to the pity of the reader but also to his indignation. By using the voice of a dead individual the authors of these text give their words the aura of a higher authority and, at least for a moment, they deceive us by creating the illusion of a communication with the departed.64 As an integral part of communication in ancient urban and rural communities, inscriptions reveal the same rhetorical and linguistic strategies of emotional arousal as the ones we find in literary texts. A few examples shall illustrate this. 3.3 Expressing and arousing emotion Creating an emotional bond with the reader Closely related to the manipulation of the voice of the dead (see p. 104) is the manipulation of the emotions of the reader of an inscription by directly or indirectly urging him to join an emotional community. In the case of grave inscriptions, this urge to participate in the grief is at times explicit. Man, whoever you are who walks on this road, even if you have other things in your mind, 65 stand still and have pity seeing Thrason’s memorial. Stand by me, as you pass by! Stand, stranger! Do not pass without noticing me, but find out 66 about me and feel compassion with my parents, who are painted here.

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ξανδρεύς, τῶν δὲ χορ⟨ῶν⟩ ὁ µέσος· | [θν]ήσκω δ᾿ οἰκτροτάτῳ θανάτῳ διὰ τὴν ἄλοχόν µου, [κ]λεψίγαµον µιεράν, ἣν περὶ Ζεὺς ὀλέσει· | ταύτη γὰρ λάθριος γαµέτης κἀµὸν γένος, Λύχων, σφάξ[ε] µε κἀφ᾿ ὕψους δισκοβόλησεν νέον· | δισδέκατον γὰρ ἔτος κατέχοντά µε, κάλλος ἔχοντα κλώσασαι µοῖραι πέµψαν ἄγαλµ᾿ Ἀΐδῃ. I read Λύχων as the name of the murderer (the earlier editors leave the letters ΛΥΧΩΝ unexplained). Another victim of murder, who speaks from his grave: Merkelbach and Stauber 1998, 209 no. 02/03/01 (Amyzon, second century BCE). IG XIV 2566 (Bonna, Germania Inferior, second/third century CE): Θεσσαλονείκη µ[ο]ι πατρὶς ἔπλετο, οὔν[οµ᾿ Ὕ]λη µοι· κἄµ᾿ Ἄσιος Β[ατά]λοι᾿ ὑὸς φίλτροισι δάµ[ασσε], εὐνοῦχός περ ἐών, [καὶ ἄ]κυρον ἦν λάχο[ς ἁµόν]· κ̣εῖµαι δ᾿ ἐνθάδε̣ [νῦν τόσ]σον ἄνευθε πάτρ[ης]. I assume that λάχος was engraved instead of λέχος. If we keep the reading λάχος, we should translate: ‘my lot was void.’ Day 2000, 39. IG I3 1204; CEG I 28 (Athens, late sixth century BCE): ἄνθροπε hὸστείχε[ι]ς καθ’ ὁδὸν | φρασὶν ἄλα µενοινν, στθι καὶ οἴκτιρον. SEG XXXI 1283 (Antiocheia in Pisidia, Imperial period): [µεῖνόν µοι παράγων], | µεῖνον, ξένε, µ[ή µε] | παρέλθῃς, ἀλλὰ [µα]θὼ̣[ν] | τίν’ ἔχω γραπτοῖς σ̣ύ̣µ̣π[ασ]|χε γονεῦσι. Cf. Merkelbach and Stauber 2001b, 206 no. 16/23/06 (Aizanoi, 247 CE): µεῖνόν µοι π[α]ράγω[ν], µ[εῖ]νον, ξένε, µή µε παρέλθῃς; SEG XLI 1166 (Galatia, third century CE): ὁδοιπόρε, µή µε πα[ρ]έλθῃς, | ἀλλὰ στὰς ἰδέ µου τὸν χαρίεντα τόπον (‘wanderer, do not pass without noticing me, but stand and look at the charming place’). Cf. TAM II 356 (Xanthos, Imperial period).

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Angelos Chaniotis Having completed eighteen years of life I came to the nightly realm of cruel oblivion. For this reason, strange traveller, shed wailing tears for me, and for this service may a god grant you 67 every happiness.

The reader is sometimes addressed as a ‘friend’ (φίλε)68 and not as a ‘passer-by’ (παρ)οδῖτα) or ‘stranger’ (ξένε), and this address urges him to feel like a member of an emotional community of affection. Also rhetorical questions oblige the reader to join others in grief: ‘who did not shed tears for the unfulfilled homes of my parents when looking at me?’69 Unanimity is often insinuated by epigraphically recorded acclamations (see pp. 295–316 in this volume). This is also implicitly done in the case of decrees through references to the fact that ‘all the people’ (πάντες/ἅπαντες, πανδηµεί, ὁµοθυµαδόν) had the same emotional response to an event. The honorary decree for the benefactor Emameinondas of Akraiphia reports that after the performance of the rites of a festival, when he was returning from the sanctuary to the city, all the citizens in one body (πανδηµεί) came to his reception, demonstrating every love of honour and gratitude. And living up to his own generosity, he sacrificed a bull to the Greatest Zeus, the one who protects the city, and 70 immediately gave a dinner for those who had come to thank him.

The unanimous display of gratitude motivated the benefactor to make a spontaneous additional benefaction, which was offered without delay (παραχρῆµα). Sometimes the prescription of mood is not implicit; some decrees directly prescribe the expression of specific emotions, for instance during the funeral of a noble woman in Kyzikos, and during a festival in Messene that commemorated a victory of Caius Caesar: All the inhabitants of the city in one body (πανδηµεί), men and women, shall lament her 71 (Apollonis).

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Merkelbach and Stauber 1998, 73 no. 01/18/05 (Teichioussa, Imperial period): ὀκτωκαίδεκα δὲ ζωῆς βιότου λυκάβαντας | ἐκτελέσας στυγερῆς ὑπὺ νύκτερον ἤλυθα Λήθης. | Τοὐνεκά µοι γοερὸν βάλε δάκρυον, ὦ ξέν᾿ ὀδεῖτα· ἀντὶ δέ σοι τούτων θεὸς ὄλβια δοῖεν ἅπαντα. This address to anonymous readers (and not to family members) is primarily attested in epitaphs of the Imperial period: e.g. IG II2 10116 (Athens); IG V.2.359 (Stymphalos); IG IX.2.1276 (Pythion); IG XII.2.644 (Troad); GV 432 (Miletos), 1013 (Ephesos?); I.Ephesos 1628 (Ephesos); I.Kyzikos 507 I.Smyrna 529 (Smyrna); Kaibel 1878, no. 226 (Teos or Ephesos). It is rarely attested in honorary epigrams: SEG XXXIV 1136 (Ephesos, Imperial period). IG VII 1883 (Thespiai, c. 150 CE): τίς ἐλπίδες οὐ[κ ἐδάκρυσεν] | τὰς ἀτελῖς γονέων, εἰς ἐµὲ δερκόµε[νος;]. IG VII 2712 lines 82–87 (Akraiphia, mid-first century CE): καταβαίνοντος | αὐτοῦ ἀπὸ τοῦ ἱεροῦ ἐπὶ τὴν πόλιν πανδηµ[ε]ὶ [ἀ]πήντησαν οἱ [πο]λεῖται | πᾶσαν φιλοτειµίαν καὶ εὐχαριστίαν ἐνδει[κ]νύµενοι· ὁ δὲ µὴ [ἐκ]λαθό|µενος τῆς ἑατοῦ µεγαλοφροσύνης ταυροθυτήσας ∆ιὶ τῷ Μεγίστῳ ἐπὶ | τῆς πόλεως παραχρῆµα εἱστ[ία]σεν τοὺς συν[ελ]θόντας ἐπὶ τὴν εὐχα|ριστίαν. On this text see Chaniotis 2008; Stavrianopoulou 2009, 161–165. SEG XXVIII 953 lines 39f. (Kyzikos, first century CE): π̣ενθῆσαι µὲν πανδηµεὶ πάντας | [τοὺς κατοικοῦντας τὴν] π̣όλιν ἄνδρας τε καὶ γυναῖκας.

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He also commanded us to spend this day every year with sacrifices and wearing crowns, as cheerful and [---] as possible (see p. 93).

The ‘unanimous’ feeling – or rather the unanimous manifestation of an emotion – such as courage in war, gratitude towards a saviour, grief for the death of an illustrious citizen or a benefactor, hope upon the accession of a new emperor, joy in a celebration, indignation at an act of injustice, and so on, implicitly urges the reader to develop the same feeling and to join these ‘emotional communities’. I give a few examples of how the authors of decrees pertaining to the relations between Greek communities and Roman power emphasised the unanimity of feelings in their cities: They (the envoys) shall also inform him that our whole People (πᾶς ὁ δῆµος) together with our wives and children and all our property is ready to risk all for Quintus and the Roman cause; and that without the rule of the Romans we do not choose even to live (decree of 72 Aphrodisias during the War of Mithridates). Our people decided to declare war against Mithridates in favor of the leadership of the Romans and common freedom, and all the citizens with one spirit (ὁµοθυµαδὸν πάντων τῶν πολιτῶν) dedicated themselves to the struggle for these causes (Ephesos during the War of Mithridates, see below p. 119). The supremacy of Gaius Caesar Germanicus Augustus, for which all men (πᾶσιν ἀνθρώποις) have hoped and prayed, has been proclaimed and the world has known no bounds to its delight, and every city and every nation (πᾶσα δὲ πόλις καὶ πᾶν ἔθνος) is eager to behold the face of the god as the greatest delight which the present age can offer to mankind (decree 73 of Assos for Caligula).

Vividness (enargeia) Enargeia is an important element of Greek oratory and literature, from the fourth century BCE onwards. This term refers to the efforts of orators, poets, or narrators to paint a mental picture of a scene and make the reader or listener have the impression that he is an eye-witness to the event that is being narrated.74 The emotional impact was thereby increased. We may observe enargeia in the detailed description of an individual’s death in grave inscriptions. A good example is offered by the epigram for a child who drowned in a well:75 72

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Reynolds 1982, 11–16 no. 2b lines 11–14: ἐνφανιοῦσιν δὲ αὐτῷ ὅτι πᾶς ὁ δῆµος ἡµῶν σὺν γυναιξὶ | καὶ τέκνοις καὶ τῷ παντὶ βίῳ ἔτυµος παραβάλλεσθαι ὑπὲρ | Κοΐντου καὶ τῶν Ῥωµαίων πραγµάτων καὶ ὅτι χωρὶς τῆς | Ῥωµαίων ἡγεµονίας οὐδὲ ζῆν προαιρούµεθα. I.Assos 26 lines 5–9 (Assos, 37 CE): ... ἡ κατ’ εὐχὴν πᾶσιν ἀνθρώποις ἐλπισθεῖσα Γαΐου | Καίσαρος Γερµανικοῦ Σεβαστοῦ ἡγεµονία κατήνγελται, | οὐδὲν δὲ µέτρον χαρᾶς εὕρηκε ὁ κόσµος, πᾶσα δὲ πόλις | καὶ πᾶν ἔθνος ἐπὶ τὴν τοῦ θεοῦ ὄψιν ἔσπευκεν, ὡς ἂν τοῦ | ἡδίστου ἀνθρώποις αἰῶνος νῦν ἐνεστῶτος. Cf. below pp. 121f. On enargeia in literature see Zangara 2007, 55–89, 233–307; Otto 2009; Webb 2009, esp. 87–105; in poetry: Zanker 1981; in inscriptions: Chaniotis 2013a. Merkelbach and Stauber 1998, 365f. no. 03/05/04 (Notion, Imperial period): ἡνίκα δ’ ἠέλιος µὲν ἔδυ πρὸς δώµατα [νυκτός,] | δειπνήσας, ἦλθον µετὰ τοῦ µήτρω λο[έσασ]|θαι, κεὐθύς µε Μοῖραι προκαθίζανον εἰς φ[ρέ]|αρ αὐτοῦ· ἔγδυνον γὰρ ἐγὼ{ι} καὶ ἀπῆγέ µε | Μοῖρα κακίστη. χὡς εἶδεν δαίµων µε | κάτω, παρέδωκε Χ[άρ]ωνει· αὐτὰρ ὁ | µήτρως µου ψόφον ἤκουσεν φρεα|τισµοῦ, κεὐθύς µ’ ἐζήτει γ’ ἄρ’· ἐγὼ δὲ οὐκ ἐλ|πίδ’ ἂν εἶχον ζωῆς τῆς κατ’

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Angelos Chaniotis When the sun was setting towards the chambers of the night, after I had taken my supper, I came together with my maternal uncle to bathe. And, right away, the Fates made me sit on (the edge of) a well, there. As I was undressing, the worst Fate took me away. As soon as the demon saw me at the bottom of the well, he delivered me to Charon. But my uncle heard the noise of me falling into the well and started looking for me right away. However, there was no hope for me to live among the mortals. My maternal aunt came running; she tore off her tunic. My mother came running; she stood there beating her chest. Immediately my aunt fell to Alexander’s feet, begging him. Seeing this, he no longer hesitated but jumped into the well right away. When he found me drowned in the bottom, he brought me out in a basket. Right away my aunt grabbed me, as I was wet, in a hurry, wondering whether there was any life left in me. Thus a bad Fate covered me, the wretched one, before I could see a palaestra, barely three years old.

By providing these details, the poet appeals to several of our senses: he ‘paints’ a scene in the twilight, with the three-year old boy running to the well, with the hectic movements after the relatives realise the accident. He gives us impressions of sounds: the sound of the body falling into the water, the desperate cries of the mother, the begging of the aunt. We even get a sense of touching, with the reference to the mother beating her chest and the aunt touching the boy’s wet body. The redundant use of the word εὐθύς (‘right away’, four times) and of words of similar meaning (σπεύδω: ‘to hurry’, twice; ἔτρεχε: ‘she ran/was running?’, twice; θᾶσσον: ‘in a hurry’) gives the narrative a rapid movement. If we are still moved by this narrative it is precisely because we are made eyewitnesses of the child’s death. Such vividness is more common in epitaphs than in other types of inscriptions, but enargeia can also be displayed in other categories of epigraphic texts with strong emotionality, especially in narratives of miracles and some of the longer honorary decrees.76 For instance a long decree from Araxa, which honours general Orthagoras for his achievements in a series of wars in Lycia (c. 180 BCE), twice states that he went to war on horseback, 77 – a detail that might seem superfluous. By giving this detail the orator who proposed the decree presented an image to his audience. When he referred to Orthagoras’s bravery, the orator used the verb ἀντιβλέπω (‘to look someone straight to the face’), thus describing his hero’s body language with a vivid image.78 Apart from the detailed description of an event, another technique that enhances emotional arousal in epitaphs of the Hellenistic and Imperial periods is

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ἐµαυτὸν ἐν ἀνθρώ|ποισι µιγῆναι. ἔτρεχεν ἡ νάννη καὶ σχείζει | τόν γ̣ε̣ χιτῶνα· ἔτρεχε κἠ µήτηρ καὶ ἵστα|το ἥγ̣ε̣ τυπη̣τόν. κεὐθὺς Ἀλεξάνδρῳ πρὸς | γούνατα πρόσπεσε νάννη, κοὐκέτ’ ἔµελ|λεν ἰδών, ἐνπήδα δ’ εἰς φρέαρ εὐθύς. | ὡς εὗρέν µε κάτω βεβυθισµένον ἐξ̣ήνεν|[κ]ε̣ν ἐ κοφίνῳ· κεὐθὺς δὴ νάννη µε διάβρο|χον ἥρπασε θᾶσον, σκεπτοµένη ζω|ῆς ἤ τιν’ ἔχω µερίδα· ὦ δ’ ἐµὲ τὸν | [δύσ]τηνον τὸν οὐκ ἐφιδόντα παλαίσ|[τρα]ν, ἀλλ’ ἤδη τριετῆ [- -] Μοῖρα [κάλ]υ̣ψε κακή. I read ὧδ’ (‘thus’) instead of ὦ δ’ (‘woe, me’). For miracles see pp. 177–204 in this volume; for long decrees see Chaniotis 2013b. SEG XVIII 570, lines 31f.: ἔφιππς ὢν διετέλει πρωταγωνιστῶν; line 47: ἔφιππος ὢν συνεστράτευσεν. Ibid. lines 25–27: καθόλου τε τοῖς τυράννοις ἀντιβλέπων οὐδένα καιρὸν παραλέλοιπεν.

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the reference to the physical contact between the deceased individual and the bereaved:79 Atthis, you lived for me and you exhaled your spirit in me; you used to be a cause of joy, now of tears; pure, much lamented. Why do you sleep a woeful sleep, you who never removed your head from your husband’s chest, desolating Theios, who is no more? Our hopes of life accompanied you to Hades.

This epigram stresses the physical contact twice: with a kiss, Atthis left her husband her last breath; only the sleep of death made her take her head away from Theos’ chest. In this and similar texts,80 physical contact expressed the affection between husband and wife, showed immeasurable grief, and aroused the pity of the reader. We should, finally, mention epitaphs that are formulated as a dialogue and interplay between the deceased individual and a relative or a passer-by, thereby insinuating communication between the living and the dead.81 Individuality and stereotypisation Inscriptions that were produced in large numbers, especially honorary inscriptions and epitaphs, oscillate between the trend of using stereotypical formulations and the need to express the individuality of emotion – gratitude, pride, pain, and so on. While gnomic phrases, very common in epitaphs,82 ease the pain of death by transforming the individual loss into an unavoidable universal experience, gravestones set up in the same cemetery may also compete with one another in expressing the uniqueness of the loss and the magnitude of the pain. As we have already seen, this expression of emotion was accomplished with the use of vivid images (see pp. 107f.). A medium that served the individual characterisation of the deceased was the description of his or her favourite activities; this, too, enhanced the expression of pain. An epigram from Aphrodisias illustrates this method of emotional arousal. It was erected for a young man, whose family probably originated in Rhodes. This explains why this text uses the Doric dialect, giving the deceased man an individual characterisation. The text alludes to the life he left behind: The stone speaks of Epikrates, the son of Epikrates, still a young man, who lies under this mound. The dust is left behind, and the barbita [a string instrument] no longer strummed, as well as the Homeric (books?) and the spears and the willow circle (i.e., the shield) with the

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I.Knidos 303 (Knidos, first century BCE): Ἀτθίς, ἐµοὶ ζήσασα καὶ εἰς ἐµὲ πνεῦµα λιποῦσα, | ὡς πάρος εὐφροσύνης νῦν δακρύων πρόφασι, | ἁγνά, πουλυγόητε, τί πένθιµον ὕπνον ἰαύεις, | ἀνδρὸς ἀπὸ στέρνων οὔποτε θεῖσα κάρα, | Θεῖον ἐρηµώσασα τὸν οὐκέτι; σοὶ γὰρ ἐς Ἅδαν | ἦλθον ὁµοῦ ζωᾶς ἐλπίδες ἁµετέρας. I.Didyma 532c (Miletos, c. 100 BCE): τοῦ δὲ πεσο[ῦσαν] ἀνδρὸς ἐν ἀγ̣κοίναις̣ ὕ̣π̣ν̣ος ἔπαυ̣σ̣ε βίου (‘sleep ended her life, as she fell in her husband’s arms’). Cf. GV 1738: τὸν µοῦνον ἐν στέρνοισιν ἐδέγµην (the husband, ‘whom alone I had taken to my bosom’). For references to physical contact during funerals see Chaniotis 2006, 219–226. Tsagalis 2008, 252–261; Baumbach, Petrovic, and Petrovic 2010, 11–13; Schmitz 2010; Tueller 2010; Vestrheim 2010. Gnomic phrases: Tsagalis 2008, 9–61; for typical expressions see ibid. 135–213.

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Angelos Chaniotis beautiful handle, the halters of the young horses, covered with cobwebs, the bows, and the 83 javelins. Being distinguished in all this, the glorious young man went to Hades.

Although the poet uses several formulaic expressions known from other epigrams, he shows his originality by using the verb λείπω (‘to leave behind’) not to refer to the people whom the deceased has left behind but rather to things. Instead of mentioning or describing Epikrates’ favourite activities, he alludes to them by listing the objects which are connected with them: the dust, the barbita, the books of Homeric poetry, the spears, the shield, the halters, the bows, the javelins. This emphasis on inanimate objects indirectly increases the sense of loss. The poem consists of images of objects, which have become meaningless now that Epikrates is gone: the barbita is no longer strummed, the halters are covered with cobwebs. In this way, the anonymous poet succeeds in offering an individual characterisation of Epikrates. Through the use of the Doric dialect he alludes to his origins; with references to his activities he characterises his social position; with the list of the objects that are no longer used he creates a sense of abandonment and loss without using any trivial word of lament or grief. Individual characterisation can also be observed in honorary inscriptions, whose aim was not only to honour and express gratitude but also to motivate other men and women to follow the honorand’s example. At first sight, honorary inscriptions seem very stereotypical, drawing from a ‘pool’ of standard attributes of praise – epithets and their corresponding adverbs and nouns: ἀγαθός, καλός (‘good’), φιλόπατρις (‘lover of the fatherland’), εὔνους (‘benevolent), σώφρων (‘prudent’), φιλόδοξος (‘eager to achieve good reputation’), φιλότιµος (‘loving honour’), δίκαιος (‘just’), ἁγνός (‘pure’), µισοπόνηρος (‘an enemy of evil’), κόσµιος (‘decent’), εὐσεβής (‘pious, respectful’), ἐπιεικής (‘moderate’), σεµνός (‘stately, arousing respect’), πρᾶος (‘gentle, mild’), and so on. But when we study the use of such attributes in a closed context, for instance in a city such as Aphrodisias from which hundreds of honorary inscriptions survive from a period of c. 300 years, we observe that such attributes are used in unique combinations, portraying, as it were, the individual who is honoured. They aroused gratitude precisely through this individual characterisation.84 To give a few examples, the honorary inscription for Attinas son of Theodoros uses words that characterise him as a good and virtuous citizen, a patriot, and a generous benefactor;85 that for his son Attinas words that emphasise his piety, love of honour, gravity, affection towards the people, nobility, and prudence;86 that for Teimokles emphasise his 83

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Chaniotis 2009c (Aphrodisias, c. 100 BCE): Ἐπικράτην ὑπόντα τῶιδ᾿ ὑπ᾿ εἰρίωι, | ἔτ᾿ ὄντα κοῦρον· ἁ κόνις δὲ [λ]είπεται | καὶ βάρβιτ᾿ ἀκλόνητα, ταί θ᾿ Ὁµηρικαὶ | καὶ ξυστά κεὐπόρπακος ἰτέας κύκλος, | τοὶ πωλικοί τ᾿ ἀγκτῆρες ἠραχνωµένοι, | τὰ τόξα θ᾿ οἵ τ᾿ ἄκοντες· οἷσιν ἐµπρέπων | ἐς Ἅϊδαν ὁ κοῦρος εὐκλεὴς ἔβα. Chaniotis 2004b, 383. IAph2007 12.203 (first century CE): ἀρετῇ καὶ καλοκαγαθίᾳ διαφέροντα ... φιλοδόξους ... εὐνουστάτην διάθεσιν ... πλουσίως καὶ φιλοτείµως ... ἀρετῆς. IAph2007 12.206 (first/second century CE): εὐσεβῆ διάθεσιν ... φιλοτείµως ... εὐσεβῆ θρησσκείαν ... φιλοδόξως σε[µνὸ]ν .... ἀρετῇ καὶ καλοκαγαθίᾳ [διαφ]έροντα καὶ εὔνουν τῷ δήµῳ ... πρὸς τὴν πατρίδα εὔνοιαν ... εὐγενείᾳ ... [σεµ]νότητι καὶ σωφροσύνῃ.

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wisdom, virtue generosity, and magnanimity;87 that of Theodotos his love of learning, virtue, prudence, and patriotism;88 that for Apollonios his moderate and gentle nature and his love for his fatherland;89 and that for Marcus Aurelius Zenas his gravity and modesty.90 Despite the repetition of certain generic words, each honorary inscription – accompanied, of course, by an honorific portrait statue – commemorated an individual. To study emotional arousal through such texts means to study them in large numbers and in their respective contexts. Linguistic strategies The authors of the more elaborate epigraphical texts (epigrams, decrees, healing miracles, prayers, hymns, etc.) were usually educated people, with some training in oratory. They were familiar with the current stylistic techniques, which they used for the purpose of emotional display and emotional arousal. For instance, alliteration and assonance were common strategies in epigrammatic poetry,91 and naturally they are also found in funerary epigrams in inscriptions. For instance, in the epigram for a seven-year old child in Athens, repetition (γαῖα ... γαῖα)92 and alliteration (lip/lup, ana-) enhanced the sense of pain felt by his parents:93 Earth (γαῖα) raised you to light, Sibyrtios, earth (γαῖα) hides your body; ether has reclaimed your breath, the very one who gave it to you. You have departed, snatched away (ἀναρπασθείς) by fate (ἀνά-νκης), leaving grief (λιπ-ὼν λύπ-ας) to your father and mother, having completed seven years.

When the name of the deceased individual had a meaning that raised an unfulfilled expectation, the author of a grave inscription would exploit this in order to underline how hopes were deceived. A very moving grave epigram from Thessaly, for instance, conveys the sense of despair by stating at the very beginning that life (zoe) has died. Life (Zoe) was in fact the name of the young woman for whom the grave was erected; after the death of their only child, her parents did not live their life (bioton), they only endured it. And since Zoe died during the delivery of a still-born baby, she took with her to death also the hope for the 87 88 89 90 91 92

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IAph2007 1.512 (first/second century CE): σοφόν, καλὸν καὶ ἀγαθόν ... µεγαλοψύχως καὶ φιλοδόξως ... µεγαλοµερῶς λαµπρότατα καὶ πολυτελέστατα. Unpublished inscription (first century BCE): ἄνδρα [καλὸν καὶ] ἀγαθὸν καὶ φιλόπατριν ... ζήσαντα καλῶς [καὶ σωφρό]νως καὶ ἐν φιλοµαθίᾳ [καὶ παιδεί]αι καὶ ἀρετῆι πάσηι. IAph2007 12.417 (late second century CE): ἄνδρα πρᾶον καὶ ἐπεικῆ καὶ ἐν πᾶσιν φιλότειµον περὶ τὴν πατρίδα. IAph2007 1.179 (early third century CE): ἤθει σεµνῷ διενένκοντα ζήσαντα κοσµίως καὶ αἰδηµόνως πρὸς ὑπόδειγµα ἀρετῆς ... µεγαλοψύχως. Tsagalis 2008, 50. For other examples from funerary inscriptions, see notes 66 (the repetition of µεῖνον) and 75 (the repetition of εὐθύς). For repetition in the papyrological evidence see p. 68 in this volume. Repetition is very common in magical texts (e.g. IGLS I 2220: ἤδη ἤδη ταχὺ ταχὺ ἄρτι ἄρτι ἄρτι; Audollent 1904, no. 239 lines 48–51: ἤδη ἤδη [ἤ] δη, ταχὺ ταχὺ ταχέως, κατάδησον κατάδησον κατάδησον αὐτούς) and in acclamations (see pp. 298f.). IG II2 12599 (Athens, third century BCE); Vérilhac 1978, 276 no. 95: γαῖα µὲν εἰς φάος ἦρε, Σιβύρτιε, γαῖα δὲ κεύθει | σῶµα, πνοὴν δὲ αἰθὴρ ἔλαβεν πάλιν, ὅσπερ ἔδωκεν. | πατρὶ δὲ σῶι καὶ µητρὶ λιπὼν λύπας ὑπ’ ἀνάνκης | ὤιχου ἀναρπασθεὶς ἑπτὰ ἔτη γ[εγ]ονώ[ς].

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continuation of the family. The only other person named in her epigram is her father. Having the same name as the greatest river of Thessaly, Peneios, his name was also suitable for a word-play: the tears he was shedding could be assimilated with the flow of the river:94 The stele which you look at, friend, is full of grief. For Zoe (‘Life’) has died, the one who was called by this name, 18 years old, leaving behind tears for her parents and the same for her grandparents from the moment she left the sorrows of earth. She was bound with the yoke of marriage, and she was pregnant with a child, who died before his time; as soon as it was born, without a sound she left the light of the sun. And Peneios, her father, pouring tears, set up this construction together with his dear wife, for they had this only child and no other. For they did not get from her (or again?) a child, but childless they endured their life.

It is also natural that we find metaphors and metonyms in poetic texts, for instance references to the ‘womb of earth’95 or comparisons of a maiden with a flower. 96 Similar techniques, again under the influence of oratory, are also found in prosaic, public documents. For instance, when Munatius Hillarianus was honoured by his association with the erection of four statues and four painted images of himself and his deceased son, he requested a more moderate honour. Using a metonym he acknowledged the gratitude of the fellow-members of the club:97 94

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SEG XLV 641 (Euhydrion, second/third century CE): Ἣν ἐσορᾷς στήλην µεστὴν ἐσορᾶς, φίλε, πένθους. | Κάτθνε γὰρ Ζώη οὔνοµα κλησκοµένη | ὀκτωκαιδεκέτης, λείψασα γονεῦσι δάκρυα | καὶ πάπποις τὰ ὅµοια, οὗπερ γαίης λίπε πένθη. | Ἦν δὲ γάµῳ ζευχθεσα κύησέ τε έκνον ἄωρον, | οὗ τεχθέντος ἄφωνος λίπεν φάος ἡελίοιο. | Πηνειὸς δὲ πατήρ χεύων δάκρ θῆκε τόδ᾿ ἔργον | σύν τε φίλῃ ἀλόχῳ, οἷς ἦν τέκνον ἕν τε κοὐκ ἄλλο. | Οὐδὲ γὰρ ἐξ αὐτῆς ἔσχον τέκνον φὼ⟨ς⟩ λιπούσης | ἀλλ᾿ ἄτεκνοι λύπῃ καρτέρεον βίοτον. We also note here repetitions and alliteration (ἐσορᾷς ... ἐσορᾶς, λείψασα ... λίπε ... λίπεν ... λιπούσης ... λύπῃ). IG VII 117 (Megara, 4th/5th CE): Νικοκράτους λαγόνεσσιν ὑπὸ χθονίαισι κέκρυπτε σῶµα. (‘Nikokrates’s body is hidden in the womb of earth’). On metaphor in Greek literature see the collection of essays in Boys-Stones (ed.) 2003, 1–147, and Harrison, Paschalis, and Frangoulidis (eds.) 2005; on metaphor and emotion in the novel see Bowie 2005, 70–74 (metaphor and desire). IG IX.2.649 (Larisa, second/third century CE); GV 988; Lattimore 1942, 97–101: ὡς νέον ἄνθος ὥ̣ρης παντοθαλοῦς πρωτο[φ]ανὴ καλύκων (‘like a young flower in the all-blooming season, showing my first petals’). Cf. IG V.1.960 (Boiai in Lakonia): the deceased girl is compared with the disk of the sun and a garland of roses (ὡς σέλας ἠελ[ί]ου, ὡς ῥόδεος στέφανο̣[ς]). Other examples: Merkelbach and Stauber 1998, 60 no. 01/12/20 (Halikarnassos, Hellenistic period): οἰκτρὰν δὲ θύγατρα κατεστενάχησε Στρατεία | οἷά τις εἰναλία δάκρυσιν ἀλκυονίς (‘Srateia groaned for her pitiable daughter, shedding tears like some alkyon of the sea’); 141 no. 01/20/23 (Miletos, late second century BCE): τέκνου νεοθηλέα βλαστόν (‘the fresh-budding branch of a child’); IG XII.3.53 (Arkesine, 242 CE): ὥσπερ δένδρον εἵµερον εὐθαλὲς ὑπὸ [π]νεύµ[ατο]ς ἐκρειζοθὲν ἐπὶ τῆς γῆς ἔπεσεν, οὕτως [κ]αὶ ὁ Ὀκτ[άβ]ιος µοιριδίως ἔπεσεν (‘as a cultivated blooming tree falls on the ground, uprooted by wind, so did Oktavios fell following his destiny’). See also the expression µ’ ἔθρεψεν | ἄνκυραν γήρως (she ‘raised me to be an anchor for her old age’) in the text in note 63. I.Napoli I 44 (Neapolis, 194 CE) col. II lines 14–18: καὶ τῶν εἰκόνων τῶν τεσσάρων καὶ τῶν ἀνδριάντων τῶν τεσσάρων ἐµοὶ µὲν ἱκανὴ {ι} µία γραφὴ {ι} καὶ χαλκοῦς ἀνδριὰς εἷς, ἴσαι δὲ τειµαὶ καὶ τῶι µεθεστηκότι τὰς γὰρ πολλὰς εἰκόνας καὶ τοὺς πολλοὺς ἀνδριάντας ἐν ταῖς ὑµετέραις ψυχαῖς ἔχοµεν καθιδρυµένους.

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And instead of four painted images and four portrait statues, one painting is enough for me and one single bronze statue – and the same honours for the deceased. For many paintings and many statues stand erected for us in your souls.

The selection of particular words, occasional redundancies, and sarcasm were used in public documents to convey indignation. When Ptolemais provoked strife among the cities of Kyrenaika by sending a delegation to the festival of the Capitolia in Rome for the first time, the emperor, Antoninus Pius, showed his indignation by insinuating surprise (θ[αυµάζ]ω ὅτι):98 I am amazed that, although you have never sent a delegation and participated in the joint sacrifice at the contest of the Capitolia in the past, you have now sent a delegation for the first time; for you know very well that such innovations cause strife among the cities.

A letter of Eumenes II to the inhabitants of Tyriaion, who had claimed for their settlement the status of a polis without his approval, is a text clearly written by an angry man, oscillating between the first person plural, when he is courteous and conciliatory, and the first person singular, when he addresses the hot legal issues. 99 A decree of the small community of Olymos in Karia is instructive for the selection of the vocabulary. Although participation in worship in a sanctuary of Apollo and Artemis was reserved to the members of three subdivisions of the citizen-body, some honorary members of the subdivisions claimed for themselves the right to participate in the gatherings of the citizens. For this reason, the community decided to have the names of the legitimate participants inscribed. The decree is fragmentary, but the phrases that are certainly preserved clearly express both the indignation of the man who proposed it and the indignation he wanted to foment.100 Some individuals, who have received the right to be members of the syngeneiai as a favour/ concession (κατὰ συνχώρηµα), claimed for themselves also the right to attend the meetings ... and had the audacity (τετολµήκασιν) to attempt an attack against the funds administered by the people of the Olymeis, some of them by attending the sacrifices, others by occupying the offices of the hierourgos, the priest, and the prophet. The rights of the people and the care of the gods were violated in an impious way through this shameless appropriation (ἀναιδοῦς ἀµφιζβητήσεως) of rights which they did not deserve. In order that in the future this whole evil pretence (µοχθηρὰ παρεύρεσις) is stopped, as best as this is possible, etc. 98

SEG XXVIII 1566 lines 81–83 (Ptolemais, 154 CE): θ[αυµάζ]ω ὅτι µηδέποτε ἐν τῷ ἔµπροσθεν χρόνῳ διαπέµψαν[τες καὶ] | συνθύσαντες εἰς τὸν τῶ[ν Καπετω]λίων ἀγῶνα νῦν πρῶτον ἀπεστείλατε· οὐ γὰρ ἀγνοεῖ[τε ὅτι] | τὸ τὰ τοιαῦτα καινοτοµ[εῖν αἰτί]αν παρέχει ταῖς πόλεσι φιλονεικίας. See Laronde 2004. For irony in papyri see p. 67. 99 SEG XLVII 1745 (shortly after 188 BCE). First person plural, lines 4f., 8, 13, 29–31. First person singular, lines 14–20, 26, 35f. Chaniotis 2012e, 318. 100 I.Mylasa 861 lines 10–13 (Olymos, second century BCE): ... τινὲς λαβόντες κατὰ συνχώρηµα τὴν µετουσίαν ἐν συνγεν[είαις τῶν ἱερῶν, ἀξιοῦντες αὐτοῖς µετουσίαν καὶ ἐν ταῖς τῶν --]ωκότων συνόδοις ὑπάρχειν, τετολµήκασιν ἐπὶ τὰ διοικούµενα ὑπὸ τοῦ Ὀλυµέων δήµου, οἱ µὲν αὐτῶν ἐπὶ τὰ[ς θυσίας µόνον ἰέναι, οἱ δὲ καὶ ἐπὶ τὰς τιµὰς τῆς τε ἱερου]ργίας καὶ ἱερωσύνης καὶ προφητείας, καὶ ἐκ τῆς τῶν µηθὲν προσηκόντων ἀναιδοῦς ἀµφιζβητήσεως [πολλὰ ἀσεβήµατα συνέβη κατὰ τῶν δικαίων τῶν πολιτ]ῶν καὶ κατὰ τῆς προστασίας τῶν θεῶν κατασκευάζεσθαι· ἵνα οὖν εἰς δύναµιν πᾶσα µοχθηρὰ παρεύρεσις π[ερὶ τούτων ἀναιρῆται τὸ λοιπόν ...].

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Three words of moral condemnation were carefully chosen to excite indignation: tolman (very common in connection with violations of legal or moral norms) anaides, and mochtheros. Anaides and mochtheros, never attested in public documents earlier than the Hellenistic period, were only used in Hellenistic public documents in the context of indignation.101 Such words belong to a political vocabulary with an emotive function; they served as acoustic signals attracting the audience’s attention and triggering emotional responses. The verb περιοράω (‘to remain indifferent’) has a similar function, used in public inscriptions of the Hellenistic period in connection with appeals to pity or with expressions of gratitude for courageous, responsible, or honorable behaviour.102 Political discourses often operate with such words, whose significance goes beyond their literal meaning – consider, for instance, Ausländer in German or liberal in US English. Studies of the emotional background of public inscriptions will certainly improve our understanding of how such linguistic and rhetorical strategies worked. 4 SOCIAL AND CULTURAL CONTEXTS ANGER AND FEAR IN THE HONORARY DECREE FOR PROTOGENES Manifestations of emotions in inscriptions are filtered by processes of appraisal, cultural norms, and social conventions. The very existence of an inscription is the result of conscious action, selection, and composition. Because of their very nature as ‘monuments’, inscriptions are part of a process of communication. Which emotions will be communicated, to whom, and through which media of linguistic expression very much depends on complex and continually changing social and cultural parameters, which are reflected in inscriptions. 101 Chaniotis 2012c. Anaides: I.Priene 17 lines 11f.; mochtheros: Welles 1934, no. 61 (see note 7); Gonnoi II 91; IG XII.3.1286; I.Mylasa 132. 102 I.Ephesos 2001 line 13 (Ephesos, c. 300–297 BCE): µὴ περιιδεῖν ἀλλοτριωθὲν τὸ φρούριον (‘not to look with indifference at the loss of the fort’); IOSPE I2 32 B lines 25f. (Olbia, c. 200 BCE): µὴ περιιδεῖν τὴν ἐκ πολλῶν τετηρηµένηµ πατρίδα ὑποχείριον γενοµένην τοῖς πολεµίοις (‘not to watch with indifference how their native city, after it had been preserved for many years, is subjected by the enemy’); SEG XXXVIII 1476 (Xanthos, 205 BCE): ... ἀξιάζοµες οὖν ὑµὲ µνασθέντας τᾶς συγγενείας τᾶς ὑπαρχούσας ἁµῖν ποθ᾿ ὑµὲ µὴ περιιδεῖν τὰµ µεγίσταν τᾶν ἐν τᾶι Ματροπόλ[ι πό]λιν, Κυτένιον, ἐξαλειφθεῖσαν (‘we ask you to bring to your memory the kinship between us and not to remain indifferent to the elimination of Kytenion, the largest among the cities of the Metropolis’); I.Oropos 307 lines 19f. (Oropos, c. 150 BCE): µὴ περιιδε[ῖν] πόλιν Ἑλληνίδα ἐξανδραποδισθεῖσαν (‘not to remain indifferent toward the enslavement of a Greek city’); IvOlympia 53 line 10 (Elis, late first century BCE): µὴ πε̣ριιδ̣ῖν κ̣[ει]µέ̣νην ἐπ’ ἐδάφους (‘not to look with indifference at her (the city?) lying on the ground’). Cf. IG XII Suppl. 364 (Thasos, first century CE); SEG XIX 1613 line 16 (Skythopolis, early second century BCE); IG II2 1092 B line 23; 1224 e line 7 (Athens, second century CE). For the use of the verb in the emotional context of a private letter see above note 39. For the analogous emotive function of καταφρονέω and ἀγωνιάω in papyri see pp. 74f. and 81 in this volume.

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As a case study I have selected one of the longest Hellenistic honorary decrees, the decree for Protogenes, a local benefactor in Olbia in the late third century BCE.103 The inscribed decree contains the proposal of the magistrates that had been presented in and approved by the assembly. The aim of the man who drafted the proposal was to show why Protogenes deserved the honours that he urged the citizens to award to him. In order to arouse the feeling of gratitude, the anonymous orator had to stress the dangers from which Protogenes had saved his city. He achieved this by referring to two emotions: the anger of a barbaric king against the city and the fear of the citizens. When king Saitaphernes came along to the other side of the river to hold court (ἐπὶ θεραπείαν), and the magistrates called an assembly and reported on the presence of the king and on the fact that the city’s revenues were exhausted, Protogenes came forward and gave 900 gold pieces. When the ambassadors, Protogenes and Aristokrates, took the money and met the king, the king took the presents but became angry (εἰς ὀργὴν δὲ καταστάντος) and broke up his quarters [... treated?] the magistrates [unworthily? and so] the people met 104 together and [were] terrified (περίφ[οβος]) [and sent?] ambassadors to - -.

This is not the place to conduct a thorough study of the Greek terminology of anger, but for the understanding of this text in its socio-cultural context it is important to point out that literary and epigraphic texts, generally, differentiate between anger (ὀργή and θυµός), wrath that cannot be settled and can be expressed with violent actions (χόλος), indignation (νεµεσάω, νεµεσητός), and annoyance caused by a violation of rights or status (ἀγανάκτησις).105 For instance in a legal document, the verdict of a Rhodian court of arbitration that considered the dispute between Priene and Samos over a territory, the verb ἀγανακτέω is used in the meaning ‘to be vexed because of a violated right’. As the Rhodian judges write in their verdict, when a fort and plots of land in the disputed territory were occupied by the Prienians, ‘the Samians were neither annoyed (οὐκ ἀγανακτῆσαι) nor sent them an embassy to bring charges for the arrangements that had been made.’106 In

103 IOSPE I2 32. Discussion in connection with Hellenistic oratory and with Hellenistic interest in enargeia and dramatic changes in Chaniotis 2013a. 104 A lines 82–96: τοῦ τε βασιλέως Σαϊταφέρνου παραγενοµένου εἰς τὸ πέραν ἐπὶ θεραπείαν, τῶν δὲ ἀρχόντων συναγαγόντων ἐκλησίαν καὶ τήν τε παρουσίαν ἐµφανισάντων τοῦ βασιλέως καὶ διότι ἐν ταῖς προσόδοις ἐστὶν οὐδέν, παρελθών Πρωτογένης ἔδωκε χρυσοῦς ἐνακοσίους· τῶ[ν] δὲ πρεσβευτῶν λαβόντων τὰ χρήµατα καὶ ἀπαντησάντων βασιλεῖ Πρωτογένους καὶ [Ἀ]ριστοκράτους, τοῦ δὲ βασιλέως τὰ µὲν δῶρ[α µεµψ]αµένου, εἰς ὀργὴν δὲ καταστάντος κα[ὶ τὴν] ἀνάζευξιν ποιησαµέν[ου - - - ὧν ἕνεκεν συν]ελθὼν ὁ δῆµος περίφ[οβος ἐγένετο καὶ πρεσ]βευτὰς ἐπὶ τ[- - -]. 105 For the terminology and perception of anger, see Harris 2001, 50–70; Konstan 2006, 41–76 (especially in Aristotle). For νεµεσητός in a Hellenistic inscription of Olbia see IOSPE I2 34 line 17 (first century BCE). For νεµεσάω in connection with divine indignation see TAM V.1.159 and SEG XXXV 1267 (Lydia, Imperial period). 106 I.Priene 37 lines 128f. (Priene, c. 196–191 or 189–182 BCE): οὐκ ἀγανακτῆσαι τοὺς Σαµίους οὐδ’ ἀποστεῖλαι πὸτ αὐτοὺς π[ρ]εσβείαν ἐγκαλοῦντας ἐπὶ τοῖς διωικηµένοις. The same verb is also used in a fragmentary passage in line 143. On this arbitration see Magnetto 2008; on the date: ibid. 75–77. For the use of the same verb in a judiciary context

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the case of the Olbian decree the foreign king showed wrath (ὀργή) that was not necessarily justified. It is represented as an affective reaction, which potentially is beyond control. Anger is associated with the unruly power of natural elements, as in an epigram from Kyzikos that attributes the death of a sailor to Fate, ‘who turned against me the anger of the open sea’107 and in an amulet that wishes for protection from the ‘wrath of the typhoons’.108 Anger can lead to violence,109 and this is why its visible display causes anxiety and fear (cf. περίφ[οβος]). One of the aims of curse tablets is to contain the anger of an opponent; an Attic curse, for instance, wishes that a certain Attalos is deprived of the ability to hear, to speak, to think, and to feel anger.110 So, with the explicit mention of the king’s anger the author could explain the measure of the Olbians’ fear. That the anger was felt by a man who stood outside Greek culture and was in a position of superiority enhanced this impact. Let us consider first the hierarchical relations. Anger appears in the epigraphic evidence as an almost exclusive privilege of the gods (and later of the Christian God). 111 For instance, the anger of a demon is held responsible for the death of a woman in an epigram in Thessaly, and an epidemic in the second century CE in Hierapolis was attributed by Apollo to the wrath (χόλος) of the gods: It was either the thread of the Fates, as they say, or the anger of a demon, which was enraged with me and violently drove me, Parmonis, away from the bed of my sweet husband Epityn112 chanos, against my will.

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see also Mitford 1950, 166 no. 22 line 5 (Cyprus, unknown provenance, fifth/sixth century CE): [ἵνα µὴ πρὸς τὸν µέλλοντα χ]ρ̣ό̣νον ἀγανακτήσεως περ̣[ιλειφθῇ πρόφασις]. I.Kyzikos 506 (Kyzikos, third century CE): εἰς ἐµὲ τὴν ὀργὴν τοῦ πελάγους ἔθετο. Kotansky 1994, 52f. (Sidi Kaddou, second/third century CE): ἀποστρέψατε ... ὀργὴ[ν] τυφώνων ἀνέµων. Augustus explains in a rescript concerning an accidental killing in Astypalaia (6 BCE; IG XII.3.174; Sherk 1969, 341–345 no. 67 lines 21–23: ‘they ordered one of the slaves not to kill them [the intruders], a deed to which one might be driven by justified anger, but to restrain them by throwing on them their excrement’ (προστεταχχότας ἑνὶ τῶν οἰκετῶν οὐκ ἀποκτεῖναι, ὡ[ς] ἴσως ἄν τις ὑπ’ ὀργῆς οὐ[κ] ἀδίκου προήχθη{ι}, ἀλλὰ ἀνεῖρξαι κατασκεδάσαντα τὰ κόπρια αὐτῶν). SEG XXXV 216 (Athens, third century BCE?): ἔστω κωφός, ἄλαλος, ἄνους, µὴ ὀργιζόµενο[ς]. Similar expressions in SEG XXXV 214, 215, 218–223 (Athens); Audollent 1904, nos. 22, 24, 26–31, 33–35, 37 (Kourion, third century CE). Cf. an amulet that was supposed to protect its owner from ‘the wrath either of gods or of humans or of demons or of the Fates’ (Arci in Italy, second/third century; SEG LII 948 lines 24–27: χόλος θεῶν ἴτε ἀνθρώπων ἴτε δεµόνων, ἴτε τῶν Μυρῶν). Ὀργὴ θεοῦ: e.g. IG IX.2.106 (Thessaly); MAMA VI.325 (Akmonia); IGLS I.1 line 210 (Nemrud Dag); χόλος θεῶν: SEG LIII 1075 (Kyme, third century CE). In a Christian context: e.g. IG V.1.821 (Sparta). Cf. the ‘anger of the Cross’ in a Christian curse (Alexandreia in Troas, fifth century CE): I.Alexandreia Troas 188. For the connection between status and display of anger see also Harris 2001, 139f., 229–263; Konstan 2006, 55f., 61, 73. See also p. 71 in this volume. IG IX.2.640 (Larisa, Imperial period): ἢ µίτος ὥς φασιν Μοιρῶν ἢ δαίµονος ὀργή, | ἥτις ἐµοὶ δεινῶς ἐχολώσατο καί µε βιαίως | ἐξ εὐνῆς ποθέουσαν ἐµῆς ἀνδρὸς γλυκεροῖο | Παρµονὶν ἐξεδίωξε Ἐπιτυνχάνου οὐκ ἐθέλουσα.

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You are not the only ones who are being harmed by the accursed misery of the deadly disease. Many cities and peoples grieve under the hatred of the gods. I command you to keep aloof from their painful wrath with libations, banquets, and sacrifices of one hundred full113 grown victims.

Funerary imprecations stereotypically threaten those who violate a grave with the relentless wrath (χόλος) of the gods, not with the anger of fellow humans. A curse contained in the testament of a certain Epikrates is a characteristic example: And if something happens contrary to what I have written or ordered, the individual who has acted against this may be liable to prosecution for tomb-robbery, and nonetheless may the gods, those who are in heaven and those who are on earth and those who are in the sea and 114 those who are under the earth, and the heroes, be angry with him and not be propitiated.

In 58 out of 60 attestations of this curse formula and its variants the wrath of the gods and the gods alone is invoked. In only two cases the wrath of humans is added to that of the gods: in the grave of an individual whose name was not inscribed115 and in the grave of a eunuch. While the first individual did not have recognisable family connections, the second man was deprived of the possibility of ever having descendants. The entrance to his grave is decorated with images of the Furies, shown with their instruments of punishment (a snake, a stick or torch, and a whip) and with their frightening names inscribed under the images (‘the avenger of blood’, ‘the implacable’, ‘the grudging one’). Condemned by his fate to inability to procreate, as the text redundantly and explicitly states (ἄγονον εὐνοῦχον), the eunuch was also deprived of the possibility of having his descendants take care of his grave. For this reason, it was entrusted to the protection of the Furies, all the gods, and all the humans.116 The Erinyes: Teisiphone, Allekto, Megaira. We protect a childless eunuch. Do not open the grave, for it is not right. If someone throws my bones out of here or displaces the burial or 113 Merkelbach and Srauber 1998, 259–261 no. 02/12/01 lines 2–6 (Hierapolis, mid-second century CE or later): οὐ µοῦνοι λοιµοῖο δυσαλθέος οὐλοµένῃσιν | κηραίνεσθε δυηπαθίαις, πολλαὶ δὲ πόληες | ἄχνυνται λαοί τε θεῶν ὀδυσηµοσύνῃσιν. | ὧν ἀπαλεύασθαι κέλοµαι χόλον ἀλγινόεντα | λοιβαῖς εἰλαπίναις τε τεληέσσαις θ’ ἑκατόµβαις. For death attributed to the wrath of the gods see also SEG XXXIV 1271; Merkelbach and Stauber 2001a, 293 no. 10/02/12 (Kaisareia/Hadrianopolis, second century CE) 114 Strubbe 1997, no. 40 lines 94–99 (Nakrasos; first/second century CE): Ἐὰν δὲ οἷς γέγραπφα ἢ διατέτακχα ὑπεναντίον τι γένηται {τι} ἄλλως τέ τι γένηται ἢ ὡς διατέτακ[χα], ὁ ὑπεναντίον τούτοις τι ποιήσας ὑπόδικος ἔστω τυµβωρυ[χί]ᾳ καὶ οὐδὲν ἧσσον θεοὺς σχοίῃ ἐπουρανίους τε καὶ ἐπιγείους καὶ ἐναλίους καὶ καταχθονίους καὶ ἥρωας κεχολωµένους καὶ ἀνεξειλάστους. This curse formula is attested in different variants, for which see Strubbe 1997, 296–298. 115 Strubbe 1997, no. 126 (Keretapa-Diokaisareia, Imperial period): εἴ τις τοῦτο τὸ µνηµῖο[ν] ἀδικήσι, θεῶν καὶ ἀνθρώπων κεχολωµένων τύχοιτο (‘if one acts injustly with regard to this memorial, let him face the wrath of gods and humans’). 116 Strubbe 1997, no. 393 (Anazarbos, first century CE): Ἐρεινύες· Τεισιφόνη, Ἀλληκτώ, Μέγαιρα. Ἄγονον εὐνοῦχον φυλάσσοµεν. Μὴ ἄνοιγε! Οὐ γὰρ θέµις. [Ἐὰν δέ τις ὀστᾶ ἐµοῦ] ἐντεῦθεν ἐγβάλῃ ἢ ταφὴν µετακεινήσῃ [ἢ τὰ γεγραµµένα ἀποξήσῃ ἢ ταφὴν σκυ]λεύσῃ καὶ καταβλάψῃ, θεῶν ἐπουρανί[ων καὶ χθονίων κεχολωµένων τύχοι καὶ] πάντων ⟨ἀ⟩νθ⟨ρ⟩ώπων αὐτός τε καὶ ἔγγονο[ι αὐτοῦ] ...

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Angelos Chaniotis cuts away what has been written or plunders the burial and damages it, may he find the gods of the heaven and of the underworld and all humans enraged, he himself and his descendants.

In the light of this evidence, it seems that the reference to the king’s display of anger implicitly reminded the Olbians of their subordinate position. Finally, the king’s ethnicity added to the dangers issuing from his anger. It should be mentioned here that some of the aforementioned funerary imprecations explicitly invoke the wrath of foreign gods, presumably because they would be more arduous and relentless. Curses in East Karia for instance invoke the wrath of the Pisidian gods, that is the gods of the neighbouring region,117 and a curse from Kollyda in Lydia wishes anyone who disrespects the wishes of the occupant of a grave ‘to face the wrath of all the gods and goddesses of the Roman people’. 118 An unusual feature of the Olbian text is also the admittance of fear, which is repeated in another section which describes the citizens’ response to reports concerning an imminent attack of barbaric tribes in moment in which large part of the city was not fortified: Because of this many had lost courage (ἐχόντων ἀθύµως) and prepared to abandon the city. ... Because of this, the people met in an assembly in deep despair (διηγωνιακώς), as they saw before them the danger that lay ahead and the terrors in store, and called on all who were able-bodied to help and not to watch with indifference (µὴ περιιδεῖν) their native city being 119 subjected by the enemy, after it had been preserved for many years.

The author of the text used several terms denoting fear, in order to intensify linguistically the impression of the fright that prevailed in the city in these two occasions: περίφοβος, ἀθύµως, διηγωνιακώς. The emotional situation is enhanced with the verb περιοράω which, as we have already seen, is often used in the context of despair and plea for help (see p. 114 n. 102). While a city, whose very name (Olbia, ‘the blessed one’) raised the expectation of prosperity and bliss,120 was confronted with extinction, its citizens displayed fear. This is highly unusual and requires an explanation. Communities which expect an attack do not collectively display fear but rather courage – genuine or not. When Aphrodisias expected an attack by Mithridates VI in 88 BCE, the authorities declared to their allies, the Romans, that our whole People together with our wives and children and all our property is ready to risk all for Quintus and the Roman cause; and that without the rule of the Romans we do not choose even to live (see note 72).

117 Strubbe 1997, 296f. 118 Strubbe 1997, no. 50 (first century CE): ἐχέτω τοὺς δήµου Ῥωµαίων θε|[οὺς κεχολ]ωµένους πάντας καὶ πάσας. We need not assume that the occupant of this grave was of Roman origin. 119 IOSPE I2 32 B lines 12–14 and 21–27: καὶ διὰ τοῦτο πολλῶν ἐχόντων ἀθύµως καὶ παρασκευασµένων ἐγλειπεῖν τὴµ πόλιν ... ὧν ἕνεκεν συνελθὼν ὁ δῆµος διηγωνιακὼς καὶ τὸγ κίνδυνον τὸµ µέλλοντα καὶ τὰ δεινὰ πρὸ ὀφθαλµῶν ποιούµενος παρεκάλει πάντας τοὺς ἰσχύοντας βοηθῆσαι καὶ µὴ περιιδεῖν τὴν ἐκ πολλῶν τετηρηµένηµ πατρίδα ὑποχείριον γενοµένην τοῖς πολεµίοις. 120 Cf. an Archaic oracle (?) from Olbia (IGDOP 93, c. 550–525 BCE): εἰρήνη Ὀλβίῃ πόλι· µακαρίζω ἐκεῖ.

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At the same time the author of a metrical inscription in Delos displayed the courage of the (Greek?) soldiers who were to follow Sulla in this war:121 One should wish to die away from hateful fate, delighting in the hope of children to take care of one in the old age; or (one should wish) not to abandon children in orphanhood; or if one dies, then (to die) having the fortune to have Sulla as a proconsul.

We do not need to take any of this at face value. This is theatrical display of courage, but it still shows the constraints that communities had in expressing fear in their public documents. If fear is mentioned in decrees, it is only a part of a persuasion strategy.122 In the aforementioned decree in honour of Lykourgos in Athens (see above note 31), the proposer, the orator Stratokles, contrasted the fear of the other Greeks, terrified by Alexander the Great’s power, with the courage shown by Lykourgos and the Athenians. An Ephesian decree mentions the confusion inflicted by Mithridates’ sudden attack only as an excuse for the fact that the Ephesians did not fight against Mithridates VI from the beginning of the Mithridatic War (‘he gained control of our city as well, terrifying (us) with the magnitude of his army and the sudden attack’).123 More often fear is mentioned in honorary decrees for generals and benefactors, in order to emphasise their courage and their contribution.124 This explains why the orator in Olbia chose to frame his narrative with the emotion of fear. In this way he showed the greatness of Protogenes’ benefaction and by arousing gratitude he made the honours acceptable. When wealthy men make benefactions, gratitude may be the emotion that the recipients admit and display, but envy most probably is the emotion that many (most?) of them feel. Some benefactors were aware of this. Let us have a look at the epigram composed by Euarestos, rhetoric teacher and sponsor of an agonistic festival at Oinoanda, to be inscribed on the base of his statue:

121 Durrbach 1921, 239 no. 149: Θ[νῄσκε]ιν εὐχέσθω τις ἀ[π]εχθέος ἄνδιχα µοίρας, | τερπόµενος τέκνων ἐλπίδι γηροκόµωι | ἤ προλιπεῖν µὴ παῖδ[α]ς ἐν ὀρφανίησιν ἐρήµο[υς], | ἤ Σύλλου θν[ῄ]σκων ἀνθυπάτοιο τ[υχεῖ]ν. In my view, the text does not refer to the interest of Sulla for war orphans but expresses the determination of soldiers to follow him even to their own death. 122 Chaniotis 2012c. 123 I.Ephesos 8 lines 7f. (c. 86 BCE): ἐκράτησεν καὶ τῆς ἡµετέρας πόλεως καταπληξάµενος τῶι] τε πλήθει τῶν δυνάµεων καὶ τῶι ἀπροσδοκήτωι τῆς ἐπιβολῆς. Cf. above note 7, for Attalos’ letter, in which he justifies his decision not to attack the Gauls by explaining his fear of the negative consequences of such an action. 124 I.Erythrai 24 (honorary decree for generals who helped defend the city against the Galatians, c. 275 BCE) lines 10f.: πο[λλῶν δὲ φό]βων καὶ κινδύνων περιστάντων (‘when many terrors and dangers were surrounding us’); I.Histriae 15 (honorary decree for Agathokles, c. 200 BCE) lines 8f.: τῆς τε [πόλεως] οὔσης ἐν τα[ρ]αχῆι (‘when the city was in confusion’); I.Sestos 1 (honorary decree for Menas, c. 100 BCE) lines 16f.: τῆς π̣όλεω[ς ἐ]ν ἐπικινδύνωι καιρῶι γενοµένης διά τε τὸν ἀπὸ τῶν γειτνιώντων Θρᾳκῶν φόβον̣ (‘when the city was in danger because of the fear caused by the neighbouring Thracians’); F.Delphes III.4.69 (honorary decree of Daulis for Hermias of Stratonikeia, c. 86 BCE): περιστ[άντων τ]ὰν [χώραν ἁµῶν φόβ]ων κα κινδύνων µεγάλων (‘when our land was met with great fears and dangers’).

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Angelos Chaniotis For you, sweet fatherland, I, Euarestos, have gladly offered this fifth contest myself; and I set up again, for the fifth time, these bronze images, symbols of virtue and prudence. For many have established beautiful contests in their cities after their death, but no one has done it during his lifetime. I am the only one who has ventured this, and my heart rejoices with pleasure at the bronze statues. Now, give up your carping criticism, you all who are in thrall 125 to dread envy, and gaze at my statue with eyes of imitation.

Euarestos, proud, self-confident, but also wise, was sure that people would stand in front of his statue and show µῶµος (reproach). There were various ways to deal with envy. Some people named their children Abaskantos and Aphthonetos. Herodes Atticus wrote terrible curses on the statues he had dedicated, suspecting that they would be the object of envious attacks.126 And the assembled crowd in Aphrodisias exorcised the fear of envy by shouting ‘fortune will prevail over envy’ (p. 93 with figure 1). Euarestos had an unusual recipe: emulation. Instead of envying him, people should follow his example. Although the decree of Olbia does not mention envy, Protogenes’ tremendous wealth was undoubtedly viewed by other citizens with envy. The author of the decree in his honour sought to outbalance envy with gratitude. 5 PERSPECTIVES This overview has hopefully shown the diversity, relevance, and potential of epigraphic texts for the study of emotions. But it must also reveal the difficulties. The interpretation of inscriptions that describe, display, prescribe, or allude to emotions means placing them in their social and cultural contexts: establishing the date and background of the composition; considering the intended audiences; studying the relation between text and monument; examining the place in which the inscription was set up. Here lie the greatest obstacles in the evaluation of inscriptions for the study of emotions. The contexts cannot always be reconstructed; it is difficult to establish the exact date of inscriptions; the authors of epigraphic texts and their intentions are not always known to us; the use of stereotypical or gnomic phrases makes it difficult to distinguish between genuine expression of feeling and conventions. Only through the analysis of a large corpus of texts can we understand the parameters that determined the composition of epigraphic texts. This must be the first step in the exploitation of the epigraphic – and more generally the documentary – sources for the study of emotions in the Greek world. The inscriptions on which this chapter placed particular emphasis, the decrees and the more elaborate epitaphs (especially the grave epigrams), were composed 125 SEG XLIV 1182 B (c. 238 CE): τήνδε σοί, ὦ πάτρη γλυκερή, πέµπτην θέµιν α[ὐ]τὸ[ς] | ⟦αὐτὸς⟧ Εὐάρεστος ἐγὼ γηθόµενος τέλεσα | καὶ πέµπτας τασδεὶ τίθεµαι πάλιν εἰκόνα[ς] αὐτὸ[ς] | χαλκείας, ἀρετῆς σύµβολα καὶ σοφίης· | πλεῖστοι µὲν γὰρ ἔθηκαν ἀέθλια καλὰ πόλεσι | τεθνεότες, ζωὸς δ᾿ οὔτις ἐφηµερίων· | µοῦνος δ᾿ αὐτὸς ἐγὼν ἔτλην τόδε, καί ῥ᾿ ἐµὸν ἦτο[ρ] | γηθεῖ τερπόνον χαλκελάτοις ξοάνοις· | τοιγὰρ µῶµον ἀνέντες ὅσοι φθόνον αἰνὸν ἔχου̣σ̣[ιν] | µειµηλοῖς ὄσσοις εἰσίδετ᾿ εἰκόν᾿ ἐµήν. See also Dickie 2003. 126 Tobin 1997, 116–130.

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by educated individuals, familiar with rhetorical and poetic techniques of persuasion and emotional stimulation. This applies also to inscriptions discussed in other chapters of this volume, healing miracles, aretalogies, and records of divine justice in particular.127 Education, literacy, the internalisation of civic values, and familiarity with philosophical ideas count among the parameters that determine if and how emotions will be expressed in epigraphic texts. Which other parameters were at play can be best understood through the study of the most abundant, seemingly most trivial, but socially and culturally most complex category of inscriptions: the epitaphs. How emotional responses to death are manifested, concealed, aroused, described, theatrically displayed, re-enacted (through the loud reading of an inscription),128 controlled through laws,129 or restrained through consolation strategies depends on civic values, gender, education, religious and eschatological beliefs, social status, age, the conditions of death (heroic death in battle, premature death in an accident, murder, illness, etc.), life expectancy, trendsetters (standard formulas and other conventions), the existence of affective family relations, concepts of inheritance and adoption, social expectations, norms limiting the extent and duration of public mourning, perceptions of the condition humaine, and so on. Precisely because of the abundance of grave inscriptions we can also best study the use of stereotypes and the divergence from standard formulas in order to express individual feelings (cf. p. 109–111). Several types of epigraphic material discussed in this chapter show that manifestations of emotions were subject to change in various respects: with regard to whether emotional language was used; with regard to what emotions were commonly mentioned; with regard to the manner emotions were communicated or provoked. As already mentioned, emotional language only becomes common in decrees after the late fourth century BCE (pp. 113f. and 115–120); references to the physical contact between husband and wife in epitaphs are not attested before the Hellenistic period (p. 109). As regards the connection of an emotion with a particular historical period, hope presents an instructive case study. Although hope appears in inscriptions of a private nature as early as the Archaic period – usually in epigrams that mention that the hopes of parents were deceived by the premature death of a child –, it is not mentioned in public inscriptions until the principate of Augustus. In the Imperial period it is mentioned quite often and always in connection with the negotiations between partners of asymmetrical power, the emperor and the cities of the provinces or the popular assembly and a local benefactor.130 A decree of the Greek cities of Asia referring to Augustus is a good example: 127 See pp. 177–204 (healing miracles), 267–291 (aretalogies). For the impact of literacy on the representation of emotions in papyri, see pp. 60–64. 128 Cf. Day 2000 (in connection with dedicatory epigrams). 129 Chaniotis 2010b and 2013d. 130 SEG LVI 1233 lines 42–47 (decree of the Greeks of Asia for Augustus, 9 BCE, copy from Metropolis): ὁ Καῖσαρ | τὰς ἐλπίδας τῶν π[ρο]λαβόντων ἐν ταῖς εὐεργεσίαις ὑπερ|έθηκεν οὐ µόνον τ[ο]ὺς πρὸ α(ὐ)τοῦ γεγονότας πᾶσι τοῖς ἀγα|θοῖς ὑπερβαλλόµενος, ἀλλ᾿ οὐδ᾿ ἐ(ν) τοῖς ἐσοµένοις ἐλπίδ[α] | τῆς συνκρίσεως ἀ[π]ολειπών (‘Caesar exceeded in bene-

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Angelos Chaniotis the eternal and immortal Nature of All Things, by reason of unsurpassed benefaction, has donated to humans the greatest good, bringing Caesar Augustus to our fortunate life, the father of his own fatherland, the divine Rome, and Ancestral Zeus and Saviour of the entire human race, whose providence has not only fulfilled the hopes but also surpassed them. For earth and sea are pacified and the cities blossom with order, concord, and prosperity; there is vigour and bounty of everything good, as men are full of good hopes for the future and good 131 spirit in the present, (expressing?) with contests, sacrifices and hymns their --

By expressing hopes, subordinate communities urged their ruler to behave according to their expectations. This is why one finds references to this emotion in a historical period in which the monarchical power of the emperor is established and communities were dominated by wealthy elites. Of course, hope cannot be separated from fear. These are the two emotions that dominate in asymmetrical relationships, such as the one between mortals and gods (see pp. 205–208 in this volume). Interestingly, the popularity of personal names composed with elpis increases in exactly this period, culminating in the third century CE, when hope is a natural response to phenomena of crisis. To make such observations one needs a critical mass of attestations of relevant names; only one city can provide them: Athens. In Athens, a city from which we have a reliable critical mass of names from the late sixth century BCE to the fifth century CE that allows us to observe trends, 129 of the names composed with elpis out of a total of 171 attestations are found in inscriptions dated from the first to the third centuries CE (75%); seven out of 17 names composed with elpis, appear for the first time in the Imperial period. In this case one is almost tempted to speak of an ‘emotional culture’ of hope, which of course does not exclude anxiety and fear.

factions the hopes of those who anticipated (benefactions), not only surpassing those before him in all good things, but not even leaving any hope of comparison to those who are to come in the future’). I.Assos 26 lines 5–7 (decree of Assos in honour of Caligula, 37 CE): ... ἐπεὶ ἡ κατ’ εὐχὴν πᾶσιν ἀνθρώποις ἐλπισθεῖσα Γαΐου | Καίσαρος Γερµανικοῦ Σεβαστοῦ ἡγεµονία κατήνγελται, | οὐδὲν δὲ µέτρον χαρᾶς εὕρηκε ὁ κόσµος (‘since the leadership of Gaius Caesar Germanicus Augustus, for which all men have hoped and prayed, has been proclaimed, and the world could not find any measure of joy’). Agora XV 460 (decree of the Athenian council for the award of the title Augustus to Geta, 209 CE): ἐπειδὴ ἡ ἱερωτάτη καὶ τε|λεω[τάτη πασ]ῶν [ἡ]µερῶν καὶ ὑπὸ πάντων ἐλπισθεῖσα διὰ τὴν ἀθάνατον ὁµόνοι|αν τῶν ὁσίων βασιλέων ... ὑπὸ τῶν µεγάλω|[ν βασιλέων κοινῶι κη]ρ[ύγµ]ατι πᾶσιν ἀν[θ]ρώποις δεδήλωται (‘since through joint declaration of the great kings the most sacred and most perfect of all days has been announced to all men, the day that all had hoped for in view of the everlasting concord of the holy kings ...’). See also the text in the next note. 131 GIBM 894 lines 2–13 (Halikarnassos, c. 1 BCE): [- - - ἐ]πεὶ ἡ αἰώνιος καὶ ἀθάνατος τοῦ παντὸς φύσις τὸ [µέ|γ]ιστον ἀγαθὸν πρὸς ὑπερβαλλούσας εὐεργεσίας ἀνθρ[ώ]|ποις ἐχαρίσατο, Καίσαρα τὸν Σεβαστὸν ἐνεν[κ]αµένη [πρ]ὸ[ς] | τῷ καθ’ ἡµᾶς εὐδαίµονι βίωι, πατέρα µὲν τῆς [ἑαυ]τοῦ πα|τ[ρ]ίδος θεᾶς Ῥώµης, ∆ία δὲ πατρῶον καὶ σωτῆρα τοῦ κο[ι|ν]οῦ τῶν ἀνθρώπων γένους, οὗ ἡ πρόνοια τὰς πάντων [ἐλπί|δ]ας οὐκ ἐπλήρωσε µόνον ἀλλὰ καὶ ὑπερῆρεν· εἰρηνεύο[υ|σ]ι µὲν γὰρ γῆ καὶ θάλαττα, πόλεις δὲ ἀνθοῦσιν εὐνοµία[ι] | ὁµονοίαι τε καὶ εὐετηρίαι, ἀκµή τε καὶ φορὰ παντός ἐστι[ν | ἀ]γαθοῦ, ἐλπίδων µὲν χρηστῶν πρὸς τὸ µέλλον, εὐθυµία[ς | δ]ὲ εἰς τ[ὸ] παρὸν τῶν ἀνθρώπων ἐνπεπλησµένων, ἀγῶ|[σ]ιν κἀ[ναθή]µασιν θυσίαις τε καὶ ὕµνοις τὴν ἑαυτῶν.

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The display of emotions is also connected with the identity of the partners in communication. As I shall show in a forthcoming study, in their contacts with the Romans, Greek communities preferred to refer to a stable disposition (προαίρεσις, διάθεσις, εὔνοια) and not to an occurrent emotional state (fear, anger, etc.). A decree of Elaia during the war against Aristonikos (c. 129 BCE) is a good example:132 Our people kept from the beginning the benevolence (εὔνοια) and friendship (φιλία) toward the Romans and in addition to giving many other proofs of its attitude (προαίρεσις) in the most critical situations, also during the war against Aristonikos showed the greatest zeal (σπουδή), enduring great dangers on land and in the sea; from all that, the Roman people acknowledged the attitude (προαίρεσις) of our people and accepting their benevolence (εὔνοια) they included our people among their friends (φιλία) and allies.

The diversity of the epigraphic material allows us to approach a variery of questions concerning, inter alia, the dynamic relationship between individual emotions and group norms; the influence of norms on emotions and, conversely, the shaping of social norms under the influence of emotional experiences; the functions of emotional display in public and social life (court, popular assembly, festival, ritual, family, economic activity); the recognition of ‘emotional communities’ and the study of changes in emotional behaviour in different environments; the part played by emotions as a ‘persuasion strategy’, in particular in asymmetrical relations (communication between mortals and gods, elite and masses, masters and slaves, kings and cities); the influence of external factors (e.g., exile, invasion, political strife, colonisation, war, multicultural environments, linguistic influences, technological development) on emotions; the impact of social changes such as changes in the rights and visibility of women in social and public life (cf. pp. 74f. and 317–327 for the evidence of papyri); the impact of interaction between different genders, age-classes, and social groups on emotions (e.g., the adoption of typically ‘female’ emotional responses by men in certain situations and vice versa); the relationship between emotions and status, gender, and age; the attachment of different emotions to social roles and functions; the projection of human emotions on to the gods; the media by which communities influence the emotions of their members (e.g., limitation of mourning in funerals, etc.); emotions and naming practices; the emotions of individuals who represent authority as a medium which shapes the perception of emotions; the linguistic expression of emotions in official documents (e.g., decrees); emotional responses to emotions (e.g., sorrow of one individual because of the anger of another; anger provoked by emotional excesses); the dynamic interplay between emotions; the 132 Syll.3 694 lines 11–22: [ἐπεὶ ὁ δῆ]µος ἡµῶν [φυλάσσ]ων ἀπ’ ἀρ[χῆς τὴν | πρὸς Ῥ]ωµαίους εὔν[οιαν κα]ὶ φιλίαν π[ολλὰς | καὶ ἄ]λλας ἐν τοῖς [ἀναγκα]ιο[τά]τοις κ[αιροῖς | τῆς] προαιρέσεως [ἀποδε]ίξεις πεπό[ηται, | ὁµ]οίως δὲ καὶ ἐν τ[ῶι πολέ]µωι τῶι π[ρὸς | Ἀρ]ιστόνικον τὴ[ν πᾶσα]ν εἰσφερό[µενος | σ]πουδὴν µεγάλο[υς ὑπέ]στη κινδύ[νους | κ]αὶ κατὰ γῆν καὶ κ[ατὰ θ]άλασσαν, [ἐξ ὧν | ἐ]πιγνοὺς ὁ δῆµος [ὁ Ῥωµ]αίων τὴν π[ροαίρε|σ]ιν τοῦ ἡµετέρου [δήµου] καὶ ἀποδεξ[άµενος] | τὴν εὔνοιαν προσ[δέδεκ]ται τὸν δῆ[µον] | ἡµῶν πρός τε τὴν φ[ιλίαν κ]αὶ συµµα[χίαν]. On this text see Robert 1987, 477–484.

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relation between literary representation and documentary evidence; the adoption by broad social strata of attitudes of the elite; the prevalence of specific emotions in clearly defined historical contexts (e.g., ‘ages of anxiety’, ‘ages of hope’). Theorists of emotional history do not take Classical Antiquity into consideration. It is usually thought that emotions cannot be adequately studied in pre-modern periods because of the lack of sources concerning the ‘common folk’, or that emotional control is a modern invention. Such views, based on clichés cncerning Classical Antiquity, do not take into account the diversity, contrasts, and contradictions of the Classical world, and ignore source material which is not contained in surveys of ‘canonical authors’. As regards emotional control, William Harris’ study on restraining anger has demonstrated the erroneousness of such views.133 A more comprehensive study of the epigraphic sources can modify prevailing views concerning the social and cultural determination of emotions in antiquity. But ancient historians should not only study texts in order to understand emotions; they should study emotions in order to understand texts, and through them ancient society, political life, and culture as well. BIBLIOGRAPHY Audollent, A. (1904) Defixionum tabellae, Paris. Baird, J. and C. Taylor (2010) Ancient Graffiti in Context: Introduction, in J. Baird and C. Taylor (eds.), Ancient Graffiti in Context, London, 1–19. Baumbach, M., A. Petrovic, and I. Petrovic (eds.) (2010) Archaic and Classical Greek Epigram, Cambridge. ––– (2010) Archaic and Classical Greek Epigram: An Introduction, in Baumbach, Petrovic, and Petrovic (eds.) 2010, 1–19. Bowie, E. (2005) Metaphor in Daphnis and Chloe, in Harrison, Paschalis, and Frangoulidis (eds.) 2005, 68–86. ––– (2010) Epigram as Narration, in Baumbach, Petrovic, and Petrovic (ed.) 2010, 313–377. Boys-Stones, G. R. (ed.) (2003) Metaphor, Alegory, and the Classical Tradition: Ancient Thought and Modern Revision, Oxford. Brenne, S. (2002) Die Ostraka (487–ca. 416 v. Chr.) als Testimonien, in P. Siewert (ed.), Ostrakismos-Testimonien I. Die Zeugnisse antiker Autoren, der Inschriften und Ostraka über das athenische Scherbengericht aus vorhellenistischer Zeit (487–322 v. Chr.), Stuttgart, 36–166. Buresch, K. (1894) Die griechischen Trostbeschlüsse, Rheinisches Museum für Philologie 49, 424–460. Cairns, D. L. (1993) Aidôs: the Psychology and Ethics of Honour and Shame in Ancient Greek Literature, Oxford. ––– (2003) Ethics, Ethology, Terminology: Iliadic Anger and the Cross-Cultural Study of Emotion, in Braund and Most (eds.) 2003, 11–49. ––– (2011) Looks of Love and Loathing: Cultural Models of Vision and Emotion in Ancient Greek Culture, Métis n.s. 9, 37–50. Casey, E. (2004) Binding Speeches: Giving Voice to Deadly Thoughts in Greek Epitaphs, in I. Sluiter und R. M. Rosen (eds.), Free Speech in Classical Antiquity, Leiden/Boston, 63–90.

133 Harris 2001, esp. 250.

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Chaniotis, A. (1987) Das Ehrendekret für Diophantos (IOSPE I 352) und die Geschichtsschreibung, in A. Fol, V. Zhivkov, and N. Nedjalkov (eds.), Acta Centri Historiae Terra Antiqua Balcanica II, Sofia, 233–235. ––– (1988) Historie und Historiker in den griechischen Inschriften. Epigraphische Beiträge zur griechischen Historiographie, Stuttgart. ––– (1996) Conflicting Authorities: Greek Asylia between Secular and Divine Law in the Classical and Hellenistic Poleis, Kernos 9, 65–86. ––– (2004a) Von Ehre, Schande und kleinen Verbrechen unter Nachbarn: Konfliktbewältigung und Götterjustiz in Gemeinden des antiken Anatolien, in F. R. Pfetsch (ed.), Konflikt (Heidelberger Jahrbücher, 48), Heidelberg, 233–254. ––– (2004b) New Inscriptions from Aphrodisias (1995–2001), American Journal of Archaeology 108, 377–416. ––– (2005) War in the Hellenistic World: A Social and Cultural History, Malden/Oxford. ––– (2006) Rituals between Norms and Emotions: Rituals as Shared Experience and Memory, in E. Stavrianopoulou (ed.), Rituals and Communication in the Graeco-Roman World, Liège, 211–238. ––– (2007) Isotheoi timai : la divinité mortelle d’Antiochos III à Téos, Kernos 20, 153–171. ––– (2008) Konkurrenz und Profilierung von Kultgemeinden im Fest, in J. Rüpke (ed.), Festrituale: Diffusion und Wandel im römischen Reich, Tübingen, 67–87. ––– (2009a) Ritual Performances of Divine Justice: The Epigraphy of Confession, Atonement, and Exaltation in Roman Asia Minor, in H. Μ. Cotton, R. G. Hoyland, J. J. Price, and D. J. Wasserstein (eds.), From Hellenism to Islam: Cultural and Linguistic Change in the Roman Near East, Cambridge, 115–153. ––– (2009b) From Woman to Woman: Female Voices and Emotions in Dedications to Goddesses, in C. Prêtre (ed.), Le donateur, l’offrande et la déesse. Systèmes votifs dans les sanctuaires de déesses du monde grec. Actes du 31e colloque international organisé par l’UMR Halma-Ipel (Université Charles-de-Gaule/Lille 3, 13–15 décembre 2007) (Kernos Suppl. 23), Liège, 51– 68. ––– (2009c) Lament for a Young Man. A New Epigram from Aphrodisias, in A. Martínez Fernández (ed.), Estudios de Epigrafía Griega, La Laguna, 469–477. ––– (2010a) Aphrodite’s Rivals: Devotion to Local and Other Gods at Aphrodisias, Cahiers du Centre Gustave Glotz 21, 2010 [2011], 235–248. ––– (2010b) Dynamic of Emotions and Dynamic of Rituals. Do Emotions Change Ritual Norms?, in C. Brosius and U. Hüsken (eds.), Ritual Matters: Dynamic Dimensions in Practice, London, 208–233. ––– (2010c) Graffiti in Aphrodisias: Images – Texts – Contexts, in J. Baird and C. Taylor (eds.), Ancient Graffiti in Context, London, 191–207. ––– (2011) Emotional Community through Ritual. Initiates, Citizens, and Pilgrims as Emotional Communities in the Greek World, in A. Chaniotis (ed.), Ritual Dynamics in the Ancient Mediterranean: Agency, Emotion, Gender, Representation, Stuttgart, 264–290. ––– (2012a) Inscriptions, in C. Ratté and P. DeStaebler (eds.), Aphrodisias Regional Survey, Darmstadt/Mainz, 347–366. ––– (2012b) Listening to Stones: Orality and Emotions in Ancient Inscriptions, in J. Davies and J. Wilkes (eds.), Epigraphy and the Historical Sciences. XIII International Congress of Greek and Latin Epigraphy, Oxford, 299–328. ––– (2012c) Affective Epigraphy: Emotional Display in Public Inscriptions of the Hellenistic Period , Mediterraneo Antico (forthcoming). ––– (2013a) Theatricality, Emotion, Enargeia: Hellenistic Decrees and Hellenistic Oratory, in C. Kremmydas and K. Tempest (eds.), Continuity and Change: Oratory in the Hellenistic Period, Oxford (forthcoming).

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PICTURE CREDITS Figure 1: Figure 2: Figure 3: Figure 4:

Acclamation in honour of the benefactor Albinus, column of the west portico of the South Agora, Aphrodisias (c. 480 CE). Photo: Author. Marble plaque with dedications of two gladiators to Nemesis, Aphrodisias (third century CE). Photo: Author. Ostrakon against Kallias, from Kerameikos, Athens (c. 471 BCE). Kerameikos Museum O 849. Brenne 2002, 141 no. T1/156. Photo: Brenne 2002, 523 Fig. 1. Ostrakon against Megakles, from Kerameikos, Athens (c. 471 BCE). Kerameikos Museum 01215. Brenne 2002, 143f. no. T1/159. Photo: Brenne 2002, 525 Fig. 4.

EMOTIONS AND ARCHAEOLOGICAL SOURCES A Methodological Introduction Jane Masséglia Art, architecture, ornamentation, utensils, environmental objects, open spaces, and even – or perhaps especially – body parts can also accrue metaphorical significance. It is therefore important ... to understand how metaphor operates in material culture to help shape the emotional lives of a people. Archeologists are in a unique position, both methodologically and substantively, to point the way to such understanding. That is one important contribution they can make to theories of emotion.1

1 THE MATERIAL The study of emotions in archaeology presents challenges of both methodology and definition. In this study, all objects and physical phenomena which have been in some way formed by human hand or use can be considered archaeological. An archaeologist differs from the palaeontologist and geologist in dealing primarily with human interaction, from the biologist, in dealing with socio-cultural phenomena, and from the anthropologist in dealing with the physical remains of the past. Furthermore, the excavation of material from a trench is not, in isolation, archaeology. Only when finds, whether skeletal or ‘artefactual’, are considered in relation to trends in social and cultural interaction, do they truly become archaeological evidence. The desire for physical manifestation of internal and metaphysical ideas appears to be universal to mankind,2 and yet the results are so varied because of the differing social and cultural contexts which governed their means of expression. If we are to identify and engage with the metaphysical world of emotions in antiquity, we must engage equally with their externalised expressions in the form of text and material culture,3 and with the social and cultural medium through which this transformation occurred.4

1 2

3 4

Averill 2000, 730. Leach 1976, 37 (with reference to religion). Cf. Dio Chrysostomus, Oratio 12.53, that men make statues because ‘all men have a strong yearning to honour and worship the deity from close at hand, and to approach and lay hold of him’. Freedberg 1989, 190. Gouk and Hills 2005, 26. Dietler and Herbich 1998, 233; Gouk and Hills 2005, 21.

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The kinds of archaeological evidence which most clearly reveal the hand of social and cultural construction may be broadly thought of as either crafted objects (i.e. artefacts) or spaces.5 In antiquity, the former includes: statuary and figurines, reliefs, intaglios (engraved gems), pots and pot paintings, jewellery, decorative embellishments, vessels, armour, tools, and architectural constructions. The latter, more abstract kind of ‘spatial’ archaeological evidence are those areas given significance by their very delineation, so not the walls of a sanctuary itself (which are ‘artefactual’), but the sanctuary space created by those walls. These spaces need not even be formed by artefactual boundaries; natural borders (e.g. mountains, rivers, etc.) and even simply patterns of human usage (e.g. a processional way, tribal territory, etc.)6 can both determine the limits of an archaeological phenomenon that serves as valuable evidence of a culture.7 2 THE STATE OF THE ART 2.1 Archaeology Emotions and archaeological evidence is not a new combination. If we consider the reception of emotions in the present day, we find that the place of Archaeology in the British consciousness is firmly founded on emotional responses to the past. The Grand Tour and its modern touristic counterparts, and the very phenomenon of Museums are all based on the emotional lure of the exotic and the frisson of strangeness.8 We are socially and culturally educated to venerate the antique,9 and to experience a range of emotions centred on the admiration of their value. Our own emotional response to archaeological objects easily leads to a tendency to project these emotions onto the past, to have them value what we value and dismiss what we dismiss. But in the last fifteen years, there has been an increased willingness to view these subjective processes more critically, to ask necessary questions about the ways in which we deal with ambiguous ancient evidence in general, and with emotions in antiquity. Lynn Meskell’s consideration of burial customs at Deir el Medina,10 was in part a response to Phillipe Ariès’ community-focussed assess5 6 7

8 9

10

Hodder 1987, 135, as opposed to the spatial science of Geography. On the formalisation of roads: Simmel 1997, 171; Tonkiss 2005, 171. On the use of spatial determinants to describe ‘cultures’, Dietler and Herbich 1998, 232. Jameson 1990, 171: ‘How space is conceived of and how it is used are artefacts of particular cultures ... Examination of space in this sense can tell us much about the culture as a whole, not least about those aspects which are taken so much for granted that they are rarely expressed verbally.’ Gazi 2008, 78, on the quasi-religious environment of the museum. On the aesthetic ‘superiority’ of the antique over the modern, see Hamilakis 2007, 41–44. On the attitudes to classical heritage following the Englightenment, ibid., 75f.; cf. Plantzos 2008, 12f.; Duke 2006, on the construction of a ‘ritual’ tourist experience at Knossos. Meskell 1994.

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ment of responses to death,11 and an attempt to reintroduce personal responses and emotions into the phenomenon. In considering the empirical facts that the remains of disabled children indicated relatively long life and formalised burial, she inferred care for them in both life and death.12 Her secondary inference, that death of the young is the ‘most poignant reminder of our inherent powerlessness in the world and our own transience’,13 is not, however, securely transferrable to the ancient inhabitants of Deir el Medina. Anxiety surrounding infant and child mortality may have been less, not more, than that surrounding adult death on account of its frequency, and there may have been other culturally-instilled emotions regarding disability that encouraged the children’s ongoing care. But Meskell is correct to consider the role of emotions in explaining the behaviour of individuals, and not simply confining such acts to the impersonal and emotionally restrictive notions of ‘tradition’ and ‘ritual practice’. More valuable still is Sarah Tarlow’s article, presenting an important review of the place of emotions in archaeology, raising concerns about the empathetic approach to understanding the past14 and highlighting the paramount importance of contextual knowledge in any inferences we make.15 Studies of architecture, artefacts and landscapes, she asserts, all benefit from an understanding of emotions since ‘[e]motion, in short, is everywhere’.16 Less clear from her article, however, is the methodology by which this might be achieved. 2.2 Art By contrast, the role of emotions in art (by which I mean here visual culture) has a long pedigree in scholarship, not least because of the prominence of figurative imagery in Western Art. Indeed the very vocabulary of the Greeks indicates an ancient appreciation of such images as interfaces for relationships and not simply technical or material achievements.17 One term for statue, agalma, means ‘a pleasure’. That this term is particularly connected with dedications18 suggests something of a persuasion strategy by the dedicant: an effort to engender positive reception by the god by predetermining in the dedicatory formula the emotions that he will feel. But it seems highly likely that the use of the word by the Greeks also affected their own perception of these figures, essentially influencing the

11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18

Ariès 1974, on ‘Western attitudes’; Meskell 1994, 36. Meskell 1994, 39. Meskell 1994, 43. Tarlow 2000, 723–725. Tarlow 2000, 719. Tarlow 2000, 720. Cf. the physical immediacy of ‘bronze’, ‘statue’, ‘relief’, ‘engraving’, ‘terracotta’, etc; cf. Benoist 2008, 30. E.g. IG I3 608 = Raubitschek 1949, no. 234 (Athens National Museum, Inv. no. EM 6351), on the base of a statue dedicated to Athena on the Acropolis (c. 530–520 BCE); Lazzarini 1976, 95–98; Scheer 2000, 8 –18.

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mortal viewer as well as the divine.19 Similarly sensitive are the terms sēma (‘sign’)20, mnēma (‘memorial’),21 eidōlon (‘image’ or ‘reflection’)22 and eikōn (‘likeness’ or ‘comparison’),23 all of which reveal a Greek conception of the art object in relation to (even standing in for) some absent thing. Such vocabulary suggests that art images for the Greeks were conceived of as cues for recollecting and responding to this ‘prototype’,24 in essence generating emotional relationships through their imitation of the real. The particular communicative potential of the body, and above all the face, has been observed by practitioners of different academic disciplines to be of great importance: The field of physiognomy, popular in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries,25 placed emphasis on face as the ‘window to the soul’, and even Charles Darwin used the facial expressions of humans and animals to demonstrate key similarities and differences in behaviour.26 More recent research into facial expression has been taken up by specialists in neurology and psychology, and has seen a greater emphasis on the role of the viewer (rather than the owner of the face) in the interpretation of emotional cues.27 This has led to the identification of areas in the brain with specialised roles, such as the right fusiform face area (FFA) in the recognition of faces,28 and the amygdala in the reading of emotions in facial expressions. 29 In particular, neurological studies which reveal the importance of ‘reading’ the eyes in processing facial expressions30 have stressed the biological basis for the widespread use of eye and gaze-related verbal and visual motifs in social interaction: whether an anglophone speaks of ‘looking daggers at someone’, a francophone of ‘lancant un regard assassin’ or a germanophone of ‘wenn Blicke töten könnten’, they all recognise the emotionally expressive potential of the eyes. So too in images, whether text-message emoticon or Turkish nazar boncuğu, the eyes are used as signifiers of emotion. Indeed, in his proposed theory of art, anthropologist Alfred Gell required eyes as the minimal concession to facial features required to ‘animate’ an object31 while, more recently, archaeologist and art 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 26 27 28 29

30 31

See p. 415 in this volume; cf. Plato, Meno 97d-e, where Sokrates employs the word agalma in his description of Daedalus’ fabled moving statuary. E.g. CEG I 26–28. Theophrastos 21.9; CEG I 25, 32, and 54. Herodotus 1.51, on the golden statue of ‘Croesus’ baker dedicated at Delphi. E.g. CEG I 399, commemorating three Olympic victories. Gell 1998, 25. Hartley 2001; Percival and Tytler 2005, on the work of Johann Lavatar (1741–1801). Darwin 1872. Ekman and Friesen 2003. Taylor, Edmonds, et al. 2001; Iaria, Fox, and Barton 2008; Churches, Baron-Cohen, and Ring 2009. With particular reference to ‘basic emotions’ such as fear, Anderson, Spencer, Fullbright, and Phelps 2000. With particular reference to socially-constructed (‘complex’) emotions such as guilt, Adolphs, Baron-Cohen, and Tranel 2002. Baron-Cohen, Wheelwright, Hill, et al. 2001. Gell 1998, 135, on the ‘consecration of contemporary idols’.

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historian Clemente Marconi has considered the role of sculpted and painted eyes in creating the sense of mysterium tremendum in those approaching temples. In considering the overall decorative scheme of Greek temples in the sixth century BCE, he identifies the outward facing carved faces of gorgons and monsters as a means of drawing the viewer’s attention to the top of the building32 and then generating anxiety and fear compatible with the emotional expectations of Greek religion.33 But scholars have noticed too the importance of emotions in understanding art in general. David Freedberg, in his monograph on responses to art, considers the role of figurative images in providing material substitutions for mental images about which we are ‘compassionate’.34 He constructs a persuasive history of Western art, understood, even in antiquity, to be means by which emotional response could be elicited and focused.35 Freedberg also considers the role of art in regulating social relations, in the dedication of votive objects. Investigating the phenomenon of thank-offerings to the Virgin Mary, he touches on the important themes of relief, gratitude, and having one’s behaviour noted and judged by others,36 all of which have implications for our understanding of votive practice in antiquity. While Freedberg’s book deals primarily with votive dedications, secular gift-giving, commissioning, display, distribution, and magic could also be considered as similar nexus (pl.) of material culture, social relations, and emotions. These themes are explored in greater details by Alfred Gell in his posthumously published theory of agency in art objects.37 His theory rests squarely on the role of the art object (or index) as the active party (or agent), and the serious consideration of animism. Whatever reservations there may be about the location of the agency permanently within the index, rather than perhaps relying on the more familiar notion of ‘suspension of disbelief’ (familiar to anyone who has been moved by the tiny, figure-shaped images on their television), the book is a valuable study for anyone wishing to engage in the power of art as an means of communicating meaning and effect within the viewer. An important investigation of Greek sculpture by Deborah Steiner38 provides a model for Classical art theory, in its use of both textual and archaeological evidence in order to understand certain social phenomena, among them portraiture, 32 33 34 35

36 37 38

Marconi 2007, 219. Marconi 2004, 221f. Cf. Burkert 1996, 30–32. Cf. pp. 205–234 in this volume. Freedberg 1989, 191; Hamilakis 2007, 69 on statues with ‘human properties and emotional reactions’. Freedberg 1989, 204. Euripides, Alcestis 348–354 (on portraiture); ibid. 149 and 162; Julian, Frag. Epist. 293a-b, and similarly Thomas Aquinas, Summa Theologica Part II.2, Q. 81.art. 3: ‘The worship of religion is paid to images, not as considered in themselves, nor as things, but as images leading us to God incarnate.’ Freedberg 1989, 138 and 142. Gell 1998, 47f. (on the commissioning party); 96 (on distribution of portraits); 32 (on volt sorcery) and 83 (on apotropaism). Steiner 2001.

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religious icons, memorials, desire for art objects, and literary ekphrasis (descriptions of objects).39 Particularly valuable is her identification of the Greek tendency to combine images with directive text, whether in the form of a grave relief with an inscription, or an honorific monument set up with an accompanying encomium.40 This synthesis of text and image, Steiner proposes, is a means to provoke response41 and it is these responses and the provoking techniques which are of interest to the scholar of ancient emotions. 2.3 Archaeological space Just as art objects and decorative schemes can manipulate and elicit emotions, so equally can archaeological space. The social anthropologist Edmund Leach saw the human need to divide space and time, to impose order on the otherwise unbroken whole, was a means to ‘give dimension’ and thus relieve the anxiety of confusion.42 It is these delineated spaces and topographical features, whether naturally occurring or man-made, that Leach sees as indices for ‘metaphysical discriminations’.43 Subsequently the archaeologist can be encouraged to view such spatial and topographical areas as the material manifestation of otherwise immaterial phenomena. This is of great relevance to the study of emotions. The archaeologist faced with their material remains, such as a city gate or a temenos wall, is in fact presented with evidence for where one code of behaviour finished (or in other words where one emotional context ended) and another began. These liminal zones, in particular, are of great interest in the study of emotions in antiquity since they are frequently marked, even lavishly decorated, so as to exploit the emotional drama inherent in designated transformative spaces. Marconi’s study of the eighth century Temple A at Prinias in Crete, suggests just such an emotional transformation took place in those passing from the secular to the sacred space, a process emphasised and heightened by the figural decoration of the temple’s exterior.44 This same principle would equally explain the phenomenon of monumental propylaia in antiquity, elaborated beyond practical necessity and often elongating the dark, interior space, but indicating in emphatic terms the importance of the distinction between ‘here’ and ‘there’, and rousing the emotions which accompany that particular transformation. The social implications of man-made spaces have received scholarly attention from various disciplines. Social anthropologist Christopher Tilley has remarked on the of power-relations in the construction and subsequent use of built spaces.45 But while power and emotions are inextricably linked, his preference is for the 39 40 41 42 43 44 45

On ekphrasis, see also Hersey 2009, 14–16. Steiner 2001, esp. 255, 265, and 293. Also Ma 2007. Steiner 2001, 294. Leach 1976, 34f. Leach 1976, 52, between ‘this world/other world, secular/sacred, low status/high status, normal/abnormal, living/dead, impotent/potent’. Marconi 2007, 189. Cf. Gerstel 2006, on the use of screens and barriers in the early Church. Tilley 1993, 81.

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seemingly more objective discussion of ‘status’ rather than ‘fear’, ‘anxiety’, ‘pride’, and so on. By contrast, the architectural theorist and art historian John Onians has embraced the connection between human psychology and material culture as a central tenet of his approach, whether to building material46 or the appearance of enclosures.47 Classical archaeologist Dieter Metzler presents a case study in just such a relationship between emotions and architectural shape, in his consideration of the interior of Greek temples. His identification of Egyptian influences in the long, thin architectural forms leads him to consider the effect of this arrangement on the viewers. In particular, the distance imposed between the cult statue and the viewer is, in his opinion, ‘a situation engendering veneration and/or fearful respect in the latter’.48 The architectural designer and historian Jane Rendell is equally explicit in her formulation of architectural spaces as emotional. Particularly fruitful is her emphasis on the reception of buildings by the viewer in light of their use; she suggests an emotional response to the disused operating theatre in the Staatsicherheit Headquarters in Berlin as ‘melancholic and sick with anxiety’, highlighting the need for contextual information, such as function, to illuminate a space’s emotional significance. Her discussion of ‘Ruin as Allegory’, focussing on the intentional redeployment of derelict architectural space as art, might initially smack of a highly modern (indeed postmodern) view of art and experience. But the process has, in fact, a number of ancient parallels, not least in the story of the Oath of Plataia in which the Athenians swore not to restore the temples destroyed by the Persians but leave them as ‘memorials of barbarian impiety’.49 Indeed, I will return to the allegorical power of buildings, and their state of repair in another chapter in this volume (pp. 342–349). 3 METHODOLOGICAL CHALLENGES Since emotions are fundamental in the motivation to make and interact, it would be difficult to imagine a study of material and spatial culture without an appreciation of emotions. And yet, naturally, there is a methodological reticence to examine closely material which is too open to interpretation. While textual evidence, whether epigraphic, papyrological, or literary, is a means to communicate and explain meaning, archaeological evidence is rarely so explicit. 50 The risk of superimposing anachronistic interpretations on ancient evidence is considerable when 46 47 48 49

50

Onians 1992, 196. Onians 2006, esp. 273 and 461 (the latter including his extraordinary ‘phalanx’ theory of Greek temple facades.) Metzler 1995, 57. Hurwit 1999, 141, after Isocrates, Panegyricus (4) 156. Cf. Lycurgus, Against Leocrates 81; Diodorus 11.29.3; On the historicity of the oath, cf. Theopompos FgrH 115 F 153; Raubitschek 1960; Siewert 1972; Cawkwell 1975; Meiggs 1975, 504–507; Blamire 1977, 151f. Cf. Krentz 2007. Dietler and Herbich 1998, 244.

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the interpreter does not take full account of their own prejudice,51 and when emotions are discussed without reference to the social-cultural expectations taboos which governed their expression.52 And yet the certain loss which comes with avoiding archaeological evidence is far greater than the potential harm in misinterpreting it. Moreover, a disinclination to engage with the ancient mind because it cannot be completely reconstructed is defeatism bordering on the solipsistic.53 As a defence against this risk, there are three important approaches: The first is to ensure that archaeological material is not studied in isolation, but in relation to the more explicit, textual evidence, so that one may illuminate the other (the historical approach). There has been a curious pessimism regarding this approach among a number of archaeologists. Sarah Tarlow’s own specialisation in pre-historical archaeology may explain her identification of ‘meagre contextual information’ among the main methodological difficulties in studying emotions in archaeology.54 Contextual evidence for Classical antiquity is not without its problems, but ‘meagre’ would certainly be an overstatement. The ruins of a shrine to Asklepios, for example, can be ‘revived’ and some of its emotional context restored through the application of textual evidence. The comic account of the healing of Aristophanes’ eponymous Ploutos,55 for example, and the epigraphic records of healing miracles at Epidauros56 work together not only to reveal the practical processes of ritual healing, but to express the emotional experience of the patients, including fear, hope, and gratitude. The second approach rests on the collation and comparison of similar archaeological phenomena, and the drawing of conclusions from patterns of occurrence in particular contexts (the archaeological and art historical approach). The third is through the application of models derived from multi-ethnic and diachronic observations of human behaviour (the anthropological and psychological approach). In short, archaeologists are duty bound to interdisciplinarity if they wish to avoid the dangers of fiction.57 Another complication in the study of archaeological material is the seemingly arbitrariness of determining where a piece of evidence ends. Just as Clemente Marconi warns against ‘dissecting’ temple decoration at the expense of the overall

51 52 53 54 55 56 57

Cf. Burke 2005, 37–39, on the approaches of C. S. Lewis, Lucien Febvre, and Jean Delumeau. Leach 1976, 47f.; Tarlow 2000, 714–720; Reddy 2001, 124. Cf. Hodder 1992, 16–23; Fowler 2000, 127; Tarlow 2000, 721. Tarlow 2000, 727. Esp. lines 655–747. Collected and translated by LiDonnici 1995. See pp. 177–204 in this volume with further bibliography. Contra Harré and Parrot 2000, who eschew the use of texts as methodologically unsound; Averill 2000, who believes archaeologists do not have access to texts; cf. Hodder 1992, 11: ‘the archaeologist deals in things and not words;’ cf. Tilley 1999, 75, for a more inclusive approach.

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effect,58 so too must we bear in mind that this same temple was part of a larger complex, this complex of a sanctuary, and so on. Thus a pediment depicting the battle between the Lapiths and the Centaurs (for example on the Temple of Zeus at Olympia) might elicit certain emotions when viewed at close-range, and when the rest of the building is temporarily excluded from consideration. But a view of the entire building, from a distance, might elicit very different ones. When talking about emotions and the Temple of Zeus at Olympia therefore, we must be clear about where we are standing and be aware of the ‘degree of magnification’. The interpretation may well need adjustment if the ‘zoom’ is changed to take account of the wider physical or social context. A further considerable challenge is one of language. Linguistic evidence, such as text, can identify emotions by name. In archaeological evidence, however, the emotional content may not necessarily correspond to a single word. Evidence for ancient behaviour, in the form of objects and spaces, may invoke emotions and responses which do not have a linguistic counterpart. But in order to communicate any analysis of emotions in archaeology, whether in a lecture or publication, we are obliged to use linguistic descriptors, despite knowing that they may be simplified or approximate.59 An important exception to this is the phenomenon of emotional allegory, highly visible in the ancient Greek visual arts: symbolic representations of emotions can be identified by both iconography and, in certain media, written captions which present an explicit interelation of image, word, and emotion (e.g. Eros, Eris, Phobos, Nemesis, Phthonos, etc.). In what follows, wherever an emotion is associated with an archaeological object or space, it is presented in the knowledge that the word used as a convenient approximation, unless on occasions where conventional emotional allegory or accompanying text make the association more secure. 4 ARCHAEOLOGY AND ‘EMOTIONAL COMMUNITIES’ Just as the ‘degree of magnification’ may skew the interpretation of evidence, so too the same object or space may have an entirely different emotional significance according to the identity of the person or persons interacting with it. This ‘emotional community’, to use Barbara Rosenwein’s term,60 may be those who crafted, commissioned, bought, viewed, displayed, or used it. Furthermore, the emotions of an emotional community also depend on whether it is composed of individuals or social groups, and on the particular nature of their social and cultural context.61 58 59 60

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Marconi 2004, 212. On the complex relationship between emotional behaviour and emotional expression, see Wollheim 1973, 84–100. Rosenwein 2006, 2: ‘groups in which people adhere to the same norms of emotional expression and value – or devalue – the same or related emotions’. In what follows, these communities need not be formally defined. On emotional communitues in ritual see Chaniotis 2011. See also pp. 76–81 and 195f. in this volume. Hodder 1987, 142 (on the normative effect of the dominant class); Onians 2006, 437.

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In the particular case of art objects, this can also include figurative depictions that can themselves be shown engaged (literally artificially) in emotional display and expression. These can form emotional communities both between themselves, and with the viewer. This quality of art is not only at the heart of its means to entertain, but can also be exploited in more formal ways in the maintenance of social identity: in the case of Greek war memorials for example, we find ‘arte-ficial’ figures or other replacements for absent bodies (however abstract their form) accompanied by text and ritual action, employed to rouse emotions and contribute to the construction of a communal memory.62 Such were the polyandreion (communal war grave) at Athens commemorating those lost at the Battle of Salamis, and the Tomb at Marathon, both which served to maintain Athenian civic identity.63 Serving as physical loci for communal expressions of pride and grief through ritual actions such as pilgrimages, sacrifices, and honorific hymns, these monuments acccorded particular significance to historical events and provided a means to ensure their ongoing importance. Through the engagement of the viewer in sympathetic emotions, the figures are able to reinvigorate their emotional proximity with the deceased, and combat their being forgotten. Indeed, regular ‘refreshing’ of emotions is an essential part of the maintenance of memory and is a process incorporated into many objects and spaces which regulate interpersonal identities.64 Important changes in the context of an object’s display can also radically change its emotional significance. As we will see in a chapter dedicated to the archaeology of Ephesos (pp. 342–349), shifts in social context, whether political, religious, economic, or otherwise, can lead to the adaptation and reinterpretation of old material over time (i.e. reception). Conversely, the redeployment of an artefact in a new setting (e.g. an item seized from its original context as war booty) can lead it to take on an entirely different meaning. And so we can say in response to Sarah Tarlow’s objections to the empathetic approach to the study of emotions, that far from being ‘wrong’, it simply renders the empathetic party themselves as the emotional community, rather than the ancient society they intended.65 That emotional response to archaeological evidence is person-specific may seem to be stating the blindingly obvious. But when dealing with ancient cultures for which the notion of identity within a community was regulated by very different means (such as ritual practices, and political systems), an awareness of the subjectivity of emotions in antiquity should not be taken for granted. Thankfully, we have a number of textual references which can confirm that emotions were thought to vary according to the identity of the individual. A fragment of 62 63 64

65

Elsner 2003, 209. On war memorials see also Ma 2005 and Chaniotis 2012. Chaniotis 2005, 237–240. Cf. the emotional strategy of Lysias 10 (Against Theomnestos) 24–32: he incites the jury’s anger by recalling Theomnestos’ conduct in the past, and encouraging them to remember (anamnēsthēte) and so ‘refresh’, their collective outrage. For more bibliography on memory, see pp. 342f. Tarlow 2000, 723–725; Cowgill 2000, 732.

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Aeschylus’ Spectators at the Isthmian Games, for example has a group of satyrs admiring a votive figure and its likeness to its owner. So realistic is it, its owner remarks, that were his mother to see it, she would ‘turn and run off shrieking, thinking it was me, the boy she raised’.66 The particular emotional response to this archaeological object, as it is presented, rests entirely on the woman’s identity as his mother and her specific familiarity with him. A different emotional community, for example someone who did not know him, would not produce the same response. The complete reconstruction of any emotional community, let alone the elusive ‘original’ one, however, is an impossibility.67 But that should not be grounds for not attempting to gather as much information as possible in order to contextualise the object/space and the emotions which relate to it. Such a collated quantity of information can enable us to identify patterns of emotional behaviour within a particular community, a target both more attainable and historically useful for those interested in the nature of ancient societies.68 5 PROCESSING THE ARCHAEOLOGICAL EVIDENCE: A SUGGESTED FRAMEWORK In order to collate this information, we require a framework both broad enough to accommodate a wide range of evidence types, and succinct enough to be useful to any scholar dealing with large quantities of material. Having selected an item and identified supporting evidence that can enable further analysis, the following three-step process has proved invaluable to the author: First Step Identify the emotional community or communities (artist/maker, commissioning party, buyer, viewer, user, and if a figurative item, the figures depicted). Second Step Consider the following three kinds of emotional response: A) Emotions of Physicality When the emotional communities respond emotionally to the size, shape,69 material, stability,70 fabrication of the object/space.71 E.g. an artist feels pride in his 66 67 68 69 70 71

P.Oxy. XVIII 2162 fr. 1a, transcribed with alternative translation in O’Sullivan 2000, 356f.; Marconi 2004, 21f. Levinson 1992, 184. Cf. Tarlow 2000, 728. Onians 2006, 535 (on culturally-acquired sensitivity to shapes and colours). Onians 2006, 273. Cf. the response of Dio Chrysostomus to an object’s physicality in oratio 12.52: ‘But was the shape you produced by your artistry appropriate to a god; and was its form worthy of divine nature? Not only did you use a material which gives delight, you also presented a human form of extraordinary beauty and size’ (εἰ δ᾽ αὖ τὸ πρέπον εἶδος καὶ τὴν ἀξίαν µορφὴν τῆς θεοῦ

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work, having overcome technical challenges in both medium and subject matter;72 a viewer admires a building, for its size and balance, and considers these indicators of the architect’s skill;73 an initiate feels fear in the darkness of an underground cave. B) Emotions of Image When the emotional communities respond emotionally to depicted figures or objects (usually art objects, often figurative). These include emotions which are internal to the image (i.e. those being expressed or represented by depicted characters), and external emotions (i.e. those which are communicated to the viewer of the object).74 These representations may be universally understood (e.g. figures performing universally recognisable actions) or require specialist knowledge (e.g. abstract symbols or allegories). In either event, they rely on the viewer’s familiarity with the ‘language of images’, including body language, iconography, and art conventions in order to successfully decode the intended meaning. E.g. a statue of an old woman holding a large lagynos shows her throwing her head back in drunken happiness (see pp. 413–430); personifications of emotions, such as Eros, Phobos (fear), and Lyssa (‘raging madness’) are recognised and their significance understood by the viewer; a viewer feels intimidated by a statue of a male ruler in dominant pose and wearing kingly accoutrements. This class of emotions does not require the viewer to believe what they are seeing as really true, but to respond to it with a degree of suspension of disbelief. When, however, the incongruity is too great for this suspension to be maintained, the art object can lose its capacity to communicate emotions, or even communicate very different ones.75 C) Emotions of Use When emotional communities respond emotionally to associations acquired through and subsequent to an object/space’s creation or formation, through its engagement with individuals and groups (the same or different emotional communities). E.g. a tripod is treated with reverence because of its ritual function; a domestic space is held in affection because it was used as a family home; knucklebones take on connotations of gratitude because they are dedicated in fulfilment of a prayer; a wooden doll takes on connotations of revenge and hostility because it was used as a fetish; a stone beside the road prompts feelings of anxiety or relief

72

73 74

75

φύσεως ἐδηµιούργησας, ὕλῃ τε ἐπιτερπεῖ χρησάµενος, ἀνδρός τε µορφὴν ὑπερφυᾶ τὸ κάλλος καὶ τὸ µέγεθος δείξας). See e.g. the inscription on the base of a colossal statue of Apollo (Delos, early sixth century BCE); I.Délos 4 = Jeffery 1990, 304 no. 10: [τ?] αϝυτ λίθο ἐµὶ ἀνδριὰς καὶ τὸ σφέλας (‘I am of the same stone, both the statue and the base’). On the interpretation of this text see more recently Di Cesare 2004. Pliny, naturalis historia 30.89, moved to write out of admiration for Apelles’ skill. Cf. Philsostratos, Imagines 1.28, who describes a painting of a hunter, commenting on both the hunter’s internal emotions, and his own emotional response to the figure. Onians 2006, 189. Cf. Pausanias 3.15.11, on the chains added to a figure of Aphrodite by Tyndaraios.

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(according to the direction in which it is passed), because it marks the border between home and foreign territory. Third Step Consider how the information generated by the first and second steps connects this object/space to other objects/spaces. With these three means of engagement with the emotions of archaeological evidence, it becomes possible to trace patterns of emotional response and context. The second step might seem an insurmountable task, but in truth, very few objects have evidence for all the categories under consideration. The method rests on the principle that there is no shame in working with what we have. 6 THE FRAMEWORK IN ACTION: TWO CASE STUDIES What follows are two brief examples, demonstrating how the three step approach can prompt useful observations, even in the case of greatly differing phenomena. Here, the studies of one geographical space and one artefact are presented in their preliminary format, showing how information relevant to emotions can be gathered and stored. 6.1 Case Study1: Rheneia

Figure 1. The object: The island of Rheneia, rocky island c. 500m from Delos (c. seventh–second centuries BCE).

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Supporting evidence: Thucydides (3.104.1–2) reports that Delos was purified by the Athenians through the removal of burials; all Delian births and deaths were confined to neighbouring Rheneia. He also reports that the Samian tyrant Polykrates (532 –521 BCE) bound both islands together and dedicated Rheneia to Apollo. According to the Hellenistic poet Theocritus (Idyl 17.70) ‘Apollo also loved Rheneia equally (i.e. to Delos)’. Corroborating evidence comes from a number of grave stelai found on Rheneia and absent on Delos.76 First Step: Emotional Communities Apollo; the Athenians; the inhabitants of Delos, especially the elderly, the sick, and pregnant women. Second Step: Emotions of Physicality, Image and Use A) Rheneia’s proximity to Delos invites similar emotional responses to both: it gives rise to Apollo’s equal love, and invites its binding and similar dedication in Polykrates’ show of piety. But similarly, Rheneia’s proximity, Thucydides implies, lies behind its suitability as Delos’ receptacle for pollution. B) Not applicable. C) Prospect of birth and death on Delos provokes fear of religious pollution (miasma). Emotions towards religious pollution must have therefore have affected the experience of those who came to Rheneia (whether to bury a relative, suffering from serious illness, or about to give birth). The Athenians’ relief in being rid of this fear is formally demonstrated in their establishment of new Delian Games. Third Step: Related Phenomena A similar exclusion of death and childbirth is attested at the sanctuary of Asklepios in Epidauros.77 Suggested lines of enquiry: i) An emotional responses to birth and death as a wider cultural phenomenon in Greece. ii) The role of physical proximity in expressions of religious reverence.

76 77

Grave stelai: Couilloud 1974. On the purification of Delos see Chankowski 2008, 53–56 and 63–70. IG IV².1.121 lines 1–2; Pausanias 2.27.1 and 7.

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6.2 Case Study 2: a Quiver from Macedonia

Figure 2. The object: Gilded silver gorytos (quiver) from Tomb II at Vergina (‘Tomb of Philip II’) embossed with an image of the sack of a city. Of Scythian origin (fourth century BCE). Supporting evidence: Scythian gold gorytoi of identical shape, one with same battle scene (from Kararagodeushkh), others with mythical scene depicting seated figures (Chortomlyk series) indicate that the Vergina example was of Scythian origin.78 The concealment of nudity in figurative motifs supports a non-Greek intended audience. The chronology suggests that this gorytos may be war booty, following Philip’s defeat of Ateas in 339 BCE. This item is one of many grave goods in precious metal in the ‘Royal Tombs’ at Vergina; it is one of several items of weaponry in this particular tomb. First Step: Emotional Communities The owner of the object (a member of Macedonian royalty); those who placed the object in the tomb (someone within elite circles of Macedon); visitor to tomb before its closure (?); previous owner (member of Scythian elite); (internal) sacking warrior, citizens of sacked city. 78

Schlitz 1979; Triester 1999; Daumas 2009, 119.

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Second Step: Emotions of Physicality, Image and Use A) The highly-wrought, precious metal invites admiration; the military function suggests pride in power. B) Aggressive warriors attack fearful populous, who cower and flee. Figures embrace cult statue and altar, demonstrating hope/faith in divine protection. One woman holds her baby away, showing emotional hierarchy of love of child over fear for own safety. C) The use of the object in a tomb implies respect for the deceased. The use in combination with other rich grave goods and weapons invites admiration for the deceased and pride in wealth and power. The item’s identity as war booty suggests a symbol of pride in victory and function in humiliation of the enemy. Third Step: Related Phenomena Hydria by Kleophrades Painter in Naples, showing sack of Troy, with Trojans seeking sanctuary at a cult statue and an altar.79 Weaponry among grave goods of the fourth-century Thracian elite tomb at Kazanluk.80 Gold shield, from spoils taken from the Argives, Athenians and Ionians, dedicated by the Spartans at Olympia. 81 Suggested lines of enquiry: i) The cultural distribution and development on the ‘sack’ motif in art. ii) The emotional significance of weaponry as a suitable choice of grave goods, especially among the elite. iii) The role of ‘exotica’ in demonstrating emotional relationships with outsiders (e.g. war booty and diplomatic gifts). 7 HOW THIS INFORMATION CAN BE USED In isolation, these preliminary studies are of only limited use to the archaeologist or historian. But collated in numbers, patterns of emotional behaviour can be seen to emerge, as well as similarities in context which can help us to identify the social and cultural parameters at work. For the archaeologist such an endeavour can reveal, for example, whether certain kinds of evidence lend themselves to particular emotional expressions. Thanks to their inscriptions, grave stelai can be closely associated with sadness and disappointment; but can similar emotional associations be made for phenomena such as votive objects, assembly spaces or honorific portraits? Similarly, in considering the emotional communities in each case, can we observe social and cultural patterns in the distribution of emotions? Are objects intended for female users, such as jewellery, toiletry vessels, or votive objects for all-female cult practice, associated with different emotions than those 79 80 81

Naples M1480 (Beazley Archive no. 201724). Zhivkova 1975, 21–26. Pausanias 5.10.4; Pritchett 1971, 95. On dedicatory inscriptions connected with the dedication of booty see e.g. Lazzarini 1976, 317–322.

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for the male? And does the material culture of one region show variations in emotional behaviour from another? These are the kinds of questions which we need to ask in order to understand the relationship between archaeology and emotions. But in order to identify these patterns, we first need a meaningful corpus of individual case studies, exemplified by the preliminary accounts of Rheneia and the gilt gorytos above, on which to draw. By collating these studies and identifying recurring themes in motivation and communication,82 we can re-introduce emotions to archaeological evidence, revealing not simply how but also why ancient societies engaged with their physical environment. BIBLIOGRAPHY Adolphs, R., S. Baron-Cohen, and D. Tranel (2002) Impaired Recognition of Social Emotions Following Amygdala Damage Source, Journal of Cognitive Neuroscience 14.8, 1264–1274. Anderson, A. K., D. D. Spencer, R. K. Fulbright, and E. A. Phelps (2000) Contribution of the Anteromedial Temporal Lobes to the Evaluation of Facial Emotion, Neuropsychology 14, 526–536. Andronicos, M. (1984) Vergina: the Royal Tombs and the Ancient City, Athens. Ariès, P. (1974) Western Attitudes toward Death, from the Middle Ages to the Present, translated by P. M. Ranum, Baltimore, Ma. Averill, J. (2000) Comments on S. Tarlow, ‘Emotion in Archaeology’, Current Anthropology 41.5, 730–731. Baron-Cohen, S., S. Wheelwright, J. Hill, Y. Raste, and I. Plumb (2001) The ‘Reading the Mind in the Eyes’ Test Revised Version: A Study with Normal Adults, and Adults with Asperger Syndrome or High-Functioning Autism, Journal of Child Psychology and Psychiatry 42, 241– 251. Benoist, S. (2008) Le pouvoir et ses représentations, enjeu de la mémoire, in S. Benoist and A. Daguet-Gagey (eds.), Un discours en images de la condamnation de mémoire, Metz, 25–42. Blamire, A. (1989) Life of Kimon: Plutarch. With Commentary and Translation, London. Burke, P. (2005) Is there a Cultural History of Emotions?, in P. Gouk and H. Hills (eds.), Representing Emotions, Aldershot, 35–47. Cawkwell, G. L. (1975) Review: The Oath of Plataea. Der Eid von Plataiai by Peter Siewert, Classical Review 25, 263–265. Chaniotis, A. (2005) War in the Hellenistic World: a Social and Cultural History, Malden/Oxford. ––– (2011) Emotional Community through Ritual. Initiates, Citizens, and Pilgrims as Emotional Communities in the Greek World, in A. Chaniotis (ed.), Ritual Dynamics in the Ancient Mediterranean: Agency, Emotion, Gender, Representation, Stuttgart, 264–290. ––– (2012) The Ritualised Commemoration of War in the Hellenistic City: Memory, Identity, Emotion, in P. Low, G. Oliver, and P. Rhodes (eds.), Cultures of Commemoration: War Memorials, Ancient and Modern, Oxford, 41–62. Chankowski, V. (2008) Athènes et Délos à l’époque classique. Recherches sur l’administration du sanctuaire d’Apollon délien, Paris/Athens. Churches, O., S. Baron-Cohen, and H. Ring (2009) Seeing Face-like Objects: an Event-related Potential Study, Neuroreport 20.14, 1290–1294. Couilloud, M.-T. (1974) Exploration de Délos XXX. Les monuments funéraires de Rhénée, Paris. 82

For examples of this approach in practice, see pp. 413–430 on ‘reading’ the emotions of Image, and pp. 329–355 on the social role of emotions of Use.

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Cowgill, G. L. (2000) Comments on S. Tarlow, ‘Emotion in Archaeology’, Current Anthropology 41.5, 731–732. Damaskos, D. and D. Plantzos (eds.) (2008) A Singular Antiquity: Archaeology and Hellenic Identity in Twentieth-Century Greece, Athens. Darwin, C. (1872) The Expression of the Emotions in Man and Animals, London [reprinted with introduction and commentaries by P. Ekmand and P. Prodger, London 1999]. Daumas, M. (2009) L’or et le pouvoir: Armement scythe et mythes grecs, Paris. Di Cesare, R. (2004) Sull’Apollo dei Nassii a Delo e le iscrizioni della base, Eidola 1, 23 –60. Dietler, M. and H. Herbich (1998) Habitus, Techniques, Style: An Integrated Approach to the Social Understanding of Material Culture and Boundaries, in M. T. Stark (ed.), The Archaeology of Social Boundaries, Washington, 232–263. Duke, P. (2006) Knossos as Memorial, Ritual, and Metaphor, in Y. Hamilakis and N. Momigliano (eds.), Archaeology and European Modernity: Producing and Consuming the ‘Minoans’, Creta Antiqua 7, 79–88. Ekman, P. and W. V. Friesen (2003) Unmasking the Face: A Guide to Recognizing Emotions from Facial Clues, Cambridge, Ma. Elsner, J. (2003) Iconoclasm and the Preservation of Memory, in R. S. Nelson and M. Olin (eds.), Monuments and Memory, Made and Unmade, Chicago, 209–231. Fowler, C. (2000) ‘The Individual’, ‘the Subject’, and Archaeological Interpretation (or, Relating Luce Irigaray and Judith Butler to Prehistory), in C. Holtorf and H. Karlsson (eds.), Philosophy and Archaeological Practice: Perspectives for the 21st Century, Göteborg, 107–114. Freedberg, D. (1989) The Power of Images: Studies in the History and Theory of Response, Chicago. Gazi, A. (2008) Artfully Classified and Appropriately Placed: Notes on the Display of Antiquities in Early 20th Cent. Greece, in Damaskos and Plantzos (eds.) 2008, 67–82. Gell, A. (1998) Art and Agency: an Anthropological Theory, Oxford. Gerstel, S. E. J. (ed.) (2006) Thresholds of the Sacred: Architectural, Art Historical, Liturgical, and Theological Perspectives on Religious Screens, East and West, Dumbarton Oaks. Gouk, P. and H. Hills (2005) Towards Histories of Emotions, in P. Gouk and H. Hills (eds.), Representing Emotions: New Connections in the Histories of Art, Music and Medicine, Aldershot, 15–34. Hamilakis, Y. (2007) The Nation and its Ruins: Antiquity, Archaeology, and National Imagination in Greece, Oxford. Harré, R. and G. J. Parrott (2000) Comments on S. Tarlow, ‘Emotion in Archaeology’, Current Anthropology 41.5, 713–746. Hartley, L. (2001) Physiognomy and the Meaning of Expression in Nineteenth-Century Culture, Cambridge. Hersey, G. L. (2009) Falling in Love with Statues: Artificial Humans from Pygmalion to the Present, Chicago. Hodder, I. (1987) Converging Traditions: The Search for Symbolic Meanings in Archaeology and Geography, in J. M. Wagstaff (ed.), Landscape and Culture, Oxford, 134–145. ––– (1992) Theory and Practice in Archaeology, London. Hurwit, J. M. (1999) The Athenian Acropolis: History, Mythology, and Archaeology from the Neolithic Era to the Present, Cambridge. Iaria, G., C. J. Fox, and J. J. S. Barton (2008) Seeing Faces: Evidence Suggesting Cortical Disinhibition in the Genesis of Visual Hallucinations, Nature Precedings, hdl:10101/ npre.2008. 1827.1. Posted on 22 April 2008, http://precedings.nature.com/documents/1827/ version/1 [accessed on 19 January 2010]. Jameson, M. (1990) Private Space and the Greek City, in O. Murray and S. Price (eds.), The Greek City: From Homer to Alexander, Oxford, 171–195. Jeffery, L. J. (1990) The Local Scripts of Archaic Greece. Revised Edition with a Supplement by A. W. Johnston, Oxford (first edition: Oxford 1961).

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Krentz, P. (2007) The Oath of Marathon, not Plataia?, Hesperia 76, 731–742. Kriss-Rettenbeck, L. (1972) Ex Voto: Zeichen Bild und Abbild im christlichen Votivbrauchtum, Zurich. Kris, E. and O. Kurz (1979) Legend, Myth, and Magic in the Image of the Artist: a Historical Experiment, New Haven. Lazzarini, M.-L. (1976) Le formule delle dediche votive nella Grecia archaica, in Atti della Accademia Nazionale dei Lincei. Memorie. Classe di Scienze morali, storiche e filologische, Serie VIII 19.2, Rome, 45 –354. Leach, E. R. (1976) Culture and Communication: The Logic by Which Symbols are Connected. An Introduction to the Use of Structuralist Analysis in Social Anthropology, Cambridge. Levinson, J. (1992) Intention and Interpretation: A Last Look, in G. Iseminger (ed.), Intention and Interpretation, Philadelphia, 221–256. LiDonnici, L. R. (1995) The Epidaurian Miracle Inscriptions: Text, Translation and Commentary, Atlanta, Ga. Livingston, P. (2005) Art and Intention: A Philosophical Study, Oxford. Ma, J. (2005) The Many Lives of Eugnotos of Akraiphia, in B. Virgilio (ed.), Studi ellenistici 16, Pisa, 141–191. ––– (2007) Hellenistic Honorific Statues and their Inscriptions, Z. Newby and R. Leader-Newby (eds.), Art and Inscription in the Ancient World, Cambridge, 203–220. Marconi, C. (2004) Kosmos: the Imagery of the Archaic Greek Temple, Res 45, 211–224. ––– (2007) Temple Decoration and Cultural Identity in the Archaic Greek World: The Metopes of Selinus, Cambridge. Meiggs, R. (1975) The Athenian Empire, Oxford. Meskell, L. (1994) Dying Young: the Experience of Death at Deir el Medina”, Archaeological Reviews from Cambridge 13.2, 35–45. Metzler, D. (1995) ‘Abstandsbetonung’. Zur Entwicklung des Innenraumes griechischer Tempel in der Epoche der frühen Polis, Hephaistos 13, 57–71. Ninou, K. (ed.) (1978) Treasures of Ancient Macedonia, Thessaloniki. Onians, J. (1992) Architecture, Metaphor and the Mind, Architectural History 35, 192–207. ––– (2006) Art, Culture and Nature: from Art History to World Art Studies, London. O’Sullivan, P. (2000) Satyr and Image in Aeschylus’ Theoroi, Classical Quarterly 50, 353–366. Percival, M., and G. Tytler (2005) Physiognomy in Profile: Lavater’s Impact on European Culture, Newark. Plantzos, D. (2008) Archaeology and Hellenic Identity, 1896 –2004. The Frustrated Vision, in Damaskos and Plantzos (eds.) 2008, 10–30. Pritchett, W. K. (1971) Ancient Greek Military Practices, Part I, Berkeley. Raubitschek, A. E. (1949) Dedications from the Athenian Acropolis. A Catalogue of the Inscriptions of the Sixth and Fifth Centuries B.C., Cambridge, Ma. ––– (1960) The Covenant of Plataea, Transactions and Proceedings of the American Philological Association 91, 178–183. Reddy, W. M. (2001) The Navigation of Feeling: A Framework for the History of Emotions, Cambridge. Rosenwein, B. H. (2006) Emotional Communities in the Early Middle Ages, Ithaca, N.Y. Scheer, T. (2000) Die Gottheit und ihr Bild. Untersuchungen zur Funktion griechischer Kultbilder in Religion und Politik, Munich. Schlitz, V. (1979) Deux gorytes identique en Macédonie et dans le Kouban, Revue Archéologique, 305–310. Siewert, P. (1972) Der Eid von Plataiai, Munich. Simmel, G. (1997) Bridge and Door, in D. Frisby and M. Featherstone (eds.), Simmel on Culture, London, 170–174. Steiner, D. (2001) Images in Mind: Statues in Archaic Greek Literature and Thought, Princeton. Tarlow, S. (2000) Emotion in Archaeology, Current Anthropology 41.5, 713–746.

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Taylor, M. J., G. E. Edmonds, G. McCarthy, and T. Allison (2001) Eyes First! Eye Processing Develops Before Face Processing in Children, NeuroReport 12, 1671–1676. Tilley, C. (1993) Art, Architecture, Landscape [Neolithic Sweden], in B. Bender (ed.), Landscape: Politics and Perspectives, Oxford, 49–84. ––– (1999) Metaphor and Material Culture, Oxford. Tonkiss, F. (2005) Space, the City and Social Theory: Social Relations and Urban Forms, Cambridge. Treister, M. (1999) The Workshop of the Gorytos and Scabbard Overlays, in E. Reeder (ed.), Scythian Gold: Treasures from Ancient Ukraine, New York, 71–81. Varner, E. (2004) Mutilation and Transformation: Damnatio Memoriae and Roman Imperial Portraiture, Leiden. Wollheim, R. (1973) On Art and the Mind: Essays and Lectures, London. Zhivkova, L. (1975) The Kazanluk Tomb, Recklinghausen.

PICTURE CREDITS Figure 1: Figure 2:

Illustration: J.E.A. Masséglia. Gilded silver gorytos from Tomb II in Vergina. Archaeological Museum of Thessaloniki. Photo reproduced by kind permission of the 17th Ephorate of Prehistoric and Classical Antiquities, Edessa.

BEYOND THE USUAL SUSPECTS Literary Sources and the Historian of Emotions Ed Sanders 1 INTRODUCTION And you have never considered what manner of men are these Athenians with whom you will have to fight, and how utterly unlike yourselves. They are revolutionary, equally quick in the conception and in the execution of every new plan; while you are careful only to keep what you have, originating nothing, and not acting even when action is most urgent. They are bold beyond their strength; they run risks which prudence would condemn; and in the midst of misfortune they are full of hope. Whereas it is your nature, though strong, to act feebly; when your plans are most prudent, to distrust them; and when calamities come upon you, to think that you will never be delivered from them. They are impetuous, and you are dilatory; they are always abroad, and you are always at home. For they think to gain something by leaving their homes; but you, that any new enterprise may damage what you have already. When conquerors, they pursue their victory to the utmost; when defeated, they fall back the least. Their bodies they devote to their country as though they belonged to other men; their true self is their mind, which is most truly their own when employed in her service. When they do not carry out an intention which they have formed, they think they have been robbed of their own property; when an enterprise succeeds, they have gained a mere instalment of what is to come; but if they fail, they at once conceive new hopes and so fill up the void. For they alone have something almost as soon as they hope for it, for they lose not a moment in the execution of an idea. This is the lifelong task, full of danger and toil, which they are always imposing upon themselves. None enjoy their good things less, because they are always seeking for more. To do their duty is their only holiday, and they deem the quiet of inaction to be as disagreeable as the most tiresome business. If a man should say of them, in a word, that they were born neither to have peace themselves nor to allow peace to other men, he would simply speak the truth.1

1

Thucydides 1.70: οὐδ’ ἐκλογίσασθαι πώποτε πρὸς οἵους ὑµῖν Ἀθηναίους ὄντας καὶ ὅσον ὑµῶν καὶ ὡς πᾶν διαφέροντας ὁ ἀγὼν ἔσται. οἱ µέν γε νεωτεροποιοὶ καὶ ἐπινοῆσαι ὀξεῖς καὶ ἐπιτελέσαι ἔργῳ ἃ ἂν γνῶσιν· ὑµεῖς δὲ τὰ ὑπάρχοντά τε σῴζειν καὶ ἐπιγνῶναι µηδὲν καὶ ἔργῳ οὐδὲ τἀναγκαῖα ἐξικέσθαι. αὖθις δὲ οἱ µὲν καὶ παρὰ δύναµιν τολµηταὶ καὶ παρὰ γνώµην κινδυνευταὶ καὶ ἐν τοῖς δεινοῖς εὐέλπιδες· τὸ δὲ ὑµέτερον τῆς τε δυνάµεως ἐνδεᾶ πρᾶξαι τῆς τε γνώµης µηδὲ τοῖς βεβαίοις πιστεῦσαι τῶν τε δεινῶν µηδέποτε οἴεσθαι ἀπολυθήσεσθαι. καὶ µὴν καὶ ἄοκνοι πρὸς ὑµᾶς µελλητὰς καὶ ἀποδηµηταὶ πρὸς ἐνδηµοτάτους· οἴονται γὰρ οἱ µὲν τῇ ἀπουσίᾳ ἄν τι κτᾶσθαι, ὑµεῖς δὲ τῷ ἐπελθεῖν καὶ τὰ ἑτοῖµα ἂν βλάψαι. κρατοῦντές τε τῶν ἐχθρῶν ἐπὶ πλεῖστον ἐξέρχονται καὶ νικώµενοι ἐπ’ ἐλάχιστον ἀναπίπτουσιν. ἔτι δὲ τοῖς µὲν σώµασιν ἀλλοτριωτάτοις ὑπὲρ τῆς πόλεως χρῶνται, τῇ δὲ γνώµῃ οἰκειοτάτῃ ἐς τὸ πράσσειν τι ὑπὲρ αὐτῆς. καὶ ἃ µὲν ἂν ἐπινοήσαντες µὴ ἐπεξέλθωσιν, οἰκείων στέρεσθαι ἡγοῦνται, ἃ δ’ ἂν ἐπελθόντες κτήσωνται,

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In this passage (set in 431 BCE), Corinthian ambassadors to Sparta comment on the national characters of the Athenians and the Spartans, in a speech to the Spartan Assembly. Ancient texts that do not obviously portray deep, powerful sensations or displays of e.g. anger/shame/grief, which quickly bring about some great reaction and reversal of fortune (emotions and emotion scenarios that are prevalent, and have been widely studied, in epic and tragedy), have generally been overlooked by those studying the emotions of the Greeks. And yet, if we read this passage more closely, the characters of both Athenians and Spartans – juxtaposed as polar opposites – involve emotions. These are not, perhaps, sharp and shortlived (as are anger/shame/grief etc.), but longer-term emotions and perceptions of feelings determined by culture are equally important. Here Thucydides talks about the Athenians’ hopeful character (the word ‘hope’ [elpis] appears three times in this short passage), contrasted with the Spartans’ caution and distrust. The Athenians are ‘revolutionary’, ‘bold’, ‘impetuous’, thinking about ‘gain’ – words implying hope, confidence, and a lack of fear. The Spartans, on the other hand, are ‘careful’, ‘distrustful’, thinking about ‘damage’ – words implying caution, fear, and a lack of confidence. We must not forget that this is a speech to an audience of Spartans, who would have reacted emotionally to what they were hearing – perhaps they would have felt shame or anger, and perhaps this would have affected their response? The speech, too, was given in a physical setting, i.e. at an assembly, where the speakers were probably situated on a bêma (speaker’s platform), talking downwards to the Spartan listeners. What effect might this spatial arrangement have had on the listeners’ emotions? Such a question is perhaps only answerable after considering many more examples of emotion arousal in deliberative contexts (that is, speeches to Assemblies, Councils etc.). Interestingly too, these words are put into the mouths of Corinthians, addressed to Spartans, in front of Athenians. Are they the Corinthians’ genuine views; or spoken with ulterior motive: to rouse some of the emotions mentioned above in their Spartan audience? Or, perhaps more likely, are they Thucydides’ own views – and if so do they reflect his pride as an Athenian, or his dismay at the impetuosity of his fellow-citizens; or should they merely be read as part of his narrative technique, his explanation for the causes of so much that follows? Again, these questions cannot be answered from studying just one passage, but careful reading of Thucydides’ text will uncover many more.2

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ὀλίγα πρὸς τὰ µέλλοντα τυχεῖν πράξαντες. ἢν δ’ ἄρα του καὶ πείρᾳ σφαλῶσιν, ἀντελπίσαντες ἄλλα ἐπλήρωσαν τὴν χρείαν· µόνοι γὰρ ἔχουσί τε ὁµοίως καὶ ἐλπίζουσιν ἃ ἂν ἐπινοήσωσι διὰ τὸ ταχεῖαν τὴν ἐπιχείρησιν ποιεῖσθαι ὧν ἂν γνῶσιν. καὶ ταῦτα µετὰ πόνων πάντα καὶ κινδύνων δι’ ὅλου τοῦ αἰῶνος µοχθοῦσι, καὶ ἀπολαύουσιν ἐλάχιστα τῶν ὑπαρχόντων διὰ τὸ αἰεὶ κτᾶσθαι καὶ µήτε ἑορτὴν ἄλλο τι ἡγεῖσθαι ἢ τὸ τὰ δέοντα πρᾶξαι ξυµφοράν τε οὐχ ἧσσον ἡσυχίαν ἀπράγµονα ἢ ἀσχολίαν ἐπίπονον· ὥστε εἴ τις αὐτοὺς ξυνελὼν φαίη πεφυκέναι ἐπὶ τῷ µήτε αὐτοὺς ἔχειν ἡσυχίαν µήτε τοὺς ἄλλους ἀνθρώπους ἐᾶν, ὀρθῶς ἂν εἴποι (translation by Jowett 1963, 47f., slightly adapted). Hornblower 1991, 114 notes parallels to a speech put into the mouth of the Athenian statesman Kleon (3.37–8) and an authorial assessment in Thucydides’ own ‘voice’ (8.96), and

Beyound the usual suspects: literary sources and the historian of emotions

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Unlike many of the other types of evidence so far discussed in this book (archaeological, epigraphic, papyrological), literary sources have been significantly studied with respect to the emotions, especially in the last twenty years. 3 However, there are methodological problems with relying solely on literary sources for the history of Greek emotions: nearly all Greek texts were written by educated men of high wealth and/or status; they were frequently written to be read only by other such men; and a large proportion were written, or received final form, in one city in a brief period – Classical (479–322 BCE) Athens. It is possibly for this reason that the majority of research done so far into Greek emotions has been philological and cultural (for instance the words and metaphors used for anger in Homer; how the expression of shame in the Iliad differs from that in tragedy), or philosophical (for instance Aristotle on the socio-psychology of emotions; the Stoics on control of the emotions). It has only rarely been historical: for instance, the ways real people interacted with each other in various poleis and other communities across the ancient Greek world at specific points in time; the way emotions change over long periods of time; the way emotions are shaped by social tensions and cultural developments. Further, attention has generally focused on certain genres (epic, lyric poetry, tragedy, and philosophy) that only very indirectly reveal how emotions worked in real life, and to a much more limited extent on such genres as historiography, oratory, and biography that, under certain conditions, may be a better source of information for the part played by emotions in social, political, legal, religious, and cultural communication. Many other literary genres, especially outside the usual canonical authors, have received almost no attention at all – for instance, medical writings, technical treatises, didactic texts, fables, epigrams, satires and mimes, literary letters, anthologies, epitomes, commentaries, and fragmentary texts of all kinds. It will not be my purpose here to canter through as many such texts as possible, covering large amounts of ground skimpily. Rather I will use a handful of passages from a selection of genres to consider what sort of historical questions literary sources might answer, and what they might not.

3

concludes that the above passage must therefore also reflect Thucydides’ own views; he describes it as ‘as glowing a tribute as anything which Thucydides puts into the mouth of an Athenian speaker and is more effective coming from an enemy.’ Major monographs and collections in English include: Cairns 1993; Williams 1993; Nussbaum 1994; Konstan 1997; Sihvola and Engberg-Pedersen 1998; Harris 2001; Konstan 2001; Nussbaum 2001; Braund and Most 2003; Konstan and Rutter 2003; Sternberg 2005; Konstan 2006; Fitzgerald 2007; Graver 2007; Konstan 2010; Munteanu 2011a and 2011b; Sanders et al. forthcoming; Sanders forthcoming.

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2 FICTION I start, perhaps perversely, with a non real-life genre – the romantic novel – to see what can be gleaned even from such a text.4 At the start of Chariton’s Chaireas and Kallirhoe,5 a number of aristocratic suitors are competing to marry Kallirhoe, the daughter of a Syracusan general. However Chariton tells us that ‘Eros intended to make a match of his own devising’.6 He continues:7 Eros likes to win and enjoys succeeding against the odds. He looked for his opportunity and found it as follows. A public festival of Aphrodite took place, and almost all the women went to her temple. Kallirhoe had never been out in public before, but her father wanted her to do reverence to the goddess, and her mother took her. Just at that time Chaireas was walking home from the gymnasium; he was radiant as a star, the flush of exercise blooming on his bright countenance like gold on silver. Now, chance would have it that at the corner of a narrow street the two walked straight into each other; the god had contrived the meeting so that each should see the other. At once they were both smitten with love … beauty had met nobility. Chaireas, so stricken, could barely make his way home; he was like a hero mortally wounded in battle, too proud to fall but too weak to stand.

This passage is formulaic (a topos), and has precedents dating back several centuries. Here, for instance, is a similar passage from the third-century BCE poet Theokritos: And when I was come already midway on the road, where Lykon’s is, I saw Delphis and Eudamippos walking together. More golden than helichryse were their beards, and their breasts brighter far than thou, O Moon, for they had lately left the manly labour of the wrestling-school. ... I saw, and madness seized me, and my hapless heart was aflame. My

4 5

6 7

Other examples of non real-life, or fictional, Greek genres include epic (e.g. Homer), tragedy, and comedy. The romantic novel flourished in Greek (and Roman) culture in the first few centuries CE; Chariton’s Chaireas and Kallirhoe is one of the earliest surviving, dating from the mid-first century (Reardon 1989, 5). Chariton, Chaireas and Kallirhoe 1.1.3.1–2: ὁ δὲ Ἔρως ζεῦγος ἴδιον ἠθέλησε συµπλέξαι (translated by Reardon 1989, 22). Chariton, Chaireas and Kallirhoe 1.1.4.1–7.4: φιλόνικος δέ ἐστιν ὁ Ἔρως καὶ χαίρει τοῖς παραδόξοις κατορθώµασιν· ἐζήτησε δὲ τοιόνδε τὸν καιρόν. Ἀφροδίτης ἑορτὴ δηµοτελής, καὶ πᾶσαι σχεδὸν αἱ γυναῖκες ἀπῆλθον εἰς τὸν νεών. τέως δὲ µὴ προϊοῦσαν τὴν Καλλιρόην προήγαγεν ἡ µήτηρ, Ἔρωτος κελεύσαντος προσκυνῆσαι τὴν θεόν. τότε δὲ Χαιρέας ἀπὸ τῶν γυµνασίων ἐβάδιζεν οἴκαδε στίλβων ὥσπερ ἀστήρ· ἐπήνθει γὰρ αὐτοῦ τῷ λαµπρῷ τοῦ προσώπου τὸ ἐρύθηµα τῆς παλαίστρας ὥσπερ ἀργύρῳ χρυσός. ἐκ τύχης οὖν περί τινα καµπὴν στενοτέραν συναντῶντες περιέπεσον ἀλλήλοις, τοῦ θεοῦ πολιτευσαµένου τήνδε τὴν συνοδίαν ἵνα ἑκάτερος τῷ ἑτέρῳ ὀφθῇ. ταχέως οὖν πάθος ἐρωτικὸν ἀντέδωκαν ἀλλήλοις … τοῦ κάλλους τῇ εὐγενείᾳ συνελθόντος. Ὁ µὲν οὖν Χαιρέας οἴκαδε µετὰ τοῦ τραύµατος µόλις ἀπῄει καὶ ὥσπερ τις ἀριστεὺς ἐν πολέµῳ τρωθεὶς καιρίαν καὶ καταπεσεῖν µὲν αἰδούµενος, στῆναι δὲ µὴ δυνάµενος (translated by Reardon 1989, 22).

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looks faded away. No eyes had I thereafter for that show, nor know how I came home again, 8 but some parching fever shook me, and ten days and ten nights I lay upon my bed.

We should not interpret such passages as being necessarily reflective of real-life scenarios, but rather literary narrative devices: a stock ‘love at first sight’ scenario.9 Despite the formulaic nature of the Chaireas and Kallirhoe passage, however, it nevertheless suggests several profitable lines of enquiry to the historian of emotions. For instance, cult: Eros is the divine son of Aphrodite, but he is also a deification of an emotion (erôs = sexual desire). This particular deity is well known across the Greek world, at least as far back as the eighth-/seventh-century BCE epic poet Hesiod.10 However, other deified emotions are more bounded in time and place – for instance the cult of Nemesis in Rhamnous and elsewhere,11 or that of Phobos (Fear) at Sparta.12 One historical question is why certain emotions were deified at certain places, and/or in certain periods – a question that might be answered by a literary author, by commentaries on the text, or perhaps by inscriptions of decrees instituting cults or establishing temples. For instance, regarding the cult of Phobos at Sparta, the first/second-century CE biographer Plutarch tells us that the Spartans13 pay honours to Fear, not as they do to the powers which they try to avert because they think them baleful, but because they believe that fear is the chief support of their civil polity. ... And the men of old, in my opinion, did not regard bravery as a lack of fear, but as fear of 8

9 10 11

12 13

Theokritos, Idylls 2.76–86: ἤδη δ’ εὖσα µέσαν κατ’ ἀµαξιτόν, ᾇ τὰ Λύκωνος, | εἶδον ∆έλφιν ὁµοῦ τε καὶ Εὐδάµιππον ἰόντας· | τοῖς δ’ ἦς ξανθοτέρα µὲν ἑλιχρύσοιο γενειάς, στήθεα δὲ στίλβοντα πολὺ πλέον ἢ τύ, Σελάνα, | ὡς ἀπὸ γυµνασίοιο καλὸν πόνον ἄρτι λιπόντων | …. χὠς ἴδον, ὣς ἐµάνην, ὥς µοι πυρὶ θυµὸς ἰάφθη | δειλαίας, τὸ δὲ κάλλος ἐτάκετο. οὐκέτι ποµπᾶς | τήνας ἐφρασάµαν, οὐδ’ ὡς πάλιν οἴκαδ’ ἀπῆνθον | ἔγνων, ἀλλά µέ τις καπυρὰ νόσος ἐξεσάλαξεν, | κείµαν δ’ ἐν κλιντῆρι δέκ’ ἄµατα καὶ δέκα νύκτας (translated by Gow 1950, 21–23). On formulaic passages in the Greek novel, and their relationship to similar passages in earlier Greek narrative or in oriental novels, see Anderson 1984, 25–42. Hesiod, Theogony 120 – though associated iconography changes over time. See Most forthcoming; Stafford forthcoming. On Nemesis cults, see Hornum 1993, 6–14. On Rhamnous in particular, see Fortea López 1994, 24–30; Parker 1996, 154; 2005, 406f. I have not provided a one-word translation for Nemesis, as there is no equivalent label in English; nemesis is a righteous indignation that leads humans to censure and gods to punish wrathfully; the god Nemesis is often translated Retribution, but this does not capture the emotional connotations of the Greek word. The latter is referred to at Plutarch, Life of Kleomenes 9.1. Plutarch, Life of Kleomenes 9.1–3: τιµῶσι δὲ τὸν Φόβον οὐχ ὥσπερ οὓς ἀποτρέπονται δαίµονας ἡγούµενοι βλαβερόν, ἀλλὰ τὴν πολιτείαν µάλιστα συνέχεσθαι φόβῳ νοµίζοντες. ... καὶ τὴν ἀνδρείαν δέ µοι δοκοῦσιν οὐκ ἀφοβίαν, ἀλλὰ φόβον ψόγου καὶ δέος ἀδοξίας οἱ παλαιοὶ νοµίζειν. οἱ γὰρ δειλότατοι πρὸς τοὺς νόµους θαρραλεώτατοι πρὸς τοὺς πολεµίους εἰσί, καὶ τὸ παθεῖν ἥκιστα δεδίασιν οἱ µάλιστα φοβούµενοι τὸ κακῶς ἀκοῦσαι (translated by Perrin 1921, 67). This passage is consistent with the Spartan ‘mirage’, which Cartledge 2002, 45 describes as: ‘the distorted image of what both Spartans and nonSpartans for various and often mutually inconsistent reasons wanted Sparta to be, to stand for and to have accomplished.’

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The connection between emotions and public/private space is another fruitful line of enquiry. Here, Kallirhoe’s chastity and modesty are suggested by her only being outdoors to attend a religious festival and chaperoned by her mother;14 Chaireas’ wholesomeness is suggested by his exercise in the gymnasium. Such an encounter would therefore be plausible. In a real-life situation (just as depicted here) they would not be allowed to express their emotions, by action, speech, or any other sort of flirtation: it would damage Kallirhoe’s reputation to be seen conversing with a young man in the street, and give the lie to Chaireas’ supposed nobility of character were he to press it upon her. Even fiction can demonstrate how place (e.g. assembly, courtroom, religious processions, festivals, within the home, at another’s house, in the street, in the agora, at war etc.) has a profound influence both on the sensation and expression of emotions, and the social acceptability of such expression. The characters’ age, social class, and gender are important too: Greeks might expect young people to fall instantly in love, and their emotions to be violently felt and incontinently expressed;15 only a wealthy youth would have the leisure to attend the gymnasium;16 and Chaireas is notably bowled over by a girl, while most Classical Athenian literature might lead us to expect erotic feeling and competition for a beautiful boy or a courtesan.17 Age, social class, gender, place: all matters that must intimately concern the historian of emotions, as any other. Another aspect we might consider is the cause of Chaireas’ and Kallirhoe’s emotion: in this case, catching sight of each other.18 Greeks of different periods were interested in a variety of competing causes for emotions. Aristotle famously suggests that anger can be understood psychologically as ‘the appetite for returning pain for pain’, or physiologically as ‘a boiling of the blood or warm substance surrounding the heart’.19 Competing socio-, psycho-, and physiological explana14

15

16 17 18 19

Attendance at, and indeed participation in, religious festivals was the one major role women played in the public life of most Greek cities – at least in the Classical period when the novel is set, though not, perhaps, at the time it was written (see below). Consider Aristotle, Rhetoric 2.12 1389a3–6: οἱ µὲν οὖν νέοι τὰ ἤθη εἰσὶν ἐπιθυµητικοί, καὶ οἷοι ποιεῖν ὧν ἂν ἐπιθυµήσωσι. καὶ τῶν περὶ τὸ σῶµα ἐπιθυµιῶν µάλιστα ἀκολουθητικοί εἰσι τῇ περὶ τὰ ἀφροδίσια καὶ ἀκρατεῖς ταύτης (‘the young are prone to desires and inclined to do whatever they desire. Of the desires of the body they are most inclined to pursue that relating to sex and they are powerless against this’); 2.13 1389b13–15: οἱ δὲ πρεσβύτεροι καὶ παρηκµακότες σχεδὸν ἐκ τῶν ἐναντίων τούτοις τὰ πλεῖστα ἔχουσιν ἤθη (‘people who are older and more or less past their prime have characters that are for the most part the opposite of these’; translated by Kennedy 2007, 149–151). Fisher 1998 challenges this, at least for Classical Athens, with its unusually democratic sociopolitical organisation. See Davidson 1997, 73–136. See Cairns 2011, on the role vision plays in arousing erôs. Aristotle, De anima 1.1 403a30–32: οἷον ὀργὴ τί ἐστιν· ὁ µὲν γὰρ ὄρεξιν ἀντιλυπήσεως ἤ τι τοιοῦτον, ὁ δὲ ζέσιν τοῦ περὶ καρδίαν αἵµατος καὶ θερµοῦ (translated by Smith 1984, 643).

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tions for the causes of the emotions can be found in the writings of philosophers and medical writers of all periods, but also (as we see above) in the most innocuous of literary text. Ideas went in and out of fashion in ancient thought as in modern, and what Greeks believed in different periods and localities is a profitable line of enquiry for the historian of emotions. Such ideas are almost exclusively expounded in literary sources. Many psychologists have noted that it often makes more sense to speak of an emotional episode or scenario, than an emotion per se.20 Emotional episodes begin with ‘antecedent conditions’, which have been well defined as ‘the elements physically or objectively present in a situation, along with the perceptions, interpretations, and appraisals of them’;21 these arouse psychological and physiological feelings (frequently confused by laypersons with the ‘emotion’ itself); attempts to regulate or cope with the emotion may follow; then verbal expressions and/or physical actions resulting from the emotion; and eventually resolution.22 In this analysis, Chaireas and Kallirhoe catching sight of each other in the way, place, and moment that they do, can be seen as the antecedent condition of their erôs episode. Continuing the life-cycle of this episode, we would hope to come to the symptoms of the emotion,23 the metaphors, similes, and other imagery used to describe it, and its resulting actions. Here Chariton is rather restrained. Plato is less so in describing Hippothales’ erôs for the boy Lysis – his symptoms and actions include blushing, talking incessantly about Lysis, composing poems and prose to him, singing about him, hiding from his beloved, and being in an agony of confusion that he might be discovered.24 Even fuller ‘symptomatologies’ are found for some emotions.25

20 21 22 23

24

25

E.g. Parrott 1991, 4: ‘… an emotional episode is the story of an emotional event, and it seems a natural unit of analysis for understanding human emotions.’ Sharpsteen 1991, 37. See also Elster 1999, 244–283 and Ben-Ze’ev 2000, 49–78, whose analyses differ in some details. Some medical writers attempt to diagnose and cure emotions, for instance the second-century CE physician and philosopher Galen in On the Diagnosis and Care of the Passions of the Soul – see Harris 2001, 385–387. Plutarch, Life of Demetrios 38.2–7 and Heliodoros, Aithiopika 4.7 provide literary dramatisations of this process, in both cases for erôs. Plato, Lysis 204c2–d8: Καὶ ὃς ἀκούσας πολὺ ἔτι µᾶλλον ἠρυθρίασεν. ὁ οὖν Κτήσιππος, Ἀστεῖόν γε, ἦ δ’ ὅς, ὅτι ἐρυθριᾷς, ὦ Ἱππόθαλες, καὶ ὀκνεῖς εἰπεῖν Σωκράτει τοὔνοµα· ἐὰν δ’ οὗτος καὶ σµικρὸν χρόνον συνδιατρίψῃ σοι, παραταθήσεται ὑπὸ σοῦ ἀκούων θαµὰ λέγοντος. ἡµῶν γοῦν, ὦ Σώκρατες, ἐκκεκώφωκε τὰ ὦτα καὶ ἐµπέπληκε Λύσιδος· ἂν µὲν δὴ καὶ ὑποπίῃ, εὐµαρία ἡµῖν ἐστιν καὶ ἐξ ὕπνου ἐγροµένοις Λύσιδος οἴεσθαι τοὔνοµα ἀκούειν. καὶ ἃ µὲν καταλογάδην διηγεῖται, δεινὰ ὄντα, οὐ πάνυ τι δεινά ἐστιν, ἀλλ’ ἐπειδὰν τὰ ποιήµατα ἡµῶν ἐπιχειρήσῃ καταντλεῖν καὶ συγγράµµατα. καὶ ὅ ἐστιν τούτων δεινότερον, ὅτι καὶ ᾄδει εἰς τὰ παιδικὰ φωνῇ θαυµασίᾳ, ἣν ἡµᾶς δεῖ ἀκούοντας ἀνέχεσθαι. νῦν δὲ ἐρωτώµενος ὑπὸ σοῦ ἐρυθριᾷ. 207b4–6: καὶ δὴ καὶ ὁ Ἱπποθάλης, ἐπειδὴ πλείους ἑώρα ἐφισταµένους, τούτους ἐπηλυγισάµενος προσέστη ᾗ µὴ ᾤετο κατόψεσθαι τὸν Λύσιν … 210e5–7: κατιδὼν οὖν αὐτὸν ἀγωνιῶντα καὶ τεθορυβηµένον ὑπὸ τῶν λεγοµένων, ἀνεµνήσθην ὅτι καὶ προσεστὼς λανθάνειν τὸν Λύσιν ἐβούλετο. See e.g. Cairns 2003, 24f. on anger in the Iliad. See also pp. 81–85 in this volume.

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Chaireas eventually marries Kallirhoe, but one envious rival tells Chaireas that his wife is being unfaithful to him. Chaireas believes this:26 For a long time he lay dumb, unable to speak or raise his eyes from the ground. When he managed to find his voice – a small voice, not like his normal one. ... [He follows the rival, sees a man admitted to his house, and:] Chaireas could restrain himself no longer and rushed in to catch the lover red-handed and kill him. [However, on seeing Kallirhoe:] He could not find his voice to revile her; overcome by his anger, he kicked her as she ran to him. Now his foot found its mark in the girl’s diaphragm and stopped her breath.

Again this passage is formulaic – we can compare the late second-century CE satirist Lucian’s Dialogues of the Courtesans: 27 Demophantos was my admirer in those days. ... But one day when he called, I was ‘not at home’; I had Kallides the painter with me (he had given me ten drachmas). Well, at the time Demophantos said some very rude things, and walked off. However, the days went by, and I never sent to him; and at last (finding that Kallides had been with me again) even Demophantos began to catch fire, and to get into a passion about it; so one day he stood outside, and waited till he found the door open: my dear, I don't know what he didn't do! cried, beat me, vowed he would murder me, tore my clothes dreadfully!

In the Chariton passage we again see many psychological and physiological symptoms, and resulting actions, but of what emotion? The rival tells us earlier that his intention was to ‘set Jealousy (zêlotypia) in arms against [Chaireas]’,28 and Chariton in his own voice suggests Chaireas could have pleaded jealousy in his defence. 29 This Greek word zêlotypia highlights a further concern of historians of emotions: the lexical and psychological overlap between ancient Greek and our own emotion words, in terms both of what they signify (the scenarios in which they occur, and the verbal expressions and physical actions they lead to), and also their change in meaning over time. Zêlotypia (or rather the adjective zêlotypos) first occurs in surviving literature in Aristophanes’ comedy Ploutos (Wealth, dated 388 BCE), and David Konstan has argued not only that it did not at that stage mean sexual jealousy, but also that sexual jealousy as we understand it may 26

27

28 29

Chariton, Chaireas and Kallirhoe 1.4.7.1–3: Ἐπὶ πολὺ µὲν οὖν ἀχανὴς ἔκειτο, µήτε τὸ στόµα µήτε τοὺς ὀφθαλµοὺς ἐπᾶραι δυνάµενος· ἐπεὶ δὲ φωνὴν οὐχ ὁµοίαν µὲν ὀλίγην δὲ συνελέξατο; 10.3–4: Χαιρέας οὐκέτι κατέσχεν ἀλλὰ εἰσέδραµεν ἐπ’ αὐτοφώρῳ τὸν µοιχὸν ἀναιρήσων; 12.1–4: ὁ δὲ φωνὴν µὲν οὐκ ἔσχεν ὥστε λοιδορήσασθαι, κρατούµενος δὲ ὑπὸ τῆς ὀργῆς ἐλάκτισε προσιοῦσαν. εὐστόχως οὖν ὁ ποὺς κατὰ τοῦ διαφράγµατος ἐνεχθεὶς ἐπέσχε τῆς παιδὸς τὴν ἀναπνοήν (translated by Reardon 1989, 26f.). Lucian, Dialogi meretricii 8.300.10–25: ἤρα µου ∆ηµόφαντος. ... ἐπειδὴ δὲ ἐλθόντα ποτὲ ἀπέκλεισα — Καλλίδης γὰρ ὁ γραφεὺς ἔνδον ἦν δέκα δραχµὰς πεποµφώς — τὸ µὲν πρῶτον ἀπῆλθέ µοι λοιδορησάµενος· ἐπεὶ δὲ πολλαὶ µὲν διῆλθον ἡµέραι, ἐγὼ δὲ οὐ προσέπεµπον, ὁ Καλλίδης δὲ ἔνδον ἦν, ὑποθερµαινόµενος ἤδη τότε ὁ ∆ηµόφαντος καὶ αὐτὸς ἀναφλέγεται ἐς τὸ πρᾶγµα καὶ ἐπιστάς ποτε ἀνεῳγµένην τηρήσας τὴν θύραν ἔκλαεν, ἔτυπτεν, ἠπείλει φονεύσειν, περιερρήγνυε τὴν ἐσθῆτα, ἅπαντα ἐποίει (translated by Fowler and Fowler 1905, 63). Chariton, Chaireas and Kallirhoe 1.2.5.4: ἐφοπλιῶ γὰρ αὐτῷ Ζηλοτυπίαν (translated by Reardon 1989, 24). On Chaireas’ jealousy, see Jones 2012, chapter 1. Chariton, Chaireas and Kallirhoe 1.5.4.6–7: οὐδὲν εἰπὼν τῶν πρὸς τὴν ἀπολογίαν δικαίων, οὐ τὴν διαβολήν, οὐ τὴν ζηλοτυπίαν (translated by Reardon 1989, 28).

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not even have existed prior to the first century BCE.30 While I have demonstrated elsewhere that this latter assertion is invalid,31 it is certainly the case that in the Classical period the word zêlotypia implies possessive jealousy or envy/greed, in either a sexual context or metaphor, rather than sexual jealousy as in Chariton.32 Drawing together several strands already referred to, these two Chariton passages suggest one final issue: to what extent do fictional genres reflect the emotions of real-life historical Greeks, rather than being merely literary topoi? And inasmuch as they do, do they reflect the emotions of the time in which they are written, or the time at which they are set?33 These are tough questions, and most scholarship on ancient emotions in Greek literature does not address them – fairly, as they are not questions philologists or philosophers frequently set out to answer. However, for historians these questions cannot be ducked. Comparisons must be found in other, contemporary genres – for instance fifth-century tragedy with Thucydides or Old Comedy (more tentatively with fifth-/fourth-century oratory); alternatively in authors of the period in which it is set – for Chariton, perhaps Thucydides or Xenophon. Non-literary media can also be extremely helpful: love stories and rivalries, sexual jealousies, and actions causing harm abound in letters found on papyri, for instance; curse tablets may be helpful too, as may epigrams.34 3 ‘HISTORICAL’ GENRES: ORATORY, BIOGRAPHY, HISTORIOGRAPHY Amongst literary genres, oratory is unique in that it both reflects real life, and addresses a mass audience, thus providing excellent evidence for the values of a community. Tragedy and comedy (and arguably epic) address mass audiences, but are fictional genres. Historiography and biography purport to record real-life events, but are written for an unrepresentative audience (educated males of superior class/wealth). Of literary genres that purport to record real life, oratory must uniquely be credible to an audience of broad social and educational background (though still entirely of citizen males). It is for this reason that I have chosen to concentrate on oratory in my case study later in this volume (pp. 355– 383). 30 31 32

33 34

Konstan 2006, 219–243. Sanders forthcoming, chapter 8. Possessive jealousy: Aristophanes, Ploutos 1016; Plato, Symposium 213d2; Aeschines 1.58.4: Menander, Perikeiromene 987. Envy/greed: Aeschines 3.81.7; Aeschines 3.211.10; Isocrates 15.245.3. NB envy in a sexual context is the feeling I have for someone who has a beautiful girlfriend; sexual jealousy is my feeling at his dating Jane Smith, with whom I myself am in love (and believe previously reciprocated). See Salovey and Rodin 1986 on this distinction between what they label ‘social-comparison jealousy’ and ‘romantic jealousy’. E.g. the first-century CE Chaireas and Kallirhoe uses zêlotypia anachronistically for its fourth-century BCE setting (see above). For epigrams evoking physical intimacy between husband and wife, see p. 103 in this volume; for a curse tablet showing jealousy, see pp. 85f.

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Let us consider a passage of Lysias’ speech Against Simon, in which he portrays a defendant’s character:35 I am particularly upset, members of the Council, at being forced to speak about matters like this in front of you. I put up with mistreatment, because I was ashamed at the prospect of many people knowing all about me. ... But if I can show I am not guilty of any of the charges that Simon has stated on oath, even though it is obvious that I have behaved rather foolishly towards the young man, given my age, I shall ask you to think no worse of me. You know that desire affects everybody and that the most honorable and restrained man is the one who can bear his troubles most discreetly.

As with the Chariton passages in the previous section, we can note once again the influence of age, social class, and gender on emotions. Unlike Chaireas, the speaker in Against Simon is a mature man, and (as he himself admits) erôs is considered somewhat unusual at his time of life.36 The object of his passion is a teenage boy, possibly a slave,37 while he himself is wealthy enough to afford a speechwriter (and a prostitute as companion, if that is what the young man is), and to leave the city at will – i.e. he is of the leisured classes. Yet he must persuade a jury, which will mostly be made up of poorer citizens, for whom indulging in love affairs with young male prostitutes will be an alien experience. Age, gender, and social class will have an effect not just on the speaker’s emotions, but also on how he can best portray those emotions. Orators use emotions as a persuasion strategy in two principal ways. First, through narrative. The speaker can describe his own emotions, in a way that is designed to demonstrate his innocence or show his good character – here, his erôs, shame at inappropriate sexual desire, and upset at being forced to make it public (all of which may be faked). Alternatively, he can accuse his opponent of being motivated by baser emotions – as in the following passage from the same speech, where the speaker portrays his opponent as driven by jealousy:38 35

36

37 38

Lysias 3.3–4: µάλιστα δ’ ἀγανακτῶ, ὦ βουλή, ὅτι περὶ τῶν πραγµάτων εἰπεῖν ἀναγκασθήσοµαι πρὸς ὑµᾶς, ὑπὲρ ὧν ἐγὼ αἰσχυνόµενος, εἰ µέλλοιεν πολλοί µοι συνείσεσθαι, ἠνεσχόµην ἀδικούµενος. ... ἐὰν δὲ περὶ τούτων ἀποδείξω ὡς οὐκ ἔνοχός εἰµι οἷς Σίµων διωµόσατο, ἄλλως δὲ ὑµῖν φαίνωµαι παρὰ τὴν ἡλικίαν τὴν ἐµαυτοῦ ἀνοητότερον πρὸς τὸ µειράκιον διατεθείς, αἰτοῦµαι ὑµᾶς µηδέν µε χείρω νοµίζειν, εἰδότας ὅτι ἐπιθυµῆσαι µὲν ἅπασιν ἀνθρώποις ἔνεστιν, οὗτος δὲ βέλτιστος ἂν εἴη καὶ σωφρονέστατος, ὅστις κοσµιώτατα τὰς συµφορὰς φέρειν δύναται (translated by Todd 2000, 44f.). Lysias lived in Athens as a resident alien in the late fifth/early fourth centuries BCE, and wrote speeches (almost entirely) for delivery by others in trials. The speaker seems embarrassed: he says he did not want to appear rather foolish, pursuing an erotic relationship with a young lad at his time of life (3.4: ἄλλως δὲ ὑµῖν φαίνωµαι παρὰ τὴν ἡλικίαν τὴν ἐµαυτοῦ ἀνοητότερον πρὸς τὸ µειράκιον διατιθείς) – cf. note 15 above. Todd 2007, 278 notes that the speaker ‘appears to be unmarried at an age when this was evidently unusual’. The fourth/third-century BCE comic playwright Menander portrays a mature man similarly ashamed of a relationship with a courtesan at Samia 23, 27 – see Lape 2004, 139f. Carey 1989, 87 believes that he is; Todd 2000, 43 believes that he is not. Lysias 3.5–8: Ἡµεῖς γὰρ ἐπεθυµήσαµεν, ὦ βουλή, Θεοδότου, Πλαταϊκοῦ µειρακίου. ... πυθόµενος γὰρ ὅτι τὸ µειράκιον ἦν παρ’ ἐµοί, ἐλθὼν ἐπὶ τὴν οἰκίαν τὴν ἐµὴν νύκτωρ

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We were both attracted, members of the Council, to Theodotos, a young man from Plataia. ... He found out that the young man was staying with me, and came to my house drunk one night. He knocked down the doors and made his way into the women’s rooms, where my sister and my nieces were – women who have been brought up so respectably that they are ashamed to be seen even by relatives. Simon, however, reached such a level of arrogance that he refused to leave, until the men who were present, together with those who had accompanied him, realized that by entering the rooms of young orphaned girls he was behaving unacceptably, and threw him out by force. Far from apologizing for this outrageous conduct, he found out where I was having dinner and did something that was extraordinary and (unless you know his criminal insanity) unbelievable. He called me out of the house, and as soon as I came out, he immediately tried to hit me. I defended myself, so he moved off and threw stones at me.

The second use of emotions in oratory is to arouse the audience’s emotions: their sympathy or pity (as in the first passage above), friendship, gratitude, or other kindly emotions for the speaker; or their anger or indignation (as in the second passage), hatred, envy, resentment, or other hostile emotions for the opponent.39 This emotion arousal can be achieved in a variety of ways. One possibility is explicitly, through exhortation – there are hundreds of explicit calls for an audience’s emotional response in Classical Athenian oratory, for instance (from the end of the same speech):40 So I rightly deserve pity from you and from others, not only if I should suffer the fate that Simon intends but simply because I have been compelled by these events to undergo such a trial.

Alternatively orators can arouse an audience’s emotions covertly, by playing on their values – in the first two passages above, the audience’s sympathy/pity is roused for the speaker for the travails he has suffered and his embarrassment, and their indignation/anger against the opponent by his violence against the speaker and outrageous behaviour towards the female relatives (see pp. 357–359 on covert arousal of emotions). A final way an audience’s emotions can be aroused is through theatrical effects – that is, delivery. Here, for instance, is an account of a

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µεθύων, ἐκκόψας τὰς θύρας εἰσῆλθεν εἰς τὴν γυναικωνῖτιν, ἔνδον οὐσῶν τῆς τε ἀδελφῆς τῆς ἐµῆς καὶ τῶν ἀδελφιδῶν, αἳ οὕτω κοσµίως βεβιώκασιν ὥστε καὶ ὑπὸ τῶν οἰκείων ὁρώµεναι αἰσχύνεσθαι. οὗτος τοίνυν εἰς τοῦτο ἦλθεν ὕβρεως ὥστ’ οὐ πρότερον ἠθέλησεν ἀπελθεῖν, πρὶν αὐτὸν ἡγούµενοι δεινὰ ποιεῖν οἱ παραγενόµενοι καὶ οἱ µετ’ αὐτοῦ ἐλθόντες, ἐπὶ παῖδας κόρας καὶ ὀρφανὰς εἰσιόντα, ἐξήλασαν βίᾳ. καὶ τοσούτου ἐδέησεν αὐτῷ µεταµελῆσαι τῶν ὑβρισµένων, ὥστε ἐξευρὼν οὗ ἐδειπνοῦµεν ἀτοπώτατον πρᾶγµα καὶ ἀπιστότατον ἐποίησεν, εἰ µή τις εἰδείη τὴν τούτου µανίαν. ἐκκαλέσας γάρ µε ἔνδοθεν, ἐπειδὴ τάχιστα ἐξῆλθον, εὐθύς µε τύπτειν ἐπεχείρησεν· ἐπειδὴ δὲ αὐτὸν ἠµυνάµην, ἐκστὰς ἔβαλλέ µε λίθοις (translated by Todd 2000, 45). For other examples of such detailed, vivid descriptions (enargeia), see other studies in this volume: pp. 63 and 76–79 (petitions in papyri), 102f. (funerary epigrams), and 188f. (healing miracles of Epidauros). Arousal of the audience’s emotions is particularly recommended by Aristotle, Rhetoric 1.2 1356a14–20 and 2.1–11 1378a19–1388b30, and [Aristotle], Rhetoric to Alexander 34 1439b15–1440b4. Lysias 3.48: ὥστε δικαίως ἂν ὑφ’ ὑµῶν καὶ ὑπὸ τῶν ἄλλων ἐλεηθείην, οὐ µόνον εἴ τι πάθοιµι ὧν Σίµων βούλεται, ἀλλὰ καὶ ὅτι ἠναγκάσθην ἐκ τοιούτων πραγµάτων εἰς τοιούτους ἀγῶνας καταστῆναι (translated by Todd 2000, 52).

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speech to the Assembly in the Sicilian city of Engyion in the late third century BCE, described by Plutarch:41 Nikias, right in the midst of some advice that he was giving to the people, suddenly threw himself upon the ground, and after a little while, amid the silence and consternation which naturally prevailed, lifted his head, turned it about, and spoke in a low and trembling voice, little by little raising and sharpening its tones. And when he saw the whole audience struck dumb with horror, he tore off his mantle, rent his tunic, and leaping up half naked, ran towards the exit from the theatre, crying out that he was pursued by the Mothers [goddesses]. No man venturing to lay hands upon him or even to come in his way, out of superstitious fear, but all avoiding him, he ran out to the gate of the city, freely using all the cries and gestures that would become a man possessed and crazed.

This passage leads me to another historical genre, biography, and a different type of text. Plutarch informs us in his Life of Agis about the reasons for, and effects of, a fourth-/third-century BCE law change in Sparta:42 But when a certain powerful man came to be ephor who was headstrong and of a violent temper, Epitadeus by name, he had a quarrel with his son, and introduced a law permitting a man during his lifetime to give his estate and allotment to any one he wished, or in his will and testament so to leave it. This man, then, satisfied a private grudge of his own in introducing the law; but his fellow citizens welcomed the law out of greed, made it valid, and so destroyed the most excellent of institutions. For the men of power and influence at once began to acquire estates without scruple, ejecting the rightful heirs from their inheritances; and speedily the wealth of the state streamed into the hands of a few men, and poverty became the general rule, bringing in its train lack of leisure for noble pursuits and occupations unworthy of freemen, along with envy and hatred towards the men of property.

In this passage we see emotions (explicitly grudging, greed, envy, and hatred; implicitly anger) interacting with property ownership, laws to promote equalisation (or otherwise) of property, the relationship between rich and poor, and the 41

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Plutarch, Life of Marcellus 20.5–6: ὁ δὲ Νικίας µεταξύ τι λέγων καὶ συµβουλεύων πρὸς τὸν δῆµον, ἐξαίφνης ἀφῆκεν εἰς τὴν γῆν τὸ σῶµα, καὶ µικρὸν διαλιπών, οἷον εἰκὸς ἡσυχίας σὺν ἐκπλήξει γενοµένης, τὴν κεφαλὴν ἐπάρας καὶ περιενεγκὼν ὑποτρόµῳ φωνῇ καὶ βαρείᾳ, κατὰ µικρὸν συντείνων καὶ παροξύνων τὸν ἦχον, ὡς ἑώρα φρίκῃ καὶ σιωπῇ κατεχόµενον τὸ θέατρον, ἀπορρίψας τὸ ἱµάτιον καὶ περιρρηξάµενος τὸν χιτωνίσκον, ἡµίγυµνος ἀναπηδήσας ἔθεε πρὸς τὴν ἔξοδον τοῦ θεάτρου, βοῶν ὑπὸ τῶν Ματέρων ἐλαύνεσθαι, καὶ µηδενὸς τολµῶντος ἅψασθαι µηδ’ ἀπαντῆσαι διὰ δεισιδαιµονίαν, ἀλλ’ ἐκτρεποµένων, ἐπὶ τὰς πύλας ἐξέδραµεν, οὔτε φωνῆς τινος οὔτε κινήσεως πρεπούσης δαιµονῶντι καὶ παραφρονοῦντι φεισάµενος (translated by Perrin 1917, 491). See Chaniotis 1997, 234f. and forthcoming. Plutarch relies on earlier sources – here the first-century BCE historian Poseidonios (FgrH 87 F 43). Plutarch, Life of Agis 5.2–3: ἐφορεύσας δέ τις ἀνὴρ δυνατός, αὐθάδης δὲ καὶ χαλεπὸς τὸν τρόπον, Ἐπιτάδευς ὄνοµα, πρὸς τὸν υἱὸν αὐτῷ γενοµένης διαφορᾶς, ῥήτραν ἔγραψεν ἐξεῖναι τὸν οἶκον αὑτοῦ καὶ τὸν κλῆρον ᾧ τις ἐθέλοι καὶ ζῶντα δοῦναι καὶ καταλιπεῖν διατιθέµενον. οὗτος µὲν οὖν αὑτοῦ τινα θυµὸν ἀποπιµπλὰς ἴδιον εἰσήνεγκε τὸν νόµον· οἱ δ’ ἄλλοι πλεονεξίας ἕνεκα δεξάµενοι καὶ κυρώσαντες, ἀπώλεσαν τὴν ἀρίστην κατάστασιν. ἐκτῶντο γὰρ ἀφειδῶς ἤδη παρωθοῦντες οἱ δυνατοὶ τοὺς προσήκοντας ἐκ τῶν διαδοχῶν, καὶ ταχὺ τῆς εὐπορίας εἰς ὀλίγους συρρυείσης, πενία τὴν πόλιν κατέσχεν, ἀνελευθερίαν καὶ τῶν καλῶν ἀσχολίαν ἐπιφέρουσα µετὰ φθόνου καὶ δυσµενείας πρὸς τοὺς ἔχοντας (translated by Perrin 1921, 13–15).

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stability or otherwise of the polity – the socio-political effects of this law, according to Plutarch, creating the conditions for revolution. Such issues are staples of Greek historiography, as well as other political writings.43 Aristotle, for instance, tells us that those who have secured power to the state, whether private citizens, or magistrates, or tribes, or any other part or section of the state, are apt to cause revolutions. For either envy of their greatness draws others into rebellion, or they themselves, in their pride of superiority, are 44 unwilling to remain on a level with others.

Likewise, Thucydides, following a description of horrific civil strife in the polis of Kerkyra:45 Love of power, operating through greed and through personal ambition, was the cause of all these evils. To this must be added the violent fanaticism which came into play once the struggle had broken out. ... As for those citizens who held moderate views, they were destroyed by both the extreme parties, either for not taking part in the struggle or in envy at the possibility that they might survive.

The extent to which Greek historians, biographers, orators, philosophers etc. ascribed such issues (and others) to emotional motivations, is clearly a major subject for investigation.46 We might also consider to what extent emotions are postulated, as in the Agis passage above, as a rationale for something whose true origins are lost in the mists of time. A second area for study suggested by this passage is the connections Greeks believed there were between emotions – for instance, how one emotion leads to another, and under what circumstances. In the passage above, private anger and grudging mingles with generalised greed, leading to widespread envy and hatred. Aristotle suggests a different sort of connection, when he opines that those (jurors) feeling indignation or envy will be incapable of feeling pity.47 The fourthcentury BCE historian/moralist Xenophon unites both these issues (emotions in 43

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E.g. see Ehrenberg 1938, 52–61 on pothos (yearning/longing/desire) as a frequent explanation of Alexander the Great’s actions in ancient historiography. Until recently, modern historians are considerably less willing to attribute political decisions to emotions. See pp. 12–14 in this volume. Aristotle, Politics 5.4 1304a34–38: ὡς οἱ δυνάµεως αἴτιοι γενόµενοι, καὶ ἰδιῶται καὶ ἀρχαὶ καὶ φυλαὶ καὶ ὅλως µέρος καὶ πλῆθος ὁποιονοῦν, στάσιν κινοῦσιν· ἢ γὰρ οἱ τούτοις φθονοῦντες τιµωµένοις ἄρχουσι τῆς στάσεως, ἢ οὗτοι διὰ τὴν ὑπεροχὴν οὐ θέλουσι µένειν ἐπὶ τῶν ἴσων (translated by Jowett 1984, 2071). Thucydides 3.82.8: πάντων δ’ αὐτῶν αἴτιον ἀρχὴ ἡ διὰ πλεονεξίαν καὶ φιλοτιµίαν· ἐκ δ’ αὐτῶν καὶ ἐς τὸ φιλονικεῖν καθισταµένων τὸ πρόθυµον. ... τὰ δὲ µέσα τῶν πολιτῶν ὑπ’ ἀµφοτέρων ἢ ὅτι οὐ ξυνηγωνίζοντο ἢ φθόνῳ τοῦ περιεῖναι διεφθείροντο (translated by Warner 1954, 243f.). Hornblower 1991, 485 comments that: ‘These motives – love of power, greed, ambition – were all of the greatest importance for Th.’, and provides comparative passages elsewhere in the History. E.g. see Harrison 2003 on envy as a cause in the Histories of the fifth-century BCE historian Herodotus. We might also compare inscriptions mentioning phthonos (envy), of which there are many. Aristotle, Rhetoric 2.9 1387a3–5: διὸ κωλυτικὰ µὲν ἐλέου πάντα ταῦτ’ ἐστί, διαφέρει δὲ διὰ τὰς εἰρηµένας αἰτίας, ὥστε πρὸς τὸ µὴ ἐλεεινὰ ποιεῖν ἅπαντα ὁµοίως χρήσιµα.

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their socio-political setting, and the relationships between emotions) in his description of how friendship changes one’s emotions and actions:48 By nature human beings have certain tendencies towards friendliness. They need one another, they feel pity, they benefit from cooperation and, realizing this, they are grateful to one another. They also have hostile tendencies. When they have the same opinions about what things are beautiful and pleasant, they fight for their possession, and, falling out, take sides. Rivalry and passion also make for hostility; the desire to overreach is a cause of ill-feeling, and envy arouses hatred. Nevertheless, friendliness finds a way through all these obstacles and unites men who are truly good. Their moral goodness makes them prefer to enjoy moderate possessions and avoid tribulation rather than gain absolute power by means of war, and enables them, when hungry and thirsty, to share their food and drink without a pang, and to control their pleasure in the sexual attraction of beauty in such a way as not to cause improper annoyance to anyone. It enables them not only to suppress greedy instincts and be content with a lawful share of wealth, but even to assist one another. It enables them to settle arguments not only without annoyance, but even to their mutual advantage, and to keep their tempers from rising to a degree that they will later regret. It rids them completely of envy, since they give their own goods into the possession of their friends, and regard their friends’ property as their own.

Returning to the Plutarch Life of Agis passage above, another issue that will be familiar to historians is what we might refer to as commentator bias: how far can authors who are rich, educated, and (frequently, though not here) Athenian, be believed when they opine on the emotional motivations of those who are poor, uneducated, and/or non-Athenian – or even non-Greek? To what extent are ‘Greek’ emotions themselves Athenian cultural constructs? For instance, discussion of phthonos (envy/possessive jealousy) in so many Classical (479–322 BCE) sources – which are overwhelmingly Atheno-centric – is so intimately bound up with class and wealth issues in democratic Athens that it raises legitimate questions as to how appropriate any understanding drawn from them will be to non-Athenian contexts.49 48

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Xenophon, Memorabilia 2.6.21.2–23.7: φύσει γὰρ ἔχουσιν οἱ ἄνθρωποι τὰ µὲν φιλικά· δέονταί τε γὰρ ἀλλήλων καὶ ἐλεοῦσι καὶ συνεργοῦντες ὠφελοῦσι καὶ τοῦτο συνιέντες χάριν ἔχουσιν ἀλλήλοις· τὰ δὲ πολεµικά· τά τε γὰρ αὐτὰ καλὰ καὶ ἡδέα νοµίζοντες ὑπὲρ τούτων µάχονται καὶ διχογνωµονοῦντες ἐναντιοῦνται· πολεµικὸν δὲ καὶ ἔρις καὶ ὀργή· καὶ δυσµενὲς µὲν ὁ τοῦ πλεονεκτεῖν ἔρως, µισητὸν δὲ ὁ φθόνος. ἀλλ’ ὅµως διὰ τούτων πάντων ἡ φιλία διαδυοµένη συνάπτει τοὺς καλούς τε κἀγαθούς. διὰ γὰρ τὴν ἀρετὴν αἱροῦνται µὲν ἄνευ πόνου τὰ µέτρια κεκτῆσθαι µᾶλλον ἢ διὰ πολέµου πάντων κυριεύειν, καὶ δύνανται πεινῶντες καὶ διψῶντες ἀλύπως σίτου καὶ ποτοῦ κοινωνεῖν καὶ τοῖς τῶν ὡραίων ἀφροδισίοις ἡδόµενοι καρτερεῖν, ὥστε µὴ λυπεῖν οὓς µὴ προσήκει· δύνανται δὲ καὶ τὴν ἔριν οὐ µόνον ἀλύπως, ἀλλὰ καὶ συµφερόντως ἀλλήλοις διατίθεσθαι καὶ τὴν ὀργὴν κωλύειν εἰς τὸ µεταµελησόµενον προϊέναι· τὸν δὲ φθόνον παντάπασιν ἀφαιροῦσι, τὰ µὲν ἑαυτῶν ἀγαθὰ τοῖς φίλοις οἰκεῖα παρέχοντες, τὰ δὲ τῶν φίλων ἑαυτῶν νοµίζοντες (translated by Tredennick and Waterfield 1990, 123). To take one example, we might wonder at its relationship to an envious (phthoneros) god causing someone’s death, a cause which has been frequently attested in funerary inscriptions – for examples see Vérilhac 1978, 100f. no. 66, 257 no. 180; Lattimore 1942, 148f., also 147 for baskania and 153f. for invidia (‘envious glance’ in, respectively, Greek and Latin) doing likewise.

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Finally, one more issue familiar from historiography can be raised here: that of reporting. Plutarch bases much of his Life of Agis on the writings of historians of the Hellenistic period (322–31 BCE), and an exaggerated emotionality was supposedly one of the hallmarks of writing in this period. The second-century BCE historian Polybios criticises the third-century BCE historian Phylarchos for this tendency:50 Exercising in this case too his peculiar talent, the author gives us a made-up story of his cries when on the rack having reached the ears of the neighbours during the night, some of whom, horrified at the crime, others scarcely crediting their senses and others in hot indignation ran to the house. About Phylarchus’ vice of sensationalism I need say no more, for I have given sufficient evidence of it.

Plutarch, like any commentator separated by time from the events he describes, can only be as good as his own sources – and undated, unreferenced anecdotes about private emotional motivations must be treated with caution.51 Like other historians, the historian of emotions must test sources for plausibility, and for their wider applicability. 4 BEYOND THE USUAL SUSPECTS: OTHER HISTORICAL SOURCES At this point it is perhaps appropriate, then, to turn to a fragment of a text by Phylarchos himself, preserved in Athenaios’ Deipnosophistai:52 Phylarchos says that the Athenian settlers in Lemnos were flatterers. For the Athenians in Lemnos – showing gratitude to the descendants of Seleukos and Antiochos, because Seleukos not only delivered them when they were severely oppressed by Lysimachos, but also restored both their cities to them – not only erected temples to Seleukos, but also to his son Antiochos;

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Polybios 2.59.2: τηρῶν δὲ καὶ περὶ ταύτην τὴν πρᾶξιν ὁ συγγραφεὺς τὸ καθ’ αὑτὸν ἰδίωµα φωνάς τινας πλάττει διὰ τῆς νυκτὸς αὐτοῦ στρεβλουµένου προσπιπτούσας τοῖς σύνεγγυς κατοικοῦσιν, ὧν τοὺς µὲν ἐκπληττοµένους τὴν ἀσέβειαν, τοὺς δ’ ἀπιστοῦντας, τοὺς δ’ ἀγανακτοῦντας ἐπὶ τοῖς γινοµένοις προστρέχειν πρὸς τὴν οἰκίαν φησίν. περὶ µὲν οὖν τῆς τοιαύτης τερατείας παρείσθω· δεδήλωται γὰρ ἀρκούντως (translated by Paton, Walbank, and Habicht 2010, 425). Cf. Polybios 2.56.7–8. On so-called ‘tragic historiography’ see Walbank 1960; for further bibliography on Polybios’ criticism of tragic historiography, see Chaniotis 1997, 221 note 14; Schepens 2004; van der Stockt 2004; Marincola 2010. On Plutarch’s sources and reliability, see Pelling 2000, 44–60. The Deipnosophistai is an invaluable late second-/early third-century CE compendium of excerpts from earlier literary and historical sources, organised by subject; it takes the form of a report of a dinner-party discussion between a large number of educated men. Phylarchos FgrH 81F29 (at Athenaios, Deipnosophistai 6.66.254f–255a): κόλακας δ’ εἶναί φησι Φύλαρχος καὶ τοὺς ἐν Λήµνῳ κατοικοῦντας Ἀθηναίων. ... χάριν γὰρ ἀποδιδόντας τοῖς Σελεύκου καὶ Ἀντιόχου ἀπογόνοις, ἐπεὶ αὐτοὺς ὁ Σέλευκος πικρῶς ἐπιστατουµένους ὑπὸ Λυσιµάχου οὐ µόνον ἐξείλετο, ἀλλὰ καὶ τὰς πόλεις αὐτοῖς ἀπέδωκεν ἀµφοτέρας, οἱ Ληµνόθεν Ἀθηναῖοι οὐ µόνον ναοὺς κατεσκεύασαν τοῦ Σελεύκου, ἀλλὰ καὶ τοῦ υἱοῦ Ἀντιόχου· καὶ τὸν ἐπιχεόµενον κύαθον ἐν ταῖς συνουσίαις Σελεύκου σωτῆρος καλοῦσι (translated by Yonge 1854, 400, slightly modified). For a similar decree instituting cult worship of Seleukos and Antiochos in the polis of Aigai, see Ricl and Malay 2009.

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Ed Sanders and at their feasts, the cup which they use for libations they call ‘the cup of Seleukos the Saviour’.

It had long been customary to express gratitude to a foreign benefactor by the granting of honours.53 Since Alexander (336–323 BCE) in particular – although there are earlier precedents – this expression of gratitude began to include the local establishment of cults, in which the benefactor was worshipped as a divinity.54 The fullest extent of their development was not immediate, however, and this excerpt of Phylarchos provides evidence for an inflation in cultic honours.55 The Athenians surpass customary gratitude in a number of ways (hence why Phylarchos terms this flattery): by establishing a cult to the king’s son as well as to the king himself; by binding future generations to continue to express gratitude; by erecting temples;56 and by pouring libations at banquets – this act of worship in private homes assimilating both kings to the level of gods.57 Since canonical literary evidence for this period is extremely limited (chiefly Polybios and Plutarch, both working from earlier sources), much of the literary evidence available for the development of such cults will only be found in fragmentary texts. This particular fragment was preserved in an anthology (see note 52 above), and such anthologies are useful, if rarely used, historical sources. Another type of source rarely used is educative literature. One tract, addressed by the fourthcentury BCE educator Isocrates to the young ruler Demonikos, contains the following instruction on the moral virtues of shame:58 53

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Among literary texts, Demosthenes 20 and 23 evidence a lively discussion on the topic in fourth-century BCE Athens. See Austin 2006, 320f. no. 175 for an example of an inscription (dated in the 240s BCE) in which Seleukos II of Syria acknowledges the gratitude of the city of Miletos for his and his ancestors’ benefactions. Habicht 1970 is the seminal work on these so-called ‘ruler cults’ established by poleis in the Hellenistic period (323–31 BCE). For recent discussions of ruler cults, including their historical development, see Chaniotis 2003; Buraselis and Aneziri 2004; Chaniotis 2007 (on gratitude and memory in the ruler cult); Chankowski 2010. The cults in the cities should be distinguished from the cults that were established centrally by the major dynasties – see van Nuffelen 2004 on the royal cult of the Seleucid kings of Syria; Melaerts 1998 on the dynastic Ptolemaic cult in Egypt. On this specific cult, see Habicht 1970, 89f. Chaniotis 2003, 438f. notes that this is a rare example of an entire temple being erected to a ruler, an altar in a sacred precinct normally sufficing. On private worship of Hellenistic monarchs, see Aneziri 2005; for Ptolemaic monarchs, see Pfeiffer 2008. Isocrates 1.15.4–5: Ἃ ποιεῖν αἰσχρὸν, ταῦτα νόµιζε µηδὲ λέγειν εἶναι καλόν. 1.15.7–16.2: Ἡγοῦ µάλιστα σεαυτῷ πρέπειν κόσµον αἰσχύνην, δικαιοσύνην, σωφροσύνην· τούτοις γὰρ ἅπασιν δοκεῖ κρατεῖσθαι τὸ τῶν νεωτέρων ἦθος. Μηδέποτε µηδὲν αἰσχρὸν ποιήσας ἔλπιζε λήσειν· καὶ γὰρ ἂν τοὺς ἄλλους λάθῃς, σεαυτῷ συνειδήσεις. 1.21.2–4: Ὑφ’ ὧν κρατεῖσθαι τὴν ψυχὴν αἰσχρὸν, τούτων ἐγκράτειαν ἄσκει πάντων, κέρδους, ὀργῆς, ἡδονῆς, λύπης. 1.21.10–11: αἰσχρὸν ὑπολάβῃς τῶν µὲν οἰκετῶν ἄρχειν, ταῖς δ’ ἡδοναῖς δουλεύειν. 1.24.4–7: Βραδέως µὲν φίλος γίγνου, γενόµενος δὲ πειρῶ διαµένειν. Ὁµοίως γὰρ αἰσχρὸν µηδένα φίλον ἔχειν καὶ πολλοὺς ἑταίρους µεταλλάττειν. 1.26.1–3: Ὁµοίως αἰσχρὸν εἶναι νόµιζε τῶν ἐχθρῶν νικᾶσθαι ταῖς κακοποιίαις καὶ τῶν φίλων ἡττᾶσθαι ταῖς εὐεργεσίαις (translated by Mirhady 2000, 22–25).

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Believe that what is shameful to do is not good even to mention. Think that a sense of shame and justice and soundness of mind are an especially fitting regimen, for all agree that the character of the young should be controlled by these things. Never expect to do something shameful and get away with it; for although you may escape the notice of others, you will be conscious of it yourself. Strengthen your soul against all those things by which it is shameful for it to be overcome, such as profit, anger, pleasure, and pain. It is shameful to rule servants and yet to be a slave to pleasures… Be slow to take on a friendship, but once you have, try to maintain it, for it is equally shameful to have no friends and to be continually changing companions. Regard it a similar disgrace to be outdone by your enemies in doing harm and to be beaten by your friends in doing good.

This passage shows the thoughts of a conservative, Athenian philosopher/educator on the appropriate uses of a healthy capacity for shame (aidôs/aischynê), especially in training the young. It demonstrates that this particular individual was well aware of the educative value of the emotion.59 His comments, however, also reflect ‘traditional’ thought – many ideas that appear in later educative tracts were attributed to earlier moralists such as the ‘Seven Sages’ of the Archaic period (seventh/sixth centuries BCE) or can be traced back to the poems the sixth-/fifthcentury BCE conservative aristocrat Theognis purportedly wrote to his young beloved Kyrnos – historical sources that are often ignored. Consider, for example the following verses:60 You will lay by no greater treasure for your sons than a sense of shame, Kyrnos, which follows good men. Kyrnos, feel shame before [i.e. respect] and fear the gods – for this prevents a man from doing harm or speaking impiously.

Such thoughts can be traced forwards in time too, and we might expect similar comments to appear in such works as Plutarch’s Moralia, Stobaeus’ Anthology,61 or the Corpus Paroemiographorum Graecorum (Corpus of Greek Proverbs). Such texts have never yet been consistently studied in connection with the history of emotions, but they will both trace patterns of thought that persist over a thousand years of Greek moralising, and help highlight similarities and differences between different geographical locations. For instance Plutarch records one anecdote in which a character says:

59

60

61

Kristjánnson 2007, 99–112 argues that for Aristotle emulation was the primary educative emotion; for a contrary view see Sanders 2008, 272–274, where I argue that Aristotle sees education in virtue as involving all the emotions. Theognis 409f.: Οὐδένα θησαυρὸν παισὶν καταθήσει ἀµείνω αἰδοῦς, ἥτ’ ἀγαθοῖσ’ ἀνδράσι, Κύρν’, ἕπεται; 1179f.: Κύρνε, θεοὺς αἰδοῦ καὶ δείδιθι· τοῦτο γὰρ ἄνδρα εἴργει µήθ’ ἕρδειν µήτε λέγειν ἀσεβῆ (my translation). Of which, for instance, 3.31–32 in particular deals with aidôs. The Anthology was probably compiled in the fifth century CE.

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Ed Sanders In Sparta ..., wealth, softness, and adorning oneself are held in no honour, while a sense of 62 shame, good conduct, and persuasion of the leaders are prioritised.

This is both excellent historical evidence for Spartan thought about shame, 63 and an indication that they too believed it could/should be taught: consider what it is grouped with. Finally, I wish to discuss briefly one more type of source that has never been systematically studied in connection with emotions, and that is the so-called scholia.64 This is a vast field, and here I shall select merely a handful of passages which cast further light on an emotion I considered earlier: zêlotypia. In the Odyssey, the nymph Kalypso responds to Zeus’ reported order to let Odysseus (her lover, but also her prisoner) go free:65 You are cruel, gods, zêlêmones beyond all others, who resent (agaasthe) goddesses sleeping beside men publicly, if one of us makes him her dear husband.

This adjective zêlêmones is habitually translated ‘jealous’, which at first glance would seem to make sense; but on closer examination it becomes clear this is not the emotion Kalypso is referring to: she says that it is not merely sleeping with a man that is the problem, it is making him her husband. The verb agaasthe, which I have translated ‘resent’, is related to agan, which means ‘very much’ or ‘excessively’; accordingly the verb can be translated in a good sense ‘to admire’, or in a bad sense ‘to be envious / bear a grudge against’. It is characteristically used in Homer to mean ‘begrudging’ or ‘resentment’,66 and this explains the prior use of zêlêmones: male gods (Kalypso says) believe female gods go too far, and accordingly they feel some sort of censuring emotion for them. The scholia make the following comments:67 (H.P.Q.) zêlêmones, jealous (zêlotypoi); baneful (dêlêmones), harmful. (V.) Baneful (dêlêmones) is written.

62

63 64

65

66 67

Plutarch, Apophthegmata Lakonika 228c9–11: ἐν Σπάρτῃ ..., ἐν ᾗ πλοῦτος µὲν καὶ τρυφὴ καὶ καλλωπισµὸς ἀτιµάζονται, αἰδὼς δὲ καὶ εὐκοσµία καὶ τῶν ἡγουµένων πειθὼ πρεσβεύονται (my translation). Or at least for the Spartan ‘mirage’ – see note 13 above. The scholia started as explanatory comments written in the margins of manuscripts of major Greek authors. They eventually became more formalised from the third century BCE, as scholars working in the great library of Alexandria collected these comments and added to them (though the process continued for centuries after the destruction of the library in 48 BCE). Some scholiasts wrote entire commentaries themselves on individual works, but for the most part the scholia are anonymous and undated. For a guide to using scholia, see Dickey 2007. For more advanced analysis, see Nünlist 2009. Homer, Odyssey 5.118–120: σχέτλιοί ἐστε, θεοί, ζηλήµονες ἔξοχον ἄλλων, | οἵ τε θεαῖσ’ ἀγάασθε παρ’ ἀνδράσιν εὐνάζεσθαι | ἀµφαδίην, ἤν τίς τε φίλον ποιήσετ’ ἀκοίτην (my translation). Walcot 1978, 25f. Scholia to Homer, Odyssey 5.118: (H.P.Q.) ζηλήµονες, ζηλότυποι· ἢ δηλήµονες, βλαπτικοί. (V.) γράφεται δηλήµονες – given in Dindorf 1855, 254 (my translation).

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The scholiasts make the same mistake as modern translators in assuming, wrongly, that zêlêmones is a synonym for zêlotypoi,68 and that both have the meaning zêlotypoi has in the later period, i.e. ‘jealous’. The scholiasts do at least realise that ‘jealous’ is the wrong word in this context, that what is meant implies some sort of resentment, some desire to punish, but this leads them to the mistaken conclusion that zêlêmones must be the wrong word. They would not have been led down that path had they realised that zêlotypos had changed its own meaning over the centuries since the Classical period (as discussed above), and that zêlêmones need not mean the same as zêlotypoi in any case. Turning finally to zêlotypia itself, in a comment on Iliad 11.58 (‘Aeneas, who was honoured as a god by the Trojan people’), the scholiast writes:69 This addition is not gratuitous, but displays the rankings of men; for this man was second after Hector; and because of this there was some jealousy (zêlotypia) between them; so they say anyway, for he was always angry with godlike Priam [the Trojan king], because he did not honour him at all despite him being noble among men.

Zêlotypia is translated ‘jealousy’ here, but (just as in the Classical period) this is not sexual jealousy: rather it shows the jealousy of rivals.70 Zêlotypia frequently appears to be similar to phthonos (envy/possessive jealousy); the two are paired in a sexual context by Plato,71 but a Homeric scholiast pairs them in a non-sexual one: commenting on Nestor’s attempt to persuade Agamemnon to accept good counsel without grudging the person giving it, he says that Nestor ‘knows that many good deeds are destroyed though envy and anger and unjust jealousies’ (my translation).72 Once again the context is not sexual but, this time, deliberative. Such scholia, though undated, have told us much about this elusive and controversial emotion, and in particular put paid to the notion that it always represents sexual jealousy.

68 69

70 71

72

Both words derive from zêlos, which itself means ‘emulative rivalry’ and generally has no relation to sexual jealousy. Scholia to Homer, Iliad 11.58: οὐ µάτην ἡ προσθήκη, ἀλλ’ ἐµφαίνει τὴν τάξιν τῶν ἀνδρῶν· µετὰ γὰρ Ἕκτορα οὗτος δεύτερος· διὸ καὶ ζηλοτυπία ἦν τις αὐτοῖς· φησὶ γοῦν. αἰεὶ γὰρ Πριάµῳ ἐπεµήνιε δίῳ, οὕνεκ’ ἄρ’ ἐσθλὸν ἐόντα µετ’ ἀνδράσιν οὔ τι τίεσκεν – given in Erbse 1974, 135 (my translation). This is close in meaning to the etymological root zêlos – see note 68 above. At Plato, Symposium 213d2 – though the emotion referred to is again not sexual jealousy, as displayed in Chaireas and Kallirhoe, but rather possessive jealousy: Alcibiades knows of Socrates’ penchant for disbursing wisdom to attractive young men, and (since Socrates refused to take advantage of Alcibiades’ sexual advances) it must be this that Alcibiades wants all to himself. Scholia to Homer, Iliad 9.102: οἶδε γὰρ φθόνῳ καὶ θυµῷ καὶ ζηλοτυπίαις ἀδίκοις πολλὰς πράξεις ἀγαθὰς ἀνῃρηµένας – given in Erbse 1971, 419 (my translation).

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5 CONCLUSION My aim in this chapter has not been primarily exegetic, but rather explorative: to broaden horizons, rather than to derive any new knowledge – though some new findings have emerged. The heterogeneous collection of passages discussed should, it is hoped, have given the reader some idea of the huge range of ancient Greek literary sources that are available to the historian of emotions, and the types of questions that such sources can, and cannot, answer. Literary sources have unique benefits not generally applicable to other types of source: we generally know something about the personality of their authors; many texts can be reasonably precisely dated; their intended readership (or audience) is generally known, as is the intention of the author in writing the text. Additionally, literary texts are generally far longer than other types of text, and accordingly provide a much wider narrative context. However, literary sources also have certain problems as sources for emotions: they are almost exclusively written by, and frequently intended to be read only by, men of higher education and wealth/status; and a disproportionately large number come from one city in a relatively brief period (Classical Athens). The historian must necessarily be concerned, therefore, with the extent to which such texts are representative of the wider society, or indeed other poleis and non-polis areas, and other periods. Further, many literary texts belong to genres which are partly or wholly fictional, and the historian must be wary that scenes portrayed may not be wholly reflective of real life, but rather literary topoi, or that details of a scene are unintentionally anachronistic. While literary sources do, therefore, raise methodological issues that must be recognised and resolved, they are far from unique in doing so, and are nevertheless an immensely rich source for the historian of emotions. Accordingly they fully deserve their place alongside the other types of evidence discussed in this volume. BIBLIOGRAPHY Anderson, G. (1984) Ancient Fiction: the Novel in the Graeco-Roman World, London/Sydney. Aneziri, S. (2005) Étude préliminaire sur le culte privé des souverains hellénistiques: problèmes et méthode, in V. Dasen and M. Piérart (eds.), Ἰδίᾳ καὶ δηµοσίᾳ. Les cadres ‘privés’ et ‘publics’ de la religion grecque antique, Liège, 219–233. Austin, M. M. (2006) The Hellenistic World from Alexander to the Roman Conquest: a Selection of Ancient Sources in Translation, Cambridge (second edition). Ben-Ze’ev, A. (2000) The Subtlety of Emotions, Cambridge, Ma./London. Braund, S. and G. W. Most (eds.) (2003) Ancient Anger: Perspectives from Homer to Galen, Cambridge. Buraselis, K. and S. Aneziri (2004) Die hellenistische Herrscher Apotheose, in Thesaurus Cultus et Rituum Antiquorum. Vol. 2, Los Angeles, 172–186. Cairns, D. L. (1993) Aidôs: the Psychology and Ethics of Honour and Shame in Ancient Greek Literature, Oxford.

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––– (2003) Ethics, Ethology, Terminology: Iliadic Anger and the Cross-Cultural Study of Emotion, in Braund and Most (eds.) 2003, 11–49. ––– (2011) Looks of Love and Loathing: Cultural Models of Vision and Emotion in Ancient Greek Culture, Métis n.s. 9, 37–50. Carey, C. (1989) Lysias: Selected Speeches, Cambridge. Cartledge, P. (2002) Sparta and Lakonia: a Regional History 1300 to 362 BC, London/New York (second edition). Chaniotis, A. (1997) Theatricality beyond the Theater: Staging Public Life in the Hellenistic World’, in B. Le Guen (ed.), De la scène aux gradins: theatre et representations dramatiques après Alexandre le Grand dans les cités hellénistiques, Toulouse, 219–259. ––– (2003) The Divinity of Hellenistic Rulers, in A. Erskine (ed.), A Companion to the Hellenistic World, Oxford, 431–445. ––– (2007) Isotheoi timai: la divinité mortelle d’Antiochos III à Téos, Kernos 20, 153–171. ––– (forthcoming) Emotional Display, Theatricality, and Illusion in Hellenistic Historiography, in A. Chaniotis, P. Ducrey (eds.) Emotions in Greece ad Rome: Texts, Images, Material Culture, Stuttgart. Chankowski, A. S. (2010) Les cultes des souverains hellénistiques après la disparation des dynasties: formes de survie et d’extinction d’une institution dans un contexte civique, in I. Savalli-Lestrade, and I. Cogitore (eds.), Des rois au prince. Pratiques du pouvoir monarchique das l’Orient hellénistique et romain (IVe siècle avant J.-C.-IIe siècle après J.-C.), Grenoble, 271–290. Davidson, J. (1997) Courtesans and Fishcakes: the Consuming Passions of Classical Athens, London. Dickey, E. (2007) Ancient Greek Scholarship: a Guide to Finding, Reading, and Understanding Scholia, Commentaries, Lexica, and Grammatical Treatises, from their Beginnings to the Byzantine Period, Oxford. Dindorf, W. (1855) Scholia Graeca in Homeri Odysseam. Volume 1, Amsterdam/Oxford. Ehrenberg, V. (1938) Alexander and the Greeks, Oxford. Elster, J. (1999) Alchemies of the Mind: Rationality and the Emotions, Cambridge. Erbse, H. (1971) Scholia Graeca in Homeri Iliadem (scholia vetera). Volume 2, Berlin. ––– (1974) Scholia Graeca in Homeri Iliadem (scholia vetera). Volume 3, Berlin. Fisher, N. (1998) Gymnasia and the Democratic Values of Leisure, in P. Cartledge, P. Millett, and S. von Reden (eds.), KOSMOS: Essays in Order, Conflict and Community in Classical Athens, Cambridge, 84–104. Fitzgerald, J. T. (ed.) (2007) Passions and Moral Progress in Greco-Roman Thought, London/ New York. Fortea López, F. (1994) Némesis en el Occidente romano: ensayo de interpretación histórica y corpus de materiales, Zaragoza. Fowler, H. W. and F. G. Fowler (1905) The Works of Lucian of Samosata. Volume 4, Oxford. Gow, A. S. F. (1950) Theocritus. Volume 1. Text, Cambridge. Graver, M. R. (2007) Stoicism and Emotion, Chicago/London. Habicht, C. (1970) Gottmenschentum und griechische Städte, Munich (second edition). Harris, W. V. (2001) Restraining Rage: the Ideology of Anger Control in Classical Antiquity, Cambridge, Ma./London. Harrison, T. (2003) The Cause of Things: Envy and the Emotions in Herodotus’ Histories, in D. Konstan and N. K. Rutter (eds.), Envy, Spite and Jealousy: the Rivalrous Emotions in Ancient Greece, Edinburgh, 143–163. Hornblower, S. (1991) A Commentary on Thucydides. Volume 1, Oxford. Hornum, M. B. (1993) Nemesis, the Roman State, and the Games, Leiden. Jones, M. (2012) Playing the Man: Performing Masculinities in the Ancient Greek Novel, New York/Oxford.

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Jowett, B. (1963) Thucydides: History of the Peloponnesian War, New York [original publication: Oxford 1881]. ––– (1984) Politics, in J. Barnes (ed.), The Complete Works of Aristotle. Volume 2, Princeton, 1986–2129. Kennedy, G. A. (2007) Aristotle, On Rhetoric: a Theory of Civic Discourse, New York/Oxford. Konstan, D. (1997) Friendship in the Classical World, Cambridge. ––– (2001) Pity Transformed, London. ––– (2006) The Emotions of the Ancient Greeks: Studies in Aristotle and Classical Literature, Toronto/Buffalo/London. ––– (2010) Before Forgiveness: the Origins of a Moral Idea, Cambridge. Konstan, D. and N. K. Rutter (eds.) (2003) Envy, Spite and Jealousy: the Rivalrous Emotions in Ancient Greece, Edinburgh. Kristjánsson, K. (2007) Aristotle, Emotions, and Education, Aldershot. Lape, S. (2004) Reproducing Athens: Menander’s Comedy, Democratic Culture, and the Hellenistic City, Princeton/Oxford. Lattimore, R. (1942) Themes in Greek and Latin Epitaphs, Urbana. Marincola, J. (2010) Aristotle’s Poetics and ‘Tragic History’, in S. Tsitsiridis (ed.), Παραχορήγηµα - Μελετήµατα γιὰ τὸ ἀρχαῖο θέατρο πρὸς τιµὴν τοῦ καθηγητῆ Γρηγόρη Μ. Σηφάκη, Irakleion, 445–460. Melaerts, H. (1998) Le culte du souverain dans l’Égypte ptolémaïque au IIIe siècle avant notre ère, Louvain. Mirhady, D. C. (2000) Part One, in D. C. Mirhady and Y. L. Too, Isocrates I, Austin. Most, G. W. (forthcoming) Eros in Hesiod, in Sanders et al. (eds.) forthcoming. Munteanu, D. L. (ed.) (2011b) Emotion, Genre, and Gender in Classical Antiquity, London. ––– (2011b) Tragic Pathos: Pity and Fear in Greek Philosophy and Tragedy, Cambridge. Nünlist, R. (2009) The Ancient Critic at Work: Terms and Concepts of Literary Criticism in Greek Scholia, Cambridge. Nussbaum, M. C. (1994) The Therapy of Desire: Theory and Practice in Hellenistic Ethics, Princeton. ––– (2001) Upheavals of Thought: the Intelligence of Emotions, Cambridge. Parker, R. (1996) Athenian Religion: a History, Oxford. ––– (2005) Polytheism and Society at Athens, Oxford/New York. Parrott, W. G. (1991) The Emotional Experiences of Envy and Jealousy, in Salovey (ed.) 1991, 3– 30. Paton, W. R., F. B. Walbank, and C. Habicht (2010) Polybius. The Histories. Books 1–2. Translated by W. R. Paton, Revised by F. W. Walbank and Christian Habicht, Cambridge, Ma. Pelling, C. (2000) Literary Texts and the Greek Historian, London/New York. Perrin, B. (1917) Plutarch: Lives. Volume 5, Cambridge, Ma. ––– (1921) Plutarch: Lives. Volume 10, Cambridge, Ma. Pfeiffer, S. (2008) Herrscher- und Dynastiekult im Ptolemäerreich: Systematik und Einordnung der Kultformen, Munich. Reardon, B. P. (ed.) (1989) Collected Ancient Greek Novels, Berkeley/Los Angeles/London. Ricl, M. and H. Malay (2009) Two New Hellenistic Decrees from Aigai in Aiolis, Epigraphica Anatolica 42, 39–60. Salovey, P. (ed.) (1991) The Psychology of Jealousy and Envy, New York. Salovey, P. and J. Rodin (1986) The Differentiation of Social-Comparison Jealousy and Romantic Jealousy, Journal of Personality and Social Psychology 50, 1100–1012. Sanders, E. (2008) Pathos Phaulon: Aristotle and the Rhetoric of Phthonos, in I. Sluiter and R. M. Rosen (eds.), KAKOS: Badness and Anti-Value in Classical Antiquity, Leiden/Boston, 255– 281. ––– (forthcoming) Envy and Jealousy in Classical Athens, New York.

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Sanders, E., C. Thumiger, C. Carey, and N. J. Lowe (eds.) (forthcoming) Erôs in Ancient Greece, Oxford. Schepens, G. (2004) Polybius on Phylarchus’ ‘Tragic’ Historiography, in G. Schepens and J. Bollansée (eds.), The Shadow of Polybius. Intertextuality as a Research Tool in Greek Historiography. Proceedings of the International Colloquium, Leuven, 21–22 September 2001, Louvain, 141–164. Sharpsteen, D.J. (1991) The Organization of Jealousy Knowledge: Romantic Jealousy as a Blended Emotion, in Salovey (ed.) 1991, 31–51. Sihvola, J. and T. Engberg-Pedersen (1998) The Emotions in Hellenistic Philosophy, Dordrecht. Smith, A. J. (1984) On the Soul, in J. Barnes (ed.), The Complete Works of Aristotle Volume 1, Princeton, 641–692. Stafford, E. (forthcoming) From the Gymnasium to the Wedding: Eros in Athenian Art and Cult, in Sanders et al. (eds.) forthcoming. Sternberg, R. H. (ed.) (2005) Pity and Power in Ancient Athens, Cambridge. Todd, S. C. (2000) Lysias, Austin. ––– (2007) A Commentary on Lysias: Speeches 1–11, Oxford. Tredennick, H. and R. Waterfield (1990) Xenophon: Conversations of Socrates, London. van der Stockt, L. (2004) Πολυβιάσασθαι? Plutarch on Timaeus and ‘Tragic History’, in G. Schepens and J. Bollansée (eds.), The Shadow of Polybius. Intertextuality as a Research Tool in Greek Historiography. Proceedings of the International Colloquium, Leuven, 21–22 September 2001, Louvain, 271–305. van Nuffelen, P. (2004) Le culte royal de l’Empire des Séleucides: une réinterpretation, Historia 53, 278–301. Vérilhac, A.-M. (1978) Paides aoroi: poésie funéraire. Tome I: textes, Athens. Walbank, F.W. (1960) History and Tragedy, Historia 9, 216–234. Walcot, P. (1978) Envy and the Greeks: a Study of Human Behaviour, Warminster. Warner, R. (1954) Thucydides: History of the Peloponnesian War, London. Williams, B. (1993) Shame and Necessity, Berkeley/Los Angeles/Oxford. Yonge, C.D. (1854) Athenaeus: the Deipnosophists or Banquet of the Learned. Volume 1, London.

PART TWO Emotions in the interaction between mortals and gods

DREAM, NARRATIVE, AND THE CONSTRUCTION OF HOPE IN THE ‘HEALING MIRACLES’ OF EPIDAUROS Paraskevi Martzavou 1 SLEEPING IN EPIDAUROS In antiquity the ill could turn to the divine for healing by visiting the shrines of healing gods, notably that of Asklepios. The healing procedure involved incubation: a patient would spend a night within the sacred premises in order to receive a divine visitation in the form of a dream. This practice is described in a striking way by Aristophanes in his play Ploutos; Karion, the servant, gives an account of the bringing of the blind Ploutos to the sanctuary of Asklepios, probably in Piraeus, in order for Ploutos to be cured from his blindness by the god.1 Karion describes the healing procedure as follows: After the completion of preliminary rites, the patients are put to sleep in a special place and the priests lie in the same location. After a while, Asklepios enters with a number of assistants including two snakes. With the help of his assistants, the god applies ointments to the patients and cures them. Ploutos has his sight restored – and hence follows a vivid expression of joy by Karion and the other characters in the play. The cure described in the narrative of Aristophanes takes place on the premises of the Asklepios shrine in Attica. Several Asklepieia have been found scattered around the Greek world. A famous one of these shrines was located in Epidauros, and from it we have a series of inscriptions depicting instances of miraculous healing (iamata). These were drawn up at the end of the fourth century BCE by one or more compilers, probably by members of the priestly personnel.2 The iamata confirm the testimony of Aristophanes concerning the role of incubations and sleeping or dreaming experience in the healing procedure, which also included purifying baths and sacrifices and took place in sanctuaries. 3 Four stelae bearing such texts survive today. Pausanias, the traveller of the second century CE, mentions them and he specifies that, in his day, six plaques were exposed, but 1 2

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Aristophanes, Ploutos 649–763; see Edelstein and Edelstein 1945, T421. Main editions: IG IV2.1.121–124; Herzog 1931 (text with German translation and commentary); Edelstein and Edelstein 1945, 221–237 T234 (text and English translation); LiDonnici 1995 (text with English translation and commentary); Prêtre and Charlier 2009 (text, French translation, detailed philological and medical commentary); further bibliography in Chaniotis 1988, 19; LiDonnici 1995; Prêtre and Charlier 2009. On language and style: Nehrbass 1935. On the relation between the iamata and local historiography: Chaniotis 1988, 19–23 T2. On their compilation by priests: Sineux 2007. Edelstein and Edelstein 1945, 145–158.

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in earlier times there were probably more.4 Apart from the iamata, miraculous healings are described in individual dedications to Asklepios, but we are not dealing with this documentation here.5 The iamata inscriptions detail the relationship between the god Asklepios and several other characters, namely patients. As texts, they prove to be sophisticated literary compositions, and ultimately they seem to be relevant to the relationship of the drafter to the audience consisting of readers, pilgrims, and auditors. In that, they are similar to more sophisticated genres of literary creation, notably to epic and tragic poetry. These texts with extremely detailed descriptions (ἐνάργεια) and dramatic elements (περιπέτεια) – both features of literary creation – lead the audience to metaphorical and literal catharsis through ‘pity and fear’, to refer to Aristotle’s definition of tragedy.6 The final aim of these texts is to arouse the emotions of hope and confidence in members of the audience, who would have been people seeking a cure. The healing procedure can thus be described as an emotional path: after the suffering caused by illness and the agonising wait for wellness, the arrival of a successful cure produces emotions of relief and hope. In this paper, I aim to identify and explain emotions sought through narrative techniques in the context of the Asklepion. My ultimate goal is to demonstrate the value of the ‘miracle inscriptions’ as a source for the socio-cultural construction of emotions in ancient Greece and for the history of emotions in general. 2 FROM DREAMS TO NARRATIVE AND EMOTIONS The importance of dreams is a key parameter in the construction of the narrative of these healing inscriptions. The experience of a dream was the main means of diagnosis and healing in the sanctuaries of Asklepios, as we can also judge from other sources.7 However, as has been already highlighted, the accounts of dreams are not simply dreams per se, but the representation of the dream experience as narrative.8 These texts should be considered as compositions, not as direct accounts of dreams. 4 5 6

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Pausanias 2.36.1. For individual accounts of healings see Girone 1998, 5, who does not treat the iamata inscriptions. On the concept of catharsis as a metaphor taken from the medical world in order to understand the function of tragedy, see Sifakis 2001, 72–113. On enargeia see pp. 107–109 in this volume. The recording of healing stories, in an institutionalised way, is a feature characteristic of other sanctuaries of Asklepios, for example the sanctuary of Asklepios in Lebena in Crete (I.Cret. I.xvii.8–12) and the sanctuary of Aesculapius in the Tiber island at Rome (IGUR 148; cf. Renberg 2006/2007, esp. 93–95 and 137–139); see Rhodes and Osborne 2003, 539. For Epidauros see the record of miraculous healing in IG IV2.1.126. Even though this inscription comes from a much later period (117 CE), this text attests a combination of a diagnostic and healing procedure based equally on dreams and on advice concerning modification of behaviour (e.g. practicing moderate exercise). Stewart 1997, 877–894.

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The approximately seventy stories of Epidauros, distributed across four stelae, are unevenly preserved. Two stelae (A and B; see Appendix, pp. 196–203) hold 20 and 23 complete narratives respectively, whereas the stories recorded in two further stelae (C and D) survive only incompletely (23 and 4 entries respectively). In what follows, I shall focus on stelae A and B, only occasionally using the material from stelae C and D. The text, as a compilation of an important number of healing stories, is an illustration of the powers of the god. In that sense, it is conceptually very close to the genre of aretalogy, the praise of the power (arete) of a god (cf. pp. 267–290 in this volume), as it records the power of the god manifested in his wonder-working. In that sense also, the healing stories are quite closely related to religious acclamations.9 At the same time, the stelae that survive today can be broadly perceived as religious dedications – that is, as religious gestures in the context of communication between the divine and the human sphere, as well as between humans themselves.10 However, even while tackling the complex semantic character of the iamata, my specific goal in this chapter is not to define these texts by attributing them to a particular genre, but to evaluate them as a source for the study of emotions in ancient Greece. So rather than gradually moving towards a precise definition, I shall pay attention to the content of the inscriptions, the types of tales, the style of the presentation (language, rhetorical elements), the modes of linguistic expression and the tropes in use, the arrangement of the individual stories, the general narrative, and the organisational principles in each individual stele and in the ensemble of stories, inasmuch as these elements are relevant for the central theme of the present volume, namely emotions. I shall place special emphasis on the narrative techniques and their role in the construction of emotions. It is important to focus on language, especially language that describes or alludes to emotions. I aim to understand how language works in the specific setting of a healing sanctuary in the flow of the narrative. Furthermore, I shall try to identify the object towards which the narrative leads, the function of these tales as they are presented, and the degree of their success in fulfilling their role. And of course, special attention must be paid to these texts as material objects, as monumentally presented written records of miracles, to which aspect I shall now turn. 3 CONTEXTUALISING THE EPIDAURIAN TEXTS The four stelai were probably exposed in front of the eastern wall of a building designated as the abaton,11 next to a well and an incribed text of political impor9 10 11

On religious acclamations see Chaniotis 2009a; on acclamations, generally, see pp. 295–312 in this volume. Rüpke 2009, 31–41. See internal evidence (stories A3, A4, B16) and also archaeological evidence, i.e. the discovery of grooved stele-bases within the abaton building itself, which may indicate that the stelai were displayed there; LiDonnici 1995, 18 and note 18; Kolde 2003, 1. LiDonnici mentions as problematic the interpretation of these stele-bases as the actual bases of the

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tance: a cult regulation and a song of praise to Asklepios composed by a certain Isyllos (early third century BCE).12 The positioning of the stelai is relevant to their emotional impact. The name abaton literally means ‘not to be trodden’, but it is obvious from the narrative that into this building the people were sent to sleep in order to dream about their cure.13 However, even if not literally ‘inaccessible’, this space was probably restricted to those practicing incubation in the sanctuary in need of a cure or advice.14 The use of the word abaton to indicate the place of actual incubation is significant; it belongs to a religious perception of space and it is highly suggestive. We can imagine the emotions of someone, in need of a cure, when actually entering a place defined as abaton: fear of transgressing a limit, awe because of the presupposed sacred character of the space, anticipation and hope for a cure and, in general, emotional tension. On the other hand, the hymn to Asklepios by Isyllos, with its clearly civic character and aristocratic resonance, represents the authority under which the miraculous activity took place in the abaton and in general in the precinct of the sanctuary of Asklepios in Epidauros.15 It is plausible to suggest that both texts contributed to the construction of civic pride for the Epidaurians. In what follows, I shall try to explore the construction of these and other emotions in relation to techniques of narrative and especially to dream narrative. I shall also look at other parameters that shaped the emotions of people who either visited the sanctuary of Asklepios in Epidauros, or who had exposure to the Epidaurian texts. For the latter, exposure to the texts could be either direct or by word of mouth. 4 CAUSES OF SUFFERING AND CURES What is striking throughout the tales is the non-specialisation of the healing and comforting offered by the sanctuary. The variety of causes of suffering, and the diversity of problems considered to be appropriate to bring to Asklepios, is impressive by the standards of modern medicine.16 For instance, suffering because of lice (Appendix, B8) is considered in the text right after the case of a man with a festering sore inside his belly (Appendix, B7). No actual distinction between

12 13 14 15 16

iamata, since there is only room for four bases in this area and Pausanias mentions six stelai. But the exposure of four stelai in the abaton does not exclude the exposure of other stelai elsewhere in the sanctuary. For the abaton in Epidauros see also Girone 1998, 41. Kolde 2003, 1; Kolde throughout her book analyses the meaning of the exposure of a text with high political significance next to the iamata inscriptions. See e.g. Appendix, A2 line 21 and A11. LiDonnicci 1995, 19. Kolde 2003, 257–301. See Prêtre and Charlier 2009, nos. 1–4, where the authors attempt a diagnostic approach to these texts, an original breakthrough to the medical reality of the ancient world.

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physical and mental cause of suffering is made.17 The importance of psychological suffering as a cause of psychosomatic illnesses is apparent throughout these texts. Also, considerable variety can be detected in the sources of the tales. Pictorial and textual dedications must have been an important source from which the anonymous compiler has drawn material for his narrative. Sometimes a combination of oral tradition along with simple anatomical dedications (pictorial, textual, or a combination of both) must have been the source of the story put into narrative in the ‘miracle inscriptions’.18 An example is the tale that opens the narrative, the first tale of stele A (Appendix, A1): Kleo was pregnant for five years. After the fifth year of pregnancy, she came as a suppliant to the god and slept in the abaton. As soon as she had left it and was outside the sacred area, she gave birth to a son who, as soon as he was born, washed himself at the fountain and walked about with his mother. After this success, she inscribed upon an offering: ‘the wonder is not the size of the plaque, but the act of the god; Kleo bore a burden in her stomach for five years, until she slept here, and he made her well.’

It seems obvious that the source of this tale lies in an inscribed dedication, a tablet of some sort, that a woman named Kleo had put up as a dedication in the sanctuary of Asklepios as a sign of gratitude; there would probably also have been an oral story attached to this dedication which the drafter and compiler of the text would have taken into account. Simple inscribed dedications must have been associated, through the passing of time, with legends that circulated by word of mouth. This must have been the case, for instance, with another story (Appendix, A4) in which we have an allusion to an object that must have been placed as a dedication in the sanctuary and which probably caused much curiosity and discussion. In this story, a woman named Ambrosia from Athens, blind in one eye, came as a suppliant to the god. The god healed her, but because she was doubtful, he ordered her to dedicate a silver pig in the sanctuary ‘as a memorial of her ignorance’. Thus it seems that, apart from the pictorial and inscribed dedications, the drafter(s) of the compilation must have drawn on stories that circulated on the premises of the sanctuary by word of mouth as rumours or ‘sanctuary legends’ (to coin a term inspired by the concept of ‘urban legends’). For example, one of the first tales (Appendix, A3) gives neither a name to the protagonist, nor a description of the dedication he made; similarly, the healing story of a mute boy (Appendix, A5) provides neither a name nor an ethnic identity. As in the case of Kleo, an important source for these tales must lie in the various ‘anatomical’ dedications that were deposited as dedications in the sanctuaries of Asklepios, either inscribed

17

18

The same mixture of mental and bodily diseases as the cause of suffering is apparent throughout the propitiatory inscriptions and dedications of Lydia and Phrygia: see Chaniotis 1995, 323–337. The anatomical votives represent body parts which are healed or expected to be healed by a deity; see Forsèn 1996. On the various sources upon which the compilers of the iamata could draw see Herzog 1931, 52–54 and 56; Chaniotis 1988, 21.

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or un-inscribed.19 A number of stories must have been circulating by word of mouth not only on the premises of the sanctuary but also in the cities and villages that were in contact with the sanctuary, once the pilgrims had returned to their place of origin. The presence and the importance of audience in the case of the performance of miracles is indeed crucial. The example given above in Aristophanes’ Ploutos (p. 177) is telling. An inscription from Rome explicitly indicates that the healed person had to thank the god in public.20 However, the major source of the tales seems to be the dreaming experience that the people visiting the sanctuary sought in order to find a cure for their physical or mental illnesses, or a solution to a problem. There must have been a record in the sanctuary of the dreaming narratives based on the dream experiences of the visitors. Narrative based on dream experience appears to be the basic source of ‘miracle tales’: the majority of healing stories are based on dreams, and we can see that 30 out of 46 acts of healing involve dreams.21 The framework for describing the dreams follows the ‘epiphany convention’. According to this framework, the dream consists of the appearance to the dreamer of an authoritative personage who may be either divine or a representative of a god; this figure then conveys instruction or information.22 5 DREAMS, NARRATIVE, AND THE CONSTRUCTION OF ANXIETY AND HOPE The miracle inscriptions, without being exclusively dream records, are fully packed with dream narratives. At first sight, the narratives do not seem to be arranged according to an order. However, a narrative is the result of an intention and usually the product of editing. It does not deliver just pure information, but it can represent or include the manipulation of that information for the fulfilment of specific goals. When reading through the miraculous stories, we should ask ourselves not only what the story says but also why the drafter wants us to know it and in what ways he chooses to inform us. Through the narrative of these texts, I will attempt to detect some of the intentions of the drafters of the compilation and the ways they used to fulfil their intentions, and I will focus on the construction of

19 20

21 22

Petsalis-Diomidis 2007, 214–217. See IGUR I 148 (inscription from the sanctuary of Asklepios on the insula Tiberina in Rome). It is obvious that the worshipper after his rescue was expected to come to the sanctuary and express in public his gratitude to the god. See Girone 1998, 157f.; Chaniotis 2009b, 120. Rhodes and Osborne 2003, 541. Harris 2009, 4, 52–57, 278. Harris thinks that this kind of dream occurs very seldom in our experience and that this pattern is merely a narrative convention that eventually disappears. However, there are modern attestations of this phenomenon. ‘Epiphany dreams’ occur for instance in a collection of cures published by the monastery of Archangelos in Thasos (Τὸ προσκύνηµα τοῦ Ἀρχαγγέλου Μιχαὴλ τῆς Θάσου, Thasos 2008, nos. 15, 19, and 23) and in notebooks from the village of Koronos in Naxos: see Stewart 2012.

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two basic emotions: anxiety and hope. I will then evaluate these emotions as they were operating in the context of the healing procedure. It is in fact of great interest that in the opening tale (Appendix, A1), the story of Kleo cited above (p. 181), the dreaming experience does not seem central. Despite the fact that the majority of the tales involve a dream narrative based on dreaming experience, this first story does not involve such narrative. We do know that Kleo slept in the abaton, but we know neither whether she had a coherent dream nor the content of any dream. In view of the importance of the dreaming experience in the ‘miracle inscriptions’ in general, the fact that this story inaugurates the series becomes significant; this initial lack of clarity about a coherent dreaming experience would be confusing especially for the reader in need of a cure who came to a sanctuary where the main means of diagnosis and cure was the practice of incubation and the experience of a dream. What should the reader who came to sleep in order to dream expect? This uncertainty concerning the prospect of a dream would be a source of worry and anxiety – we might wonder if this was the very effect sought by the drafter of the compilation.23 More anxiety might be experienced through ignorance of the form to be taken by the divine in a possible encounter, in or outside a dream. In the narrative of the first tale, the word used to denote the divine is τὸν θεόν (line 4), ‘the god’ – but which god? We must bear in mind that the inscribed text begins with a heading which reads: ‘God, Good Fortune; Healings by Apollo and by Asklepios’. Which one of the two divine personae will come to the aid of the human in need? And in what form? The anxiety that is constructed though uncertainty concerning the prospect of a dream is made more sophisticated through the vagueness of the form of the encounter with the divine. In line 8, where we have the citation of the original inscription on the plaque dedicated by the woman, the term used is τὸ θεῖον, ‘the divine’; this is a rather impersonal way to indicate the divinity, without gender or form (human or animal).24 An uncertain encounter with an indefinite ‘divine’ could be a source of serious anxiety for a reader in need of a cure. Although the indefinite character already exists in the text of the dedication that must have inspired the narrative in which it is quoted, we have to bear in mind that the narrative was the product of composition and editing.25 We are dealing here with an effort of editing from the drafter of the compilation in order to manipulate the emotions of the reader. However, during the course of the second story (Appendix, A2) things change; the vagueness concerning the nature of the dream experience and the form that the encounter with the divine might take disappears: A three-year pregnancy. Ithmonika of Pallene came to the sanctuary to have children. Sleeping here she saw a vision. It seemed that she asked the god if she could conceive a daughter, 23 24 25

See the analogies with the collection of miracles of the monastery of Archangelos in Thasos (note 22). The translation of the term θεῖον can vary according to the context. For instance Girone 1998, II 2, translates the term θεῖον, used in the hymn to Asklepios by Isyllos, as ‘ l’evento divino’. See Chaniotis 1988, 20 and note 41.

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In the very first lines of the tale the ‘god’ is introduced to the reader; he is immediately identified as Asklepios. In contrast with the tale A1, not only do we have the specific name of the god who is coming to the aid of the human, but we are also provided with the extremely coherent dream experience of a woman in need of help; we have a narrative based on a first dream in a first phase (before the pregnancy) and on a second dream in a second phase (before the birth). The second dream is supposed to follow the first after a three-year gap. The dialogue between the human and the god is referred to in indirect speech; this dialogue is so coherent that it can be continued even after a gap of three years and in that way the two dream narratives of A2 are connected to each other. Thus, we can read the petition of a woman to Asklepios; and then we read the continuation of that petition which aims to correct the woman’s incomplete first petition (i.e. asking initially to conceive a daughter, but not actually to give birth to the child). In this case, the divinity is clearly indicated by the anonymous narrator as the male god Asklepios. From the indefinite indication of the identity of the divine in the first tale, we progress to a tale which unambiguously defines the divinity: it is Asklepios, the god who dwells in the sanctuary of Epidauros. The second story (Appendix, A2) is thematically related to the first one (A1) – in both cases the theme is an extended pregnancy – and this gives unity to these two stories that function as a basis for the construction of the personality of the divine, even though the god is openly presented only in the second story. These two initial tales may differ in regard to their function in the overall narrative, but thanks to their thematic connection they work very well in a complementary way. In the dream narratives of stele A, the god appears several times.26 Given the fact that the dream is a highly personal experience, it is noteworthy that all of these people dreamed of Asklepios. In fact, it would be more accurate to say that they dreamed of someone they thought was Asklepios – at least that is what the compiler wanted the reader to believe. The construction of the personality of the god is carefully accomplished through the tales of the first stele. The nine tales that actually include an encounter with the divinity describe the divinity as a mature male. An instructive example is the very well constructed dialogue of A2 which includes the petition for a pregnancy by the woman, followed by questions by the god who, in a manner of a thoughtful merchant taking an order, tries to specify the character of the petition. The dialogue continues three years later, when the pregnancy had been achieved 26

Appendix, A2, A3, A4, A8, A9, A12, A13, A18, A19.

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but – alas – not the labour. The god, in a manner of a meticulous entrepreneur, recalls the wording of the petition; in a highly rational way with a dose of humour, he reassures her that he will take notice of her new petition and will fulfil it. The god in this case is presented like a teaser with a deadpan sense of humour. The fact that the god is presented like an individual with absolutely good intentions makes it easier for the reader to engage emotionally with the constructed image of ‘the god’ who in fact has a name – Asklepios – rather than with an abstract and general idea of the divine. The communication with the divine is analogous to the communication between humans. It is easier to know what emotion to experience when the divinity is presented as a benevolent man who, like a pedantic teacher, is trying through teasing to ‘teach a lesson’ to his pupils so that they are more accurate next time when they hand in their essay (or petition, in this case).27 This is highly reassuring for the readers who are puzzled by their own personal problems of physical or mental health and by their suffering in general; and therefore it assuages their frustration. Concerning the individual stories of the narrative, it is remarkable that the story concerning the suspicious man (Appendix, A8) brings to mind the wellknown story of ‘doubting Thomas’ in the New Testament.28 This happens because these two stories have a common theme, namely the doubts of a human concerning the powers of the divinity (healing in the case of Asklepios, resurrection in the case of Jesus Christ). They also have an analogous function in the general narrative, as they both illustrate a moral and religious lesson: the doubting individual is relieved of his doubts but, as a penalty, he is given the name ‘the Unbeliever’, so that his name becomes associated with doubt in approaching the divine. This act of naming establishes a permanent blame, setting the individual up as an example of the proverbial ‘doubter’. The existence of patterns in common with other religious contexts, not always related to dreams, requires an explanation. As we have stressed above, we are not dealing here with the raw material of the dreaming experience but with the narrative that has the dreaming experience as its source. This narrative is not the direct product of the individual who experienced the dream, but it is the processed product of a community of priests and their helpers, and of other people who narrated their experiences as dreamers to the religious officials of Epidauros. It is understandable then that in the miracle inscriptions we find patterns of narrative that also occur elsewhere.29 It is worth emphasising that this type of story that has a punitive theme works towards the construction of the fear inspired by the divine – the fear of punishment – either because one has been doubtful or because one has forgotten to pay

27

28 29

In this regard, Asklepios, as presented in this story, is similar to Asklepios as the latter is constructed through the narrative of Aelius Aristides’ Sacred Tales; that is, as a teacher of rhetoric who orders Aristides to start again to write and speak, who presents him to Plato and Sophocles, and who writes even his words for him; see Petsalis-Diomidis 2007, 211. See Herzog 1931, 95, 99, 125 for other narratives (pagan or Christian) concerning doubt or disbelief. Stewart 1997, 877–894.

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respect to the god after his or her cure.30 This function can be attributed to a series of tales in the Epidaurian compilation of miracles.31 The second tale (Appendix, A2) is constructed as an exercise for the patient’s – and the reader’s – imagination. It demands a certain amount of attention in order to follow the dialogue in indirect speech, and it becomes obvious that this story bears the following moral for the reader: ‘be careful when you ask for something from the god, for it might come true’ – a moral that could be unpacked as follows: ‘when you ask something of a god, try to use your imagination, try to be clever. Think of the ambiguities of language, think of the traps that exist in the words; and remember, if something goes wrong, don’t blame it on the god, blame it on your own lack of imagination, lack of intelligence, and use of the wrong formulas.’ This particular story, based on a dream narrative, represents for the reader a sort of awakening to the difficulties and the complexities of the communication with the divine, especially through the means of the dream. Communication is not less complicated with the divine than with fellow humans: one has to be vigilant. This realisation might put the reader in a state of intellectual alertness. As mentioned above, the compositional background of these healing miracles is extremely varied; these texts can be considered as sorts of ‘snapshots’ in a constant process of reworking. We should not however hold that these texts are haphazard amalgamations of random stories. It takes little attention in order to discover that we are in front of quite sophisticated compilations. As it has been convincingly suggested, the reading and the discussion of the iamata was an important preparatory activity before the incubation.32 At this point, our effort must be focused on the possible existence of a compositional principle and on the function that it might serve especially for the arousal of emotions. In order to better understand the construction of the narrative as a means of arousing emotions, let us look at the texts through the eyes of a first time reader. Special attention must be paid to the language. It does not lack ambiguities, and this fact, though it does not serve well the descriptions of the sufferings of the characters from the medical point of view, contributes to the presentation of these texts as part of the wonder-working of the god.33 A telling example is the word chosen as title of the inscription: ἰάµατα; the first sense of the word is ‘therapeutic remedy’ and in that way, it is synonymous with the word φάρµακον.34 The reader was actually reading something which could be understood both as the story of a cure but also as a ‘remedy’ in itself. In this context, the very title of the compilation could indicate to the audience the function of these texts. The double meaning of the word iamata (story of healing/remedy) could even provoke a ‘placebo effect’ to the suggestible reader.

30 31 32 33 34

Cf. pp. 201–230 in this volume, on the construction of the fear of god. E.g. A3, A7, A9, B2, B16, C4. LiDonnici 1992, 25–41. Prêtre and Charlier 2009, 39. Prêtre and Charlier 2009, 32.

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From the beginning of the story A1 and then in the story A2, the reader’s attention is gripped through the strong images created by the simple words used to describe the situation and construct the tale. The impressive graphic details of the first two stories seem hard to swallow; for instance that the child born after a pregnancy that lasted five years was able to wash himself and crawl around his mother immediately after birth. In the second example, the god gratified the woman with a pregnancy but not with a labour, since, literally, she did not ask for a labour but only for a pregnancy. Before the reader finds time to digest what s/he has just been reading, and probably at the moment when doubts would start to arise about the trustworthiness of these two tales, another story (Appendix, A3) begins where the protagonist, a man paralysed in his fingers, is presented as having some serious doubts about the truth of the narrated tales in the dedications (pictorial or inscribed), as he wanders around the sanctuary. However, he is having a dream in which the god interacts with him, stretching his fingers one by one, and taking the opportunity to chat with him (as a doctor would), asking him whether he will continue to doubt regarding the narratives of the sanctuary of Epidauros. The man replies negatively but the god still gives him the name Ἄπιστος (Suspicious). Then comes another tale of a suspicious woman (Appendix, A4) who is depicted as even laughing at the stories on the inscribed dedications of people claiming that they were healed just by having a dream. Yet when it is her turn to have a dream while she is sleeping at the sanctuary, the god appears to her and promises that he will heal her but would like in return a silver piglet as a dedication and a ‘memorial of her ignorance’ (ὑπόµνηµα ἀµαθίας). The drafter of the text, judging that these two stories of ‘punitive’ miracles were enough to describe the god as capable of punishing the doubtful and the scornful, returns with a tender story of a child (Appendix, A5) who, unable to speak, came with his father in order to find a cure in Epidauros; which duly happens. The stories have a didactic character and goal, and this is illustrated by the tale of Pandaros.35 Pandaros from Thessaly had στίγµατα (‘marks’) on his forehead and, after sleeping in the Asklepios sanctuary, was cured. He ordered another man to offer a dedication on his behalf, giving him at the same time the money to do that. But the man, who apparently was also seeking some sort of cure, did not do as Pandaros told him, and kept the money. The god asked him in a dream if he had money for a dedication on behalf of Pandaros but the man denied it. He also said that if the god healed him, he would offer a dedication. The god, apparently irritated by his lies, tricked him, and the man left the sanctuary with the στίγµατα of Pandaros. After this story, which shows a vengeful face of the god, comes another story which shows a completely different aspect of Asklepios (Appendix, A8). It is the story of a small child from Epidauros who came and slept at the sanctuary in order to be cured from a ‘stone’. The god appeared to him in a vision and asked the child what he would give him if he was

35

Appendix, A6; discussed by Chaniotis 1997, 152f. On the possible medical background of the στίγµατα see Prêtre and Charlier 2009, 40–45.

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healed. The child replied: ten knucklebones.36 The god laughed and cured him. This episode reveals a completely different – gentle and tender – aspect of the god. From this small specimen of tales as they are arranged in the narrative of the first stele, it is obvious that the placement of the individual tales in the general narrative of stele A is not random but is done according to a principle that serves a specific goal; it engages the reader with the characters and the stories of the narrative and arouses a number of emotions: anxiety, fear, and of course hope. Hope is one of the most important emotions for the reader in need of a cure. 6 DREAM NARRATIVE AND THE CONSTRUCTION OF HOPE Even though the achievement of a coherent dream was the main diagnostic and healing procedure, as mentioned earlier, not all of the tales include a narrative based on dream experience. There are exceptions: no dream is involved in the story of how a broken cup miraculously was put together again by the invisible intervention of the god (Appendix, A10). For the restored ‘whole’ cup, ὑγιῆ (‘healthy’) is the word used in the text, and the metaphor is telling. Nor does the story of lame Nikanor, whose crutch was grabbed by some boy ‘while he was awake’, have a dream associated with it (Appendix, A16). As Nikanor got up to chase the boy, he walked without difficulty ‘and from then on he became well’; likewise, there is no dream in the story of a blind boy who had his eyes treated by one of the dogs about the sanctuary ‘while he was awake’ and left cured (Appendix, A20). As human experience suggests, the achievement of a coherent dream is not always possible. The narrative of the miracle inscription had to deal with this possibility and the anxiety that this might generate. The function of the non-dream tales, randomly distributed through the narrative of all four stelae, is probably to comfort the reader in need of a dream who, despite his or her incubation in the abaton, could not experience a coherent dream. In addition, in some cases, the narrative clearly indicates that the achievement of a coherent dream is in fact impossible (e.g., Appendix, B5 and B13). It is significant that in these cases, the action of the god is expressed in another way: for instance, as a woman was unable to have a dream and was carried homeward (Appendix, B5), she and her attendants met up in the middle of their trip with a handsome man who, on the spot, performed an operation – he cut open the belly of the woman and took out so many ‘creatures’ that they were able to fill two basins. After sewing up the woman’s belly, the man revealed his identity; he was, of course, Asklepios, who ordered the woman to send her offering to Epidauros. The encounter with the divinity in this tale resembles in many ways the encounters with the divine in the other tales: we have a suffering person who, after having put her hopes in the god, is cured through an operation. The difference is that, in this case, we have an epiphany of the divinity in real life and 36

A. Chaniotis informed me that knucklebones have been found in the sanctuary of Asklepios in Lissos (Crete).

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not in a dream. In addition, the god operates far from the sanctuary, literally in the middle of the road. The moral here is that there is a solution even for those who are experiencing difficulties in the exercise of dream hunting – that, again, ‘there is hope’. 7 AN APPARENT DISORDER ... The narrative is constituted by a succession of tales and it is structured with the help of headings that introduce individual healing stories37 – the existence of headings seems to be a rule throughout stelae B, C, and probably D. In stele A, the headings exist, but they seem less prominent than in the subsequent stelae. In many cases, only a personal name and an ethnic identity are listed. In some cases, the heading consists of the name of a person and the main characteristic of his suffering, such as the name of the illness, when available. In fact, the sources of suffering can be more diverse than just an illness; such examples include the breaking of a cup (Appendix, A10), baldness (A19), disappearance of a child (B4), lice (B8), and frustration in the search of a buried treasure (C3). In that sense, the general impression of human suffering, throughout the miracle inscriptions of Epidauros, is somewhat chaotic because the sources of suffering are not only diverse but are also linked to subjective impressions – such as suffering caused by a broken cup, or frustration because of an ineffective treasure hunt. In these cases, it is clearly the reaction to the event that is the cause of the suffering and not the event itself. As has been noted, this apparent disorder is a metaphor for the effect of suffering on human life, but this impression is countered by order, in the form of the architecture of the sanctuary and of the ritual.38 Likewise, the subversive element of surprise in the miracle narratives alludes to what an audience consisting of sick people expected from the miracle inscriptions. It constitutes the matter out of which their hope is made. 8 ALL YOU HAVE TO DO ... It is noteworthy that, according to the narrative of the miracle inscriptions, dealing with illness, its effects, and with human suffering in general, is achieved by taking practical action. What Asklepios has to offer is not a ‘philosophical’ handling of the situation and a transformation from within the individual, but rather an actual cessation of the cause of the subjective suffering, independent from the degree of objective seriousness of the situation. For instance, in the case of the bald man (Appendix, A19) who was hurt from the reaction of others to his baldness: it is not the patient who, thanks to the intervention of Asklepios, changes from within in order to help re-arrange his values and stop suffering; it is the physical cause of 37 38

See A2, A4–A6, A8, A10, A13–A20, B1–B3, B5, B6. Petsalis-Diomedis 2007, 183–218.

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suffering that miraculously changes, and, in fact, ceases. In that sense, the representation of the god is constructed as that of a tender father who takes care of his children who are suffering for whatever reason, without trying to underplay the cause of the suffering. The model of the relationship of the patient to the god here is that of a child to his father. This way the ‘therapeutic’ operation demands nothing else from the suffering person than confidence in the power of Asklepios to cure, in the same way that children believe that adults are capable of doing miraculous things. Hence another moral of the tales: the value of child-like naivety. This constitutes another pattern which we also find in the New Testament. However, the differences from the New Testament and, furthermore, the differences between Asklepios and, say, Jesus Christ as miracle-makers are important. As Emma and Ludwig Edelstein underline,39 confidence in the power of the procedure followed in a healing sanctuary should not be synonymous with the belief or even faith in the god. People came to Epidauros because they were hoping to be cured from their physical or mental illnesses and not because they wanted to be ‘saved’ in general. They hoped to be cured independently of whether they believed that Asklepios was the son of Koronis or indeed of someone else, and regardless of whether they believed that he was a hero or a god. All these details were of no importance in the construction of their hope to achieve cure, even though the text exposed next to the iamata, the hymn of Isyllos (see note 12), gives a certain version of the life and story of Asklepios. We even see through the narrative of the healing miracles that some people were there because they were hoping to be cured, even though they were in doubt about the effectiveness of the healing procedure. 9 TECHNIQUES FOR THE AROUSAL OF EMOTIONS The four stelae seem to have different organisational principles, but we can attempt to identify them only for stelae A and B, since they are preserved in good condition. While the stories of the first stele A seem to be arranged in order to provide the god with a personality, a necessary element for a personal relationship with the divine, and suggest a link between the healing and the requital of the debt towards the god,40 the stories in the second stele B are arranged in a way that creates a whole range of strong images that alternate in an unpredictable manner for someone who reads the texts for the first time. The story of a man who, struck with a spearhead though both his eyes, carried the spearhead around in his face (Appendix, B12) is immediately followed by the story of a man who, unable to achieve a dream, was carried back to his hometown, while one of the snakes of the sanctuary was twined around the axle of his wagon; when he arrived home, the snake cured him. While the narratives in stele A aim to construct a human personality for the divine, some of the stories in stele A, and mostly in stele B, 39 40

Edelstein and Edelstein 1945, 145 and 161f. Rhodes and Osborne 2003, 540.

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seem to deconstruct the human aspect of the god’s personality by presenting other miraculous agents that provide the cure.41 This deconstruction provokes confusion in the reader and, again, puts him in a state of intellectual alertness. Given the fact that these texts narrate encounters with the divinity during the dreaming experience, it is remarkable that words indicating emotion are extremely rare. We should expect an emotional reaction before, during, and after an encounter with the divine, and we can easily imagine the protagonists of these stories as sad because of their physical and mental suffering; frustrated because of possible previous failed efforts to find a cure; and finally anticipating, hoping for a cure. However, it is clear that the anonymous compiler of this text chose not to indicate with specific words the emotional states of the characters of these tales concerning either their own suffering or their emotional reaction during and after a divine encounter. Instead, the effort of the drafter is concentrated on the extremely vivid description of the physical aspect of some of these illnesses. From this element, we can deduce that his focus was not on describing the emotions of the characters in the tales – these we can in fact easily deduce from the general narrative – but on constructing a number of emotions in the audience of these tales. This audience itself would have been filled with people suffering in some way, since they were visiting the sanctuary of Asklepios and were sleeping in the abaton where these texts were exposed. This feature suggests that the function of these texts is not to distract and to please as a literary text would, but to help, in a specific way, the healing procedure of the people that would come in contact with the iamata. This element confirms the hypothesis that the reading of the healing miracles was supposed to be part of the healing procedure. The positioning of the stelae in the abaton, the heading bearing a word with a double sense, and the function of the narrative, all identify the sick people in need of a cure as the audience of these texts. The healing procedure based on the use of narrative has many anthropological parallels.42 What is noteworthy is the set of techniques used for the construction of strong images.43 We have here a straightforward description of basic details: the people (a man, a woman, a child), the wounds and abnormalities. With this minimalist approach the narrative provides images of great intensity. The pictorial representations that we often find in dedications in healing sanctuaries accomplish the same function (see p. 192 figure 1). The account of dreams is introduced with some formulaic phrases – for example ἐνεκάθευδε, ἐκατακοιµάθη, ἐγκατακοιµαθεῖσα ὄψιν εἶδε, ἐγκαθεύδων δὲ ὄψιν εἶδε, etc. – after which we are transferred to the time, place, and plot of the dream. The result is that the reader pays special attention to the dream 41 42 43

Appendix, A5: the boy who carries fire for the god; A16: some boy; A17: a snake; B3: the sons of the god; B6: a dog; B11: a handsome young boy. Dein 2002, 41–63; Pearcy 1988, 377–391. This is an element known in ancient rhetoric and historiography as ἐνάργεια. See Chaniotis 2013 and pp. 102f. in this volume. See also the observations of M. Theodoropoulou on iconicity in this volume (p. 463).

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narrative, which, especially in the context of a healing sanctuary, was believed to have diagnostic and prophetic qualities. The accomplishment of healing is also presented in a formulaic, stylised way with some standard sentences: ἔθηκε ὑγιῆ, ἁµέρας δὲ γενοµένης ὐγιὴς ἐξῆλθε, καὶ ἐκ τούτου ὑγιὴς ἐγένετο etc.

Figure 1. Votive relief dedicated by Archinos, from the sanctuary of the healing hero Amphiaraos, in Oropos (Boiotia). It depicts the healing hero performing an operation on Archinos’ shoulder (left); on the right, Archinos is depicted lying on a bed, while the hero’s snake bites (?) his shoulder (c. 400–350 BCE).

Some tales from stele B have a number of particularly gruesome details concerning the suffering of the people and some ‘technical’ details concerning the procedure of healing, which usually involves some kind of operation taking place either during a dream or in real time. A woman goes to consult the sanctuary on behalf of her daughter who has dropsy (Appendix, B1); in her dream, the god cuts off the head of her daughter and hangs the body neck downwards (as if it were an animal’s body hanging outside a butcher’s shop). After much fluid has run out, the god unites the body, putting the head back on the neck. The graphic details of this dream recall the treatment of the body of animals, which was part of regular, daily experience (we are dealing after all with societies where the butchering of animals was not the job of specialists but of almost everyone). The same gruesomeness can be seen in the detail of another story (Appendix, B5; see p. 188), with reference to two basins filled with ‘creatures’ removed from an ill woman’s belly. Another entry describes how a man wounded in the lung by an arrow in a battle filled 67 bowls with pus (Appendix B10). A man who had been struck and

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blinded with a spear through both his eyes during a battle (Appendix, B12) is said to have carried around the spearhead with him, through his face; in his dream, the god pulled out the dart and fitted the apples of his eyes back into his eyelids. In the morning he left well. Both the description of the suffering and the operation which leads to the cure have vivid details, but since no emotion is described, this way of describing the cure has a detached and ‘clinical’ character – very appropriate in a place with a healing character such as the Asklepieion in Epidauros. As emphasised above, probably because abstract language is inadequate to express the emotional intensity of a dream, the verbal description of vivid images is often more effective.44 The absence of terms denoting emotion and the use of strong images is a very effective way to express the emotional intensity of the encounter with the god, even within the context of a dream. The importance of dreams as a diagnostic tool and a component of the healing process is obvious from the miracle inscriptions of Epidauros. It is not unreasonable to assume that in a healing environment they were particularly useful, especially in the cases where the patient was in a state of embarrassment or numbness because of the suffering caused by the illness, or was incapable of producing a narrative of his illness – thus hindering diagnosis. In these cases, the dream provides material for narrative and subsequently a way towards diagnosis and healing. The dreams are used as a major diagnostic tool, as a way to break through to the cause of suffering. The diagnosis in the case of the miracle inscriptions is not seen as a preliminary stage of the healing, but as a structural part of it. The importance of the narrativisation of the illness and its symptoms as a breakthrough for the diagnosis of the illness and its treatment has already been underlined by some scholars.45 This way of considering the diagnostic procedure has been observed in other cultures and has been suggested by anthropological studies. 46 What is also obvious from the non-specialised character of the cures is that, in general, the notions of happiness, well-being, and health are linked with religious devotion.47 The function of the miracle inscriptions is to contribute towards the construction of hope in this religious context – an emotion which is basic for the general well-being of someone in need of a cure. 10 EMOTIONS AND THEIR WORKING IN A HEALING ENVIRONMENT From what has been analysed above, it becomes obvious that the drafter of this compilation aimed at working on the emotional reactions of the reader. He carefully staged the different episodes of the narrative in order to create in the reader an initial tendency towards incredibility, just to annul it a few lines later as an effect of the narrative of the subsequent episode. There is something theatrical, a 44 45 46 47

Stewart 1997, 878. Pearcy 1992, 595–616. Milne and Howard 2000, 543–570 (in Navajo culture). Compton 1998, 301f.

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sort of ‘coup de théâtre’ effect, in the choice of the stories and in the structure of the narrative, depending on the order in which the stories are presented. The element of surprise (which aims at a shock reaction) has potentially healing effects;48 indeed an emotional reaction could be the beginning of the cure. The reading of the miracle inscriptions was not a way for the patients to ‘kill time’, but it was part of the healing process. A certain degree of auto-suggestion must have played an important role in the improvement of the patients’ situations while they were on the premises of the sanctuary.49 The fact that we do not follow their stories outside the sanctuary is significant; and when we learn of people who came back to the sanctuary because the ‘healing’ had not been final, it is always because they did something wrong in the first place (e.g. Appendix, A2). The healing power of the miracle narratives is also a phenomenon that has been observed through anthropological studies.50 Formulaic expressions create a unity among disparate stories and make them part of a ‘miracle narrative’ irrespective of the fact that some of them (the majority, in fact) are based on dream accounts and some of them have their source in oral stories that were diffused on the premises of the sanctuary. 11 THE CONSTRUCTION OF ANXIETY AND HOPE The basic emotions that these texts help to create are anxiety and hope, through internal evidence (narrative, organisational principals of the narrative, use of the language, etc.) and also through their positioning in the abaton of the healing sanctuary of Asklepios. The means are in fact simple, but their use is quite sophisticated. As we noted, entering the abaton must have created the feeling that a boundary was violated and thus caused emotional tension. This tension might have counterbalanced another tension, the one caused by the physical and mental sufferings of the people who visited the sanctuary either for their own sake or for that of a loved one. A distraction is necessary as a way of entering a healing procedure. Another way of distracting a visitor in need of a cure is to attract his attention by hard-to-believe stories. In cases of physical pain this diversion may even act as an analgesic. A diversity of elements make the reading of these stories very distracting: the alternation of stories with different subjects and with different or even contradictory descriptions of the action of the god, the rhetorical means that are used, the element of excess, the quantity of the tales (more than seventy), and the diversity of numerous types of suffering – extended pregnancies, lice, social ostracism, numbness, blindness, tattoo marks, stones, leeches; all of these elements make the reading of these texts very distracting indeed. Along with the anxiety that the 48 49 50

For the importance of shock as a form of therapy see Edelstein and Edelstein 1945, 168. Edelstein and Edelstein 1945, 144, 158. Dein 2002, 41–63.

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reading of these stories must have inspired – at least after the reading of the first few lines where the situation that causes the suffering is exposed, and the following lines where the plot of the stories eventually becomes complicated – anxiety for the fate of these people in need of a cure arises. In some cases, when the ill person is portrayed as an honest person, a strong feeling of compassion can also develop. The sympathy for the characters and the happy ending of the stories were very ‘cathartic’ for the reader, in an Aristotelian sense. The formulaic, hypnotic sentences that are used remind us of fairy tales: ‘when day came, he left well’, ‘and from this, he/she became well’, ‘he/she slept in there (in the abaton) and became well’. We do not follow the stories of these people after their return home or for long after their cure. We can suspect, however, that many of them, while they were ‘miraculously’ cured during their stay in the sanctuary of Asklepios in Epidauros, relapsed after their return home. But that is another story. The material we have examined suggests that the narrative path through the emotions of anxiety, uneasiness, shock, relief, and hope, is a metaphor for the path of the reader in need of a cure from suffering to health. 12 FROM STORIES TO COMMUNITIES In what precedes, I have tried to demonstrate the importance of these texts in a healing environment; that is, the importance of their emotional impact on the audience in need of a cure, as an indispensable part of the healing procedure. However, to fully understand the significance of these texts in general for the history of ancient religion and for the history of emotions we have to realise that the miracle inscriptions were operative not only for the people who actually took the trouble to go and visit the sanctuary of Asklepios and read these texts but also for all the people who, during the entire period of the functioning of the sanctuary of Asklepios, in one way or another came into contact with these texts in the form of rumours. The readers of these inscriptions in the sanctuary of Asklepios contributed to the diffusion of these stories, by word of mouth, as rumours, when they were returning back to their home cities. The practice of reading and discussing these texts must be considered as constitutive of a sort of a temporary community whose members were sharing the emotional impact that the activities of reading the texts and hearing about the texts were able to achieve. It is the emotional impact of the texts in written and oral form that created the reputation of the sanctuary of Asklepios through the years, not the ‘miracles’ themselves, whose authenticity it was impossible to verify. This is of great importance for the creation of a common emotional fund which can form another community: that of the people who received as oral narrative the content of the miracle inscriptions, and also those who received the emotional impact of these tales. In a religion, which is not based on a book or written text, the contribution of these texts to the creation of such types of communities must be fully appreciated. I would like to stress here the importance of rumours for the arousal of hope and also for the

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construction of the divine itself.51 These two combined phenomena can be observed through Late Antique sources, for instance in collections of miracles of Christian saints.52 I hope to have shown that an emotions-centred approach helps us better understand the way these texts were actively operative in the specific cultural context, namely in healing procedures within a shrine. Being in the intimate space of private experience (incubation and dreams), yet also offering themselves, through their narrativisation, as a source for rumours and stories, these texts are an example of the way in which individual emotional experience becomes a source of community. APPENDIX The healing miracles of Epidauros (stelae A and B)53 Greek text, stele A θεός. τύχα [ἀγ]αθά. [ἰά]µατα τοῦ Ἀπόλλωνος καὶ τοῦ Ἀσκλαπιοῦ. A1. [Κλ]εὼ πένθ’ ἔτη ἐκύησε. αὕτα πέντ’ ἐνιαυτοὺς ἤδη κυοῦσα ποὶ τὸν [θε]ὸν ἱκέτις ἀφίκετο καὶ ἐνεκάθευδε ἐν τῶι ἀβάτωι· ὡς δὲ τάχισ[τα] ἐξῆλθε ἐξ αὐτοῦ καὶ ἐκ τοῦ ἱαροῦ ἐγένετο, κόρον ἔτεκε, ὃς εὐ[θ]ὺς γενόµενος αὐτὸς ἀπὸ τᾶς κράνας ἐλοῦτο καὶ ἅµα τᾶι µατρὶ [π]εριῆρπε. τυχοῦσα δὲ τούτων ἐπὶ τὸ ἄνθεµα ἐπεγράψατο· «οὐ µέγε[θο]ς πίνακος θαυµαστέον, ἀλλὰ τὸ θεῖον, πένθ’ ἔτη ὡς ἐκύησε ἐγ γαστρὶ Κλεὼ βάρος, ἔστε | ἐγκατεκοιµάθη καί µιν ἔθηκε ὑγιῆ». A2. τριέτης [φο]ρά. Ἰθµονίκα Πελλανὶς ἀφίκετο εἰς τὸ ἱαρὸν ὑπὲρ γενεᾶς. ἐγ[κατακοι]µαθεῖσα δὲ ὄψιν εἶδε· ἐδόκει αἰτεῖσθαι τὸν θεὸν κυῆσαι κό[ραν]. τὸν δ’ Ἀσκλαπιὸν φάµεν ἔγκυον ἐσσεῖσθαί νιν, καὶ εἴ τι ἄλλο α[ἰτ]οῖτο, καὶ τοῦτό οἱ ἐπιτελεῖν, αὐτὰ δ’ οὐθενὸς φάµεν ἔτι ποιδε[ῖ]σθαι. ἔγκυος δὲ γενοµένα ἐγ γαστρὶ ἐφόρει τρία ἔτη, ἔστε παρέβαλε ποὶ τὸν θεὸν ἱκέτις ὑπὲρ τοῦ τόκου· ἐγκατακοιµαθεῖσα δὲ ὄψ[ι]ν εἶδε· ἐδόκει ἐπερωτῆν νιν τὸν θεόν, εἰ οὐ γένοιτο αὐτᾶι πάντα ὅσσα αἰτήσαιτο καὶ ἔγκυος εἴη· ὑπὲρ δὲ τόκου ποιθέµεν νιν οὐθέν, καὶ ταῦτα πυνθανοµένου αὐτοῦ, εἴ τινος καὶ ἄλλου δέοιτο λέγειν, ὡς ποησοῦντος καὶ τοῦτο. ἐπεὶ 51 52

53

I owe this formulation to Eleanor Dickey who helped me articulate it in the course of a workshop in June 2010. For instance in the healing cult of St Demetrios of Thessaloniki (Bakirtzis, KourkoutidouNikolaidou, and Mavropoulou-Tsioumi 2012, 133f.; Mentzos 1994). His miracles, in the form of therapeutic dream-visions, are recounted by John the Bishop both as first-hand testimony and as second-hand accounts (Lemerle 1979–1981, I 52). The same importance of rumour appears in the miracles of St Cyrus and St John in Egypt, collected by Sophronius: ‘... we write about what has been done in our own time, some of which we ourselves witnessed, others we heard from those who saw the events themselves’ (Montserrat 1998, 274). Similar formulas are encountered in the miracle narratives of St Menas (Drescher 1946, 108–125). I thank Chrysi Kotsifou for the last two references. Since we are interested in the textual and narrative structure of the healing miracles, not in their epigraphic features, we do not present an edition of the text according to the epigraphic conventions. The Greek text is that of the ‘Searchable Greek Inscriptions’ of the Packard Humanities Institute (http://epigraphy.packhum.org/inscriptions/main). Not all readings and restorations are certain, but this does not affect the arguments presented in this chapter. Of stele B, we only present the first 13 entries, which are better preserved.

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δὲ νῦν ὑπὲρ τούτου παρείη ποτ’ αὐτὸν ἱκέτις, καὶ τοῦτό οἱ φάµεν ἐπιτελεῖν. µετὰ δὲ τοῦτο σπουδᾶι ἐκ τοῦ ἀβάτου ἐξελθοῦσα, ὡς ἔξω τοῦ ἱαροῦ ἦς, ἔτεκε κόραν. A3. ἀνὴρ τοὺς τᾶς χηρὸς δακτύλους ἀκρατεῖς ἔχων πλὰν ἑνὸς ἀφ̣ίκετο ποὶ τὸν θεὸν ἱκέτας· θεωρῶν δὲ τοὺς ἐν τῶι ἱαρῶι πίνακας ἀπίστει τοῖς ἰάµασιν καὶ ὑποδιέσυρε τὰ ἐπιγράµµα[τ]α. ἐγκαθ̣εύδων δὲ ὄψιν εἶδε· ἐδόκει ὑπὸ τῶι ναῶι ἀστραγαλίζον[τ]ος αὐτοῦ καὶ µέλλοντος βάλλειν τῶι ἀστραγάλωι, ἐπιφανέντα [τ]ὸν θεὸν̣ ἐφαλέσθαι ἐπὶ τὰν χῆρα καὶ ἐκτεῖναί οὑ τοὺς δακτύλλους· ὡς δ’ ἀποβαίη, δοκεῖν συγκάµψας τὰν χῆρα καθ’ ἕνα ἐκτείνειν τῶν δακτ̣ύλων· ἐπεὶ δὲ πάντας ἐξευθύναι, ἐπερωτῆν νιν τὸν θεόν, εἰ ἔτι ἀπ̣ι στησοῖ τοῖς ἐπιγράµµασι τοῖς ἐπὶ τῶµ πινάκων τῶν κατὰ τὸ ἱε̣ρόν, αὐτὸς δ’ οὐ φάµεν. «ὅτι τοίνυν ἔµπροσθεν ἀπίστεις αὐτο[ῖ]ς οὐκ ἐοῦσιν ἀπίστοις, τὸ λοιπὸν ἔστω τοι», φάµεν, «Ἄπιστος ὄν̣[ οµα]». ἁµέ̣ρας δὲ γενοµένας ὑγιὴς ἐξῆλθε. A4. Ἀµβροσία ἐξ Ἀθανᾶν [ἁτερό]πτ[ι]λλος. αὕτα ἱκέτις ἦλθε ποὶ τὸν θεόν· περιέρπουσα δὲ [κατὰ τ]ὸ ἱα̣ρὸν τῶν ἰαµάτων τινὰ διεγέλα ὡς ἀπίθανα καὶ ἀδύνα[τὰ ἐόν]τα, χωλοὺς καὶ τυφλοὺ[ς] ὑγιεῖς γίνεσθαι ἐνύπνιον ἰδόν[τας µό]νον. ἐγκαθεύδουσα δὲ ὄψ̣ιν εἶδε· ἐδόκει οἱ ὁ θεὸς ἐπιστὰς [εἰπεῖν], ὅτι ὑγιῆ µέν νιν ποιησοῖ, µισθὸµ µάντοι νιν δεησοῖ ἀν[θέµεν ε]ἰς τὸ ἱαρὸν ὗν ἀργύρεον ὑπόµναµα τᾶς ἀµαθίας. εἴπαν[τα δὲ ταῦτ]α̣ ἀνσχίσσαι οὑ τὸν ὄπτιλλον τὸν νοσοῦντα καὶ φάρµ[ακόν τι ἐγχέ]αι· ἁµέρας δὲ γενοµένας ὑγιὴς ἐξῆλθε. A5. παῖς ἄφωνος. [οὗτος ἀφί]κετο εἰς τὸ ἱαρὸν ὑπὲρ φωνᾶς· ὡς δὲ προεθύσατο καὶ [ἐπόησε τὰ] νοµιζόµενα, µετὰ τοῦτο ὁ παῖς ὁ τῶι θεῶι πυρφορῶν [ἐκέλετο, π]οὶ τὸµ πατέρα τὸν τοῦ παιδὸς ποτιβλέψας, ὑποδέκεσ[θαι αὐτὸν ἐ]νιαυτοῦ, τυχόντα ἐφ’ ἃ πάρεστι, ἀποθυσεῖν τὰ ἴατρα. [ὁ δὲ παῖς ἐξ]απίνας «ὑποδέκοµαι», ἔφα· ὁ δὲ πατὴρ ἐκπλαγεὶς πάλιν [ἐκέλετο αὐ]τὸν εἰπεῖν· ὁ δ’ ἔλεγε πάλιν· καὶ ἐκ τούτου ὑγιὴς ἐγέ[νετο. A6. Πάνδαρ]ος Θεσσαλὸς στίγµατα ἔχων ἐν τῶι µετώπωι. οὗτος [ἐγκαθεύδων ὄ]ψιν εἶδε· ἐδόκει αὐτοῦ τα[ι]νίαι καταδῆσαι τὰ στί[γµατα ὁ θεὸς κα]ὶ κέλεσθαί νιν, ἐπεί [κα ἔξω] γένηται τοῦ ἀβάτου, [ἀφελόµενον τὰ]ν ταινίαν ἀνθέµε[ν εἰ]ς̣ τὸν ν̣αόν· ἁµέρας δὲ γενο[µένας ἐξανέστα] καὶ ἀφήλετο τ[ὰν ται]νίαν, καὶ τ̣ὸ µὲν πρόσωπον [κενεὸν εἶδε τῶ]ν στιγµάτω[ν, τ]ὰν δ[ὲ τ]αινίαν ἀνέθηκε εἰς τὸν να[όν, ἔχουσαν τὰ γρ]άµµατ[α] τ̣ὰ ἐκ τοῦ µετώ̣που. A7. Ἐχέδωρος τὰ Π̣ανδά[ρου στίγµατα ἔλ]αβε ποὶ τοῖς ὑπάρχουσιν. οὗτος λαβὼν πὰρ [Πανδάρου χρήµατα], ὥστ’ ἀνθέµεν τῶι θεῶι εἰς Ἐπίδαυρον ὑπὲρ αὐ[τοῦ], [οὐκ] ἀπ̣ε δίδου ταῦτα· ἐγκαθεύδων δὲ ὄψιν εἶδε· ἐδόκει οἱ ὁ θε[ὸς] ἐπιστὰς ἐπερωτῆν νιν, εἰ ἔχοι τινὰ χρήµατα πὰρ Πανδάρου ἐ[ξ Εὐ]θηνᾶν ἄνθεµα εἰς τὸ ἱαρόν· αὐτὸς δ’ οὐ φάµεν λελαβήκειν οὐθὲ[ν] τοιοῦτον παρ’ αὐτοῦ· ἀλλ’ αἴ κα ὑγιῆ νιν ποήσαι, ἀνθησεῖν οἱ εἰκόνα γραψάµενος· µετὰ δὲ τοῦτο τὸν θεὸν τὰν τοῦ Πανδάρου ταινίαν περιδῆσαι περὶ τὰ στίγµατά οὑ καὶ κέλεσθαί νιν, ἐπεί κα ἐξέλθηι ἐκ τοῦ ἀβάτου, ἀφελόµενον τὰν ταινίαν ἀπονίψασθαι τὸ πρόσωπον ἀπὸ τᾶς κράνας καὶ ἐγκατοπτρίξασθαι εἰς τὸ ὕδωρ· ἁµέρας δὲ γενοµένας ἐξελθὼν ἐκ τοῦ ἀβάτου τὰν ταινίαν ἀφήλετο, τὰ γράµµατα οὐκ ἔχουσαν· ἐγκαθιδὼν δὲ εἰς τὸ ὕδωρ ἑώρη τὸ αὐτοῦ πρόσωπον ποὶ τοῖς ἰδίοις στίγµασιν καὶ τὰ τοῦ Πανδρου γρά[µ]µατα λελαβηκός. A8. Εὐφάνης Ἐπιδαύριος παῖς. οὗτος λιθιῶν ἐνε[κά]θευδε· ἔδοξε δὴ αὐτῶι ὁ θεὸς ἐπιστὰς εἰπεῖν· «τί µοι δωσεῖς, αἴ τύ κα ὑγιῆ ποιήσω»; αὐτὸς δὲ φάµεν «δέκ’ ἀστραγάλους». τὸν δὲ θεὸν γελάσαντα φάµεν νιν παυσεῖν· ἁµέρας δὲ γενοµένας ὑγιὴς ἐξῆλθε. A9. ἀνὴρ ἀφίκετο ποὶ τὸν θεὸν ἱκέτας ἁτερόπτιλλος οὕτως, ὥστε τὰ βλέφαρα µόνον ἔχειν, ἐνεῖµεν δ’ ἐν αὐτοῖς µηθέν, ἀλλὰ κενεὰ ε[ἶ]µεν ὅλως. ⟨ἐγέλων⟩ δή τινες τ̣ῶν ἐν τῶι ἱαρῶι τὰν εὐηθίαν αὐτοῦ, τὸ νοµίζειν βλεψεῖσθαι ὅλως µηδεµίαν ὑπαρχὰν ἔχοντος ὀπτίλλου ἀλλ’ ἢ χώραµ µόνον. ἐγκαθ̣[εύδο]ν̣τι οὖν αὐτῶι ὄψις ἐφάνη· ἐδόκει τὸν θεὸν ἑψῆσαί τι φά[ρµακον, ἔπε]ι̣τα διαγαγόντα τὰ βλέφαρα ἐγχέαι εἰς αὐτά· ἁµέρ[ας δὲ γενοµέν]ας βλέπων ἀµφοῖν ἐξῆλθε. A10. κώθων. σκευοφόρος εἰ̣[ ς τὸ] ἱαρ[ὸν] ἕρ̣π̣ων, ἐπεὶ ἐγένετο περὶ τὸ δεκαστάδιον, κατέπετ̣ε· [ὡς δὲ] ἀνέστα, ἀνῶιξε τὸγ γυλιὸν̣ κα[ὶ ἐ]πεσκόπει τὰ συντετριµµένα σκ[ε]ύη· ὡς δ’ εἶδε τὸγ κώθωνα κατε[αγ]ότα, ἐξ οὗ ὁ δεσπότας εἴθιστο [π]ίνειν, ἐλ̣υπεῖτο καὶ συνετίθει [τὰ] ὄστρακα καθιζόµενος. ὁδο[ι]πόρος οὖν τις ἰδὼν αὐτόν· «τί, ὦ ἄθλιε», [ἔ]φα, «συντίθησι τὸγ κώθωνα [µά]ταν; τοῦτον γὰρ οὐδέ κα ὁ ἐν Ἐπιδαύρωι Ἀσκλαπιὸς ὑγιῆ ποῆσαι δύναιτο». ἀκούσας ταῦτα ὁ παῖς συνθεὶς τὰ ὄστρακα εἰς τὸγ γυλιὸν ἧρπε εἰς τὸ ἱερόν· ἐπεὶ δ’ ἀφίκετο, ἀνῶιξε τὸγ

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γυλιὸν καὶ ἐξαιρεῖ ὑγιῆ τὸγ κώθωνα γεγενηµένον καὶ τῶι δεσπόται ἡρµάνευσε τὰ πραχθέντα καὶ λεχθέντα· ὡς δὲ ἄκουσ’, ἀνέθηκε τῶι θεῶι τὸγ κώθωνα. A11. Αἰσχίνας ἐγκεκοιµισµένων ἤδη τῶν ἱκετᾶν ἐπὶ δένδρεόν τι ἀµβὰς ὑπερέκυπτε εἰς τὸ ἄβατον. καταπετὼν οὖν ἀπὸ τοῦ δένδρεος περὶ σκόλοπάς τινας τοὺς ὀπτίλλους ἀµφέπαισε· κακῶς δὲ διακείµενος καὶ τυφλὸς γεγενηµένος καθικετεύσας τὸν θεὸν ἐνεκάθευδε καὶ ὑγιὴς ἐγένετο. A12. Εὔιππος λόγχαν ἔτη ἐφόρησε ἓξ ἐν τᾶι γνάθωι· ἐγκοιτασθέντος δ’ αὐτοῦ ἐξελὼν τὰν λόγχαν ὁ θεὸς εἰς τὰς χῆράς οἱ ἔδωκε· ἁµέρας δὲ γενοµένας ὑγιὴς ἐξῆρπε τὰν λόγχαν ἐν ταῖς χερσὶν ἔχων. A13. ἀνὴρ Τορωναῖος δεµελέας. οὗτος ἐγκαθεύδων ἐνύπνιον εἶδε· ἔδοξέ οἱ τὸν θεὸν τὰ στέρνα µαχαίρ̣αι ἀνσχίσσαντα τὰς δεµελέας ἐξελεῖν καὶ δόµεν οἱ ἐς τὰς χεῖρας καὶ συνράψαι τὰ στήθη· ἁµέρας δὲ γενοµένας ἐξῆλθε τὰ θηρία ἐν ταῖς χερσὶν ἔχων καὶ ὑγιὴς ἐγένετο· κατέπιε δ’ αὐτὰ δολωθεὶς ὑπὸ µατρυιᾶς ἐγ κυκᾶνι ἐµβεβληµένας ἐκπιών. A14. ἀνὴρ ἐν αἰδοίωι λίθον. οὗτος ἐνύπνιον εἶδε· ἐδόκει παιδὶ καλῶι συγγίνεσθαι, ἐξονειρώσσων δὲ τὸλ λίθον ἐγβάλλει καὶ ἀνελόµενος ἐξῆλθε ἐν ταῖς χερσὶν ἔχων. A15. Ἑ̣ρµόδικος Λαµψακηνὸς ἀκρατὴς τοῦ σώµατος. τοῦτον ἐγκαθεύδοντα ἰάσατο καὶ ἐκελήσατο ἐξελθόντα λίθον ἐνεγκεῖν εἰς τὸ ἱαρὸν ὁπόσσον δύναιτο µέγιστον· ὁ δὲ τὸµ πρὸ τοῦ ἀβάτου κείµενον ἤνικε. A16. Νικάνωρ χωλός· τούτου καθηµένου παῖς τ̣ις ὕπαρ τὸν σκίπωνα ἁρπάξας ἔφευγε· ὁ δὲ ἀστὰς ἐδίωκε καὶ ἐκ τούτου ὑγιὴς ἐγένετο. A17. ἀνὴρ δάκτυλον ἰάθη ὑπὸ ὄφιος· οὗτος τὸν τοῦ ποδὸς δάκτυλον ὑπὸ τοῦ ἀγρίου ἕλκεος δεινῶς διακείµενος µεθάµερα ὑπὸ τῶν θεραπόντων ἐξενειχθεὶς ἐπὶ ἑδράµατός τινος καθῖζ̣ε · ὕπνου δέ νιν λαβόντος ἐν τούτωι δράκων ἐκ τοῦ ἀβάτου ἐξελθὼν τὸν δάκτυλον ἰάσατο τᾶι γλώσσαι καὶ τοῦτο ποιήσας εἰς τὸ ἄβατον ἀνεχώρησε πάλιν. ἐξεγερθεὶς δὲ ὡς ἦς ὑγιής, ἔφα ὄψιν ἰδεῖν, δοκεῖν νεανίσκον εὐπρεπῆ τὰµ µορφὰν ἐπὶ τὸν δάκτυλον ἐπιπῆν φάρµακον. A18. Ἀλκέτας Ἁλικός· οὗτος τυφλὸς ἐὼν ἐνύπνιον εἶδε· ἐδόκει οἱ ὁ θεὸς ποτελθὼν τοῖς δακτύλοις διάγειν τὰ ὄµµατα καὶ ἰδεῖν τὰ δένδρ̣η πρᾶτον τὰ ἐν τῶι ἱαρῶι. ἁµέρας δὲ γενοµένας ὑγιὴς ἐξῆλθε. A19. Ἡραιεὺς Μυτιληναῖος· οὗτος οὐκ εἶχε ἐν τᾶι κεφαλᾶι τρίχας, ἐν δὲ τῶι γεν̣είωι παµπόλλας. αἰσχυνόµενος δὲ̣ [ὡς] καταγελάµενος ὑπ[ὸ] τῶν ἄλλων ἐνεκάθευδε. τὸν δὲ ὁ θεὸς χρίσας φαρµάκωι τὰν κεφαλὰν ἐπόησε τρίχας ἔχειν. A20. Λύσων Ἑρµιονεὺς παῖς ἀϊδής. οὗ[τος] ὕπαρ ὑπὸ κυνὸς τῶν κατὰ τὸ ἱαρὸν θε[ραπ]ευόµενος τοὺς ὀπτίλλους ὑγ̣[ιὴ]ς ἀπῆλθε. Greek text, stele B (B1–B13) B1. Ἀ̣ράτα [Λά]καινα ὕδρωπ[α. ὑπ]ὲρ ταύτας ἁ µάτηρ ἐνεκάθευδεν ἐλ Λακεδαίµονι ἔσσα[ς] καὶ ἐνύπνιον [ὁ]ρῆι· ἐδόκει τᾶς θυγατρός οὑ τὸν θεὸν ἀποταµόντα τὰν κ[ε]φαλὰν τὸ σῶµα κραµάσαι κάτω τὸν τράχαλον ἔχον· ὡς δ’ ἐξερρύα συχνὸν ὑγρ̣[ό]ν, καταλύσαντα τὸ σῶµα τὰν κεφαλὰν πάλιν ἐπιθέµεν ἐπὶ τὸν αὐχένα· ἰδο[ῦ]σ̣α δὲ τὸ ἐνύπνιον τοῦτο ἀγχωρήσασα εἰς Λακεδαίµονα καταλαµβάνε̣[ι τ]ὰν θυγατέρα ὑγιαίνουσαν καὶ τὸ αὐτὸ ἐνύπνιον ὡρακυῖαν. B2. Ἕρµων Θ[άσιος. τοῦτο]ν τυφλὸν ἐόντα ἰάσατο· µετὰ δὲ τοῦτο τὰ ἴατρα οὐκ ἀπάγοντ̣[ α ὁ θεός νιν] ἐπόησε τυφλὸν αὖθις· ἀφικόµενον δ’ αὐτὸν καὶ πάλιν ἐγκαθε̣[ύδοντα ὑγι]ῆ κατέστασε. B3. Ἀριστα̣[γόρα Τροζ]ανία. αὕτα ἕλµιθα ἔχουσα ἐν τᾶι κοιλίαι ἐνεκάθευδε ἐν Τροζ[ᾶνι ἐν τῶι] τοῦ Ἀσκλαπιοῦ τεµένει καὶ ἐνύπνιον εἶδε· ἐδόκει ⟨οἱ⟩ τοὺς υἱ[οὺς τοῦ θ]εοῦ, οὐκ ἐπιδαµοῦντος αὐτοῦ, ἀλλ’ ἐν Ἐπιδαύρωι ἐόντος, τὰγ κεφα[λὰν ἀπο]ταµεῖν, οὐ δυναµένους δ’ ἐπιθέµεν πάλιν πέµψαι τινὰ πο[ὶ] τὸν Ἀσκλ[απιόν, ὅ]πως µόληι· µεταξὺ δὲ ἁµέρα ἐπικαταλαµβάνει καὶ ὁ ἱαρρεὺς ὁρῆι [σάφα τ]ὰν κεφαλὰν ἀφαιρηµέναν ἀπὸ τοῦ σώµατος· τᾶς ἐφερποῦσας δὲ νυκτ[ὸς Ἀρ]ισταγόρα ὄψιν εἶδε· ἐδόκει οἱ ὁ θεὸς ἵκων ἐξ Ἐπιδαύρου ἐ̣πιθεὶς τ[ὰν κε]φαλὰν ἐπὶ [τὸ]ν τράχαλον, µετὰ ταῦτα ἀνσχίσσας τὰγ κοιλ[ία]ν̣ τὰν αὐτ[ᾶς ἐξ]ελεῖν τὰν ἕ[λµ]ιθα καὶ συρράψαι πάλιν, καὶ ἐκ τούτου ὑγ[ιὴ]ς ἐγένετ[ο]. B4. ὑ]π[ὸ π]έ̣τραι παῖς Ἀριστόκριτος Ἁλ̣ικός· οὗτος ἀποκολυµ[βάσ]ας εἰς τὰν θά̣[λασ]σ̣αν ἔπειτα δενδρύων εἰς τόπον ἀφίκετο ξηρόν, κύκ[λωι] πέτραις περ[ιεχό]µενον, καὶ οὐκ ἐδύνατο ἔξοδον οὐδεµίαν εὑρεῖν. [µε]τὰ δὲ τοῦτο ὁ πατ[ὴρ α]ὐτοῦ, ὡς οὐθαµεὶ περιετύγχανε µαστεύ-

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ων, παρ’ [Ἀ]σκλαπιῶι ἐν τῶι ἀ[βάτ]ωι ἐνεκάθευδε περὶ τοῦ παιδὸς καὶ ἐνύπνιον ε̣[ἶ]δε· ἐδόκει αὐτὸν ὁ θ[εὸς] ἄγειν εἴς τινα χώραν καὶ δεῖξαί οἱ, δ̣[ι]ότι τουτ[ε]ῖ ἐστι ὁ ὑὸς αὐτοῦ. ἐξε̣[λθὼ]ν δ’ ἐκ τοῦ ἀβάτου καὶ λ̣ατοµήσας τὰ[ν] πέτραν ἀ[ν]ηῦρε τὸµ παῖ̣δα ἑβδεµα̣[ῖο]ν. B5. Σωστράτα Φεραί[α παρ]εκύησε. α[ὕ]τα ἐµ παντὶ ἐοῦσα φοράδα̣ν εἰς τὸ ἱαρὸν ἀφικοµένα ἐνε[κά]θευδε. ὡς δὲ οὐθὲν ἐνύπνιον ἐναργ[ὲ]ς ἑώρη, πάλιν οἴκαδε ἀπεκοµίζ̣[ε]το. µετὰ δὲ τοῦτο συµβολῆσαί τις περὶ Κόρνους αὐτᾶι καὶ τοῖς ἑ[ποµέ]νοις ἔδοξε τὰν ὄψιν εὐπρεπὴς ἀνήρ, ὃς πυθόµενος παρ’ αὐτῶν τ[ὰς δυσπρα]ξίας τὰς αὐτῶν ἐκελήσατο θέµεν τὰν κ̣λίναν, ἐφ’ ἇς τὰν Σωστρ[άταν ἔφε]ρον. ἔπειτα τὰγ κοιλίαν αὐτᾶς ἀνσχίσας ἐξαιρεῖ πλῆθος ζ[ωϋφίων πάµ]πολυ, [δύ]ε ποδανιπτῆρας· συνράψας δὲ τὰ[ν γ]αστέρα καὶ ποήσας ὑ[γιῆ] τὰν γυ̣ναῖκα τάν τε παρουσίαν τὰν αὐτο[ῦ π]αρενεφάνιξε ὁ Ἀσκλαπιὸς καὶ ἴατρα ἐκέλε̣το ἀπ[ο]πέµπειν εἰς Ἐπί[δα]υρ[ον.] B6. κύων ἰάσατο παῖδα Αἰ[γιν]άταν. οὗτος φῦµα ἐν τῶ[ι τρα]χ̣άλωι εἶχε· ἀφικόµενο[ν] δ’ αὐτὸν ποὶ τ[ὸν] θε[ὸ]ν κύων τῶν ἱαρῶν ὕ[παρ τ]ᾶ̣ι γλώσσαι ἐθεράπευσε καὶ ὑγιῆ ἐπόη[σ]ε. B7. ἀνὴρ ἐ[ντὸ]ς τᾶς κοιλίας ἕλκος ἔχων. οὗτος ἐγκαθεύδων ἐν[ύπνιο]ν εἶδε· ἐδ̣όκ[ε]ι αὐτῶι ὁ θεὸς ποιτάξαι τοῖς ἑποµένοις ὑπηρέτα[ις συλ]λαβόντας αὐτὸν ἴσχειν, ὅπως τάµηι οὑ τὰν κοιλίαν· αὐτὸς δὲ φεύ[γει]ν, τοὺς δὲ συλλαβόντας νιν ποιδῆσαι ποὶ ῥόπτον· µετὰ δὲ τοῦτο τὸν [Ἀσ]κλαπιὸν ἀνσχίσσαντα τὰγ κοιλίαν ἐκταµεῖν τὸ ἕλκος καὶ συρρά[ψαι] πάλιν, καὶ λυθῆµεν ἐκ τῶν δεσµῶν· καὶ ἐκ τούτου ὑγιὴς ἐξῆ[λθ]ε, τὸ δὲ δάπεδον ἐν τῶι ἀβάτωι αἵµατος κατάπλεον ἦς. B8. Κλεινάτας Θηβα̣ῖ ος ὁ τοὺς φθεῖρας· οὗτος π̣[λῆ]θός τι πάµπολυ φθε[ιρ]ῶν ἐν τῶι σώµατι [ἔ]χων ἀφικόµενος ἐνεκά[θευ]δε καὶ ὁρῆι ὄψιν. ἐδόκει αὐτόν νιν ὁ θεὸς ἐγδύσας καὶ γυµνὸν καταστάσας ὀρθὸν σάρ̣[ ω]ι τινὶ τοὺς φθεῖρας ἀπὸ τοῦ σώµατος ἀποκαθαίρειν· ἁµέρας δὲ γ[ε]νοµένας ἐκ τοῦ ἀβάτου ὑγιὴς ἐξῆλθε. B9. Ἀγέστρατος κεφαλᾶς [ἄ]λγος· οὗτος ἀγρυπνίαις συνεχόµενος διὰ τὸµ πόνον τᾶς κεφαλᾶ[ς], ὡς ἐν τῶι ἀβάτωι ἐγένετο, καθύπνωσε καὶ ἐν[ύ]πνιον εἶδε· ἐδόκει αὐτὸν ὁ θεὸς ἰασάµε̣νος τὸ τᾶς κεφαλᾶς ἄλγος ὀρθὸν ἀστάσας γυµνὸν παγκρατίου προβολὰν διδάξαι· ἁµέρας δὲ γενηθείσας ὑγιὴς ἐξῆλθε καὶ οὐ µετὰ πολὺγ χρόνον τὰ Νέµεα ἐνίκασε παγκράτιον. B10. Γοργίας Ἡρακλειώτας πύος. οὗτος ἐµ µάχαι τινὶ τρωθεὶς εἰς τὸµ πλεύµονα τοξε[ύ]µ[α]τι ἐνιαυτὸγ καὶ ἑξάµηνον ἔµπυος ἦς οὕτω σφοδρῶς, ὥστε ἑπτὰ καὶ ἑξήκοντα λεκάνας ἐνέπλησε πύους· ὡς δ’ ἐνεκάθευδε, ὄψιν εἶδε· ἐδόκει οἱ ὁ θεὸς τὰν ἀκίδα ἐξελεῖν ἐκ τοῦ πλεύµονος· ἁµέρας δὲ γενοµένας ὑγιὴς ἐξῆλθε τὰν ἀκίδα ἐν ταῖς χερσὶ φέρων. B11. Ἀνδροµάχα ἐξ Ἀπείρο[υ] περὶ παίδων. αὕτα ἐγκαθεύδουσα ἐνύπνιον εἶδε· ἐδόκει αὐτᾶι π[α]ῖς τις ὡραῖος ἀγκαλύψαι, µετὰ δὲ το̣ῦτο τὸν θεὸν ἅψασθαί οὑ τᾶι [χη]ρί· ἐκ δὲ τούτου τᾶι Ἀνδροµάχαι υ[ἱ]ὸς ἐξ Ἀρύββα ἐγένετο. B12. Ἀ[κ]ράτης Κνίδιος ὀφθαλµούς. οὗτος ἔν τινι µάχαι ὑπὸ δό[ρα]τος πλα[γεὶ]ς δι’ ἀµφοτέρων τῶν ὀφθαλµῶν τυφλὸς ἐγένετο καὶ τὰν λόγχαν [παρ]οῦσαν ἐν τῶι προσώπωι περιέφερε· ἐγκαθεύδων [δ]ὲ ὄψιν εἶδε· ἐδ[όκε]ι ⟨οἱ⟩ τὸν θεὸν ἐξελκύσαντα τὸ βέλος εἰς τὰ β[λέ]φαρα τὰς καλουµ[έν]ας κόρας πάλιν ἐναρµόξαι. ἁµέρας δὲ γενοµένας ὑγιὴς ἐξῆλθ[ε]. B13. [Θ]έ̣ρσανδρος Ἁλικὸς φθίσιν. οὗτος, ὡς ἐγκαθεύδων [οὐ]δεµίαν ὄψιν [ἑ]ώρη, ἐφ’ ἁµάξας [ἄµπαλ]ιν ἀπεκοµίζετο εἰς Ἁλιεῖς, δράκων δέ τις [τ]ῶν ἱαρῶν ἐπὶ τ[ᾶς ἁµ]άξας καθιδρυµένος ἦς, τὸ πο[λ]ὺ τᾶς ὁδοῦ περιη[λι]γµένος περ[ὶ τ]ὸν ἄξονα διετέλεσε. µολόντων δ’ [α]ὐ[τ]ῶν εἰς Ἁλιεῖς [κα]ὶ τοῦ Θερσ[ά]νδρου κατακλιθέντος οἴ[κο]ι, ὁ δράκων ἀπὸ τᾶς ἁµά[ξα]ς καταβὰ[ς τ]ὸν Θέρσανδρον ἰάσατο. [τᾶς δ]ὲ πόλιος τῶν Ἁλικῶν [ἀγγε]λ[λ]ούσας τὸ γεγενηµένον καὶ διαπορ[ουµένας] περὶ τοῦ ὄφι[ος, πό]τερον εἰς Ἐπίδαυρον ἀποκοµίζωντι [ἢ αὐτὸν κα]τὰ χώραν ἐῶν[τι, ἔ]δοξε τᾶι πόλι εἰς ∆ελφοὺς ἀποστεῖλα[ι χρησοµέ]νους, πότερα [π]οιῶντι· ὁ δὲ θεὸς ἔχρησε τὸν ὄφιν ἐῆν αὐ[τεῖ καὶ ἱ]δρυσαµένου[ς Ἀ]σκλαπιοῦ τέµενος καὶ εἰκόνα αὐτοῦ πο[ιησαµέ]νους ἀνθέµεν [εἰς] τὸ ἱαρόν. ἀγγελθέντος δὲ τοῦ χρησ[µοῦ, ἁ πόλι]ς ἁ τῶν Ἁλικῶν ἱδρύσατο τέµενος Ἀσκλαπιοῦ [αὐτεῖ καὶ τὰ ὑπὸ το]ῦ θεοῦ µαντ[ευ]σθέντα ἐπετέλεσε.

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Translation God. Good Luck. Healings of Apollo and Asklepios A1. Kleo was pregnant for five years. After the fifth year of pregnancy, she came as a suppliant to the god and slept in the abaton. As soon as she had left it and was outside the shrine, she gave birth to a son who, as soon as he was born, washed himself at the fountain and walked about with his mother. After this success, she inscribed upon her offering: ‘The wonder is not the size of the plaque, but the divine: Kleo was pregnant with a burden in her stomach for five years, until she slept here and he made her well‘. A2. A three-year pregnancy. Ithmonika of Pellene came to the sanctuary to have children. Sleeping in the shrine, she saw a vision. It seemed that she asked the god if she could conceive a daughter, and Asklepios answered that she would and that if she asked anything else that he would do that as well, but she answered that she didn’t need anything more. She became pregnant and bore the child in her stomach for three years, until she came again to the god as suppliant, concerning the birth. Sleeping in the shrine, she saw a vision. The god appeared asking whether everything she had asked had not happened and she was pregnant. She had not asked anything about the birth, and he had asked her to say whether there was anything more she needed and he would do it. But since she had come to him as a suppliant for this, he said he would do it for her. Right after this, she rushed out of the abaton, and as soon as she was outside the shrine, gave birth to a daughter. A3. A man who was paralyzed in all his fingers except one came as a suppliant to the god. When he was looking at the plaques in the sanctuary, he didn’t believe in the cures and was somewhat disparaging of the inscriptions. Sleeping in the shrine, he saw a vision. It seemed he was playing the knucklebones below the temple, and as he was about to throw them, the god appeared, sprang on his hand and stretched out this fingers one by one. When he had straightened them all, the god asked him if he would still not believe the inscriptions on the plaques around the sanctuary and he answered no. ‘Therefore, since you doubted them before, though they were not unbelievable, from now on,’ he said, ‘your name shall be “Unbeliever”.’ When day came he left well. A4. Ambrosia from Athens, blind in one eye. She came as a suppliant to the god. Walking about the sanctuary, she ridiculed some of the cures as being unlikely and impossible, the lame and the blind becoming well from only seeing a dream. Sleeping in the shrine, she saw a vision. It seemed to her the god came to her and said he would make her well, but she would have to pay a fee by dedicating a silver pig in the sanctuary as a memorial of her ignorance. When day came she left well. A5. A mute boy. He came to the sanctuary for a voice. He performed the opening sacrifices and did the required things; and then the boy who carries fire for the god, looking over at the boy’s father, bid him to promise to sacrifice within a year, if what he came for occurred. Suddenly the boy said, ‘I promise’. The father was amazed and told him to repeat it. The boy spoke again and from this he became well. A6. Pandaros of Thessaly, with marks on his forehead. Sleeping here, he saw a vision. It seemed that the god bound a fillet around his marks and told him that when he was outside of the abaton, to take off the fillet and dedicate it in the temple. When day came he rose and took off the fillet, and he saw his face clear of the marks. He dedicated the fillet, which had the letters from his forehead, in the Temple. A7. Echedoros received the marks of Pandaros along with those he already had. He had taken money from Pandaros in order to make a dedication to the god at Epidauros for him, but he did not hand it over. Sleeping in the shrine, he saw a vision. It seemed to him that the god came to him and asked whether he had any money of Pandaros’ to make a dedication for Athena in the sanctuary. He answered that he had taken nothing of the kind from him, but that if he would make him well, he would have an image inscribed and dedicate it to him. At that the god seemed to tie Pandaros’ fillet around his marks and to order him, when he went outside the abaton, to take off the fillet and 1

The English translation is that of LiDonicci 1995 (slightly modified).

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wash his face at the fountain and to look at his reflection in the water. When day came, he went out of the abaton and took off the fillet, which no longer had the letters, but when he looked into the water, he saw that his own face bore his original marks and had taken on the letters of Pandaros. A8. Euphanes, a boy of Epidauros. Suffering from stone, he slept (in the abaton). It seemed to him the god came to him and said, ‘What will you give me if I should make you well?’ The boy replied, ‘Ten knucklebones.’ The god laughed and said that he would make it stop. When day came, he left well. A9. Once a man came as a suppliant to the god who was so blind in one eye that, while he still had the eyelids of that eye, there was nothing within them and they were completely empty. Some of the people in the sanctuary were laughing at this simple-mindedness in thinking that he could be made to see, having absolutely nothing, not even the beginnings of an eye, but only the socket. Then in his sleep, a vision appeared to him. It seemed that the god boiled some drug, and then drew apart his eyelids and poured it in. When day came he departed with both eyes. A10. The cup. A baggage carrier was walking into the sanctuary, but he fell down near the ten stadia stone. Getting up, he opened his bag and looked at the shattered things. When he saw that the cup from which his master was accustomed to drink was broken into pieces, he grieved and sitting down, tried putting the pieces together. Some passerby saw him. ‘Why fool,’ he said, ‘are you fruitlessly putting that cup together? For not even Asklepios in Epidauros would be able to make that cup whole.’ Hearing this the boy, having put the pieces into his bag, walked into the sanctuary. When he arrived he opened the bag and took out the cup, which had become whole. He explained to his master what had happened and what had been said. When he heard it, he dedicated the cup to the god. A11. Aischines, when the suppliants were already sleeping, went up a tree and peered over into the abaton. Then he fell out of the tree and impaled his eyes on some fencing. In a dreadful state, having been blinded, he earnestly prayed to the god, slept (in the abaton), and became well. A12. Euhippos bore a spear in his jaw for six years. While he was sleeping in the shrine, the god drew the spearhead from him and gave it to him in his hands. When day came, he walked out well, having the spearhead in his hands. A13. A man from Torone, leeches. When he was sleeping, he saw a dream. It seemed to him that the god ripped open his chest with a knife, took out the leeches and gave them to him in his hands, and sewed his breast together. When day came he left having the animals in his hands, and had become well. He had drunk them down, after being tricked by his stepmother who had thrown them into a potion that he drank. A14. A man had a stone in his penis. He saw a dream. It seemed that he was having sex with a beautiful boy and as he had an orgasm in his sleep, he ejected the stone and picking it up he departed with it in his hands. A15. Hermodikos of Lampsakos, paralysed of body. When he was sleeping in the shrine, he was healed and ordered, when he went out, to carry into the sanctuary the biggest stone that he could. He brought the one which lies in front of the abaton. A16. Nikanor, lame. When he was sitting down, being awake, some boy grabbed his crutch and ran away. Getting up he ran after him and from this he became well. A17. A man’s toe was healed by a snake. He was in a terrible condition from a malignant ulceration on his toe. During the day he was carried out of the abaton by the servants and was sitting on a seat. He fell asleep there, and then a snake came out of the abaton and healed the toe with its tongue; and when it had done this it went back into the abaton again. When the man woke up, he was well and he said he had seen a vision: it seemed to him that a good-looking young man had sprinkled a drug over his toe. A18. Alketas of Halieis. This man being blind, saw a dream. It seemed to him that the god came towards him and drew open his eyes with his fingers, and he first saw the trees in the sanctuary. When day came he left well.

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A19. Heraios of Mytilene. This man had no hair on his head, but plenty on his chin. Ashamed, because he was laughed at by the others, he slept (in the abaton). The god anointed his head with a drug and made it have hair. Α20. Lyson of Hermione, a blind boy. The boy while awake, had his eyes treated by one of the dogs about the sanctuary, and went away well. B1. Arata of Lakedaimon, dropsy. For her sake, her mother slept (in the abaton), while she remained in Lacedaimon, and she sees a dream. It seemed to her the god cut off the head of her daughter and hung the body neck downwards. After much fluid had run out, he untied the body and put the head back on the neck. Having seen this dream she returned to Lakedaimon and found on her arrival that her daughter was well and that she had seen the same dream. B2. Hermon of Thasos. He came as a blind man, and he was healed. But afterwards when he didn’t bring the offering, the god made him blind again. Then he came back and slept (in the abaton), and he restored him to health. B3. Aristagora of Troizen. Since she had a worm in her belly, she slept in the temenos of Asklepios in Troizen and she saw a dream. It seemed to her that the sons of the god, while he was not there but was in Epidauros, cut off her head, but they couldn’t put it back again so they sent someone to the Asklepieion, so that he would return. Meanwhile the day overtakes them and the priest clearly sees the head removed from the body. When the night finally came again, Aristagora saw a vision. It seemed to her that the god had returned from Epidauros and put the head on ther neck, and after that cut open her belly, took out the worm and sewed it together again, and from this she became well. B4. Under a rock, a boy Aristokritos of Halieis. He had dived and swum away into the sea and then remaining under water he came upon a dry place completely surrounded by rocks, and he couldn’t find any way out. Later his father, after he found nothing by searching, slept in the abaton before Asklepios concerning his son and saw a dream. It seemed that the god led him to a certain place and there showed him where his son was. When he left the abaton and cut through the stone he found his son on the seventh day. B5. Sostrata of Pherai, false pregnancy. This woman, borne entirely on a litter, arrived at the sanctuary and slept (in the abaton). But since she saw no clear dream she was carried homeward again. Later, around Kornoi, she and her attendants met up with someone, in appearance a handsome man, who when he heard from them their bad luck, told them to set down the couch on which Sostrata was borne. Then he cut open the belly and took out lots and lots of creatures – two footbasins full. When he had sewn up her stomach and made the woman well, Asklepios revealed his presence to her and ordered her to send offerings to Epidauros. B6. A dog cured a boy from Aigina. He had a growth on his neck. When he had come to the god, a dog from the sanctuary took care of him with his tongue while he was awake, and made him well. B7. A man with a fastering sore inside his belly. Sleeping here, he saw a dream. It seemed to him that the god ordered the servants who accompanied him to seize and restrain him, so that he could cut hisbelly. He run away, bu they seized him and bound him to an operating table. After that Asklepios cut open his belly, cut out the sore, and sewed him up again, and he was released from his bonds. From this he left well, but the floor of the abaton was covered in blood. B8. Kleinatas of Thebes, who had lice. This man, having a great multitude of lice on his body, came and slept (in the abaton), and he sees a vision. It seemed to him the god stripped him and, standing him up straight, naked, cleared the lice from his body with a broom. When day came he left the abaton well. B9. Hagestratos, headache. This man was afflicted with sleeplessness on account of the distress in his head, but when he came into the abaton, he fell fast asleep and saw a dream. It seemed to him the god had cured the pain in his head and then stood him up straight, naked, and taught him the pankration thrust. When day came he left well, and not a long time after won the pankration at Nemea. B10. Gorgias of Herakleia, pus. This man was wounded in the lung by an arrow in some battle, and for a year and six months it was festering so badly that he filled sixty-seven bowls with pus.

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When he was sleeping in the shrine, he saw a vision. It seemed to him the god drew out the barb from his lung. When day came he left well, carrying the barb in his hands. B11. Andromache from Epirus, concerning children. When she was sleeping in the shrine she saw a dream. It seemed to her that a handsome young boy uncovered her, and after that the god touched her with his hand. From this a son was born to Andromache by Arhybbas. B12. Antikrates of Knidos, eyes. This man had been stuck with a spear through both his eyes in some battle, and he became blind and carried around the spearhead with him, inside his face. Sleeping in the shrine, he saw a vision. It seemed to him the god pulled out the dart and fitted the pupil back into his eyelids. When day came he left well. B13. Thesandros of Halieis, consumption. This man, since he didn’t see any vision while sleeping in the shrine, was carried on a wagon back to Halieis. But one of the snakes from the sanctuary had settled down in the wagon and rode for most of the way twined around the axle. When they arrived in Halieis and Thersandros was lying in bed in his house, the snake came down from the wagon and cured Thersandros. The city of Halieis reported what had happened, and the people didn’t know what to do about the snake, whether they should carry it back to Epidauros or keep it in their own country. It seemed good to the polis to send to Delphi asking which thing they should do. The god proclaimed that the serpent should be right there and that they should dedicate a temenos of Asklepios, and make an image of him and dedicate it in the sanctuary. When the oracle was announced, the polis of Halieies dedicated a temenos of Asklepios there, and carried out the things divined by the god.

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Forsén, B. (1996) Griechische Gliederweihungen. Eine Untersuchung zu ihrer Typologie und ihrer religions- und sozialgeschichtlichen Bedeutung, Helsinki. Girone, M. (1998) Ἰάµατα. Guarigioni miracolose di Asclepio in testi epigrafici, Bari. Herzog, R. (1931) Die Wunderheilungen von Epidauros, Leipzig. Harris, W. V. (2009) Dreams and Experience in Classical Antiquity, Cambridge, Ma./London. Kolde, A. (2003) Politique et religion chez Isyllos d’Epidaure, Basel. Lemerle, P. (1979–1981) Les plus anciens recueils de miracles de Saint Demetrios et la pénétration des Slaves dans les Balkans, Paris. LiDonnici L. (1992) Compositional Background of the Epidaurian Iamata, American Journal of Philology 113, 25–41. ––– (1995) The Epidaurian Miracle Inscriptions. Text, Translation and Commentary, Atlanta. Mentzos, A. (1994) Τὸ προσκύνηµα τοῦ Ἁγίου ∆ηµητρίου Θεσσαλονίκης στὰ Βυζαντινὰ χρόνια , Athens. Milne, D. and W. Howard (2000) Rethinking the Role of Diagnosis in Navajo Religious Healing, Medical Anthropology Quarterly, 14.4, 543–570. Montserrat, D. (1998) Pilgrimage to the Shrine of SS. Cyrus and John at Menouthis in Late Antique, in D. Frankfurter (ed.), Pilgrimage and Holy Space in Late Antique Egypt, Leiden, 257–279. Nehrbass, R. (1935) Sprache und Stil der Iamata von Epidauros, Leipzig. Pearcy, L. T. (1988) Theme, Dream, and Narrative: Reading the Sacred Tales of Aelius Aristides, Transactions of the American Philological Association 118, 377–391. ––– (1992) Diagnosis as Narrative in Ancient Literature, American Journal of Philology 113, 595–616. Petsalis-Diomidis, A. (2007) The Body in Space: Visual Dynamics in Healing Pilgrimage, in J. Elsner and I. Rutherford (eds.), Seeing the Gods: Pilgrimage in Graeco-Roman and Early Christian Antiquity, Oxford, 184–218. Petrakos, V. C. (1997) Οἱ ἐπιγραφὲς τοῦ Ὠρωποῦ, Athens. Prêtre, C. and P. Charlier (2009) Maladies humaines, thérapies divines. Analyse épigraphique et paléopathologique de textes de guérison grecs, Villeneuve d’Ascq. Renberg, G. (2006/2007) Public and Private Places of Worship in the Cult of Asclepius at Rome, Memoirs of the American Academy in Rome 51/52, 87–172. Rhodes, P. and R. Osborne (2003) Greek Historical Inscriptions 404–323 BC, Oxford. Rüpke, J. (2009) Dedications Accompanied by Inscriptions in the Roman Empire: Functions, Intentions, Modes of Communication, in J. Bodel and M. Kajawa (eds.), Dediche sacre nel mondo greco-romano: Diffusione, funzione, tipologie – Religious Dedications in the GrecoRoman World: Distribution, Typology,Use, Helsinki, 31–41. Sifakis, G. (2001) Aristotle and the Function of Tragic Poetry, Irakleion. Sineux, P. (2007) Les récits de rêve dans les sanctuaires guérisseurs du monde grec: des textes sous contrôle, Sociétes et Représentations 23, 45–65. Stewart, C. (1997) Fields in Dreams: Anxiety, Experience, and the Limits of Social Constructionism in Modern Greek Dream Narratives, American Ethnologist 24.4, 877–894. ––– (2012) Dreaming and Historical Consciousness in Island Greece, Cambridge, Ma.

PICTURE CREDITS Figure 1:

Marble votive relief stele from the sanctuary of Amphiaraos in Oropos, c. 400–350 BCE. Photo: Petrakos 1997, 263f. no. 344, pl. 39.

CONSTRUCTING THE FEAR OF GODS Epigraphic Evidence from Sanctuaries of Greece and Asia Minor Angelos Chaniotis 1 FEAR AND HOPE: THE EMOTIONAL CONSTRUCTION OF GOD Lucian, the second-century CE satirist, had no doubts about the motives of a certain Alexander from Abonou Teichos and his companion when they decided to introduce a new cult, that of the snake-god Glykon Neos Asklepios:1 They readily understood that human life is ruled by two great tyrants, hope and fear, and that a man who could use both of these to advantage would speedily enrich himself. ... Thanks to these two tyrants, hope and fear, men continually visited the sanctuaries and sought to learn the future in advance, and to that end sacrificed hecatombs and dedicated ingots of gold ...

Whether the introduction of the cult of Glykon was an enterprise planned and executed in the manner described by Lucian is arguable. But that religious experience in the Greek world had an emotional background is not. As it was believed to be exclusively within a god’s discretion to punish or to forgive, to listen to a prayer or to ignore it, to come when invited or to stay away, the emotions of the mortal who approached a god were fear and hope. In their acclamations and prayers mortals addressed the gods with epithets that expressed their expectations: that a divine being would listen to a prayer (ἐπήκοος, φιλήκοος); that it would be willing to manifest its power (ἐπιφανής, ἐπιφανέστατος, µέγας); that it would be a patron of their communities (καθηγεµών, προκαθηγεµών, προεστώς); that it would be continually present (ἔνδηµος, ἐπίδηµος); that it would offer protection (σωτήρ, ἀσφάλειος, ἀποτρόπαιος); that it would be a donor of good things (ἀγαθοποιός, καλογάθιος).2 Where there is hope, however, there is also fear: fear of disappointment, failure, and rejection. Perhaps the best expression of these ambiguous feelings is the use of the verb ‘to have courage’ (θαρρεῖν or θαρσεῖν) in narratives of human encounters with a god. The imperative ‘take courage!’ (θάρσει) is an expression regularly used by gods when addressing mortals. The imperative of courage presupposes the reality of fear: fear of the unknown, of the future, of a god’s unpre-

1 2

Lucian, Alexander or The False Prophet 8. On the cult see more recently Miron 1996; Victor 1997; Sfameni Gasparro 1996 and 1999; Chaniotis 2002. On these epithets and their significance see Chaniotis 2010, 129–138. On acclamatory epithets see Chaniotis 2008.

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dictable reaction.3 One of the miracles narrated in an inscription from Lindos, which aimed at glorifying the local goddess Athena Lindia and her sanctuary (99 BCE), describes how the Lindians were in despair because of a water shortage during a siege of their city by the Persians. While they were considering surrender, Athena appeared in one of the magistrates’ dreams and ‘urged him not to be afraid (θαρσεῖν), for she herself would request from her father [Zeus] the water that they so urgently needed’.4 It was the prerogative of a god to assuage the fear of an impending disaster.5 A similar situation is described by the poet Isyllos. He narrates his encounter as a sick boy with Asklepios, who was on his way to save Sparta from a Macedonian attack (early third century BCE):6 Asklepios, you met him as he approached, shining in your golden armour. When the boy saw you, he implored you (λίσσετο), stretching out his hand to you and addressing you with words of supplication (ἱκέτηι µύθωι): ‘I have no share in your gifts, Asklepios Paian. Have mercy on me’! (ἐποίκτειρον) And clearly you said to me this: ‘Have courage (θάρσει)! For I shall come to you in due time’ ...

The vocabulary used in this encounter clearly expresses the asymmetry in the relationship between the petitioning mortal and the granting god.7 Understanding that the mortal’s predominant emotion is fear, the benevolent god gives courage. Of course, some gods had to be feared more than others. Pan, a patron of hunting, herding, and the wilderness,8 did not give his name to panic for no reason. A Cretan, probably a mercenary with some poetic talent, dedicated a

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Θάρσει and similar words are often used in the ‘alphabetical’ and ‘dice’ oracles of Asia Minor; these metrical texts are presented as oracles, i.e. as divine pronouncements. For a recent collection see Nollé 2007. A few examples of such verses: θάρσει· καιρὸν ἔχεις· πράξεις, ἃ θέλεις (‘Have courage! You have a good opportunity; you will achieve what you wish.’); Ἑκάτῃ πεποιθὼς µᾶλλον εὐθαρσὴς ἴθι (‘Trusting in Hekate, proceed with more courage.’); θάρσει, ἀγωνίζου· Ζεὺς Κτήσιος ἐστὶν ἀρωγός (‘Have courage, fight! Zeus Ktesios assists you.’); σὺ δ’ αὖ λόγοισι µαντικοῖς πεισθείς, ξένε, θάρσησον (‘And you, stranger, persuaded by the oracular pronouncements, have courage.’). I.Lindos 2 D lines 14–16: παρεκάλει θαρσεῖν ὡς αὐτὰ παρὰ τοῦ πατρὸς αἰτησευµένα τὸ κατεπεῖγον αὐτοὺς ὕδωρ. On this inscription see Chaniotis 1988, 52–57; Higbie 2003; Koch Piettre 2003; Dillery 2005; Shaya 2005. For cases in which gods give courage in the context of wars see e.g. IOSPE I2 352 I 25f. (Artemis in Chersonesos in Tauris, late second century BCE): θάρσος δὲ καὶ τόλµαν ἐνεποίησε παντὶ τῶι στρ̣α̣τοπέ[δωι]; Bernand 1969, no. 175 III 18 (Isis praise in Narmouths, first century BCE): ὀλίγοισι δὲ θάρσος ἔ[δωκε]. IG IV2.1.128 lines 63–68. Recent editions of the text: Furley and Bremer 2001, I 227–240 (translation and comments); II 180–192 (text); Kolde 2003, 8–15 (text and translation), 192– 209. I follow Kolde in the assumption that the sick boy is Isyllos, not Isyllos’ son. Kolde 2003, 198–209, observes the similarity between this scene and encounters between gods and mortals in the Homeric poems in which θάρσει is used five times by gods addressing mortals: Iliad 15.254; 24.171; Odyssey 4.825; 8.197; 15.362. Θαρρέω/θαρσέω is used in a similar context in negotiations between the emperors and their subjects; see IG XII.3.35 col. b I 5 and 33; F.Delphes III.4.304 lines 22–27; SEG XVII 759 col. II 37; Sherk 1969, no. 58 line 93. On the perceptions and cult of Pan see Borgeaud 1988.

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statue of Pan in Thyrreion (Akarnania, c. 300–250 BCE), expressing in the dedicatory epigram the fear intrinsic in the encounters of human beings with this god:9 Farewell, demon. Who can approach you without fear, even if he is bringing you sacrificial animals? From your very nature you are entirely wild (or boorish).

It is, therefore, not surprising that intellectuals regarded the fear of gods as instrumental in bringing about the existence of religion. A radical expression of this view is found in a satyr-play (Sisyphos) composed in late fifth-century BCE Athens and attributed to the sophist Kritias. Its author argued that belief in gods was the invention of a smart guy who wanted to deter offenders by making them believe that superior beings could see, hear, and know everything. In the earliest times, mortals lived like animals, subdued by the power of the mightiest among them; they knew neither the punishment of the wicked nor the reward of the virtuous. It was only later that they developed laws; but again, only open deeds of violence could be punished. In order to deter secret offenders as well, some clever man invented the gods. Our source is a passage in Sextus Empiricus (c. 200 CE):10 When the laws prevented men from open deeds of violence, but they continued to commit them in secret, I believe that a man of shrewd and subtle mind invented for men the fear of the gods, so that there might be something to frighten the wicked even if they acted, spoke or thought in secret. From this motive he introduced the conception of divinity. There is, he said, a spirit enjoying endless life, hearing and seeing with his mind, exceedingly wise and allobserving, bearer of a divine nature. ... For a dwelling he gave them the place whose mention would most powerfully strike the heartsers of men, whence, as he knew, fear comes to mortals and help for their wretched lives; that is, the vault above, where he perceived the lightning and the dread roars of thunder, and the starry face and form of heaven fair-wrought by the cunning craftsmanship of time. ... With such fears did he surround mankind, and so by his story gave the godhead a fair home in a fitting place, and extinguished lawlessness by his ordinances. ... So, I think, first of all, that someone persuaded men to believe that there exists a race of gods.

Few Greek intellectuals would have possessed the boldness shown by this play’s author to directly instrumentalise religion by associating the creation of belief in gods with the hope of a more effective implementation of justice. And few intellectuals throughout history would claim that an emotion, in this case the fear of divine powers, was the invention of a certain individual. But the fear of god(s), along with the fear of divine wrath and divine punishment, is a widespread – perhaps universal – phenomenon. However, its manifestations in space and time are determined by specific cultural parameters.11 9 10

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IG IX2.1.253: [ἔρρ]ωσο, ὦ δαῖµον· τίς δ’ ἂν καὶ θύµατα ἄγων σοι | [πρ]οσπελάσαι θαρρῶν; πάµπαν ἀγρεῖος ἔφυς. Sextus Empiricus, Against the Mathematicians 9.54. Translation and discussion: Guthrie 1971, 243–244; see also Davies 1989. The idea that the fear of the gods makes the mortals respect justice is rejected by the Epicurean philosopher Diogenes of Oinoanda; see the recently discovered fragment of his work in Hammerstaedt and Smith 2009, 5–12. See e.g. Camporesi 1990 (fear of hell in early modern Europe); Dinzelbacher 1996 (mediaeval Europe); Michaels 2006 (fear and anxiety in religion); Fischer 2010 (fear in Christianity in early modern America).

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The aim of this chapter is to present and discuss evidence, primarily epigraphic, for the media through which specific agents, sometimes identifiable (priests, dedicants, worshippers, members of the elite), promoted the fear of god in Greece and Asia Minor in the Hellenistic and Imperial periods (c. 300 BCE–c. 300 CE). 2 THE INTERPLAY OF EMOTIONAL EXPERIENCE, RELIGIOUS BELIEF, AND RITUAL Some time in the late second century CE the inhabitants of Daokometai, a small village near the Phrygian city of Aizanoi, set up an altar for the worship of Zeus. The short text on the altar reports:12 The inhabitants of Daokome in fulfilment of a vow [- -]. On the 19th of the month Loos, Menophilos was taken by sudden fear, and (the cult of) Great Zeus of Menophilos was founded.

We will never know what caused Menophilos’ fear and made him establish a cult of Zeus (‘the Great Zeus of Menophilos’). Was it a divine epiphany or a vision? Did he survive being struck by Zeus’ lightning? Or was he perhaps a repentant victim of divine punishment? Although these questions must remain unanswered, this inscription still epitomises several essential features of popular religion in Greece and the rural areas of the Hellenised East: religion was belief in the presence and power of (a) god, a belief that was based on experience and was both expressed and enhanced through rituals.13 Menophilos’ experience of fear made him recognise the presence of god and exclaim ‘Zeus is Great!’ By establishing a cult, which probably consisted in the offering of a sacrifice on this altar on 19 Loos, Menophilos transmitted his experience and belief to his community. The regular repetition of this ritual strengthened the belief in divine power. A very similar case is reported in a contemporary inscription from Sidyma (Asia Minor). It contains an oration referring to local myths and traditions. A fallen rock in a cave was attributed to a miracle of Apollo; as it was a memorial of a fearful experience that testified to the god’s power, it was associated with a ritual:14

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Lehmler and Wörrle 2006, 76–78 no. 135 (SEG LVI 1434): ∆αο̣κωµῆται κατ̣᾿ [εὐχὴν - -]. Λώου µηνὸς ἐννεακαιδεκάτῃ Μηνόφιλος [κ]ατεπλήχθη δε[ινῶς καὶ] ἐκτίσθη Ζεὺς Μέγας Μηνοφίλου. See also Chaniotis 2009a, 231f. no. 73. Chaniotis 2012, 269. TAM II 174; more recent publications and commentaries: Chaniotis 1988, 75–84 no. T19; Merkelbach 2000: ... τόπῳ πρὸς θαλάσσῃ, Λόπτοις, σπηλαίῳ ἀποκρύφῳ δυσεισόδῳ ἐκ κορυφῆς δὲ φωτοῦλκον ἄνοιγµα µεικρ̣ὸν ἔχοντι, µέσον εἰς ὃ καθοπτεῦσαι θελήσασά τις ἄφνως ἀψοφητὶ τὸν θεὸν κατηνέχθη καὶ λίθος κεῖται πτῶµα, φόβου δεῖγµα κατασκοπῶν· διὸ καὶ κροτεῖν ἀσπάσµατι «χαῖρε Ἄπολλον {ὁ} ἐγ Λόπτων», εἰσερχόµενοι φωνοῦµεν. If one reads κατασκόπων, the meaning is slightly different: ‘as fearful warning for those who try to look inside.’

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... In a place near the sea, in Lopta, in a secret cavern, hard to approach, having a small opening on the top which lets some light inside, some woman who tried to spy on the god from above fell unexpectedly and without making noise; and now she lies there as a fallen stone, as evidence that one should be afraid to look inside. For this reason, when we enter the cave we make noise in our greeting of Apollo, shouting ‘Hail, Apollo, the one from Lopta.’

Another example is Philostratos’ Heroikos (early third century CE), a fictional dialogue between a Thracian vine-dresser and a Phoenician merchant. The Phoenician expresses his disbelief in the heroes of the Trojan War and their powers. More generally, he refuses to believe in tales that are not supported by personal experience:15 I was right in my disbelief in such things, vine-dresser! You say that you have heard something from your grandfather, perhaps also from your mother or your nurse. But of what you have personally experienced, you say nothing; unless of course you shall say something about Protesileos.

The vine-dresser then presents evidence for how Protesileos had manifested his power in his sanctuary in Thessaly and concludes:16 For the sanctuary there is effective (or active) on behalf of Protesileos, and it gives the Thessalians many signs, both kind and benevolent, but also angry (ὀργίλα) if he is neglected.

It is only then that the Phoenician exclaims: By Protesileos, I believe you, vine-dresser! As I recognise, it is a good thing to swear by such a hero.

The experiences of the vine-dresser and the Thessalians and the display of the hero’s anger dispel the Phoenician merchant’s doubt (ἀπιστεῖν) and replace it with belief (πείθοµαι). The very first manifestation of his belief is a ritual: swearing by the name of this hero. In Greece, and later in the areas that were Hellenised after Alexander’s conquests, religious belief beyond intellectual circles was inextricably linked with experiences that were attributed to divine interventions. This can be clearly seen already in the healing miracles in Epidauros (late fourth century BCE). Some of the narratives in this collection of texts deal with disbelievers in Asklepios’ healing powers or with individuals who thought that they could cheat the god and deprive him of his reward. But then the god revealed his power, usually punishing the disbeliever and restoring faith in his power. Thereupon, this belief was expressed in public.17 The narrative of the fishmonger Amphimnastos, who had 15

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Philostratos, Heroikos 8.2: Οὐ µάτην ἀπιστεῖν ἔοικα τοῖς τοιούτοις, ἀµπελουργέ· καὶ σὺ γὰρ πάππου µέν τι ἀκηκοέναι φῂς καὶ ἴσως µητρὸς ἢ τίτθης, σεαυτοῦ δὲ ἀπαγγέλλεις οὐδέν, εἰ µὴ ἄρα περὶ τοῦ Πρωτεσίλεω εἴποις. Philostratos, Heroikos 16.5–6: καὶ γὰρ τὸ ἐκείνῃ ἱερὸν ἐνεργὸν τῷ Πρωτεσιλέῳ καὶ πολλὰ τοῖς Θετταλοῖς ἐπισηµαίνει φιλάνθρωπά τε καὶ εὐµενῆ, καὶ ὀργίλα αὖ, εἰ ἀµελοῖτο. — Πείθοµαι, νὴ τὸν Πρωτεσίλεων, ἀµπελουργέ· καλὸν γὰρ, ὡς ὁρῶ, καὶ ὀµνύναι τοιοῦτον ἥρω. In the collection of LiDonnici 1995, nos. A3, A7, A9, B2, B16, C4. Cf. Prêtre and Charlier 2009, 35 and 40–45. See pp. 177–204 in this volume.

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neglected his promise to dedicate a tithe from his profit to Asklepios, is a good example. When Amphimnastos was in the market at Tegea, his fish were struck by lightning:18 While a big crowd was standing around to watch, Amphimnastos confessed the whole fraud that he had committed against Asklepios. And after he had entreated the god, the god revived the fish and Amphimnastos dedicated the tithe to Asklepios.

Divine punishment restored the man’s belief in the power of the god and prompted him to perform two rituals: prayer and dedication. The fear of divine punishment for crimes, violations of sacred regulations, impiety, or anything else that might cause the anger of gods was omnipresent in Greek culture. The gods’ wrath could fall upon innocent and guilty alike. This is a central theme already in the earliest literary works. In the Iliad, when Agamemnon refuses to return Chryseis to her father and insults him, Chryses’ prays to Apollo and the angered god indiscriminately shoots Agamemnon’s soldiers with his arrows; when Odysseus rouses Poseidon’s wrath by blinding Polyphemos, his crew pays the penalty. Belief in the collective suffering of divine vengeance for the wrongdoing of an individual had deep roots in Greek religion; impurity resulting from the neglect of a religious duty was also often regarded as communicable and potentially collective.19 This concept is not only reflected in literary sources, which are not always to be trusted; it clearly also dictated the public actions of communities. The public imprecations of Teos (c. 470 BCE) repeatedly threaten the violator of laws with the destruction not only of himself but of his entire lineage (ἀπόλλυσθαι καὶ αὐτὸν καὶ γένος).20 A decree of Iolkos in Thessaly (third century BCE) reintroduced sacrifices to the heroes to prevent their anger, should their worship be neglected.21 As late as the early third century BCE the polis of Dodona was wondering whether ‘the god had sent bad weather because of the impurity (ἀκαθαρτία) of some man’.22 In this context, piety (εὐσέβεια) can be understood as fear of the divine (δεισιδαιµονία).23 But piety can also justify hope for divine grace. The idea that 18

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LiDonnici 1995, 121 no. C47 (IG IV2.1.123). I only present the part of the text that is relatively securely restored: ὄχλου δὲ πολλοῦ π[ε]ρι[στά]ντος ε[ἰς] τὰν θεωρίαν, ὁ Ἀµφίµναστος δηλοῖ τὰν ἐξαπάταν ἅπασα[ν] [τὰ]µ περ[ὶ] τὸν Ἀσκλαπιὸν γεγενηµέναν· ἐξικετεύσαντος δ’ αὐτοῦ τὸν θεὸν βιοτ[ε]ύοντες πάλ[ι]ν ἰχθύες ἔφανεν καὶ ὁ Ἀµφίµναστος ἀνέθηκ[ε τ]ὰν [δεκάτα]ν τῶι Ἀσκλαπιῶι. Collective and inherited guilt in popular religion: Lloyd-Jones 1983, 35, 90f.; Parker 1983, 198–205, 218f.; Johnston 1999, 53f.; Chaniotis 2004a, 2f. Syll.3 37–38; Tod 1946, no. 23. Béquignon 1935, 74–77; Meyer 1936. The restoration of many lines of this inscription is uncertain, but the passage referring to divine wrath is clearly preserved (B line 5: [ἵνα µή τι ἐκε]ῖθεν µήνισµα γίνηται). SEG XIX 427; Lhôte 2006, 64f. no. 14. For the fear of god as a constitutive part of piety in the wider context of pagan religiosity, cf. the term θεοσεβής, which designates a religious group influenced by Judaism and also highlights awe in the face of god. On the controversy over the identity of the θεοσεβεῖς see Lieu 1995; Mitchell 1998 and 1999; Ameling 2004, 13–20. Fear of god is also clearly expressed in

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success originated in piety, while failure could ultimately be attributed to some transgression, was very prominent in Greek public discourse, as is authentically recorded in epigraphic sources. An Athenian decree concerning the festival of the Thargelia shows that one of the arguments used by its proposer was precisely the intrinsic causal connection between piety, the proper observance of rituals, and success:24 It is a norm of the forefathers and a custom of the Athenian demos and an ancestral tradition to show the greatest care for piety towards the gods and it is for this reason that the Athenians have achieved the fame and the praise of the most glorious deeds both on land and in the sea through many campaigns on land and on board of ships, always beginning all their activities with an homage to Zeus Soter and with the worship of the gods.

When the Romans wished to assure the Greek city of Teos of their piety, they needed no other proof than their success:25 One would surmise that we always pay the greatest attention to piety toward the gods from the fact that we receive the favour of the gods for this reason.

Piety placed a worshipper in the privileged position of approaching the divinity with confidence. For instance, having experienced a cure, a worshipper in Maroneia (c. 150–100 BCE) demonstrated his faith in Isis by means of a highly rhetorical eulogy, in which he expressed his confidence that the goddess would accept his invitation to come and listen to his praise:26

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an inscription connected with the Montanist movement. The prophetess Nana declares in a metrical inscription (c. 350 CE) that ‘from the beginning she felt the fear of god all night long’ (παννύχιον θεοῦ φόβον εἶχεν ἀπ’ ἀρ̣χῖς): SEG XLIII 943; Merkelbach and Stauber 2001, 349f. no. 16/41/15. Sokolowski 1962, no. 14 = SEG XXI 469 C lines 3–8 (Athens, 129/8 BCE): ἐπειδὴ πάτριόν [ἐ]στ[ιν καὶ ἔ]θος τῶι δήµωι τῶι Ἀθηναίων καὶ ὑπὸ τῶν προγόνων π[α]ραδε[δ]οµένον περὶ πλείστου ποεῖσθαι τὴν πρὸς τοὺς θεοὺς [εὐσέβειαν] καὶ διὰ ταῦτα πολλα⟨ῖ⟩ς ⟨πεζαῖς⟩ καὶ ἐπὶ ναυσὶ στρατεί⟨αι⟩ς τὴν κλε[ιν]οτάτων ἔργων καὶ κατὰ γῆν καὶ κατὰ θάλατταν εὐδοξία[ν] κ̣α̣ὶ̣ [εὐλογίαν κέκτ]ηνται ἀρχόµενοι δι̣ὰ̣ π̣αντὸς ἀπὸ ⟨τοῦ ∆ιὸς τοῦ⟩ Σωτῆρος [τῆς π]ρὸς τοὺς θεοὺς ὁσιότητος. Recent discussions of this text: Chaniotis 2009c, 100f.; Stavrianopoulou 2011, 94–96. Sherk 1969, no. 34 lines 11–15 (letter of the praetor M. Valerius Messala, the tribunes, and the senate to Teos, 193 BCE): ὅτι µὲν διόλου πλεῖστον λόγον ποιούµενοι διατελοῦµεν τῆς πρὸς τοὺς θεοὺς εὐσεβείας, µάλιστ’ ἄν τις στοχάζοιτο ἐκ τῆς συναντωµένης ἡµεῖν εὐµενείας διὰ ταῦτα παρὰ τοῦ δαιµονίου. Loukopoulou et al. 2005, 383–385 no. 205 lines 10–13: πείθοµαι δὲ πάντως σε παρέσεσθαι. εἰ γὰρ ὑπὲρ τῆς ἐµῆς καλουµέ|νη σωτηρίας ἦλθες, πῶς ὑπὲρ τῆς ἰδίας τιµῆς οὐκ ἂν ἔλθοις; θαρρῶν οὖν πορεύοµαι πρὸς τὰ λοιπά, γινώσκων ὅτι τὸ ἐγκώµιον | νοῦς µὲν θεοῦ, χεῖρες δὲ γράφουσιν ἀνθρώπου. On this text, its highly rhetorical style, and the use of rhythmical prose see Papanikolaou 2009. See also p. 278. During the initiation into the mysteries of Isis a priest gave courage to the initiates: ‘Have courage, initiates, now that the god has been saved. For we shall receive salvation from troubles.’ (Firmicus Maternus, De errore profanarum religionum 23.5: θαρρεῖτε, µύσται, τοῦ θεοῦ σεσωσµένου· ἔσται γάρ ἡµῖν ἐκ πόνων σωτηρία).

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Angelos Chaniotis I am confident that you shall certainly come. Since you came when I called you to save me, how couldn’t you come now to be honoured? Without fear (θαρρῶν) I am now proceeding to the rest, knowing that this praise is written by mortal hands but by a divine mind.

This praise of Isis was certainly set up in a sanctuary of the goddess, together with other manifestations of piety, especially dedications. In the following sections of this chapter I shall survey such inscriptions that enhanced the fear of god. 3 ‘THOU SHALL NOT ...’: CULT NORMS AND THE FEAR OF PUNISHMENT As recognized by Kritias (see p. 207), a principal function of the fear of god is to endorse obedience to norms. Not only religious norms required such backing; the hymn to Asklepios by Isyllos (see p. 206), for instance, endorsed an aristocratic political regime. In this section I only discuss religious norms and, in particular, cult prescriptions and cult regulations.27 Since piety is expressed through rituals, it follows that the observance of rituals could save a community from the wrath of gods. No less an authority than that of Apollo Klarios declared this. In an oracular response given to Hierapolis when the city was facing a plague (early second century CE), Apollo gave the unambiguous command:28 I command you to avoid the gods’ grievous wrath through libations, feasts, and the offering of hecatombs of full-grown animals.

Another of his oracles, again from Hierapolis but this time fragmentary, mentions the fear of god (θεουδείη) in an unclear context concerning a Roman magistrate – possibly advising the city to accept the verdict of a Roman governor (late second or early third century CE).29 In yet another oracle, this time recommending rituals for the removal of a plague from Ephesos (second century CE), Apollo directly threatens the Ephesians: ‘if you do not follow my commands, you shall pay the penalty of fire.’30 Composed in metrical form and solemnly recited by priests, these words of Apollo must have had the desired impact on an audience confronted with disease. As soon as they were inscribed on stone, they were transformed into unremitting reminders that divine punishment awaits those who disobey sacred norms and 27 28 29

30

For an overview of Greek cult regulations (often misleadingly called ‘sacred laws’ or leges sacrae) see Parker 2004; Lupu 2005, 3–112. Merkelbach and Stauber 1998, 259–261 no. 02/12/01: ὧν ἀπαλεύασθαι κέλοµαι χόλον ἀλγινόεντα | λοιβαῖς εἰλαπίναις τε τεληέσσαις θ᾿ ἑκατόµβαις. Merkelbach and Stauber 1998, 263 no. 02/12/03: ὧδε γὰρ οὐκ ἀφαµαρτήσεις ὧν τοι θε[ὸς αὐδᾷ], | ἐκ δὲ θεουδείης κύρσεις, ἥ σ᾿ οὔτι [κακώσει] (‘In this way you will not fail in what the god pronounces, and through the fear of god, which will not harm you, you shall achieve something.’). Merkelbach and Stauber 1998, 296f. no. 03/02/01: εἰ δέ τε µὴ τελέοιτε, πυρὸς τότε τείσετε ποινάς.

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secular institutions. The oracles from Hierapolis were in fact published as a small ‘anthology’ upon command by Apollo himself and at the expense of some citizen; as we can infer from the dedicatory formula ‘for his own well-being’ ([ὑπὲ]ρ ἑαυτοῦ), the inscription must have been dedicated in a sanctuary, probably a sanctuary of Apollo.31 Prescribed by traditions – both true and ‘invented’ –, believed to have been introduced through divine agency (especially oracles), and expanded through the agency of pious citizens (usually members of the elite),32 ritual norms became known to the worshippers, both orally and in written form. Priestly proclamations at the beginning of rituals encouraged some worshippers to attend without fear while discouraging others who did not fulfil the requirements of purity and morality.33 Such proclamations are echoed by sacred regulations, such as a text from Lindos (early third century CE) which concerns matters of ritual purity. The regulation ends with a metrical text – certainly an oracle – urging those who are pure to enter the precinct of Athena without fear (θαρραλέως) and the impure to depart.34 One of the longest sacred regulations in Greek fixes the requirements for participation in the mysteries performed by a private cult association at Philadelpheia (late second/early first century BCE).35 The founder of the association claimed that he had received ordinances for the performance of purifications and mysteries from Zeus in his sleep: ... When coming into this House, let men and women, free people and slaves, swear by all the gods neither to know nor to make use wittingly of any deceit against a man or a woman, neither poison harmful to men nor harmful spells. They are not themselves to make use of a love potion, abortifacient, contraceptive, or any other thing fatal to children; nor are they to recommend it to, nor connive at it with another. They are not to refrain in any respect from being well intentioned towards this House. If anyone performs or plots any of these things, they are neither to tolerate it nor keep silent, but to expose it and to defend themselves. ...

The text continues with further restrictions, accompanied with blessings and threats: Whoever, woman and man, does any of the things written above, let him not enter this House. For great are the gods set up in it. They watch over these things and will not tolerate those who transgress the ordinances. A free woman is to be chaste and shall not know the bed of, nor have sexual intercourse with, another man except her own husband. But if she does have such knowledge, such a woman is not chaste, but defiled and full of endemic pollution, and unworthy to reverence this god whose holy things these are that have been set up. She is not to be present at the sacrifices, not to offend the purifications and cleansings, not to see the mysteries being performed. But if she does any of these things from the time the ordinances

31 32 33 34 35

On the discovery place see Pugliese Carratelli 1963/64, 351. On the origin of ritual norms see Chaniotis 2003 and 2009c; Stavrianopoulou 2011. Dickie 2004 with examples. Sokolowski 1962, no. 91 lines 23–26: εἴσιθι· τοιγάρ, εἰ καθαρὸς βαίνις, ὦ ξένε, θαρραλέως. Metrical cult regulations are usually oracles; see Petrovic and Petrovic 2006. Sokolowski 1955, no. 20 = TAM V.3.1539; Barton and Horsley 1981; Chaniotis 1997a, 159– 162; Petzl 2003, 93f. I use the translation by Barton and Horsley with small modifications.

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Angelos Chaniotis have come on to this inscription, she shall have evil curses from the gods for disregarding these ordinances. For the god does not desire these things to happen at all, nor does he wish it; but he wants obedience. The gods will be gracious to those who obey, and always give them all good things, whatever gods give to men whom they love. But should any transgress, they shall hate such people and inflict upon them great punishments.

The regulation was endorsed through a ritual: At the monthly and annual sacrifices may those men and women who have confidence in themselves touch this inscription on which the ordinances of the god have been written, in order that those who obey these ordinances and those who do not may be manifest.

The inscription was probably set up in the entrance of the shrine. Before the worshippers were invited to touch the inscription, the text was certainly read aloud to them. The worshippers heard the long list of the gods whose altars were set up in the club-house; they heard the expression ‘great gods’ (θεοὶ ... ἵδρυνται µεγάλοι), which in this period signified divine power, efficacy, and presence, the willingness of the gods both to listen to the just prayers of mortals and to prosecute sinners with their infallible justice (below p. 229);36 they heard both the promise of blessing and the threat of punishment. This cult regulation is more detailed and direct than most similar texts, and thus it helps us understand one of the functions of cult regulations, not as texts but as inscriptions: they were texts meant to be read and sometimes to be ‘performed’ (to be read aloud solemnly) in order to arouse hope and fear. Another metrical cult regulation from Euromos in Karia (late first/early second century CE) expresses similar thoughts in clear and unambiguous language:37 Stranger, if you have a pure heart and if you exercise justice in your soul, then enter this sacred place. But if you are unjust and your mind is impure, then stay away from the immortals and from the sacred precinct. This sacred house does not like evil men and punishes them. To the holy, however, the god gives holy gifts.

Not unlike the text from Philadelpheia, which presents itself as a text directly given by a god, the text from Euromos seems to be an oracle (cf. note 34). It was probably written on one of the doorposts of Zeus’ temple to be read by (or to) the worshippers who approached the sacred place. The emotive impact of other cult regulations was endorsed with curses. In the third century BCE the assembly of the small city of Gambreion in Asia Minor approved of a decree which limited the duration of mourning, especially for women.38 In order to reach its primary addressees, women, this decree was inscribed 36 37

38

Chaniotis 2010, 134; cf. Müller 1913; Peterson 1926, 196–208. Voutiras 1995; Merkelbach and Stauber 1998, 70 no. 01/17/01; SEG XLIII 710: Εἰ καθαράν, ὦ ξεῖνε, φέρεις φρένα καὶ τὸ δίκα[ι]ον | ἤσκηκες ψυχῇ, βαῖνε κατ᾿ εὐίερον· | εἰ δ᾿ ἀδίκων ψαύεις, καί σοι | νόος οὐ καθαρεύει, | πώρρω ἀπ᾿ ἀθανάτων [ἔ]ργεο καὶ τεµένους· οὐ στέργει φαύλους [ἱ]ερὸς δόµος ἀλλὰ κολάζει, | τοῖς δ᾿ ὁσίοις [ὁ]σίους ἀντινέµε[ι χάριτας]. Sokolowski 1955, no. 16. This text has often been discussed in connection with measures for the limitation of lament. See Engels 1998, 70f.; Frisone 2000, 139–154; Stavrianopoulou 2005. The English translation reproduced here is that of Price 1999, 180 no. 14.

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twice, and the two inscriptions were set up in the two sanctuaries most frequently (and exclusively) visited by women: one in front of the doors of the sanctuary of Demeter Thesmophoros, the patron of the women’s festival of the Thesmophoria; the other in front of the temple of Artemis Lochia, the protector of women during pregnancy and at childbirth. Again, rituals endorsed the efficacy of the word: The supervisor of the women elected by the people shall pray at the purification rituals before the Thesmophoria for the men who abide by and the women who obey this law that things will be well and that their existing goods will increase, and that the opposite will occur for the men who do not obey and the women who do not abide by this law. And it shall not be proper for those women, because of their impiety, to sacrifice to any god for ten years.

In addition to the solemn cursing of potential violators, women who did not follow the law were threatened with being prohibited from sacrifice for ten years, that is, with the interruption of communication with the gods. Many sacred regulations do not explicitly refer to divine punishment but imply it with phrases such as ‘he shall be impious’.39 What the cult regulations refer to only as a possibility is presented as a past event in the records of divine justice to which I shall now turn. 4 EPIGRAPHIC MEMORIALS OF DIVINE JUSTICE The sanctuary of the Mother of Gods Autochthon at Leukopetra near the Macedonian city of Beroia was an important cult place that attracted numerous worshippers from the nearby urban centres and the countryside in the Imperial period. As we can infer from the inscriptions in that sanctuary, it was accessible on certain festive days. Many of its visitors used this opportunity to dedicate their slaves, and a few times their children as well, to the goddess. By becoming the property of the goddess and being obliged to serve her on the festive days, the slaves acquired their freedom from their mortal masters.40 The dedications were inscribed on the columns of a portico. Some of them explained the motivation for the dedication. In one case a couple made a dedication after ‘having suffered many terrible misfortunes at the hands of Meter Theon, Autochthon’; in another, a man declared that he had been ‘harassed by the goddess’.41 In a third inscription, an angry man dedicated his female slave who had run away. In asking the goddess to find and keep her, he indirectly urges her to show her punitive power:42 39

40

41 42

E.g. Sokolowski 1955, no. 28 line 17: εἶν[αι ἀσε]βῆ; 53 lines 26f.: ἀσεβῆ καὶ ἄδικον ὑπάρχειν τῶν προγεγραµµένων θεῶν. For a discussion of this term and its meaning see Delli Pizzi 2011. On the legal aspects of this form of ‘sacred manumission’ see Youni 2005. The inscriptions from Leukopetra have been published in Petsas, Hatzopoulos, Gounaropoulou, and Paschidis 2000. On religious aspects see Chaniotis 2009d and 2011, 277–280. Petsas et al. 2000, no. 65: πολλὰ δινὰ κακὰ πάσχοντες ἀπὸ Μητρὸς Θεῶν Αὐτόχθονος; no. 35: ὀχλούµενος ὑπὸ τῆς θε[ο]ῦ. Petsas et al. 2000, no. 53: ἐχαρισόµην κοράσιον ὀνόµατι Συνφέρουσαν ... τὸ κὲ ἀπούλωον τὸ αὐτὴ ἀτῇ ἀναζητήσεις.

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Angelos Chaniotis I dedicated to you a girl by the name of Sympherousa, whom I have lost, so that you can look for her for yourself.

In another sanctuary in Macedonia, that of the Huntress Artemis (Artemis Kynagos), an anonymous woman dedicated a female slave and her descendants ‘after having been harassed by Artemis Ephesia, the one in Kolobaise’.43 All these texts were inscribed in sanctuaries as manifestations of the belief in punishment by vengeful gods for human misdemeanours. Their emotive effect on those who read them – or listened to the texts being read aloud – must have been awe and fear. At first sight, the agents propagating this belief seem to have been the worshippers themselves; we cannot, however, exclude the possibility that they had been advised to do so by the priests or administrators of the sanctuaries. After all, visitors did not have the liberty to set up inscriptions wherever they liked without permission by the sanctuary’s personnel. The active involvement of priests in the recording of the gods’ punitive miracles is attested in the sanctuary of Asklepios in Epidauros. Here, a collection of miracles, including miracles in which Asklepios is shown punishing those who tried to cheat him or who lacked faith, was composed by the cult’s personnel (see pp. 177–204 in this volume). However, the best evidence for priests as agents for the propagation of the fear of the gods is provided by the so-called ‘confession inscriptions’. The term ‘confession inscriptions’ designates a group of texts from Asia Minor (Lydia and Phrygia) which contain confessions of various offences (often violations of ritual norms). They also mention the ritual acts with which the angry gods were propitiated and record exaltations of the divine power. Their dedicators believed that an offence committed either by them or by their relatives had angered a god who prosecuted them with illness, accident, death, or the destruction of their property.44 The relevant texts date from the first to the third century CE; they were written on stone stelae and set up in sanctuaries. It has often been pointed out that the term ‘confession inscription’ isolates only one of their components. These inscriptions combine elements of confession, propitiation, exaltation, and dedication – consequently they share common features with vows, dedications, prayers, aretalogies, and praises –, and were connected with complex ritual actions.45 A more appropriate term for these texts would be ‘records of divine justice’ or ‘records of divine punishment’.

43 44

45

IG X.2.2.233 (Kolobaise, 200 CE): ἐνωχληµέν[η ὑπὸ] Ἀρτέµιδος Ἐφεσίας [τῆς] ἐν Κολοβαίσῃ. Main corpus: Petzl 1994 (cf. Petzl 1997); new texts (‘confession inscriptions’ and related texts): SEG XLVII 1651, 1654, 1751; LIII 1344; LIV 1225; LVII 1158, 1159, 1172–1174, 1182, 1185–1187, 1210, 1211, 1222, 1223 (Herrmann and Malay 2007, nos. 46, 47, 51, 52, 54–56, 66, 70, 72, 83–85); Malay 1999, no. 217; cf. nos. 111–112. For a suspected confession inscription from Jerusalem see SEG LIII 1852 and LVII 1833. Recent studies on the religious significance of ‘confession inscriptions’: Chaniotis 1997b, 2004a, and 2009b (with further bibliography); Petzl 1998; de Hoz 1999, 114–124; Versnel 2002, 63–67; Rostad 2002 and 2005; Schnabel 2003; Gordon 2004a and 2004b; Belayche 2006, 2007, and 2008. On the rituals see Chaniotis 2009b.

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Despite many uncertainties, it seems that these texts come from individuals who thought that a god was inflicting punishment on them because they had, intentionally or not, committed a crime or violated a norm. In this difficult situation they made vows to the gods and appealed to local sanctuaries, where the god revealed the cause of his anger and the way in which atonement could be achieved. This was done by means of oracles, divine messengers, or dreams, and with the active assistance of priests, who interpreted the signs of the divine will and advised those who wished to atone for their misdemeanours. In cases of disputes between villagers, the priests served as arbitrators, swore in the parties, or cursed the offenders in order to attract the gods’ interest towards the offence. An example illuminates the background of these ‘records of divine justice’. The delinquent reports:46 I suffered punishment because I was not ready, and I received the following oracular response: ‘because you are impure’.

Some worshippers received an oracular response indicating the possible cause of the divine wrath, others identified this either by interrogating relatives or through discussions with the priests. If they were unable to find an explanation, they could atone for ‘known and unknown sins’ (ἐξ εἰδότων καὶ µὴ εἰδότων; p. 219 figure 2).47 The offenders atoned for their failing by erecting a stele with the record of their offense and punishment, making a dedication, performing rituals (purification, praise of the gods), and sometimes paying a fine to the sanctuary.48 A few selected inscriptions shall illustrate the impact of such monuments on the visitors of sanctuaries. The first text from Kollyda (205 CE) narrates in a very syncopated form the sin of two brothers who prevented their father from propitiating the gods. A fragmentary relief seems to represent a man being killed by an animal (figure 1):49 Ammianos and Hermogenes, sons of Tryphon, appear (at the sanctuary) asking the gods, Men Motyllites and Zeus Sabazios and Artemis Anaitis, and the great senate and the council of the gods, asking also the village and the sacred doumos [assocaition?], in order that they may find mercy. For they have been punished because they seized their father, while he was acknowledging the powers of the gods. And their father did not obtain pity but died. – ‘Nobody should ever disparage the gods’. – They wrote (this) on account of his first written declaration and dedicated (the stele) praising the gods. 46 47 48 49

Petzl 1994, 115f. no. 98 (Bulladan, second century CE); Chaniotis 2009b, 131 with note 74: κολασθεὶς διὰ τὸ µ ἕτοιµον εἶνε κὲ κ̣εκληδονίσθε µε «ὅτι µεµολυµένος εἶ». Chaniotis 2009b, 134 with note 90. Chaniotis 2009b, 134–142. Herrmann and Malay 2007, no. 85 (SEG LVII 1186): Ἀµµιανὸς καὶ Ἑρµογένης Τρύφωνος πάρισιν ἐρωτῶντες τοὺς θεούς, Μῆνα Μοτυλλίτην καὶ ∆ία Σαβάζιον καὶ Ἄρτεµιν Ἀναεῖτιν καὶ µεγάλην συνᾶτος καὶ σύνκλητον τῶν θεῶν, ἐρωτῶντες τὴν κατοικία[ν] καὶ τὸν ἱερὸν δοῦµον, ἵνα ἐλέου τύχωσιν. Ἐπὶ ἐκολάσθη[σ]αν οὗτοι, ὅτι τὸν πατέρα ἐκράτησαν ἐξοµολογούµενον τὰς δυνάµις τῶν θεῶν. Καὶ ἐληµοσύνην µὴ λαβόντος τοῦ πατρὸς αὐτῶν, ἀλλὰ ἀποτελεσθέντος αὐτοῦ. – «Μή τίς ποτε παρευτελίσι τοὺς θεούς». – ∆ιὰ τὰς π[ρ]ώτας προγραφὰς αὐτοῦ ἔγρα[ψ]αν καὶ ἀνέθηκαν εὐλογοῦντε[ς] τοῖς θεοῖς. Cf. Chaniotis 2011, 283f.

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Figure 1. Relief stele from Kollyda (Lydia, 205 CE) with a record of divine punishment and atonement. The relief probably represents the death of a man who had failed to reconcile himself with the gods.

It seems that Tryphon was about to confess a sin, probably after having been punished by the gods, but was held back by his sons. As his reconciliation with the gods was denied to him, he met with a violent death. The wrath of the gods then fell on his sons, until they were forced to come to the sanctuary and confess their sin, so as to put an end to their prosecution by the gods. Their question was addressed to three particular gods who were very popular in this region: the Iranian moon-god Mes or Men, whose sanctuary was at Motylla; Zeus Sabazios; and the Iranian goddess Anahita, identified with the Greek Artemis. Their case was also presented to a council of gods, which is sometimes mentioned in these confession inscriptions and was perceived as a divine court.50 But this affair was not only a matter between these sinners and the gods through the mediation of priests. Their village (katoikia) and a religious association (hieros doumos) were also involved, certainly as an audience, possibly as witnesses and advisors. The brothers’ reconciliation with the gods was achieved when they erected a stele with their confession and a quite unambiguous visual message (figure 1). In the text they quoted a statement written by their father (or an oracle) which would serve as a warning to others: ‘nobody should ever disparage the gods.’ The text ends with a reference to the fact that the repentant sinners praised the gods – probably in the usual form of acclamations.

50

Chaniotis 2009b, 131–134.

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Figure 2 (left). Stele of unknown provenance (Lydia, third century CE) recording atonement from ‘known and unknown sins’; under the pediment representation of the statue of Mes, holding his sceptre. Figure 3 (right): Stele from Silandos (235 CE) recording Theodoros’ confessions, the responses of the god Mes, and ritual instructions. The drawing of a crescent moon symbolises Mes’ power, that of two eyes alludes to Theodoros’ punishment with an affliction of his eyes.

Another example illustrates the transmission of the gods’ oracular responses to sinners by the priests. Theodoros, a sacred slave at Silandos (235 CE), had repeatedly violated the obligation of sexual abstinence and had even committed adultery. When his sight was afflicted, he went to the sanctuary. There, he may have been kept in custody – possibly not as a punishment but as a result of his affliction – and he received instructions concerning the rituals through which he could propitiate Mes, the god who had punished him. The crescent moon and pair of eyes represented on the stele allude to the punishing god and the affliction (figure 3). The text does not give a continuous narrative of the events, but presents three confessions by Theodoros, followed by divine utterances and ritual instructions. The gods’ declarations and the instructions were probably given by the priests,

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who impersonated the gods. With Zeus’ assistance the council of the gods in a heavenly court entreated Mes to forgive Theodoros.51 Theod.: ‘For I have been brought to my senses by the gods, by Zeus and the Great Mes Artemidorou.’ Mes: I have punished Theodoros on his eyes for his offences.’ Theod.: ‘I had sexual intercourse with Trophime, the slave of Haplokomas, the wife of Eutychis, in the praetorium.’ He takes the first sin away with a sheep, a partridge, a mole. Second sin. Theod.: ‘While I was a slave of the gods of Nonnos, I had sexual intercourse with the flautist Ariagne.’ He takes away with a ‘piglet’, a tuna, (another) fish. Theod.: ‘For my third sin I had sexual intercourse with the flautist Aretousa. He takes away with a chicken, a sparrow, a pigeon. A kypros of barley and wheat, a prochous of wine, a kypros of clean (?) wheat for the priests, one prochous. Theod.: ‘I asked for Zeus’ assistance.’ Mes: ‘See! I have blinded him for his sins.’ But, since he has appeased the gods and has erected the stele, he has taken his sins away. ‘Asked by the council (I respond that) I am kindly disposed, if (or when) he sets up my stele on the day I have ordered. You may open the prison. I set the convict free after one year and ten months.’

The ritual described in this text is labelled in other texts as triphonon (triad of animals) or enneaphonon (three triads of animals). It seems to be a specific, local ritual expressed in Greek terms. The triads of animals probably represent elements, such as earth, sky, the underworld, and water. The ritual transmission of the sin to animals recalls scapegoat rituals, but also finds parallels in Hittite rituals. Such rituals included the release of animals (birds, fish, mice) to remove evil and sins, followed by incantations. The scene described in this text must have taken place in a sanctuary or a temple, in front of the images of the divinities. The importance of the sanctuary as the stage for the rituals of confession and praise is also clear in one of the most detailed inscriptions, which concerns the conflict between a woman (Tatias) and her village (Kollyda, 156/7 CE):52 51

52

Petzl 1994, 7–11 no. 5 lines 2–26: «Κατὰ τὸ ἐφρενωθεὶς ὑπὸ τῶν θεῶν, ὑπὸ τοῦ ∆ιὸς κὲ τοῦ (Μηνὸς) µεγάλου Ἀρτεµιδώρου». — «Ἐκολασόµην τὰ ὄµατα τὸν Θεόδωρον κατὰ τὰς ἁµαρτίας, ἃς ἐπύησεν». — «Συνεγενόµην τῇ πεδίσχῃ τῶ Ἁπλοκόµα, τῇ Τροφίµῃ, τῆ γυναικὶ τῇ Εὐτύχηδος εἰς τὸ πλετώριν». — Ἀπαίρι τὴν πρώτην ἁµαρτίαν προβά̣τῳ {ν}, πέρδεικι, ἀσφάλακι. ∆ευτέρα ἁµαρτία. «Ἀλλὰ δοῦλος ὢν τῶν θεῶν τῶν ἐν Νονου συνεγενόµην τῇ Ἀριάγνῃ τῇ µοναυλίᾳ». — ᾿παίρι χύρῳ, θείννῳ, ἐχθύει. «Τῇ τ̣ρίτῃ ἁµαρτίᾳ συνεγενόµην Ἀρεθούσῃ µοναυλίᾳ». — ᾿παίρι ὄρνειθι, στρουθῷ, περιστερᾷ, κύ(πρῳ) κρειθοπύρων, πρό(χῳ) οἴνου· κύ(πρῳ?) πυρῶν καθαρὸς τοῖς εἱεροῖς, πρό(χῳ?) α´. — «Ἔσχα παράκλητον τὸν ∆είαν». — «Εἴδαι, κατὰ τὰ πυήµατα πεπηρώκιν». Νῦν δὲ εἱλαζοµένου αὐτοῦ τοὺς θεοὺς κὲ στηλογραφοῦντος ἀνερύσετον τὰς ἁµαρτίας. Ἠρωτηµαίνος ὑπὸ τῆς συνκλήτου· «εἵλεος εἶµαι ἀναστανοµένης τῆς στήλλην µου, ᾗ ἡµέρᾳ ὥρισα. Ἀνύξαις τὴν φυλακήν, ἐξαφίω τὸν κατάδικον διὰ ἐνιαυτοῦ κὲ µηνῶν ι´ περιπ̣ατούντων». Chaniotis 2009b, 131–133 (with further bibliography). Petzl 1994, 88–90 no. 69 lines 3–34: ... ἐπὶ Ἰουκοῦνδος ἐγένετο ἐν διαθέσι µανικῇ καὶ ὑπὸ πάντων διεφηµίσθη ὡς ὑπὸ Τατιας τῆς πενθερᾶς αὐτοῦ φάρµακον αὐτῷ δεδόσθαι, ἡ δὲ Τατιας ἐπέστησεν σκῆπτρον καὶ ἀρὰς ἔθηκεν ἐν τῷ ναῷ ὡς ἱκανοποιοῦσα περὶ τοῦ πεφηµίσθαι αὐτὴν ἐν συνειδήσι τοιαύτῃ, οἱ θεοὶ αὐτὴν ἐποίησαν ἐν κολάσει, ἣν οὐ διέφυγεν· ὁµοίως καὶ Σωκράτης ὁ υἱὸς αὐτῆς παράγων τὴν ἴσοδον τὴν ἰς τὸ ἄλσος ἀπάγουσαν

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Since Jucundus was struck by insanity and it was rumoured by everybody that he had been given a potion by his mother-in-law Tatias, Tatias set up a sceptre and deposited imprecations in the temple to defend herself against an imputation, although she was conscious (of her guilt). For this reason the gods exercised a punishment which she did not escape. Similarly, her son Sokrates, when he was passing by the entrance which leads to the grove, having a sickle in his hands with which one cuts down vines, the sickle fell on his foot and, thus, he suffered punishment within a day and died. The gods at Azitta are great! They demanded that the sceptre and the imprecations made in the temple be annulled; Sokrateia, Moschas, Jucundus, and Menekrates, the children of Jucundus and Moschion and grandchildren of Tatias, annulled this, atoning in every way the gods. Having reported the power of the gods on a stele, we praise the gods from now on.

In order to defend her honour and free herself from slander, Tatias went to the sanctuary and cursed her accusers (‘she set up the sceptre and deposited imprecations’). Tatias’ ritual actions were performed in public, in the temple, the most prominent public space of a small community, possibly on the day of a festival. The ceremony consisted of the setting up of a sceptre, the symbol of divine power. This is a common attribute of Mes in the reliefs that decorate the stelae recording divine punishment (figure 2). The sceptre’s erection was presumably carried out by the priests. During the ceremony they probably mentioned the case for which it was being set up and invoked the particular god whose sceptre was being erected and who was expected to punish the culprit.53 Such ceremonies were also performed against the violators of graves. In Saittai, for example, a family that had built a grave warned potential wrongdoers that it had ‘made an imprecation in order that no one should harm the grave, because sceptres have been set up’.54 As well as putting up a sceptre Tatias ‘deposited curses in the temple’, in order to demonstrate publicly that the accusations against her were unfounded. But when misfortunes befell her family, this was interpreted by the community as punishment for an unjustified curse. To put an end to the divine prosecution, Tatias’ grandchildren ritually annulled the curses and ‘praised the gods from now on’. The praise of the gods, which is only mentioned here and in similar inscriptions, is more evident in another inscription from Lydia which, without being a ‘confession’, is still a record of divine punishment (57 CE):55

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δρέπανον κρατῶν ἀµπελοτόµον, ἐκ τῆς χειρὸς ἔπεσεν αὐτῷ ἐπὶ τὸν πόδα καὶ οὕτως µονηµέρῳ κολάσει ἀπηλλάγη. Μεγάλοι οὖν οἱ θεοὶ οἱ ἐν Αζιττοις· ἐπεζήτησαν λυθῆναι τὸ σκῆπτρον καὶ τὰς ἀρὰς τὰς γενοµένας ἐν τῷ ναῷ· ἃ ἔλυσαν τὰ Ἰοκούνδου καὶ Μοσχίου, ἔγγονοι δὲ τῆς Τατιας, Σωκράτεια καὶ Μοσχᾶς καὶ Ἰουκοῦνδος καὶ Μενεκράτης κατὰ πάντα ἐξειλασάµενοι τοὺς θεοὺς, καὶ ἀπὸ νοῖν εὐλογοῦµεν στηλλογραφήσαντες τὰς δυνάµις τῶν θεῶν. Discussion: Zingerle 1926, 16–23; Versnel 2002, 64f.; Chaniotis 2004a, 11– 13; 2004b, 245–256; 2009b, 122–125. Chaniotis 2009b, 121–124. TAM V.1, 160 = Strubbe 1997, 53 no. 62 (108 CE) lines 5–8: καὶ ἐπηράσαντο µή τις αὐτοῦ τῷ µνηµείῳ προσαµάρτῃ διὰ τὸ ἐπιστᾶσθαι σκῆπτρα. SEG LIII 1344 (Magazadamları, Lydia): Μεγάλη Μήτηρ Μηνὸς Ἀξιοττηνοῦ. Μηνὶ Οὐρανίῳ, Μηνὶ Ἀρτεµιδώρου Ἀξιοττα κατέχοντι. Γλύκων Ἀπολλωνίου καὶ Μύρτιον Γλύκωνος εὐλογίαν ὑπὲρ τῆς ἑαυτῶν σωτηρίας καὶ τῶν ἰδίων τέκνων. Σὺ γάρ µε, κύριε, αἰχµαλωτιζόµενον ἠλέησες. Μέγα σοι τὸ ὅσιον, µέγα σοι τὸ δίκαιον, µεγάλη νείκη,

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Angelos Chaniotis Great is the Mother of Mes Axiottenos! – Glykon, the son of Apollonios, and Myrtion, the wife of Apollonios, (set up) this praise for Mes Ouranios and for Mes of Artemidoros who rules over Axiotta, for their rescue and for that of their children. – ‘For you, Lord, have shown mercy, when I was a captive’. – Great is your holiness! Great is your justice! Great is your victory! Great your punishing power! Great is the Dodekatheon that has been established in your vicinity! – ‘For the son of my brother Demainetos made me his captive. For I had neglected my own affairs and helped you, as if you were my own son. But you locked me in and kept me a captive, as if I were a criminal and not your paternal uncle! Now, great is Mes, the ruler over Axiotta! You have given me satisfaction. I praise you’.

This text consists of acclamations and an account given by Glykon before an audience in a sanctuary. Glykon had been locked up by his nephew, probably in the course of a family quarrel. After an unknown incident was interpreted by the nephew as divine punishment, he was forced to set his uncle free. Glykon came to the sanctuary, accompanied by his nephew, and presented his accusations in an emotional manner. In so doing, he indicated his nephew’s ingratitude and praised the god. Presumably, Glykon’s dedication and praise were accompanied by the nephew’s propitiation of the god in accordance with the manner often described in such records of divine punishment (public confession, request for forgiveness, performance of a propitiatory ritual, praise). We may assume that the acclamations recorded in the text were performed during the erection of the stele. Records of divine punishment do not only appear in ‘confession inscriptions’. As we have already seen, divine punishment is occasionally mentioned in the healing miracles of Epidauros (see pp. 209f. and 224), in manumission records in the sanctuary of the Mother of the Gods at Leukopetra, and in ordinary dedications (pp. 215f.). They are also found in decrees, such as a decree of Stratonikeia which records a miracle of Zeus. When the sanctuary of Zeus and Hekate at Panamara was under attack by the troops of Labienus during one of the last wars of the Late Republic (c. 40 BCE), Zeus burned the weapons of the enemy with his divine fire. A sudden storm with thunder and lightning terrified the enemy to such an extent that ‘many were those who deserted, asking for forgiveness and crying out with a loud voice, “Great is Zeus Panamaros”’. In this confusion and chaos, the enemy soldiers ended up killing and wounding one another; out of their senses, as if pursued by the Furies, they met a terrible death in the nearby mountains. When the enemy attempted a second attack, surrounding the fort and laying a siege, they heard cries, as if help was coming from the city, and the loud barking of dogs. Besides the aforementioned texts, which mention divine punishment as a fait accompli, a large variety of inscriptions present it as a possibility. These texts confront their readers with a threat and therefore fulfil a similar emotive function. Aretalogies of Isis (see pp. 267–291) present the goddess as the guarantor of µεγάλαι σαὶ νεµέσεις, µέγα σοι τὸ δωδεκάθεον τὸ παρὰ σοὶ κατεκτισµένον. Ἠχµαλωτίσθην ὑπὸ ἀδελφοῦ τέκνου τοῦ ∆ηµαινέτου. Ὅτι τὰ ἐµὰ προέλειψα καί σοι βοΐθεαν ἔδωκα ὡς τέκνῳ. Σὺ δὲ ἐξέκλεισές µε καὶ ᾐχµαλώτισάς µε οὐχ ὡς πάτρως, ἀλλὰ ὡς κακοῦργον. Μέγας οὖν ἐστι Μεὶς Ἀξιοττα κατέχων. Τὸ εἱκανόν µοι ἐποίησας. Εὐλογῶ ὑµεῖν. Discussion: Chaniotis 2009b, 116–122.

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social norms and therefore indirectly threaten transgressors with prosecution by the goddess.56 Aretalogies were not only set up in sanctuaries; they were also orally performed in them. Curses often do not simply request divine action against an opponent of the defigens; they also explicitly plead for the divine punishment of wrongdoers.57 Sometimes they were publicly exposed in sanctuaries – as seems to have been the case in the sanctuary of Demeter at Knidos.58 A ‘prayer for justice’ at Delos was set up in the sanctuary of the Syrian goddess; the author of the text not only invoked the justice of the goddess but also urged worshippers to abuse the woman who had wronged him continuously in their speech (see pp. 251f. in this volume). Curses against suspected wrongdoers were often performed in sanctuaries. This is certain in the case of funerary imprecations. Those who engraved these, invoking the anger of the gods against violators of graves, sometimes explicitly state that a ceremony of cursing (the setting up of the sceptres of gods) had taken place.59 Pleas for the punishment of the people responsible for an individual’s death were inscribed on tombstones (see pp. 235–266). This interplay of sacred space, texts (eulogies, records of miracles and manifestations of divine anger), images, and performances (acclamations, orally performed aretalogies, imprecations) contributed to the construction of fear of gods. 5 SPACE, TEXT, IMAGE, PERFORMANCE What all the texts discussed in this chapter have in common regardless of their ncontent is the fact that they were set up in sacred space. The healing miracles of Epidauros were inscribed on stelae dedicated to Apollo and Asklepios; the manumission records from Leukopetra were dedications of slaves to the goddess, inscribed on the columns of a building in the sanctuary; confession inscriptions and praises referring to divine punishment were dedicated in sanctuaries; cult 56

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See e.g. the aretalogy of Kyme (first century BCE/first century CE; Bricault 2005, no. 302/0204; see pp. 287–289 in this volume): ‘I established laws for human beings and created legislation which no one has the power to change. .... I made justice strong. ... I ended the rule of tyrants. I ended murders. ... I legislated that truth be considered a fine thing. I invented marriage contracts. ... I made nothing more respected than the oath. I delivered the person plotting unjustly against another into the hands of the person plotted against. I inflict punishment on those acting unjustly. I legislated mercy for the suppliant. I honour those who avenge themselves with justice. Through me justice is mighty.’ For this reason, and despite the objections of Dreher 2010, it is legitimate to distinguish a sub-group of ‘prayers for justice’, i.e. curses that present justifications for the suffering of an opponent, within the more general genre of curses; this distinction is a useful hereustic tool that allows us to study the ancient mentality. On ‘prayers for justice’ see pp. 236f. in this volume. For the publicity of curses in some cases, see Kiernan 2003; Chaniotis 2009b, 125. Knidos: Chaniotis 2009d, 63–66; on these Knidian curses see also pp. 253–255 in this volume. A curse tablet from Maionia preserves a suspension hole: SEG XXVIII 1568; XL 1049; Versnel 1999, 145f.; 2002, 55f.; Chaniotis 2009b, 127f. (with further bibliography). Strubbe 1997, 48; Chaniotis 2009b, 124 (with examples).

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regulations were usually inscribed in the entrance of sacred precincts or in front of temples. For this reason a sanctuary’s sacred space acquired great significance in shaping the image of god(s) and, in particular, propagating fear of god(s). The sanctuaries were also the places where relevant rituals were performed and, more importantly, they were the places where agents of religious mentality operated: the priests, who compiled collections of miracles, communicated and interpreted the expression of divine will (e.g. oracles), interacted with worshippers, and composed cult regulations; the authors of aretalogies; the cult personnel that regulated the setting up of inscriptions and dedications; and finally the pious worshippers themselves. Inscriptions are texts, but texts of a peculiar kind. Their significance changed depending on where they were set up; their ‘messages’ could be enhanced through images (e.g. figures 1–3; cf. below note 73) and the form of the monument; and precisely because they were set up in sacred and not private space, they reached their audiences through performance (loud reading, recitation). The varying interdependence between text, space, image, and performance gives inscriptions their particular significance. This applies also to inscriptions that aimed to shape the ‘profile’ of a divinity for worshippers. This interdependence is not always directly attested, but it can be safely inferred from a variety of testimonia. Let us take, for example, the healing miracles of Epidauros. One of the stories refers to a paralyzed man who came to the sanctuary of Asklepios.60 When he looked at the dedications and the healing narratives, ‘he did not believe in the cures and sneered somewhat at the inscriptions’ (ὑποδιέσυρε τὰ ἐπιγράµµα[τ]α). The use of the verb ὑποδιασύρω (‘to ridicule, to scorn’) makes it clear that he did not keep his comments to himself; he interacted with other worshippers. In the aforementioned cult regulation from Philadelpheia (see pp. 213f.) the inscription that contained the prescriptions and prohibitions was set up at the cult place’s entrance and was integrated into the ritual: the worshippers had to touch the stone whenever they entered, confirming that they abode by the cult association’s moral and religious principles. In view of such testimonia, one can understand the function and impact of dedications in sanctuaries. One of the ‘confession inscriptions’ concerns the preventive cursing of those who might commit theft in a public bath. A thief who ignored this was punished by the god and forced to confess his crime and deliver the garment he had stolen: A sceptre was set up in case someone should steal something from the bath. When a garment was stolen, the god angrily prosecuted the thief and made him, after some time, bring the garment to the god. And he confessed. Through a messenger the god ordered the garment to 61 be sold and (the manifestation of) his power to be written on a stele.

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IG IV2.1.121 lines 22–33; LiDonnici 1995, 86f. A3. For the text see p. 197, Appendix, no. A3. Petzl 1994, 3–5 no. 3 lines 2–11 (Saittai, 164 CE): ἐπεὶ ἐπεστάθη σκῆπτρον, εἴ τις ἐκ τοῦ βαλανείου τι κλέψι, κλαπέντος οὖν εἱµατίου ὁ θεὸς ἐνεµέσησε τὸν κλέπτην καὶ ἐπόησε

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Figure 4. Stele with a record of divine punishment from the area of Saittai (Lydia). A thief brings to the god Mes a garment that he had stolen from a bath; the inscription narrates the incident (164/5 CE).

As in the case of other records of divine punishment, an image (figure 4) attracted the visitors’ attention. If they were not able to read the text themselves, they could ask another worshipper or the priests. But it is also possible that such inscriptions were read out to the worshippers from time to time, as happened with the narratives of miracles in the worship of Sarapis. As we learn from a papyrus fragment from Egypt (second century CE), the priest read narratives aloud from collections of miracles. The reading was followed by acclamations by the worshippers.62 Inscriptions could attract a worshipper’s attention in different ways: through their location – for instance, at the entrance of a precinct, in front of a temple, near the incubation room in a healing sanctuary –, with their decoration, or by their size. An inscription from Delos found in the area of Sarapis’ sanctuary (Serapeum A) contains a text of 94 lines which narrates both in prose and in verse how the

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µετὰ χρόνον τὸ εἱµάτιον ἐνενκῖν ἐπὶ τὸν θεόν, καὶ ἐξωµολογήσατο. Ὁ θεὸς οὖν ἐκέλευσε δι᾿ ἀνγέλου πραθῆναι τὸ εἱµάτιν καὶ στηλλογραφῆσαι τὰς δυνάµεις. P.Oxy. XI.1382: Ἡ ἀρετὴ ἐν ταῖς Μερκουρίου βιβλιοθήκαις· οἱ παρόντες εἴπατε «εἷς Ζεὺς Σάραπις» (‘this miracle is contained in the Library of Mercurius; those who are present should exclaim: “One Zeus Sarapis!”’).

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cult was introduced, how the god faced the opposition of local authorities, and how his priest overcame this resistance with the god’s miraculous assistance. The exact original location of the stone (a marble column) in the sanctuary is not known, but its size is impressive (1.25 m).63 One of the texts is a poem of 64 lines, which may have been performed during a celebration. An inscription from Maroneia in Thrace (c. 100 BCE) which contains a long encomium of Isis is not entirely preserved.64 The surviving section is 44 lines long, and the stele is 53 cm high. The text is a highly rhetorical composition65 which was originally meant for oral delivery. The orator explains that the goddess had healed him and asks her to approach again:66 Isis, as you once listened to my prayers concerning my eyes, now come to receive your praise and to listen to my second prayer. For your praise is more important than my eyes with which I have seen the sun. I am confident that you shall certainly come. Since you came when I called on you to save me, how could you not come now to be honoured? Without fear I am now proceeding to the rest, knowing that this praise is written with mortal hands but a divine mind.

By communicating his personal experience, the author gave hope to others. By referring to his reciprocal relation with the goddess – fulfilment of a prayer followed by gratitude –, he provided other worshippers with an exemplum. By referring to his divine inspiration, he gave his text a higher authority. By eloquently praying again, he invited the goddess to return. All this suggests that the praise was intended for re-performance on later occasions as well. The author expresses his confidence that the goddess would come. This confidence was made visible with a particular type of dedication in the sanctuaries of Egyptian gods: footprints that indicated the presence of the gods.67 Similarly, representations of ears in reliefs (e.g. p. 95 figure 2 in this volume) alluded to the expectation that gods listened to prayers; anatomical votives showed the parts of the body that were cured by the god – or afflicted with disease as punishment (p. 227 figure 5);68 and hands raised in prayer on tombstones informed the passer-by and potential robber that divine protection had been invoked.69 All these were means of attracting worshippers’ attention to the inscription. And the reading of the inscription in its

63 64 65 66

67 68 69

Main editions: IG XI.4.1299; Engelman 1975; Bricault 2005, no. 202/0101. Editions: Grandjean 1975; Loukopoulou et al. 2005, 383–385 no. E205; Bricault 2005, 176– 178. See the thorough analysis by Papanikolaou 2009. Lines 6–13: ὥσπερ οὖν ἐπὶ τῶν ὀµµάτων, Ἶσι, ταῖς εὐχαῖς [ἐπήκο]υσας, ἐλθὲ τοῖς ἐπαίνοις καὶ ἐπὶ δευτέραν εὐχήν· [κα]ὶ γ̣ὰρ τὸ σὸν ἐγκώµιον τῶν ὀµµάτων ἐστὶ κρεῖσσον [ἅπ]αν, οἷς ἔβλεψα τὸν ἥλιον· τούτοις καὶ τὸν σὸν βλέπω κόσµον· πείθοµαι δὲ πάντως σε παρέσεσθαι. εἰ γὰρ ὑπὲρ τῆς ἐµῆς καλουµένη σωτηρίας ἦλθες, πῶς ὑπὲρ τῆς ἰδίας τιµῆς οὐκ ἂν ἔλθοις; θαρρῶν οὖν πορεύοµαι πρὸς τὰ λοιπά, γινώσκων ὅτι τὸ ἐγκώµιον νοῦς µὲν θεοῦ, χεῖρες δὲ γράφουσιν ἀνθρώπου. Dunbabin 1990. Van Straten 1981, 105–151; Chaniotis 1995; Forsén 1996. Graf 2007.

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decorative, spatial, and ritual setting added to the stimulation of the three most important emotions in ancient religious experience: fear, hope, and gratitude.

Figure 5. Stele from Kollyda (?, second century CE) recording the punishment of a woman: Glykia had been punished by Anaitis with a disease in her buttock. Responding to the goddess’ request, she dedicated the stele. The relief represents the diseased part of her body.

6 EMOTION AND JUDGMENT: FEAR AND SUBORDINATION TO NORMS The fear of god is a constitutive element of religiosity in the Greek and Hellenised world, since popular religion can be understood as belief in the presence and power of (a) god, a belief that was based on experience and was both expressed and enhanced through rituals (§ 1). The experience that supported the belief in god(s) was often an emotional one – including that of fear (§ 2). For this reason, piety was closely connected with the fear of gods. This sentiment was at times endorsed by secular and religious authorities or by pious devotees. Several groups

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of inscriptions from sanctuaries in Greece and Asia Minor clearly address the fear of gods and, in particular, the fear of divine punishment: cult regulations (§ 3); narratives of punitive miracles; confession inscriptions; dedications; and funerary imprecations (§ 4). The interplay of sacred space, text, image, and ritual enhanced the emotive power of these inscriptions which was expected to promote piety (§ 5). The part played by emotions in the texts that I have discussed in this chapter is evident. The ‘confession inscriptions’ continually describe or allude to a variety of emotions – fear, hope, shame, honour, anger –, but their common denominator is the fear of gods. The fear of divine punishment is also explicitly stated in the cult regulations; it is described in narratives of punitive miracles; it is the background for propitiatory dedications. These inscriptions were simultaneously normative, performative, and emotive. The normative nature of inscriptions is clearly evident in the case of cult regulations. What the cult regulations did in a direct manner – prescribing behaviour – was done indirectly by dedications, healing miracles, and records of divine punishment. By telling a story – a miracle, the fulfilment of a prayer, the punishment of a transgression – they served as exempla. It is explicitly stated in many ‘confession inscriptions’ that they had been set up as exempla (ἐξεµπλάριον, ὑπόδειγµα) and proofs (µαρτύριον) of the effectiveness of divine justice. 70 They urged their viewers and readers to interpret the problems that occurred in their everyday life, both little and big, as punishments for their offences. Eulogies and acclamations gave public testimony to the power of a god and confirmed the worshipper’s faith, thus contributing to the intensity of emotions during celebrations. The reliefs that decorated the stelae sometimes depicted the performance of acclamations.71 Oral praise was an effective, albeit ephemeral, means of attracting the attention of pilgrims to divine power. It was the erection of the stele (στηλογραφεῖν) that made the ephemeral ritual into a perpetual exemplum (ἐξεµπλάριον) for others. No demonstration of divine power is meaningful if there is no one to testify to it. The very word that describes the manifestation of divine power (epiphaneia) underlines the visual nature (φαίνειν/φαίνεσθαι) of the miracle. A ‘confession inscription’ explicitly associates the erection of the inscription (ἐστηλογράφησεν) with the pronouncement of instructions (παραγγέλλων): a man ‘set up a stele, ordering (others) not to neglect the god.’72 The stereotypical images that decorated the stelae – especially those of ‘confessions’ (pp. 219, 225, and 227 figures 2–5) and dedications (p. 95 figure 2 and p. 218 figure 1) – enhanced the

70

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Ἐξεµπλάριον: Petzl 1994, nos. 106, 111, 112, 120, 121. Μαρτύριον: Petzl 1994, nos. 9 and 17; cf. the verb µαρτυρεῖν: Petzl 1994, nos. 8, 17, 68. Cf. Versnel 1999, 153; Chaniotis 2009b, 124. Petzl 1994, nos. 6, 7, 10–12, 20, 37, 38. Petzl 1994, 136f. no. 117 (unknown provenance in Phrygia, Imperial period): ἐστηλογράφησεν παραγέλων µηδένα καταφρονεῖ[ν τοῦ θεοῦ?]. On the emotive significance of καταφρονέω see pp. 74f. in this volume.

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message. 73 These images – diseased parts of the body, hands raised in prayer for revenge, the god Mes with the sceptre symbolizing his power, worshippers performing gestures of adoration –, deeply embedded as they were in contemporary experiences and cult practices, served as visual signals that attracted the attention of the worshipper. The stereotypical phrases used in these texts, especially the stereotypical vocabulary of divine punishment and the standardized phrases of acclamations (heis, megas etc), fulfilled a function as acoustic signals.74 For instance, the phrase θεοὶ ... ἵδρυνται µεγάλοι (‘great gods have been established here’) in the cult regulation from Philadelpheia (see pp. 213f.) quotes the common acclamation µέγας θεός,75 which had a strong emotive function in this period as a reference to the efficacy, presence, grace, and infallible justice of a god. Just as the verb περιοράω (‘to remain indifferent’) in decrees appealed to pity, just as the verb καταφρονέω in petitions on papyri underscored female weakness, just as φθόνος in Attic oratory was used to arouse anger, so µέγας θεός in inscriptions with a religious content was expected to arouse hope of grace in the pious, and fear of punishment in the impious. The emotive meaning of words in specific contexts – for instance, Ausländer in German or liberal in American-English – is stronger than their literal meaning. If I were to ask someone what Z is, the response that I would get in countries that use the Latin alphabet is that it is the last letter of the alphabet; Greeks would recognise the sixth letter of their alphabet and at the same time the numeral seven; cinephiles might be reminded of the sign of Zorro or of Costa Gavra’s movie. But for a Greek alive in the sixties and seventies of the twentieth century, Z (pronounced zi, ζῆ) means ‘he is alive’ – referring to Gregoris Lambrakis, a murdered member of parliament and peace activist of the Left. ‘Z’ was the symbol of Greek progressive youth in the sixties, the symbol of a movement that led to the collapse of the conservative government in 1963. In Greece, in a very specific historical context, ‘Z’ had an emotive function embedded in specific experiences. Similarly, only when we study the emotional background in which ancient texts and images are embedded can we properly understand them as acoustic and visual signals that aimed to arouse emotions. Texts and images set up in sanctuaries were such signals that inspired the fear of god. Their meaning was activated during rituals and became effective in the presence of large audiences and during collective actions. The reconstruction of these emotional contexts and the emotional communities that were associated with them is a great challenge for the ancient historian.

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On the importance of the reliefs on the ‘confession inscriptions’ see Gordon 2004a, 185; Belayche 2008. On the emotive impact of such acoustic signals see also pp. 114 and 363 in this volume. On this acclamation see Müller 1913; Peterson 1926, 196–208; Chaniotis 2010. For its presence in records of divine punishment see Chaniotis 2009b, 115f., 118f.

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One of the most fascinating subjects in the study of emotions, both in the humanities and the sciences, is the study of the interdependence of attention, memory, emotion, cognition, and decision-making. As Ray Dolan wrote,76 Emotion exerts a powerful influence on reason, and in ways neither understood nor systematically researched, contributes to the fixation of belief.

It is precisely such interdependences that historians and historians of religion can discover in the study of textual sources. An inscription on an altar in Asia Minor in the second century CE states: ‘There is a goddess Nemesis [the goddess of divine indignation and retribution]. Observe justice!’ Narratives of divine punishment written on stone and set up in sanctuaries preserved the memory of past events that had caused fear of god. Their decoration with reliefs attracted the attention of pilgrims. Their reading out loud, often in the context of rituals, aroused emotions: fear of divine punishment, hope of divine protection. And this founded a belief in the presence and power of god which guided decisions and actions. The text on the altar expresses this connection precisely: remember the punishment of others; feel fear; act justly. Emotions determine decision-making. BIBLIOGRAPHY Ameling, W. (2004) Inscriptiones Judaicae Orientis II. Kleinasien, Tübingen. Barton, S. C. and G. H. R. Horsley (1981) A Hellenistic Cult Group and the New Testament Church, Jahrbuch für Antike und Christentum 24, 7–41. Belayche, N. (2006) Les stèles dites de confession: une religiosité originale dans l’Anatolie impériale?, in L. de Blois, P. Funke, and J. Hahn (eds.), The Impact of Imperial Rome on Religions, Ritual, and Religious Life in the Roman Empire, Leiden/Boston, 66–81. ––– (2007) Rites et ‘croyances’ dans l’épigraphie religieuse de l’Anatolie impériale, in J. Scheid (ed.), Rites et croyances dans les religions du monde romaine (Entretiens Hardt LIII), Geneva, 74–103. ––– (2008) Du texte à l’image: les reliefs sur les stèles ‘de confession’ d’Anatolie, in S. Etienne et al. (eds.), Image et religion dans l’Antiquité gréco-romaine, Naples, 181–194. Béquignon, Y. (1935) Études thessaliennes, Bulletin de Correspondance Hellénique 59, 74–77. Bernand, E. (1969). Inscriptions métriques de l’Égypte gréco-romaine, Paris. Borgeaud, P. (1988) The Cult of Pan in Ancient Greece. Translated by Kathleen Atlass and James Redfield, Chicago. Bricault, L. (2005) Recueil des inscriptions concernant les cultes isiaques, Paris. Camporesi, P. (1990) The Fear of Hell: Images of Damnation and Salvation in Early Modern Europe, University Park, Pa. Chaniotis, A. (1988). Historie und Historiker in den griechischen Inschriften. Epigraphische Beiträge zur griechischen Historiographie, Stuttgart. ––– (1995) Illness and Cures in the Greek Propitiatory Inscriptions and Dedications of Lydia and Phrygia, in H. F. J. Horstmanshoff, P. J. van der Eijk, and P. H. Schrijvers (eds.), Ancient Medicine in its Socio-Cultural Context. Papers Read at the Congress Held at Leiden University, 13–15 April 1992, Amsterdam/Atlanta, II, 323–344. ––– (1997a) Reinheit des Körpers – Reinheit der Seele in den griechischen Kultgesetzen, in J. Assmann and T. Sundermeier (eds.), Schuld, Gewissen und Person, Gütersloh, 142–179. 76

Dolan 2002, 1191.

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––– (1997b) Tempeljustiz im kaiserzeitlichen Kleinasien: Rechtliche Aspekte der Sühneinschriften Lydiens und Phrygiens, in G. Thür and J. Vélissaropoulos-Karakostas (eds.), Symposion 1995. Vorträge zur griechischen und hellenistischen Rechtsgeschichte (Korfu, 1.–5. September 1995), Cologne/Weimar/Vienna, 353–384. ––– (2002) Old Wine in a New Skin: Tradition and Innovation in the Cult Foundation of Alexander of Abonouteichos, in E. Dabrowa (ed.), Tradition and Innovation in the Ancient World (Electrum, 6), Krakow, 67–85. ––– (2003) Negotiating Religion in the Cities of the Eastern Roman Empire, Kernos 16, 177–190. ––– (2004a) Under the Watchful Eyes of the Gods: Aspects of Divine Justice in Hellenistic and Roman Asia Minor, in S. Colvin (ed.), The Greco-Roman East. Politics, Culture, Society, Cambridge, 1–43. ––– (2004b) Von Ehre, Schande und kleinen Verbrechen unter Nachbarn: Konfliktbewältigung und Götterjustiz in Gemeinden des antiken Anatolien, in F. R. Pfetsch (ed.), Konflikt (Heidelberger Jahrbücher, 48), Heidelberg, 233–254. ––– (2008) Acclamations as a Form of Religious Communication, in H. Cancik and J. Rüpke (eds.), Die Religion des Imperium Romanum. Koine und Konfrontationen, Tübingen, 199– 218. ––– (2009a) Epigraphic Bulletin for Greek Religion 2006, Kernos 22, 209–243. ––– (2009b) Ritual Performances of Divine Justice: The Epigraphy of Confession, Atonement, and Exaltation in Roman Asia Minor, in H. Μ. Cotton et al. (eds.), From Hellenism to Islam: Cultural and Linguistic Change in the Roman Near East, Cambridge, 115–153. ––– (2009c) The Dynamics of Ritual Norms in Greek Cult, in P. Brulé (ed.), La norme en matière religieuse en Grèce antique (Kernos, Suppl. 21), Liège, 91–105. ––– (2009d) From Woman to Woman: Female Voices and Emotions in Dedications to Goddesses, in C. Prêtre (ed.), Le donateur, l’offrande et la déesse. Systèmes votifs dans les sanctuaires de déesses du monde grec. Actes du 31e colloque international organisé par l’UMR Halma-Ipel (Université Charles-de-Gaule/Lille 3, 13–15 décembre 2007) (Kernos Suppl., 23), Liège, 51– 68. ––– (2010) Megatheism: The Search for the Almighty God and the Competition between Cults, in S. Mitchell and P. van Nuffelen (eds.), One God: Pagan Monotheism in the Roman Empire, Cambridge, 112–140. ––– (2011) Emotional Community through Ritual. Initiates, Citizens, and Pilgrims as Emotional Communities in the Greek World, in A. Chaniotis (ed.), Ritual Dynamics in the Ancient Mediterranean: Agency, Emotion, Gender, Representation, Stuttgart, 264–290. ––– (2012) Staging and Feeling the Presence of God: Emotion and Theatricality in Religious Celebrations in the Roman East, in L. Bricault and C. Bonnet (eds.), Les mutations religieuses dans l’Empire romain, Leiden (forthcoming). Davies, M. (1989) Sisyphus and the Invention of Religion (‘Critias’ TrGF 1 (43) F 19 = B 25 DK), Bulletin of the Institute of Classical Studies 36, 16–32. de Hoz, M. P. (1999) Die lydischen Kulte im Lichte der griechischen Inschriften (Asia Minor Studien 36), Bonn. Delli Pizzi, A. (2011) Impiety in Epigraphic Evidence, Kernos 24, 59–76. Dickie, M. (2004) Priestly Proclamations and Sacred Laws, Classical Quarterly 54, 579–591. Dillery, J. (2005) Greek Sacred History, American Journal of Philology 126, 505–526. Dinzelbacher, P. (1996) Angst im Mittelalter. Teufels-, Todes- und Gotteserfahrung: Mentalitätsgeschichte und Ikonographie, Paderborn. Dolan, R. J. (2002) Emotion, Cognition, ad Behavior, Science 298, 1191–1194. Dreher, M. (2010) Gerichtsverfahren vor den Göttern? – ‘Judicial Prayers” und die Kategorisierung der defixionum tabellae, in G. Thür (ed.), Symposion 2009. Vorträge zur griechischen und hellenistischen Rechtsgeschichte (Seggau, 25.–30. August 2009), Vienna, 301–335. Dunbabin, K. M. B. (1990) Ipsa deae vestigia: Footprints Divine and Human on Graeco-Roman Monuments, Journal of Roman Archaeology, 3, 85–10.

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Engelmann, H. (1975) The Delian Aretalogy of Sarapis, Leiden. Engels J. (1998) Funerum sepulcrorumque magnificentia. Bergräbnis- und Grabluxusgesetze in der griechisch-römischen Welt mit einigen Ausblicken auf Eischränkungen des funeralen und sepulcralen Luxus im Mittelalter und in der Neuzeit, Stuttgart. Fischer, K. (2010) Religion Governed by Terror: A Deist Critique of Fearful Christianity in the Early American Republic, Revue Française d’Études Americaines 125, 13–26. Forsén, B. (1996) Griechische Gliederweihungen. Eine Untersuchung zu ihrer Typologie und ihrer religions- und sozialgeschichtlichen Bedeutung, Helsinki. Frisone, F. (2000) Leggi e regolamenti funerari nel mondo greco. 1. Le fonti epigrafiche, Galatina. Furley, W. D. and J. M. Bremer (2001) Greek Hymns. Volume I. The Texts in Translation. Volume II. Greek Texts and Commentary, Tübingen. Gordon, R. (2004a) Raising a Sceptre: Confession–narratives from Lydia and Phrygia, Journal of Roman Archaeology 17, 177–196. ––– (2004b) Social Control in the Lydian and Phrygian ‘Confession’ Texts, in L. Hernández Guerra and J. Alvar Ezquerra (eds.), Actas del XXVII Congreso Internacional Girea-Arys IX. Jerarquías religiosas y control social en el mundo antiguo. Valladolid, 7–9 de Noviembre 2002, Valladolid, 193–203. Graf, F. (2007) Untimely Death, Witchcraft, and Divine Vengeance. A Reasoned Epigraphical Catalog, Zeitschrift für Papyrologie und Epigraphik 162, 139–150. Grandjean, Y. (1975) Une nouvelle arétalogie d’Isis à Maronée, Leiden. Guthrie, W. K .C. (1971) The Sophists, Cambridge. Hammerstaedt, J. and M. F. Smith (2009) Diogenes of Oionanda: The Discoveries of 2009 (NF 167–181), Epigraphica Anatolica 42, 21–38. Herrmann, P. and H. Malay (2007) New Documents from Lydia, Vienna. Higbie, C. (2003) The Lindian Chronicle and the Greek Creation of their Past, Oxford. Johnston, S. I. (1999). Restless Dead. Encounters Between the Living and the Dead in Ancient Greece, Berkeley. Kiernan, P. (2003) Did Curse Tablets Work?, in B. Croxford et al. (eds.), Proceedings of the Thirteenth Annual Theoretical Roman Archaeology Conference, Leicester, 123–134. Koch Piettre, R. (2005) La Chronique de Lindos, ou comment accommoder les restes pour écrire l’Histoire, in P. Borgeaud and Y. Volokhine (eds.), Les objects de la mémoire. Pour une approche comparatiste des reliques et de leur culte, Bern, 95–145. Kolde, A. (2003) Politique et religion chez Isyllos d’Épidaure, Basel. Lehmler, C. and M. Wörrle (2006). ‘Neue Inschriften aus Aizanoi IV: Aizanitica Minora’, Chiron 36, 45–111. Lhôte, É. (2006) Les lamelles oraculaires de Dodone, Geneva. LiDonnici, L. R. (1995) The Epidaurian Miracle Inscriptions. Text, Translation, and Commentary. Atlanta. Lieu, J. M. (1995) The Race of the Godfearers, Journal of Theological Studies 46, 483–501. Lloyd-Jones, H. (1983) The Justice of Zeus, Berkeley/Los Angeles/London. Loukopoulou, L. D., A. Zournatzi, M. G. Parisaki, and S. Psoma (2005) Ἐπιγραφὲς τῆς Θράκης τοῦ Αἰγαίου, µεταξὺ τῶν ποταµῶν Νέστου καὶ Ἕβρου (Νοµοὶ Ξάνθης, Ροδόπης καὶ Ἕβρου) , Athens. Lupu, E. (2005) Greek Sacred Law. A Collection of New Documents, Leiden/Boston. Malay, H. (1999) Researches in Lydia, Mysia and Aiolis, Vienna. Merkelbach, R. (2000) Der Glanz der Städte Lykiens, Epigraphica Anatolica 32, 115–125. Merkelbach, R. and J. Stauber (1998) Steinepigramme aus dem griechischen Osten. Band I: Die Westküste Kleinasiens von Knidos bis Ilion, Stuttgart/Leipzig. ––– (2001) Steinepigramme aus dem griechischen Osten. Band II: Die Nordküste Kleinasiens (Marmarameer und Pontos), Munich/Leipzig. Meyer, E. (1936) Eine Inschrift von Jolkos, Rheinisches Museum für Philologie 85, 367–376.

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Michaels, A. (2006) Religionen ohne Gottesfurcht? Angstbewältigung im Religionsvergleich, in J. Baldewien and H. E. Loos (eds.), ‘Angst essen Seele auf’ – Vom Umgang mit den Ängsten, Karlsruhe, 44–68. Miron, A. V. B. (1996) Alexander von Abonuteichos. Zur Geschichte des Orakels des Neos Asklepios Glykon, in W. Leschhorn, A. V. B. Miron, and A. Miron (eds.), Hellas und der griechische Osten. Studien zur Geschichte und Numismatik der griechischen Welt. Festschrift für Peter Robert Franke zum 70. Geburtstag, Saarbrücken, 153–188. Mitchell, S. (1998) Wer waren die Gottesfürchtigen?, Chiron 28, 55–64. ––– (1999) The Cult of Theos Hypsistos Between Pagans, Jews, and Christians, in P. Athanassiadi and M. Frede (eds.), Pagan Monotheism in Late Antiquity, Oxford, 81–148. Müller, B. (1913) Μέγας Θεός, Halle. Nollé, J. (2007) Kleinasiatische Losorakel: Astragal- und Alphabetchresmologien der hochkaiserzeitlichen Orakelrenaissance, Bonn. Papanikolaou, D. (2009) The Aretalogy of Isis from Maroneia and the Question of Hellenistic ‘Asianism’, Zeitschrift für Papyrologie und Epigraphik 169, 59–70. Parker, R. (1983) Miasma. Pollution and Purification in Early Greek Religion, Oxford. ––– (2004) What are Sacred Laws?’, in E. M. Harris and L. Rubinstein (eds.), The Law and the Courts in Ancient Greece, London, 57–70. Peterson, E. (1926) Εἷς Θεός. Epigraphische, formgeschichtliche und religionsgeschichtliche Untersuchungen, Göttingen. Petrovic, I. and A. Petrovic (2006) ‘Look Who is Talking Now!’: Speaker and Communication in Greek Metrical Sacred Regulations, in E. Stavrianopoulou (ed.), Rituals and Communication in the Graeco-Roman World, Liège, 151–179. Petsas, P., M. B. Hatzopoulos, L. Gounaropoulou, and P. Paschidis (2000) Inscriptions du sanctuaire de la Mère des Dieux Autochthone de Leukopetra (Macécoine), Athens. Petzl, G. (1994) Die Beichtinschriften Westkleinasiens (Epigraphica Anatolica 22), Bonn. ––– (1997) Neue Inschriften aus Lydien (II). Addenda und Corrigenda zu ‘Die Beichtinschriften Westkleinasiens’, Epigraphica Anatolica 28, 69–79. ––– (1998) Die Beichtinschriften im römischen Kleinasien und der Fromme und Gerechte Gott, Opladen. ––– (2003) Zum religiösen Leben im westlichen Kleinasien: Einflüsse und Wechselwirkungen, in E. Schwertheim and E. Winter (eds.), Religion und Region. Götter und Kulte aus dem östlichen Mittelmeerraum, Bonn, 94–101. Prêtre, C. and P. Charlier (2009) Maladies humaines, thérapies divines. Analyse épigraphique et paléo-pathologique de textes de guérison grecs, Villeneuve d’Ascq. Price, S. (1999) Religions of the Ancient Greeks, Cambridge. Pugliese Carratelli, G. (1963/64) Χρησµοὶ di Apollo Klareios e Apollo Klarios a Hierapolis in Frigia, Annuario della Scuola Archaeologica di Atene 41/42, 351–370. Rostad, A. (2002) Confession or Reconciliation? The Narrative Structure of the Lydian and Phrygian ‘Confession Inscriptions’, Symbolae Osloenses 77, 145–164. ––– (2005) The Religious Context of the Lydian Propitiation Inscriptions, Symbolae Osloenses 81, 88–108. Schnabel, E. J. (2003) Divine Tyranny and Public Humiliation: a Suggestion for the Interpretation of the Lydian and Phrygian Confession Inscriptions, Novum Testamentum 45, 160–188. Sfameni Gasparro, G. (1996) Alessandro di Abonutico, lo ‘pseudo-profeta’ ovvero come construirsi un’identità religiosa. I. Il profeta , ‘eroe’ e ‘uomo divino’, Studi e Materiali di Storia delle Religioni 62, 565–590. ––– (1999) Alessandro di Abonutico, lo ‘pseudo-profeta’ ovvero come construirsi un’identità religiosa. II. L’oracolo e i misteri, in C. Bonnet and A. Motte (eds.), Les syncrétismes religieux dans le monde méditérranéen antique. Actes du colloque international en l’honneur de Franz Cumont, Bruxelles/Rome, 275–305.

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Shaya, J. (2005) The Greek Temple as Museum: The Case of the Legendary Treasure of Athena from Lindos, American Journal of Archaeology 109, 423–442. Sherk, R. K. (1969) Roman Documents from the Greek East, Baltimore. Sokolowski, F. (1955) Lois sacrées de l’Asie Mineure, Paris. — (1962) Lois sacrées des cités grecques. Supplément, Paris. — (1969) Lois sacrées des cités grecques, Paris. Stavrianopoulou, E. (2005) Die ‘gefahrvolle’ Bestattung von Gambreion, in C. Ambos et al. (eds.), Die Welt der Rituale von der Antike bis heute, Darmstadt, 24–37. ––– (2011) ‘Promises of Continuity’: The Role of Tradition in the Forming of Rituals in Ancient Greece, in A. Chaniotis (ed.), Ritual Dynamics in the Ancient Mediterranean: Agency, Emotion, Gender, Representation, Stuttgart, 85–103. Strubbe, J. H. M. (1997) ΑΡΑΙ ΕΠΙΤΥΜΒΙΟΙ. Imprecations Against Desecrators of the Grave in the Greek Epitaphs of Asia Minor. A Catalogue (IGSK 52), Bonn. Tod, M. N. (1946) A Selection of Greek Historical Inscriptions I, Oxford. Van Straten, F. T. (1981) Gifts For the Gods, in H. S. Versnel (ed.), Faith, Hope, and Worship. Aspects of Religious Mentality in the Ancient World, Leiden, 65–151. Versnel, H. S. (1999) ΚΟΛΑΣΑΙ ΤΟΥΣ ΗΜΑΣ ΤΟΙΟΥΤΟΥΣ Η∆ΕΩΣ ΒΛΕΠΟΝΤΕΣ: ‘Punish Those Who Rejoice in Our Misery’: On Curse Texts and Schadenfreude, in D. R. Jordan, H. Montgomery, and E. Thomassen (eds.), The World of Ancient Magic. Papers from the First International Samson Eitrem Seminar at the Norwegian Institute at Athens 4–8 May 1997, Athens, 125–162. ––– (2002) Writing Mortals and Reading Gods. Appeal to the Gods as a Strategy in Social Control, in D. Cohen (ed.), Demokratie, Recht und soziale Kontrolle im klassischen Athen, Munich, 37–76. Victor, U. (1997) Lukian von Samosata, Alexander oder Der Lügenprophet. Eingeleitet, herausgegeben, übersetzt und erklärt, Leiden/New York/Cologne. Voutiras, E. (1995) Zu einer metrischen Inschrift aus Euromos, Epigraphica Anatolica 24, 15–19. Waldner, K. (2006) Die poetische Gerechtigkeit der Götter: Recht und Religion im griechischen Roman, in D. Elm von der Osten et al. (eds.), Texte als Medium und Reflexion von Religion im römischen Reich, Stuttgart, 101–123. Youni, M. (2005) Maîtres et esclaves en Macédoine hellénistique et romaine, in V. I. Anastasiadis, P. Doukellis (eds.), Esclavage antique et discriminations socio-culturelles. Actes du XXVIIIe colloque international du Groupement International de Recherche sur l’Esclavage antique (Mytilène, 5–7 decembre 2003), Frankfurt, 183–196. Zingerle, J. (1926) Heiliges Recht, Jahrbuch des Österreichischen Archäologischen Instituts 23, Beiblatt, 5–72.

PICTURE CREDITS Figure 1: Figure 2: Figure 3: Figure 4: Figure 5:

Relief stele from Kollyda (Lydia, 205 CE). Photo: Hasan Malay. Marble relief stele of unknown provenance, third century CE. Photo: Georg Petzl. Petzl 1994, 47 no. 38. Marble stele from Silandos, 235 CE. Photo: Hasan Malay. Petzl 1994, 7 no. 5. Marble stele from Köleköy (area of Saittai in Lydia), 164/5 CE. Photo: Georg Petzl. Petzl 1994, 3 no. 3. Marble stele, probably from Kollyda, second century CE. Photo: Georg Petzl. Petzl 1994, 98 no. 75.

SWEET REVENGE Emotional Factors in ‘Prayers for Justice’ Irene Salvo 1 INTRODUCTION In one of the best known legends of early Greece, Artemis sent a monstrous boar into the region of Kalydon (Aitolia), when the local king Oeneus had failed to sacrifice to her. As the boar was devastating the countryside, the king called the strongest heroes to organise a hunt. Among the hunters was the king’s own son, Meleagros. The hunt was successful, but over the spoils of the boar an argument arose, in which Meleagros killed a maternal uncle.1 His mother had a strong emotional reaction.2 The wish to obtain vengeance for her brother’s death was even stronger than the love for her son.3 The desire for revenge was articulated in a mediated way: Althaia, his mother, did not attempt to kill her son with her own hands, but she invoked the gods of the underworld, entrusting Meleagros’ death to them.4 It was impossible for her to slay this bravest hero, the city’s defender, or to 1

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Bakchylides, 5.127–135, gives an account of an involuntary slaying of two maternal uncles in the war between Aitolians and the Kouretes. On Meleagros’ myth and its versions, see ex plurimis Grossardt 2001. Homer, Iliad 9.565–572: τῇ ὅ γε παρκατέλεκτο χόλον θυµαλγέα πέσσων | ἐξ ἀρέων µητρὸς κεχολωµένος, ἥ ῥα θεοῖσι | πόλλ᾽ ἀχέους᾽ ἠρᾶτο κασιγνήτοιο φόνοιο,| πολλὰ δὲ καὶ γαῖαν πολυφόρβην χερσὶν ἀλοία | κικλήσκους᾽ Ἀΐδην καὶ ἐπαινὴν Περσεφόνειαν | πρόχνυ καθεζοµένη, δεύοντο δὲ δάκρυσι κόλποι, | παιδὶ δόµεν θάνατον· τῆς δ᾽ ἠεροφοῖτις Ἐρινὺς | ἔκλυεν ἐξ Ἐρέβεσφιν ἀµείλιχον ἦτορ ἔχουσα (‘by her side lay Meleagros brooding on his painful anger, out of temper because of his mother’s curses; for she imprecated the gods immediately, being grieved for her brother’s murder; and in addition, instantly beat with her hands upon the all-nurturing earth, invoking Hades and awesome Persephone, the while she knelt, and her garment was steeping in tears, that they should bring death upon her son; and the Erinys that moves in darkness, she of the implacable heart, heard her from Erebus’, trans. adapted from Murray 1924). This must be understood in the context of the solidarity between the woman and her original family group and also in the context of the special relationship between brother and sister. In fact, for the Calydonian hunt, Meleagros had been helped by his maternal uncles and not his paternal ones. On the maternal uncle and uterine nephew link, see Bremmer 1983. In Hesiod, Catalogue of Women, fr. 25.12ff. edd. Merkelbach and West, Meleager was killed by Apollo; in Bakchylides 5.140–150, Althaia, grieved for her brothers’ death, placed on fire the brand linked to Meleager’s life, consuming him. On the manner in which Althaia killed her son and on the curse in the Homeric version, see most recently Vox 2008–2009 [2010].

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find someone to kill him on her behalf; this was the reason why she called for help from those who could certainly accomplish her murderous intent. The urgency to get satisfaction through retaliation was channelled into a cursing prayer. Similar dynamics are well attested in Greek epigraphic sources, especially from the Hellenistic period onwards. I shall analyse a group of documents defined by Henk Versnel as pleas addressed to a god or gods to punish a (mostly unknown) person who has wronged the author (by theft, slander, false accusations or magical action), often with the additional request to redress the harm suffered by the author (e.g. by forcing a thief to return a stolen ob5 ject, or by publicly confessing guilt).

According to Versnel, the following characteristics distinguish these prayers from proper curses (defixiones):6 1) the name of the author is mentioned; 2) an argument defending the action is presented, sometimes with a single term, sometimes with more elaborate details; 3) the author requests that the act be excused or that the writer be spared the possible adverse effects; 4) gods other than the usual chthonic deities appear; 5) either because of their superior character or as a persuasive gesture the gods are addressed either with a flattering adjective (e.g. philē) or with a superior title such as kyrios, kyria, or despoina; 6) expressions of supplication (hiketeuō, boēthei moi, boēthēson autō) are added to personal and direct invocations of the deity; and 7) terms and names which refer to (in)justice and punishment are used (e.g. Praxidike, Dike, ekdikeō, adikeō, kolazō, and kolasis).7 Texts of this kind were written on different materials: lead or bronze tablets, stone inscriptions, ostraka, and papyri. ‘Prayers for justice’ in Latin and in Greek are attested all over the Mediterranean world and beyond, from Mainland Greece and the Aegean islands to Asia Minor, and from Sicily to Great Britain.8 We have attestations of these documents from the fourth century BCE to Late Antiquity. 5 6

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Versnel 2010, 278f. See also Versnel 1991, 67f.; 2002, 49f.; 2009, 22–25. See Jordan 1985, 151: ‘Defixiones, more commonly know as curse tablets, are inscribed pieces of lead, usually in the form of small, thin sheets, intended to influence, by supernatural means, the actions or welfare of persons or animals against their will. They became popular in the fifth century B.C. and continued in use in Mediterranean lands until at least the sixth century of our era.’ Versnel 1991, 68. For a full scholarly discussion and new texts discovered recently, see Versnel 2010. See Versnel 2009 on the magic or religious nature of these documents. Many ancient texts and parallels analysed in the present research have already been discussed in Versnel’s contributions. For recent critical discussion on the concept of ‘prayer of justice’ see Dreher 2010 and Vélissaropoulos-Karakostas 2010. See also p. 223 in this volume. On the diffusion of rituals and the dynamics of ritual transfer in the Imperial period, see Chaniotis 2009a, 17–24.

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It has been pointed out that these documents have an emotional tone.9 The aim of this chapter is to explore this emotional attitude and how feelings are constructed in those texts. I would like to show how these prayers were used as a way to soothe and cool the feelings behind a wish for revenge. Taking the Greek ‘prayers of justice’ as a case study, I shall ask some questions of more general significance concerning the study of emotions in inscriptions: can we identify emotions? Towards whom are they expressed? Who is the audience that observes this display of emotions? Why, in what way, and to what purpose does someone voice his own sentiments? To find an answer to these questions, I shall comment on some inscriptions ranging from the Hellenistic to the Imperial period and from various geographical areas. 2 SUSPICIOUS DEATH AND DESIRE FOR REVENGE THE TEXTS FROM RHENEIA I shall start by presenting a famous inscription on a tombstone from the island of Rheneia, one of the earliest examples of a ‘prayer for justice’.10 The stele of white marble is broken at the top and has a tenon beneath; the text is inscribed on both sides but with a dissimilar division of lines, since on one side the words are smaller than the image and vice versa on the other side; both sides show a pair of raised hands above the writing field (figure 1). On side A, traces of the original red paint are still visible inside the letters. Dated to the end of the second or the beginning of the first century BCE, the text of side A runs as follows:11 I invoke and entreat the God Most High, the Lord of the spirits and all flesh, against those who have treacherously murdered or poisoned the miserable untimely Heraklea, and shed unjustly her innocent blood, that the same may happen to them who have murdered or poisoned her, and to their children. O Lord, you who see everything, and you angels of god, for whom every soul humiliates itself on the present day with supplication, that you may avenge the innocent blood, may investigate, and as soon as possible.

9 Most recently Versnel 2010, 280. 10 I.Délos 2532 I A-B; Hirschfeld 1874, 403 no. 57; Syll.3 1181; CIJ 725; Björck 1938, 29 no.11; SEG XIV 505; Couilloud 1974, no. 485; Guarducci 1978, 236–238; SEG XXXVII 687; Gager 1992, 87; SEG XLVI 966; Noy, Panayotov, and Bloedhorn 2004, no. Ach70; now kept in the Bucharest National Museum; see Wilhelm 1901 for details on provenance and discovery of the stone. The island of Rheneia is close to Delos. In antiquity it was mainly under Delian control, partly as burial ground, partly as territory of the sanctuary of Apollo. Cf. Hansen and Nielsen 2004, 769. See also pp. 143f. in this volume. 11 I.Délos 2532 I A: ἐπικαλοῦµαι καὶ ἀξιῶ τὸν Θεὸν τὸν | ὕψιστον, τὸν κύριον τῶν πνευµάτων | καὶ πάσης σαρκός, ἐπὶ τοὺς δόλωι ϕονεύ|σαντας ἢ ϕαρµακεύσαντας τὴν τα|λαίπωρον ἄωρον Ἡράκλεαν, ἐχχέαν|τας αὐτῆς τὸ ἀναίτιον αἷµα ἀδί|κως, ἵνα οὕτως γένηται τοῖς ϕονεύ|σασιν αὐτὴν ἢ ϕαρµακεύσασιν καὶ | τοῖς τέκνοις αὐτῶν. Κύριε, ὁ πάντα ἐ|ϕορῶν καὶ οἱ ἄνγελοι θεοῦ, ᾧ πᾶσα ψυ|χὴ ἐν τῇ σήµερον ἡµέραι ταπεινοῦτα[ι] µεθ’ ἱκετείας, ἵνα ἐγδικήσῃς τὸ αἷµα τὸ ἀ|ναίτιον ζητήσεις καὶ τὴν ταχίστην.

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This is an epitaph with a ‘prayer for justice’, without any doubt from a Jewish context as evident from the biblical quotations.12 The inscription is a good example of what ‘interculturality’ means in the Hellenistic period. Here we have Jewish people that made use of a Greek practice, and they expressed themselves in the Greek language but chose Jewish phrasing. Since it is a product of a Jewish community living in a Greek country, it is legitimate to use this text as evidence for a ritual practice widely attested in the Greek-speaking world.

Figure 1. The grave stele of Herakleia, Rhenaia (late second/early first century BCE).

The young Heraklea was believed to have been a victim of injustice. She died in an untimely way and for this reason it was believed that she had been murdered. When individuals die young, the bereft can use various formulas to reproach Fate: they denounce the inconsiderate decisions of the divinity;13 they accuse Fate (Moira), the gods of the underworld (Hades, Plouton), or a daimon to be cruel, envious, or ruthless.14 These gods steal lives of young and promising mortals,

12

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For a commentary on the Jewish or perhaps Samaritan ambience, and references to biblical passages, see Deissmann 1910; Bergmann 1911; Schürer 1986, 70; White 1987; Gager 1992, 186f.; Stückenbruck 1995, 183; van der Horst and Newman 2008, 137–143. See Lattimore 1942, 147–158. E.g. Vérilhac 1978, no. 147 line 5 (Smyrna, first century CE); Merkelbach and Stauber 1998, 637f. no. 07/06/05 line 10 (Ilion, first/second century CE). Many examples in Lattimore 1942, 148f. I think, however, that the following epigrams refer to human envy rather than to a jealous divinity, as Lattimore states: Kaibel, EG no. 560 line 2 (Naples, first century CE); Merkelbach and Stauber 2001b, 210 no. 16/23/10 (Aizanoi). Other examples of cruel divinities in Vérilhac 1982, 195–203.

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even though every soul is doomed to die anyway, 15 and this generates frustration for a divine behaviour which cannot be explained by plain logic. But in the case of Heraklea, it was not against Fate that her relatives directed their feelings. They thought that no insatiable god was responsible for Heraklea’s death, but humans. Their charge was general and comprehensive. The real reason behind her death was unknown: murder, poison or maybe a binding spell. But her relatives were sure that someone (one or more persons) had killed her. When the relatives buried the poor maiden, they decided to make public their desire for vengeance: they inscribed on her gravestone an appeal to god against whoever caused her death. At first sight, this prayer is addressed to God. But he is not the only addressee. Other addressees were equally essential: the text was inscribed on a gravestone, and so it was meant to be read by passers-by. The readers of the funerary stone were clearly thought as receivers of the plea for justice: everyone in the community had to be informed that an appeal to divine justice had been performed. Implicit, but also of great significance, is the role of the deceased, Heraklea; she was perhaps the primary addressee of the text inscribed on her tombstone. Having died before her time, Heraklea could return from the realm of death and frighten the living. She was regarded as an unhappy dead, because she failed to fulfil her social duties as wife and mother;16 moreover, she had to be avenged, otherwise, she could get angry and spread fear and madness among those who ignored her.17 These beliefs were at the origin of a powerful emotion that influenced the behaviour of Heraklea’s relatives: the fear of the dead’s anger induced them to make clear to Heraklea that they sought vengeance. To appease an un15 16

17

See Vérilhac 1978, nos. 148 (Rome, second/third century CE), 149 (Rome, second century CE?), 150 (Albani Hills, third century CE?), and 154 (Naples, first/second century CE). Although we do not know at what age she died, as a girl or as a young woman, the text clearly says that she died an untimely death and we can assume that she did not complete the natural course of life. See van der Horst 1991, 45–47; Noy, Panayotov, and Bloedhorn 2004, 238; Graf 2007, 145; van der Horst and Newman 2008, 140. Full analysis of types of dead people that, in ancient Greek culture, are dangerous for the living in Johnston 1999, 127–199. The aôroi, spirits of those dead before their time, had magical power. First, defixiones could be buried in their graves. See Jordan 1988, 273f.: ‘The spirits of the untimely dead – the Greek word is aôroi – were believed to have to wait in their graves until their span of mortal life had completed itself before they could go to their final rest. Admittedly, this belief is articulated by ancient authorities of a period much later than the classical (e.g. Tertullian, A Treatise on the Soul 56.4; Servius, Commetary on the Aeneid 4.368), but in every period of antiquity when we have been able to estimate the ages of the dead who have curse tablets in their graves, those ages have proved to be young. Presumably the ghost could see through the rolled-up lead and read the names written inside, for it was important that he should focus his feeling of outrage at his unnaturally early death on these persons. ... Then the ghost, it was believed, would arise from the grave on such occasions and do his evil.’ Second, their spirits could be invoked in spells for magical purposes, for instance for binding a lover (PMG IV.342) or in helping the performance of a love spell of attraction (PMG IV.1401). In another love spell of attraction, the heroes who died without wife and children (τινες ἡρώων ἔθανον ἀγύναιοί τε ἄπαιδες) are invoked together with Hekate (PMG IV.2727–2730).

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timely dead by the right epitaph was a fundamental function of funerary monuments.18 Claiming revenge for this sudden and unexplained death, the only available weapon was to implore the God of heaven to seek justice against the people chiefly responsible for what happened. In doing so, Heraklea’s parents were channelling all their negative emotions into a concrete action. They had to convince God that they had been wronged and they needed help from him now. Every word they chose to engrave had a precise aim. The persuasion strategy in order to bring God to their side was double-faced. It aimed, first, to show how immense their suffering was; and second, to extol the divine interlocutor. The author of the text employed various means in order to express a sense of loss and affliction: details about Heraklea’s death; redundantly repeated synonyms used as attributes; figures of speech such as alliteration and the reiteration of key concepts; flattery of God; expectation of justice; hope in the success of the ritual prayer; urgency of the request; the combination of textual with visual media. In line 3, the author specified that the crime was committed by guile (dolos). It is interesting to note that this is the only known occurrence in Greek inscriptions of the expression δόλωι ϕονεύσαντας ἢ ϕαρµακεύσαντας. But guile was greatly condemned both in Jewish and Greek culture. In the Old Testament, killing someone by treachery meant to act wilfully, and this was punished with death;19 he who mortally struck down his neighbour was cursed.20 In Greek thought, it was a very common idea that slaying by treachery was much more horrible than to be killed by someone more powerful.21 In addition to this, unexplained death could be attributed to bewitchment or poisoning (pharmakeia).22 We have a great number of Greek texts on this motive of undistinguished causes of untimely death (deceit, murder, binding spells, poisons).23 Dolos poneros, equivalent of the Latin dolus malus, was pursued by Greek as well as Roman law, and its disapproval was embedded in popular morality.24 In lines 4–5, Heraklea’s misery and her untimely death are deplored. As already noted above, the theme of the untimely death was 18 19 20 21

22 23 24

Casey 2004. Exodus 21.14. Deuteronomy 27.24. See also Deissmann 1910; Noy, Panayotov, and Bloedhorn 2004. Cf. e.g. already in Homer the death of Agamemnon, Odyssey 3.249f.: τίνα δ᾽ αὐτῷ µήσατ᾽ ὄλεθρον Αἴγισθος δολόµητις, ἐπεὶ κτάνε πολλὸν ἀρείω (‘what death did guileful Aigisthos plan for the king, since he slew a man mightier far than himself?’); or what Polyphemus says to the Cyclopes, Odyssey 9.408: ὦ φίλοι, Οὖτίς µε κτείνει δόλῳ οὐδὲ βίηφιν (‘my friends, it is Noman that is slaying me by guile and not by force’). See Versnel 1999, 130–139 for a summary on death caused by dolos poneros in Latin and Greek texts. See Graf 2007 for a collection of the relevant epigraphical material. See Chaniotis 1997a, 361 note 46, with references to previous bibliography and ancient sources, including the cult regulation from Philadelpheia (TAM V.3.1539; see pp. 213f. in this volume), the Isis Aretalogies from Kyme, Thessalonike and Ios (Totti 1985, 1 § 34; cf. pp. 267–291 in this volume), and the poem of the Pseudo-Phokylides (line 4: µήτε δόλους ῥάπτειν).

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deeply rooted in Greek mentality. In lines 5–7, we find a vivid image of Heraklea’s blood that had been shed. The impact of this image is enhanced through striking use of the alliteration of alpha (eccheantas autēs to anaition aima adikōs): the vowel -a suggests a sense of largeness,25 and thus the figure of speech here increases the injustice of the guiltless blood spilt. In lines 12–13, to aima to anaition is repeated but with an inversion of noun and adjective, giving more emphasis to the condition of innocence.26 The second aim, the glorification of God, is achieved by employing the language of the Septuagint (see note 12). Does this exaltation of the divinity have a special function? Could praising God’s name be considered a persuasion strategy? When dealing with crimes, whose agents are unknown, human justice is helpless; the victims need to go beyond normal jurisdiction and to appeal to divine agency.27 Furthermore, another reason to invoke God could be that the author of the text was a foreigner, a Jew in a Greek site: ties between worshippers and divine actor were stronger than ties between foreigners and the local justice system.28 God was obliged to intervene in order to avenge the victim. The capacities and the range of action of God are believed much more extended, but it is also regarded necessary to highlight what the divine powers are in order to remind God to use them. At the beginning of the text, the divinity is invoked as ‘God the highest, Lord of the spirits and of all flesh’, a designation which refers to the God of Israel.29 To the sovereignty over all human beings is added the ability of omniscience towards the end of the prayer: ‘O Lord, you who see everything’, an epithet familiar to the Greek audience for the Sun avenger and protector of justice.30 The deity has supreme powers. The concept of God as creator and ruler of the universe is of course the kernel of the Jewish faith. But in this prayer, the hierarchal characterisation of the relationship between human and 25 26

27 28

29

30

On the connection between phonemes and semantic areas, see Ohala 1994 with references to other research on sound symbolism. In the Old Testament, the innocent blood cries out for divine vengeance and falls over the one who shed it: Judges 9.24; 1 Kings 2.32–33. For a study of homicide laws and customs in the Bible, see Barmash 2005. On wrongdoers escaping legal punishment but not divine justice, see Chaniotis 2004a and 2009c; for parallels in ancient Egypt and the Near East, see Assmann 1992 For parallels of foreigners invoking divine justice, see Robert 1936, no. 77 (below note 51); I.Délos 2531 (see below note 74). See also SEG LIII 813 with Jordan 2002 and Chaniotis and Mylonopoulos 2007, no. 128, on a ‘prayer for justice’ from Délos (first century BCE or later) to the Dea Syria and the gods who live in Sykôn, an unknown place (maybe in Syria); the owner prayed for vengeance against the thief of a necklace; the author could be a Syrian in Délos. References to the biblical occurrences in van der Horst and Newman 2008, 139f. On the cult of Theos Hypsistos and its controversial connection with Judaism see Robert 1946, 155; Mitchell 1999 and 2010; Stein 2001; Walraff 2003; Ameling 2004, 13–20; Belayche 2005; Chaniotis 2009a, 13–15 and 2010a. See van der Horst 2008, 141 on solar aspects of Yahwism. The Greek epithet was παντεπόπτης, on which see Chaniotis 2010a, 135 note 98 with other equivalent epithets and a collection of the most relevant examples.

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God is also foundational to the aim of the prayer itself. In a condition of anguish, as in this case, the believer reminds God of his greatness so that he can use his effective means31 together with his angels who promptly execute his orders.32 Every individual humbles himself in front of God with supplication.33 The author of the text presents himself as a good believer who knows that before God one must be meek and suppliant. And in other Greek ‘prayers for justice’ we find the same dynamic: the divinity is addressed as king or queen, lord or lady, absolute ruler or mistress; on the other hand, the human part is a servant, a slave, a suppliant that kneels down, a victim that seeks refuge.34 The more the divinity is high and almighty, the more the human beings are inferior, fragile and in need of help. What could seem to be an emphasis upon the distance between men and god is in fact a way to bridge this gap. The powers of god are invoked so that they can be manifest in the human world and the mortals can experience the divine presence in their lives.35 Does this experience involve any emotion? We can say that the hope in divine help is at play here, and we can add that it is exactly this feeling that provokes an appeal to the divinity composed in these modalities.36 This process is valid at the individual and family level, but it is extended to the whole community when the prayer is inscribed on stone; everyone could take part in the appeal for justice, and could use the same pattern if something similar happened to himself. In addressing God, the young woman’s relatives made use of a judicial terminology. The verbs ekdikeō and zēteō were used almost as technical terms to express the requests of punishment of the guilty person.37 The last statement, as ‘soon as possible’ (tēn tachistēn), shows that waiting was unbearable. We can understand this request of rapidity as a recognition of how fast divine justice is – in contrast with the slowness of human law.38 It is tolerable to be disappointed by secular law, but there is a strong hope that an appeal to divine justice will be 31 32 33

34

35 36 37 38

Chaniotis 2009b, 126f. See Noy, Panayotov, and Bloedhorn 2004, 239; van der Horst and Newman 2008, 142; on the inclusion of angels here see also Stückenbruck 1995, 183–185. Van der Horst 2008, 142 comments that ‘to humiliate one’s soul’ means ‘fasting’ in biblical language, and it is a reference to the day of Yom Kippur, although a practice of invoking revenge is not attested on that day. On the Day of Atonement see also Gager 1992, 187 note 44, with previous bibliography. See Pleket 1981; Belayche 2006; Versnel 2010, 285 note 33, 335. A well-know example is the ‘prayer for justice’ from Amorgos (IG XII.7, p. 1 A, c. 100 BCE); see below note 98 and pp. 214–216 in this volume. Chaniotis 2010a, 133f. On hope, see pp. 77, 205–208, and 267–291 in this volume. See Björck 1938, 81f.; Versnel 1991, 71f. For a complete analysis of the judicial terminology in ‘prayers for justice’ and confession inscriptions, see Chaniotis 1997a. Swiftness of operation is a prerogative of gods, and stressing this quality is a persuasion strategy common also in magical texts; see most recently Chaniotis 2009b, 127 (with bibliography and main references to ancient sources).

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satisfied quickly. Otherwise, we can say the opposite: to emphasise acting quickly implies a fear that God will not hear his believers and that this plea could remain an unfulfilled wish.39 A very good means of persuading Gd to hear humans is indicated in a grave inscription from Phazimon in northern Turkey, that represents a perfect parallel for our text.40 Lord the Almighty, you have made me, but an evil man has destroyed me. Revenge my death fast!

We have an appeal to divine justice to take vengeance for the murder of a young man. On the top, the stele is decorated with a hair crown (possibly a symbol of the revenge of the solar god, Helios) and a pair of crossed hands. The text presents the victim as a creation of Gd; since a wicked man is responsible for the destruction of god’s creation, now God must avenge this death fast. The logic is clear: God himself was wronged, because his own creation has been destroyed.41 Here the strategy is even more compelling, since the author and creator-god have been tied up in a personal relationship. In both texts, Phazimon and Rheneia, the aim was to render the divine the main wronged actor, but in the Rheneia texts the discourse remains general. God is the ‘Lord of all spirits and all flesh’ (lines 2f.): he created every human being, so when one of his creatures is killed, he himself is the injured party. The loss of a member weakened the family; therefore the punishment of the guilty person could restore God’s authority and strength. Since the loss was irrecoverable, the only acceptable form of redress would be revenge. In response to this desire a goal must be pursued: to bring death upon the individual who had injured them. The way to achieve this aim consisted of implying that God himself was damaged by the crime, so as to arouse in the divinity the same emotions as the ones that they themselves felt.42 In the Rheneia inscription, the text was engraved twice – on both sides of the stele, possibly in order to enforce the prayer.43 This may be related to the setting up of the stele to face east and west, the rising and setting sun, perhaps connected with a ritual.44 The sun and other gods are regarded as pantepoptai (seeing everything).45 The two palms of the raised hands, above the writing field, also are depicted twice. This iconic sign is conventional on gravestones of persons who died 39 For similar requests of quick action in ‘prayers for justice’ in papyri see Chaniotis 2009b, 127. 40 SEG L 1233 (Phazimon-Andrapa, later Neapolis/Neoclaudiopolis, 237/8 CE): Κύριε Παντοκράτωρ, σὺ µὲ ἔκτισες, κακὸς δέ µε ἄνθρωπος ἀπώλεσεν· ἐκδίκησόν µε ἐν τάχι. The similarities between these two texts have already been highlighted by Marek 2000, 141f. 41 Chaniotis 2009b, 126f. 42 On the intention to arouse in others hostile emotions, cf. pp. 359–387 in this volume. 43 Examples of imprecations inscribed twice: IG XI.4.1296; IGR I 195. On repetition as means to make a prayer ‘more powerful’, see Deissmann 1910, 432; Guarducci 1978, 238. On repetition and emotion see also pp. 68, 108, and 112 in this volume. 44 On public ritualisation of appeals to divine justice, see Chaniotis 2009b, 122–128. 45 See Chaniotis 2010a, 135f., with references to ancient sources and secondary literature.

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prematurely and symbolises the invocation to the Sun, the best performer of divine vengeance.46 Nevertheless, we can read in it something more. The symbol of raised hands can be interpreted as an expression of emotions. The pair of hands on these reliefs expresses the misery (great pain) and the despair (loss of hope in human justice) of those who have been wronged (Heraklea and her family) and, at the same time, hope (of the family of the deceased) in an immediate and resolute intervention of god.47 Furthermore, the engraved words reiterate the prayer that probably had been repeated aloud at the burial ceremony, and in the same way the image reiterates the gesture of raising hands towards the sky performed in the praying ritual. If on one side of the stele the words are smaller than the image and, vice versa, on the other side the image is smaller, this may signify that the two elements – text and image – must have equal value and visibility, without one depriving the other of the right attention. This document was intended to be read and seen by a passer-by, and its nature was easily recognised. Indeed, the language is formulaic. We have an almost identical gravestone from Rheneia, with the same text and the same image, for the young woman Marthina.48 We cannot say that we are dealing here with a trendsetter, since we have only two inscriptions and not a large number of similar epitaphs. But we can assert that the tombstone of Heraklea influenced that of Marthina, if we consider a process of reduction during copying: from a more complex structure with both sides of the stone inscribed and decorated, we arrive at a simpler layout with only one face engraved.49 In a milieu of cultural exchanges between Greek and Jewish communities, we know that for an inexplicable death, such as the suspicious murder of a young individual, there is a precise set of actions to be followed. It is possible to identify an emotional community in which a clear response to damage prevailed and was acceptable. When a harmful event provoked negative emotions, there was a set of social rituals at one’s disposal in order to channel feelings and to contain the

46

47 48

49

See Cumont 1923, 1926, and 1933; Strubbe 1991; Graf 2007 with a catalogue of inscriptions and bibliography. The gesture of raising hands toward the sky is cross-cultural and it can be used in different contexts (prayer, imprecation, magic). For more references see recently Belaynche 2007, 76f.; Chaniotis 2009b, 126. Cf. also Aristoteles, De mundo 400a 15–16 on the universality of praying with raised arms. Bibliographical references on this gesture and body language in Morris 1985, 144; Pease and Pease 2004, 32f.; Anderson 2009. On the emotive impact of such images see pp. 224–227 in this volume. For divine interventions as reflected in the confession inscriptions, see pp. 216-223. I.Délos 2532 II = Noy, Panayotov, and Bloedhorn 2004, no. Ach71 (second/early first century BCE?.), now in the Epigraphical Museum, Athens. The stele is inscribed only on one side; the upper portion is broken but from certain traces we can say that there was depicted a pair of hands. In line 13 after ἀναίτιον there is not ζητήσεις, as in the stele of Heraklea (I.Délos 2532 I A line 13 and B lines 18f.). To be considered also is the lack of a fundamental verb such as ζητήσεις in Marthina’s gravestone (see previous note).

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negativity of the situation.50 I would now like to test these remarks on other documents from both similar and different contexts. 3 EMOTIONAL REACTIONS TO MURDER – REAL OR IMAGINARY In a funerary stele from Alexandria in Egypt (late Ptolemaic period) there are elements similar to those in the Rheneia texts: a suspicious death ascribed to poison, the invocation of the gods, and an imprecation against the suspected murderers so that they might die in the same way as the victim:51 Virtuous Thermis, farewell! Rulers of the chtonian daimons down there, and you revered Persephone, daughter of Demeter, receive this pitiful wrecked foreign woman, me Thermis, born to father Lysanias, and noble spouse, married to Simalos. If someone led against my body or my life the dreadful Erinyes (Furies) of poison, then, immortal gods, do send to him not a different fate, but the one I hold. Under the earth I live, and after three months of consumption I had left the fruits of life, that the all-powerful Earth gave to mortals, and I was bereft of my children, lords, and of my husband; with him I was one soul and life was sweet. Having forgotten all these things in my misery, I utter curses, in such a suffering, against them and their children, may all their race go to the great abyss of Hades and the doors of darkness. But may the life of all my children and of my husband proceed without breaks until old age; if in Hades a prayer still has some value, may the curse, against those whom I imprecate, be accomplished. Singing in verses our shared life, in a joyful and painful way, Thermis, my spouse, I tell you these words: I will bring the children you gave me up in a way worthy of your love, my consort, and Lysas, the son you had before, I will look after him as one of my children, doing you a favour. For you adopted a blameless behaviour in life.

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Main collections of texts with an appeal to a god, quite often the Sun, for vengeance for someone’s death (usually a murder done mysteriously): Björck 1938; Cumont 1923, 1926, 1933; Graf 2007. Other texts also in: BE 1965, 335; 1968 535 = CCCA 1.57; Robert 1973, 172 note 40 (= OMS 7.235); Jordan 1979; Pippidi 1976; Ricl 1994, 170f. Robert 1936, no. 77 = Peek 1955 no. 1875; Bernard 1969, no. 46; Del Barrio 1992, no. 136; Graf 2001: Θέρµιν χρηστή, χαῖρε. | χθονίων ἔνερθε δαιµόνων ἀνάκτορες | σεµνή τε Φερσέφασσα, ∆ήµητρος κόρη, | δέχεσθε τὴν ναυαγὸν ἀθλίαν ξένην, || πατρὸς γεγῶσαν Λυσανί̣ου Θέρµιν ἐµέ, | ἐσθλὴν δ’ ἄκοιτιν Σιµάλου ξυνάορον. | εἴ τις δ’ ἐµοῖς σπλανχνοῖσιν ἢ βίῳ ποτὲ | οἰκτρὰς Ἐρινῦς φαρµάκων ἐπήγαγεν, | µὴ πώποτ’ ἄλλην µοῖραν, ἄφθιτοι θεοί, || πέµψηθ’ ὁµοίαν θ’ ἣν ἐγὼ κεκτηµένη. | ἔνερθε ναίω, τριπτύχους µῆνας φθίσι, | βιότου λιποῦσα καρπόν, ὃν γῆ πανκράτωρ | βροτοῖς δίδωσι, τοῦδ’ ἀπεστερηµέ[ν]ῃ | τέκνων τε, ἄνακτες, κἀνδρὸς οὗ ψυχὴ [µ]ία || ὑπῆρχέ µοι σὺν ἀνδρὶ καὶ βίος γλυκύς. | τούτων ἁπάντων ἀθλία λελησµένη | ἀρὰς τίθηµι, τοῖα ἔχουσα πήµατα, | αὐτοῖσι καὶ τέκεσι παρρίζους µολῖν | Ἅδου µέγαν κευ[θ]µῶνα καὶ σκότου πύλας, || τέκνων δ’ ἐµῶν ἄθραυστον ὄλβιον βίον | πάντων ἱκέσθαι κἀνδρὸς ἰς γήρως χρόνον. | Εἴ γ’ ἐστ’ ἐν Ἅδου βαιὸς εὐχωλῆς λόγος, | ἀρὰς τελήας οἷς ἐπεύχοµαι τελῖν. | — Μουσῶν ἀοιδήν συνβιώσεως σέθεν || τερπνήν τε καὶ λυπηρὸν ἔνπαλιν διδούς, | Θέρµιν, ἐµὴ ξύνευνε, τοῖαδ’ ἐννέπω· | θρέψω δ’ ὅσους ἔφυσας ἐξ ἐµοῦ γόνους | τῆς πρός σε φιλίας ἀξίως, ξυνάορε. | Λυσᾶν τε τὸν πρὶν τοῖς ἐµοῖς ὁµόρροπον (ἔτους) ζʹ, Παϋνὶ κϛʹ || παισὶν συνέξω, σὴν χάριν ταύτην τιθίς, | ἄµενπτον ἐν βίῳ γὰρ ἔσχηκας τρόπον. On the use of metaphors in this text, cf. the remarks of Maria Theodoropoulou (pp. 463f. in this volume).

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The author of the first part of the text, possibly the husband, presents the text as a prayer of the deceased woman to the chthonian gods and to Persephone; the curses of a dead soul were perceived as more powerful, because it was impossible to revoke them. Only in the last lines the husband addressed his poor dead wife. Here, we have a truly moving story: genuine love, a wonderful marriage disrupted by a calamity; we have the suspicion of poisoning, hate, and anger; finally, there is also a son from a previous marriage. Thermis died after three months of consumption. Those who suspected an external intervention made – in her name – a plea for revenge: the same death for whomever deprived her of the sweetness of life. In this text, the ‘prayer for justice’ does not follow a formulaic style; and it is a poetic text. This allows us not only to detect the feelings of the author of the text, but also to observe in what way and by what means these feelings were displayed with a personal approach – always inside a well attested socio-cultural frame.52 A clear persuasion strategy is used, choosing a manipulative language. Interestingly, deities are assumed to be persuaded with arguments suitable for a human audience. In other words, the author addressed sensitive social issues. First of all, the inscription mentions the fact that the victim was a foreigner (line 3). 53 Far from his homeland, a foreigner is without rights and without protection; most of the time, he needs to petition civic authorities or powerful citizens to obtain both rights and protection. Such an alien suppliant would be viewed according to traditional norms.54 To put it in Plato’s words, all the faults against foreigners are — compared with those against citizens — to be strongly referred with an avenging deity. For the foreigner, being alone without companions or kinsfolk, is more likely to move pity (ἐλεεινότερος) in men and gods. ... He who, then, has but a bit of foresight will pay great attention to live until the end of his life without causing 55 any offence to foreigners.

We have to imagine exactly this mentality behind the words ‘pitiful foreign shipwrecked woman’. The author of this text knew that these values were shared by the whole community. A second important issue is that an illness that confined someone to bed until death was attributed to magical poisons or binding spells. We can say that in the community of the author this was regarded as a harmful threat. To stress that 52 53

54 55

Cf. Robert 1946, 122 note 3: ‘L’intérêt de cette épigramme vient d’ailleurs de ce que les sentiments personnels n’ont pas été coulés dans le moule de formules passe-partout.’ To die far away from one’s own fatherland was considered deplorable. See some examples of grave inscriptions for foreigners: IG IV2.2.906 (Aigina, fifth century BCE); IG II2 11780 (Attica, beginnings fourth century BCE); Merkelbach and Stauber 1998, 62 no. 01/12/23 (Halikarnassos, fourth century BCE); Merkelbach and Stauber 2001a, 304 no. 10/02/29 (Kaisareia/Hadrianopolis, Roman Imperial period); IG XIV 2566 (Bonn, second/third century CE). Cf. Sophocles, Oedipus Coloneus 562–569. On the xenia relationship and foreigners as suppliants, see ex plurimis Herman 1987; ZelnickAbramovitz 1998; Gill, Postlethwaite, and Seaford 1998; Gödde 2000; Naiden 2006. Plato, Laws 5.729e–730a.

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others were responsible for Thermis’ death was an attempt to provoke an emotional reaction in the readers of the epitaph. Since they considered such a death terrible, their own sympathetic feelings were awakened. The intention of Thermis’ husband was to arouse in his fellow citizens precisely this empathy. The suffering of the woman created an emotional community. The author focused also on a third social issue: this death broke the unity of a happy family – a couple full of love for their children. This point is stressed in an extreme way through an exaggerated use of adjectives, connoting both negative and positive aspects of the condition of Thermis and her family group. To give some examples: the victim depicted herself as ‘miserable’ twice (line 4 with ‘shipwrecked’, line 16); she left the ‘sweet’ life enjoyed with her husband (line 15), and she wished for her children a ‘blessed unbreakable’ life (line 19). We note this abundance of attributes also in the varied manner of addressing the gods:56 ‘rulers of the chthonian demons down there’ (line 2), ‘revered Persephone, daughter of Demeter’ (line 3), ‘immortal gods’ (line 9), ‘lords’ (line 14). 57 Between the deities and the worshipper a hierarchal relationship was established. Moreover, these epithets functioned in a way already analysed in the Rheneia texts: they reminded the gods what powerful sovereigns they were, and this meant that they could decide authoritatively the destiny of Thermis’ enemies. Last but not least, a fourth critical social concern: the deceased was disgruntled and enraged. All the community could be in danger in such a situation. In a long appeal to the divinities (lines 7–23) the dead woman described with great detail how joyful and pleasant her life had been and how grievous and pitiful her actual condition was. The imprecation against the persons responsible for her death caused by sorcery (line 8: Erinys pharmakōn), together with their children, is opposed to the wish of a blessed life until old age for all the members of her family.58 The love between husband and wife satisfied both parties of the relationship: they were one heart and one soul, their life together was delightful and gratifying, they will have brought their children up – even the wife’s son from a previous marriage (a sign of great love). Entering the doors of Hades, she left the pleasantest of life. Unlike other epitaphs, which offer consolation by stating that the deceased individual escaped the negative aspects of life, Thermis, presented as speaking from her grave, rejects this consolation. The conditions of her death made her an unquiet dead character that emphasises a strong feeling of regret for her own death. What is the reason to communicate such unhappiness? In other

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To address the god in the right way was very important in Greek prayers and hymns, and, in a sort of captatio benevolentiae, different epicleseis defined functions and powers of the invoked gods: see Jakov and Voutiras 2005, 117 and Furley 2007, 122–124, with the relevant bibliography. Cf. Bernard 1969, 212: ‘Daimones a ici le sens courant de Manes, appelés parfois theoi katachthonioi. … Néanmoins, certains textes distinguent les theoi et les daimones (cf. 93).’ See Graf 2001 on the unusual combination of curse and blessing in this text (with many parallels from the Imperial period both in Greek and Latin).

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funerary epigrams from Graeco-Roman Egypt for women and wives,59 we can find expressions of grief and pain60 and stories of true conjugal love destroyed,61 but never with a style so accentuated; usually there is a consolatory motive.62 The aim of Thermis’ husband was different. Three times (lines 10, 17, 23) the deceased cursed her murderers/sorcerers, and every time she talked about her beautiful life, grateful to the fruitful earth or thinking of her sons and in particular of her husband. The curse of a dead person was inescapable. Portraying her as a rancorous soul, her husband was asking the gods and his social group to act fast and to avenge her death properly, in order to appease her spirit and to escape being damaged by her and her curses.63 In this family drama, we have a display of emotions related to various levels: first, the house context (love between husband and wife, maternal and paternal 59 60

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Bernand 1969, 28–61. E.g. Bernand 1969, no. 35 lines 11–16 (Apollonopolis Magna, second century BCE): ὧι γενόµην εὔνους βίοτον διάγουσ’ ἅµα κοινῆι καὶ γενέσει τέκνων, ἣν λίπον ἐν προκοπαῖς· ὧν µ’ἀπεχώρισ’ ὁ πάντ’ ἐφορῶν Χρόνος, ἠδὲ σὺν αὐτῷ Μοῖραι κλωστείρων νῆσαν ἀπ’ ἀθανάτων· τοῦ χάριν ἡ τλήµων κατοδύροµαι εἰν Ἀίδαο, παντοίων χαρίτων κάλλος ἐνεγκαµένηι (‘I was committed to him during our life together, and also to the children we had, that I left in vigour; from them separated me Time that watches over everything, and together with him the Moirai spun out my fate on their immortal spindles; this is the way that I, miserable, moan in Hades, where I brought in a beauty of a thousand delights’). E.g. Bernand 1969, no. 36 lines 9–12 (Cairo, second century BCE): θρηνεῖτέ µε πάντες, θυµὸν ἣ ὄλλυµ’ ἐγώ, δεσµεὸν ἐµῆς φιλίης ἄνδρα λιποῦσ’ Ἀπόλλων (‘wail all of you about me, I who lose my life, leaving the bond of my love, my husband Apollon’). E.g. Bernand 1969, no. 28 lines 9–11 (Alexandria, third century BCE): ἀλλ’ ἐπὶ λώιονι µὲν µοίρηι νύµφην τις ἄγοιτο τοιαύτηνδε, σαοῦν οἶκον ἐπισταµένην (‘that you could have a better fortune and marry a young wife, who could be able to give prosperity to the house’); no. 32 lines 9f. (Memphis, third century BCE?): ἀλλ’ οὖγ εὐσβέων ναίεις µέτα πατρὶ σύνοικος ∆ιογένει, τὸν καὶ ζῶσα πάροιθ’ ἐπόθεις (‘certainly you live with pious men, dwelling in the same house with your father Diogenes, that you in earlier times craved’); no. 44 lines 5–9 (Leontoplis, late first century BCE/early first century CE): εἰ δ’ὀλίγον ζῆσα χρόνον κεκριµένον, ἀλλὰ ἐλέους ἐλπίδα ἀγαθὴν ἐγὼ προσδέχοµαι (‘if the time that I lived and that was fixed for me was short, now I receive favourably good hope of mercy’); no. 48 lines 5–8 (Memphis, Imperial period): οὐ γὰρ ἅπασιν ὁµῶς θάνατος βαρύς, ἀλλ’ ὅτις ἐσθλός, οὗτος καὶ θανάτου κοῦφον ἀπέσχε τέλος (‘not for everyone is death likewise grievous, but he who is noble, may(?) he receive a light death’). An opposite model can be found in Bernand 1969, no. 52 (Alexandria, Imperial period); the deceased has to be propitious and unharmful, because the dead woman is assured that everybody in her family performed the customary duties and honored her at the funerary ritual: γράµµατα καὶ στήλην κεχαραγµένα σῆς ἀρετῇσι ἠσέλιπες, µακάρων ἰς χθόν’ ἀνερχοµένη· ἀλλ’ εὐψύχι, Σεραπιάς, ἀπὸ σῶν γε τέκνων ὡς εὔχου τεθεῖσα· σὲν γὰρ ἀνὴρ προέπεµψε καὶ ἁδελφοὶ σου συνόµαιµοι· σοὶ χάριτας δὲ ἔχοµεν, ἐπεὶ βίον ἡδὺν ἔδοκας· ἀλλ’ ἄγε συντήρει ὃν πέπλεχες στέφανον· σοὶ δὲ Ὀσείριδος ἁγνὸν ὕδωρ Εἶσις χαρίσαιτο (‘engraved letters and a stele remembering your virtues you leave, going up to the land of the blessed. Have courage, Serapias! You were buried by your children as you wished, your husband escorted you to the grave and also your brothers and your kindred. We are grateful to you because you made our lives sweet. Good! Preserve the crown that you have twined; Isis may gratify you with the pure water of Osiris’).

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love towards the children); second, the social community (realisation of hate and curses against the murderers); third, the relationship with the supernatural (hope in divine retribution). The communication strategy works both horizontally between members of the same status and vertically between men and gods. Let us continue with another family drama, this time less romantic. In this case we are dealing with a real murder, not an effect of witchcraft. The lover of a treacherous wife killed and threw the legitimate husband off a cliff. And the dead man invoked Zeus to punish his wife.64 Passer-by, Aphrodeisios is my name, and I am a citizen of Alexandreia, leader of the chorus. I die a most wretched death because of my wife, the dirty adulteress, whom Zeus will destroy. Her secret lover, a member of my own family, Lychon, slaughtered me and threw me from the heights like a discus, still a young man. In my twentieth year, full of beauty, the Destinies, who have spun (my fate) sent me as a delight to Hades.

His wife probably managed to escape secular law, but for the relative’s victim she was equally responsible for Aphrodisios’ death as her lover. The family of Aphrodisios put in his mouth an imprecation full of anger against her, which was also an invocation to Zeus to implement justice. The aim of this grave epigram is to arouse in the passers-by feelings of indignation and rage against the treacherous wife – feelings which were particularly significant if they were community members. Moreover, the family had to make clear to everyone that they were condemning Lychon even though he was a kinsman. As regards the woman, punishment from the gods was expected, and at the same time the social community was led to take measures in order to satisfy the anger of the victim, another restless dead. Let us briefly examine how the appeal to justice is constructed. Stronger than the hate against the secret lover was the anger against the wife, ‘the dirty adulteress’.65 In contrast with the negative characterisation of the wife and the lover, the deceased was celebrated as a handsome choir-leader, whose image is 64

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From Alexandreia (Troas?), third century CE, now in the Louvre, Paris. CIG II 3588; Peek 1955, no. 1098; I.Alexandreia Troas 90; Merkelbach and Stauber 1998, 632f. no. 07/05/04; Greek text and discussion on pp. 104f. in this volume. On the stone a standing male figure inside an aedicula is depicted. See Graf 2007, 142f. for other examples of epitaphs for young victims of a real murder. For reproach of treacherous wives, cf. a cult regulation from Philadelphia (c. 100 BCE): LSAM 20 = TAM V.3.1539; see Barton and Horsley 1981; Chaniotis 1997b; Versnel 2002, 43 note 19; Petzl 2003; Chaniotis 2010b, 227f.; see also pp. 213f. in this volume. A certain Dionysios established a new cult. Access to the cult was subject to strict requirements of accepted behaviour. For example, a woman was not allowed to sleep with a man other than her husband; otherwise she would be defiled and not permitted to enter the house cult or take part in the cult practices (lines 35–41). If she disregarded these rules, the gods would curse her (lines 41–44). This text is interesting also for considering that even the intention of having sexual relations outside of marriage was worthy of punishment by the gods, as in the case of Aphrodisios’ wife: a man had not to even consider having sexual relations with a woman that was not his own wife (lines 25–28): and the gods which were guardians of these precepts were powerful and did not accept any contravention (lines 33–35).

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depicted in the relief. His physical beauty provoked an emotion in a divinity: Hades rejoiced when such a fine-looking young man arrived in his realm. While this epitaph denounces a crime and accuses the real instigator, another funerary epigram clears an accused husband of a wife-killing. In fact, the deceased wife is presented as rejecting the gossip that the husband killed her: she was not the only one to die before her time.66 Know, thou stone palace of the Night that hides me, and thou, flood of Kokytos, where wailing is loud: it was not my husband, as they say, who murdered me, wishing for another marriage. Why should Ruphianos have this reputation for naught? But the fatal Destinies brought me here. Paula of Tarentum is not the only woman who has died untimely.

The husband had to save face. He inscribed this epitaph in order to show his love for his wife and his grief after her death, but at the same time it was a message to his community to stop gossiping about the strange death of the woman.67 My last example also comes from a funerary context. A young and successful athlete, son of powerful parents, was killed not by love charms, but by ‘doombringing insalubrious herbs’.68 Although we do not have an explicit demand for revenge, still this epitaph is worth mentioning. An interesting feature is the play with the name of the young man: Abaskantos.69 This name means ‘protected from 66

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First century CE. Peek 1955, no. 1819; Greek Anthology 7.700: ῎Ιστω νυκτὸς ἐµῆς, ἥ µ’ ἔκρυϕεν, οἰκία ταῦτα | λάινα Κωκυτοῦ τ’ ἀµϕιγόητον ὕδωρ, | οὔτι µ’ ἀνήρ, ὃ λέγουσι, κατέκτανεν ἐς γάµον ἄλλης | παπταίνων. τί µάτην οὔνοµα ‘Ρουϕιανός; | ἀλλά µε Κῆρες ἄγουσι µεµορµέναι. οὐ µία δήπου | Παῦλα Ταραντίνη κάτθανεν ὠκύµορος (translation slightly adapted from Paton 1960). On uxoricide in the Imperial period, see the case of Regilla murdered by Herodes Atticos, now analysed by Pomeroy 2007. See Chaniotis 2004b for information on gossip, loss of face and social stigma in confession inscriptions, ‘prayers for justice’, and epitaphs. IG XII.5.764; Peek 1955, no. 711; Del Barrio 1992, no. 295 (Andros, second century CE): ‘Ρώµης ἠδ’ ’Ασίης ἐπιβὰς διὰ πράγµατα πολλὰ καὶ πάντων ἀέθλων νεῖκος ἐνεγκάµενος ῎Ανδριος Αἰακίδης τέκνῳ µίγα τῷδ’ ἐνὶ τύµβῳ κεῖµαι ’Αβάσκαντος, παῖς κρατερῶν γονέων· οὐχ ὡς Πηλεΐδης ϕίλτροις, ἀλλ’ ὡς µέγας ῎Αρης µοιριδίοις ληµϕθεὶς οὐχ ὁσίαις βοτάναις. ἀλλὰ πατρὸς µὲν ἐµεῖο λυγρὸς [–⏑⏑–] µήτηρ πενθαλέη δ’ ἐστ[ε-⏑–⏑⏑–]. ‘Having already travelled to Rome and Asia for many deeds and having won every contest, I, Abaskantos, a descendant of Aiakos, son of powerful parents, lie in this grave together with my son. I was not defeated by love charms like the son of Peleus, but by doom-bringing insalubrious herbs, as was the great Ares. But the baneful (...) of my father, my mother is mourning’ (trans. A. Chaniotis). See Graf 2007, 140 no. 7 for a commentary on the mythical examples. Attested 9 times in the Aegean Islands, Cyprus and Cyrenaica, always in the Imperial period (LGNP I s.v. Ἀβάσκαντος). Another interesting epigram that plays with the name is SEG XLV 641, Euhydrion (Thessalia), third century CE, a funerary epigram for the eighteen-yearold Zoe (ll. 3–4: Κάτθνε γὰρ Ζώη οὔνοµα κλησκοµένη). See also I.Stratonikeia 1202: θρέψας µοι Κάρπος ... πάντα ὀλέσας καρπὸν τῶν ἐπ᾿ ἐµοὶ καµάτων; I.Erythrai 309: Ἀλύπητος ψευδώνυµον; discussion of these epigrams and more examples of this playing with the name of the deceased in Chaniotis 2004c and SEG LIV 555.

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the evil eye’.70 We can detect the fear of the evil eye behind the choice of this name by his parents. They were probably well-off people (krateroi) who feared the envy of others and the possibility of a spell that could cause damage or death. But a name was not enough, or rather, in this case, the nomen had the opposite omen. The poor Abaskantos died exactly because of magical poisons – at least this is what his parents thought – given to him by an enemy, possibly by someone who envied him. To denounce in the epitaph a death by sorcery was the only instrument available for the grieved parents. Their pain (lygros, penthaleē) needed to be shared: they communicate their emotions to the whole civic group. Whoever read this grave epigram knew the truth, and so could take part in the emotional situation of the family of the deceased.71 We can hypothesise that their prime intent was to create an emotional community with other elite families, arousing in them the fear of the evil eye – their sons could have the same fate as Abaskantos. Within this emotional community it was easier to identify the risks and to try to find valid means of protection of life. 3 EXPERIENCES OF INJUSTICE SMALL CRIMES THAT STIR UP RETALIATORY EMOTIONS What emerges from the texts presented so far is that it was socially permitted to express one’s own desire for revenge, and that for doing this there were culturally constructed means.72 Death that demanded revenge was not the only situation in which it was acceptable to show the wish for vengeance. We have a great number of texts about cases of theft, abuse, economic damage, slander, and false accusations.73 Through a selection of some more exemplary texts, in the next pages I will get closer to various circumstances in which a strong feeling of being offended led to an appeal for justice to the gods and to a public expression of emotion. We will notice how a retaliatory emotion dynamically interacts with other emotions such as envy and Schadenfreude. The gesture of raising hands towards the sky is observed in connection with an event less grievous than an untimely violent death, but charged with the same intensity. In a text from Delos, Theogenes raised his hands to the gods, the Sun, and the Dea Syria (Hagnē thea) in order to bring punishment to a woman who did not return his deposit of money despite having sworn to give it back.74 He 70 71 72 73 74

See Bonneau 1982, 23–25 for the etymological explanation. For other examples of unknown or shadowy murderers, see Graf 2001, 187 with notes 19f. On the importance of revenge in Greek culture see Gehrke 1987; Blundell 1989; Cohen 1995; McHardy 2008. For a discussion about small crimes of everyday life and belief in divine punishment, see Chaniotis 2004b. Small stele of white marble, discovered in 1881 (Delos, second/first century BCE?), I.Délos 2531: Θεογένης κατ’ ἀναγίου αἴρει τὰς χεῖρας τῷ ‘Ηλίῳ καὶ τῇ Ἁγνῇ Θεᾷ. ὀµώµοκεν αὐτῶι µὴ στερέσαι µηδὲ ἀδικῆσαι αὐτὸν παρακαταθήκην µηδὲ λαβοῦσαν ἀποσστερεῖν.

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harboured a deep grudge against her, and the best solution to give voice to his feelings was to erect this stele in the Sanctuary of the Syrian Gods.75 We can reconstruct his emotions through the text and the image above it – a pair of upraised hands. The text gives us the details of the story: his behaviour, correct in every detail, is contrasted to her perjury. He was not the one who started the conflict. Such a justification is a typical feature of this group of documents. He claimed then for damages, and he exploited two levels of action: the power (kratos) of the goddess and the slandering of human beings (the therapeutai, ‘no doubt the group of those devoted to the goddess, including the sacred personnel of the temple’ 76). The image, as we have seen also in the Rheneia texts, is an expression of his emotions and tells us that he performed a ritual to communicate with the gods and with the whole social group. Theogenes’ emotions are projected onto the divinities, and in particular onto the Dea Syria. The woman in the above episode broke the oath first and thus the goddess will have to show her anger.77 The mechanism of action here works in this way: the anger and the disappointment of Theogenes are rendered as the emotions of the goddess herself. This is an excellent strategy to assure an involvement of a divine agent. Perjury was an offence not prosecuted by secular law. However, a misfortune which befell a perjurer was perceived as punishment from the gods, who had been wronged by the broken oath .78 The revenge, then, would come not directly from Theogenes but from the goddess – and the punish-ment of a powerful divinity is the worst thing that could happen to a human being. Furthermore, Theogenes prayed that the woman would be the object of the slander of the therapeutai. He wanted to be sure that his opponent would be under attack from heavenly powers and mortals alike. He knew the deceitful woman personally, although he did not name her.79 Asking that the devotees to the goddess speak badly about her, Theogenes wanted to spread a bad reputation for this woman, and to awaken the judgment of others. Gossip amplified the news, and in

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ἐγὼ δὲ πεποιθὼς τῇ ἁγνῇ θεᾶ̣ πεπίστευκα ὅρκῳ καὶ οὐθὲν ἐξ ἐµοῦ ἀδίκηµα γέγονεν εἰς αὐτήν· αὐτὴ δὲ λαβοῦσα παρακαταθήκην εἰς ἐλευθερίαν ἀπεστέρησε. µὴ ἐκϕύγοι τὸ κράτος τῆς θεᾶς. ἀξιῶ δὲ καὶ δέοµαι πάντας τοὺς θεραπευτὰς βλασϕηµεῖν αὐτὴν καθ’ ὥραν. ‘Theogenes raises his hands to the Sun and the Pure Goddess against an impious person. She swore to him neither to deprive him of something nor to wrong him, and if she takes a deposit not to defraud. And I, having confidence in the Pure Goddess, trusted in the oath and no wrong-doing was done to her by me. But she took a deposit, in order to be manumitted, and deprived me (of it). May she not escape the power of the goddess. And I demand and request from all the worshippers of the goddess to slander her at the right time’ (trans. A. Chaniotis). On the sanctuary of the Syrian Gods in Delos, see Bruneau 1970, 466–473; Will 1985. Versnel 1999, 141. On divinities showing their anger after a crime, see e.g. Petzl 1994, no. 3 (Saittai, 164 CE) for a stolen garment (see pp. 224f.); Strubbe, Arai Epitymboi, no. 40 (Lydia, first/second century CE) for tomb-robbery. On perjury, a crime between secular and sacred law, see Chaniotis 1997, 2004a and b. Jordan 1979, 523 note 5.

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the end the whole story was known to everyone in the community. In this period, the island of Delos was a centre where merchants, bankers, and businessmen from various countries were exchanging goods. Unreliable behaviour could undermine basic social or economic relations within the society itself, and so it was to be manifestly condemned by everyone. At Knidos (an ancient city of Caria, in modern Turkey), during the second or first century BCE, it was a common practice among women to go to the sanctuary of Demeter and Kore to denounce a wrong suffered. We have 13 lead tablets, all written by women, found in the sanctuary.80 The authors of these texts presented themselves as victims mistreated by other persons. Standard expressions and similar phraseology were used to describe various situations,81 always an experience of injustice: theft, slander, or a deposit not returned. The wrongdoers were committed to Demeter and Kore. A reading of two of these documents will give an idea of the contents of this dossier: (A) Artemis dedicates to Demeter and Kore and all the gods with Demeter, the person who did not return the cloak and the garments that I had left behind, even though I demanded them back. May he, in his own person, bring them back to Demeter; also if it is another person who has my possessions, may he be burnt internally by fever, publicly confessing. For me let everything be holy and free. (B) Let it be allowed for me to drink and eat together and to come under the same roof (as the cursed person). For I am wronged, Lady Demeter.82 I hand over to Demeter and Kore the person who has accused me of preparing poisons against my husband. Let him go up to Demeter, burnt internally by fever, with all his family, publicly confessing. And let him not find Demeter, Kore or the gods with Demeter to be merciful. For me let everything be holy and free. Let it be allowed for me to be safe when under the same roof or involved with him in any way. And I hand over also the person who has written charges against me or commanded others to do so. And let him not find Demeter, Kore, or the gods with Demeter merciful, but may he go up burnt internally by fever together with all his family.83

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Found in the sanctuary of Demeter and Kore in Knidos in 1859. See Blümel 1992, nos. 147– 159, with references to previous editions. See Chaniotis 2009c, 63f. I.Knidos 148 = DTA 2; translated by Versnel 2002 (modified): ἀνιεροῖ Ἄρτεµεις ∆άµατρι, Κούρα[ι θεο]ῖς παρὰ ∆άµατρι πᾶσι· ὅστις τὰ ὑπ’ ἐµοῦ καταλιφθέντα ἱµάτια καὶ ἔνδυµα καὶ ἀνάκω[λ]ον, ἐµοῦ ἀπαιτ[η]⟨σά⟩σας, οὐκ ἀπέ[δωκέ] µοι, ἀνενέγκαι αὐτὸς καρὰ ∆[άµ]ατρα, καὶ εἴ τι[ς ἄλλος] τἀµὰ ἔ⟨χ⟩[ει, πεπρη]µένος ἐξ[αγορεύ]ων· ἐµο[ὶ δὲ ὅσια κ]αὶ ἐλεύθερα καὶ συµπιεῖν καιὶ συµφαγεῖν καὶ ἐπ[ὶ τὸ α]ὐτὸ στέγος ἐ[λθ]εῖν· ἀδίκηµαι γάρ̣̣, δέσπο[ι]να ∆άµατερ. Cf. SEG XXVIII 1568 (= SEG XL 1049), a ‘prayer for justice’ from Maionia, with Chaniotis 2009b, 127, and 128–130 on the cession of disputed, lost or stolen goods to the divinity. IKnidos 150 = DTA 4 A; translated by Versnel 2002 (modified): [ἀνα]τίθηµι ∆άµατρι καὶ Κούραι τὸν κατ’ ἐµο[ῦ] εἴπ[α]ντα, ὅτι ἐγὼ τῶι ἐµῶι ἀνδ[ρὶ] φάρµακα ποιῶ· ἀνα[βαῖ] παρὰ ∆άµατρα πεπρηµένος µετὰ τῶν αὐτοῦ [ἰδίων] πάντων ἐξαγορεύων, καὶ µὴ τύχῃ εὐειλάτου [∆]άµατρος καὶ Κούρας µηδὲ τῶν θεῶν τῶν παρὰ ∆ά[µα]τρος, ἐµοὶ δὲ ᾖ ὅσια καὶ ἐλεύθερα ὁµοστεγησάσῃ ἢ ὧι πο[τε] τρόπωι ἐπιπλεκοµένηι· ἀνατίθηµι δὲ καὶ τὸν κατ’ ἐ[µοῦ] γράψαντα ἢ καὶ ἐπιτάξαντα· µὴ τύχοι ∆άµατρος καὶ [Κ]όρας µηδὲ θεῶν τῶν παρὰ ∆άµατρος εὐιλάτων, ἀλλ’ ἀ[ν]α̣⟨β⟩αῖ µετὰ τῶν ἰδίων πάντων παρὰ [∆]άµατρα

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Some essential features of these prayers, as rightly outlined by Henk Versnel are: first, the punishment from the goddess could be referred to as a kind of ordeal by fire that would force the perpetrator to confess and recompense the damages (see, however, below pp. 255f.); second, having dedicated the wrongdoers to the gods, the author of the prayer knew that they were now cursed, and so asked to escape contagion in case of an encounter with them – a quite realistic eventuality in a small community, especially if the culprit was unknown; third, the author justified her choice of such vindictive measures by claiming to suffer injustice.84 These texts need to be put into context. Christopher Faraone cautiously suggested that the festival of the Thesmophoria, performed in the sanctuary of Demeter and Kore, might have offered the occasion for a quasi-juridical activity aimed at solving crimes and securing the culprit’s punishment. Especially on the second day, the day of fasting and grief for the injustice suffered by Demeter, the rape of Persephone, women could deposit their tablets or orally accuse their offender. The fear of coming into contact with the accursed person, as expressed by the self-protection clauses, might be limited to the context of the Thesmophoria, when women lived together and shared meals in the sanctuary. The process of crime detection and conflict resolution might have been an ongoing dialogue with the goddess and the hypothetic offender, with previous written requests left unanswered.85 As noted by Angelos Chaniotis, the women that frequented the sanctuary displayed their emotions in these prayers. They influenced each other as proved by the convergence in phraseology. What we read resulted from the interaction among the female worshippers. Showing one’s own emotions had the function of a persuasion strategy in the asymmetrical relationship established with the goddess. The women deposited their appeals for justice in the context of ritual actions; and such moments loaded with emotions were worthwhile times to come to the sanctuary to meet other women and to deposit one’s own prayer.86 There are still some further questions that can be addressed in connection with these texts to understand them more deeply within their cultural framework. What is their social function? Does the display of one’s own emotions to the divinities and to other women play a role in the dynamics of social interrelationships? To

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πεπρηµένος. The possible consequences of an accusation of having poisoned a family member are exemplified by the story of Tatias, see Petzl 1994, no. 69; see also Chaniotis 2009b, 122–125 and pp. 220f. in this volume. See also Versnel 1994, 149: the pittakion and the arai of Tatias ‘precisely denote the kind of objects that have survived in the form of lead tablets in Knidos’. See Versnel 1994 and Versnel 2002, 50–54. See Faraone 2011: he compares the Knidian tablets with the judgment for slander against Euripides in Aristophanes’ Thesmophoriazousai (lines 372−379, 444−454, 663−684), and with two curse tablets from Locri (Audollent 1904, no. 212, Calabria, third century BCE) and Amorgos (IG XII.7 p. 1; see below note 98). See Chaniotis 2009c, 61–68, with a reference to Polybios 15.29.8–14, an interesting passage describing how women were behaving and interacting in a sanctuary (in this case the Thesmophorion in Alexandria, Egypt).

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give an answer, it might be interesting to look at some recent findings in social psychology and conflict management. I am thinking in particular about research on social justice, that studies the fairness of procedures and behaviour in interpersonal relationships within organisations. Analyses of interrelationships in contemporary workplaces could offer valid interpretative tools to approach our prayers from Knidos. Robert Bies and Thomas Tripp studied how, in a company, revenge is a behaviour provoked by someone else, and most of the time the root of provocation is in the sense of injustice. The emotions of revenge are characterised by a sense of violation and by feelings of helplessness, which are intense and of an enduring nature.87 The feelings of violation and helplessness provoke action-orientated emotions. People describe their psychosomatic experience, and these emotions are typified as ‘hot’, and the person herself is ‘inflamed’, ‘enraged’, ‘consumed by thoughts of revenge’, or with a ‘burning desire for revenge’. The emotions of revenge can poison the professional and personal lives of the people that feel them: emotions themselves can operate as a ‘social toxin’.88 Another important result of their research is that social cognitive dynamics shape retaliatory emotions. In fact, these emotions are amplified by a cognitive process of ‘rumination and obsession’, that become stronger when people express and give vent to their emotions in social gatherings called by Calvin Morrill ‘bitch sessions’.89 Moreover, there is experimental evidence suggesting that to compare equal experiences of inequity affects the individual’s perception of what happened to him. The social environment then conditions the evaluation of blame and influences the reaction to be taken.90 Revenge consists of two parts, the first being the perception of the injustice suffered, and the second being the intention to restore justice by harming the offender. Revenge can take different forms: behaviour of retributive justice can be, for example, public complaints directed to a humiliation of the rival, public claims for embarrassing apologies, or whistleblowing and speaking badly about the wrongdoer.91 In what way could these statements be useful to us? Historical periods, local contexts, and situations are completely different. We cannot simply transfer these results from one setting to another. Interpersonal dynamics change in altered circumstances. But these studies could be an inspiration for considering the cognitive processes and the social mechanisms that structure the phenomenon of praying for justice in Knidos. Far from implying universal elements in human nature, I want to reflect on similar emotional cognitive processes that can be compared. First of all, the Knidian women also started from a feeling of injustice in a condition of helplessness: often their charges were based on purely circum87 88 89 90 91

Bies and Tripp 2005. Hornstein 1996. Morrill 1992. Bies and Tripp 2002. Bies and Tripp 2005.

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stantial evidence, and at any rate they could not personally bring their cases to the court.92 They decided then to apply to the authority of Demeter, Kore, Plouton, and all the gods and goddesses with Demeter. In considering the motives of the women when seeking revenge from the goddess, perhaps they asked that their offender be burnt inside as they were ‘burning’ with their own thoughts of violation and revenge; similarly, in ‘prayers for justice’ for an untimely death the author wanted the same fate for the murderer according to the mentality ‘as I have suffered, you have to suffer’.93 After having written their prayers, the women stopped being ‘inflamed’ in their wish for revenge, and they hoped for pain and affliction for their enemies. But this is only an impression that cannot be proven since we cannot say what the women felt – if they perceived themselves as ‘inflamed’ by retaliatory emotions. We aren’t able to set up a scientific and psychological experiment as in the modern example above. What can be taken from the Knidos example is that peprēmenos indicates a form of punishment involving the interior (shame) or physical (fever) ‘burning’ of the opponent.94 Another stimulating concept from the social sciences and research on organisational justice is the idea that retaliatory emotions are acting as a ‘social toxin’. Indeed, it is not hard to imagine what an offended woman was able to do, as we can easily assume in cases of slander or false accusations. Her reaction could be unpredictable and possibly even socially unacceptable. She would need a culturally established way to satisfy her wishes for revenge. Her emotions could poison social and personal lives in a small community operating as a face-to-face society. The cognitive process of ‘rumination’, the ‘bitch sessions’, and the exchanges of similar incidents were not taking place during a coffee break but at the sanctuary. The sanctuary, in fact, was a place of social gatherings where women, usually confined to their home, could meet other women and talk about their pains. 95 Women who were recently offended were meeting women that had already deposited a tablet. Plausibly, arriving at the sanctuary, they were not clearly resolute on what they should have to denounce. But talking about and dealing with one offence, they started remembering other wrongs suffered. Festival after festival these women were all together amplifying individual emotions and shaping the response that should be given after an experience of injustice. The social environment moulded their actions: their wish for revenge took the form of a ritual. Because of their strong feelings, the demands and public complaints of the women could appear to constitute overly emotional, antisocial behaviour that could destroy peace and harmony in a community. It is true that their public com92 93 94 95

Chaniotis 2009c, 64. See Lieberman 1974 on demanding justice in conformity (houtōs) with the wrong suffered. See Chaniotis 2004a, 7 with note 19 for an overview of modern interpretations of the term peprēmenos. Chaniotis 2009c, 66f.

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plaints could often be serious and violent, since they might pray for instance for the humiliation of the rival, for embarrassing apologies from the rival and his family, or for dreadful punishments and horrendous tortures, with no hope for mercy. These are serious and violent prayers indeed. However, it must be understood that all of these retaliatory emotions were condensed into a text, and this text was delivered to a divinity. It became now the responsibility of the divinity to sort out the situation. Thus, through a ritual, which was well established and socially accepted, the negative emotions of the women were eradicated from everyday life. Indeed, the author of the text, praying to the goddess not to be merciful, also tried to manipulate the emotions of the divinity.96 I think we can identify two cognitive processes activated by the ritual of praying for justice in Knidos: first, women ruminated about their wishes for revenge and amplified their emotions in interactions with other women; second, instructing the divinity to sort out their problems, women were confident to have done everything within their power against their adversaries: they had focused their harmful feelings in a concrete action. In conclusion, the social function of the display of emotions in the Knidian prayers, ritually deposited in the sanctuary of Demeter, was to satisfy and cool strong retaliatory emotions, and to ‘detoxify’ the social interrelationships within the city. A ritual deed was a solution for daily misdemeanours that had generated animosities. Alongside the wish for revenge, Schadenfreude, the pleasure derived from the misfortunes of others,97 plays a part as a very important feature of social dynamics of a small community. In a famous ‘prayer for justice’ from Amorgos, the author of the text asked Demeter to punish those who rejoiced in seeing him and his wife suffering:98 Lady Demeter, I implore you, because I have suffered injustice; listen to my prayer, goddess, and pass a judgment of what is just, so that you give the most terrible and harsh sufferings to 96

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In these texts µὴ γένοιτο εὐειλάτου τυχεῖν is a recurring expression. Εὐείλατος ‘very merciful’ is derived from the verbs ἵληµι (attested only in the imperative form ‘be gracious!’) and ἱλάσκοµαι (‘appease’ (a god) and ‘to be merciful’): terms of the ιλ- group are very common in Greek prayers; they express the idea that the divinity should be propitious and favourable towards the worshipper; see Pulleyn 1997, 145 and appendix 1. Cf. Pinker 1997, 367: ‘When English-speakers hear the word Schadenfreude for the first time, their reaction is not, “Let me see ... Pleasure in another’s misfortunes. ...What could that possibly be? I cannot grasp the concept; my language and culture have not provided me with such a category”. Their reaction is, “You mean there’s a word for it? Cool!”’. On cultural differences of naming emotions, see Oatley, Keltner, and Jenkins 2006, 183. IG XII.7 p. 1 (Arkesine on Amorgos, c. 100 BCE): Κυρία ∆ηµήτηρ, λιτανεύω σε παθὼν ἄδικα, ἐπάκουσον, θεά, καὶ κρῖναι τὸ δίκαιον, ἵνα τοὺς τοιαῦτα ἐνθυµουµένους καὶ καταχαίροντε⟨ς⟩ καὶ λύπας ἐπιθε⟨ῖ⟩ναι κἀµοὶ καὶ τῇ ἐµῇ γυναικὶ Ἐπικτήσι καὶ µισοῦσιν ἡµᾶς ποιῆσαι αὐτοῖς τὰ δινότατα καὶ χαλεπώτατα δινά. Βασίλισσα, ἐπάκουσον ἡµῖν παθοῦσι, κολάσαι τοὺς ἡµᾶς τοιούτους ἡδέως βλέποντας. For the text see pp. 214–216 in this volume. See also Jordan 1985, no. 60; Versnel 1999. The text was transcribed after its discovery in 1899 but, unfortunately, the tablet was then lost.

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The first part of this text (not cited here) explains the circumstances of the affair: a certain Epaphroditos persuaded the slaves of the author of the prayer to escape; plus, he seduced his handmaid and took her as wife against the wishes of her owner (who may have been in love with her). It seems that there were many anonymous rivals that approved the actions of Epaphroditos or rejoiced at them.99 The author of the text seems to be an arrogant, rich man disliked by everyone. And, after his slaves have run away, in a condition of public mockery, he made himself slave of Demeter, and constructed a hierarchical relationship as a persuasion strategy in order to obtain satisfaction from the goddess. The sense of violation, felt by the author of the text, here concerned one’s own honour and social esteem; and the curse was also against those who hated his family. But Schadenfreude, like envy, is an emotion not overtly expressed,100 and so it was hard to know precisely (although perhaps easily imaginable in a small community) who was rejoicing in such a shameful situation. Therefore, the prayer is all-inclusive. Schadenfreude of others was also feared in the case of death attributed to poison or magic: ‘if anybody poisoned her or if anybody exulted over her death or will exult, pursue them’.101 This language is formulaic. The formula expresses the idea that not only the damage itself is a reason for praying to the gods in these terms. When someone rejoices, or will rejoice, in another’s misfortune it is necessary to invoke retribution from the gods. The Schadenfreude can be revenged. Praying against someone who rejoices in one’s own misfortunes is also a way of provoking one’s own Schadenfreude, the joy in seeing the rival punished by the gods and tremendously suffering. Gossip and storytelling offer occasions for pleasure of another’s adversity and for invidious comparisons, especially in an honour-shame culture. Moreover, another emotion is involved: fear to loose one’s own period of prosperity. For the person who feels it, Schadenfreude is a rewarding feeling and it is closely related to envy; indeed, it is more likely to arise when misfortune happens to a person who is advantaged.102 Schadenfreude finds its roots in a scenario of social injustice, where the less fortunate are forced to remember what they lack.103 Envy and Schadenfreude, as well as belief in the evil eye, are interrelated. Inequalities in the

99 Versnel 1999, 127. 100 See Sanders 2010, 38. 101 SB 1323; Cumont 1923, no. 22; Björck 1938, no. 11: θεῷ ὑψίστῳ καὶ πάντων ἐπόπτῃ καὶ ‘Ηλίῳ καὶ Νεµέσεσι αἴρει ’Αρσεινόη ἄωρος τὰς χεῖρας. ἤ τις αὐτῇ ϕάρµακα ἐποίησε ἠ καὶ ἐπέχαρέ τις αὐτῆς τῷ θανάτῳ ἠ ἐπιχαρεῖ, µετέλθετε αὐτούς. See Versnel 1999, 130 for other parallels. 102 See the neuroscientific study of Takahashi et al. 2009. 103 Portmann 2000, 34.

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social texture are the requirement to feel such emotions.104 And when someone else’s loss could be your gain, the social struggle can run without rules, especially within a community with limited control mechanisms. 4 AFTER VICTIMISATION SOCIAL AND RITUAL STRATEGIES OF CONTAINING EMOTIONS Murders, magical poisons, thefts, false accusations, cheating friends, conflicts between owners and slaves, rivalry between noble families: the texts discussed in this chapter depict communities with hard political and social living conditions. Today in almost every country there is a government office or a charitable organisation that can offer help, practical advice, and emotional support to victims of crime. Greek ‘prayers for justice’ show us a crime-coping method which involves the supernatural.105 Even small crimes could threaten the social order and the safety of the inhabitants of cities and villages.106 What these documents allow us to analyse is the reaction to various types of crime, a reaction that has many facets: emotionality, social norms, rituals, and compensation. Fearful, frustrated and angry victims needed to cope with the experience of being affected by a crime. It is from ‘une poussé émotionnelle’ that the procedure of hunting the person responsible for the offence suffered begins.107 But, as Louis Gernet pointed out, the logic of sentiments is a ‘logique collective’, that must be preferred to a ‘logique inviduelle’.108 How can we detect collective emotions from these texts, since ‘prayers for justice’ were written by a single person, and were not, for example, decrees enacted by a popular assembly? Luckily, we have many clues at our disposal: first, there are themes often recurring for similar circumstances, and emotional reactions to wrongs suffered seem to become conventional; second, there is formulaic language, phraseology, and style to express one’s own emotions; third, the way chosen to display emotions presupposes that the addressees and the observers have the same Weltanschauung as the author of the text, as for example in the case of grave epigrams with a prayer for revenge; then our texts were the result of a process of interaction and mutual influence between 104 Some categories of social inequalities in ancient Greek culture: male/female, free/slave, Greek/barbarian, citizen/foreigner, rich/poor, politically powerful/weak, influential/emarginated class, educated/illiterate, urban/peasant, successful/unsuccessful, young/old, good-looking/ugly, healthy/sick, lucky/unlucky, happy and functional family/unhappy and disaggregated family group, many dear friends/no friends. 105 This does not mean that secular law was not taken into consideration at all; see Chaniotis 1997a; Versnel 2002, 73. 106 See Chaniotis 2008 for an historical account on problems of policing the Hellenistic countryside. 107 Fauconnet 1928, 238; see id., chapter 5 for his idea about the nature of responsibility as a ‘transfert des émotions suscitées par le crime’. 108 Gernet 1917, 426.

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members of a social community,109 as in the sanctuary of Demeter in Knidos; finally, certain emotions are valid only in comparison with other people, as the intergroup emotion of Schadenfreude in the prayer from Amorgos.110 I hope to have shown that a study of prayers for justice, as opposed to simple curses that do not contain justifications, can contribute to our understanding of the emotional dynamics of retaliation in ancient Greek culture. These documents need to be analysed together with literary evidence on beliefs about revenge. In the last two decades there has been a lively discussion in particular on fourth-century BCE Athenian laws and Athenian values about honour, revenge, family feuding, and litigation. Scholars have based this discussion mainly on the corpus of orators and on Aristotle.111 Since we do have prayers for justice from Athens, and the earliest attestations date from the fourth century BCE,112 a discussion of Athenian beliefs on revenge should be reformulated taking into account the epigraphic evidence with an analysis of its emotional factors. 113 But this discussion can encourage questions to ask of our sources. Are prayers for justice finally resolving conflicts and tensions between different social actors? Or are they another means to pursue hostility?114 I think that the involvement of supernatural agents had the effect of smoothing down strife. As Henk Versnel has argued, the practice of praying to the gods for justice testifies to two strategies of social control:115 the first is the appeal to a powerful third party for help against a second party. The second is the suggestion to the second party that a third party has been called in for assistance. If one does not work, the other may.

The punishments of the gods against the culprit were effective, inescapable, and terrific.116 From the data here presented, I would suggest that prayers for justice also had another function for the maintenance of a stable social order. A public expression of one’s emotions served to regulate social behaviours and social interactions, and 109 For empirical evidence of how emotions are shaped by cultural and social processes, see Kitayama and Markus 1994, with studies on cognitive, linguistic, physiological, and neurochemical components of the relation between culture and emotions. 110 On Schadenfreude as intergroup emotion see Frijda 1998, 276f.; Spears and Leach 2004; Sanders 2010, 37–39. 111 See Cohen 1995 and 2005; Harris 2005; Herman 2006. The reader can find useful bibliographical references in Harris 2005, Herman 2006, and Chaniotis 2013. On risk management and control of imminent dangers, from the analysis of an oracle’s questions and curses, see Eidinow 2007. 112 See Versnel 2002, 48f. 113 Gehrke 1987, 143 has stressed the importance of ‘prayers for justice’ for understanding Greek mentality of vengeance. See now Riess 2012, 164–234, who takes in consideration Athenian curse tablets, and argues that they functioned as a form of mediated violence; the ritualisation of violence contributed to hedge in troublesome emotions. 114 See Cohen 1995. 115 Versnel 2002, 73 and 37–40 for the definition of social control here implied. 116 The ‘confession inscriptions’ show clearly how illness and misfortune were interpreted as divine punishments. On the construction of fear of the gods see pp. 205–234 in this volume.

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to culturally construct and to keep under control the negative emotions that could threaten a peaceful life in a community. Indeed, the act of writing down a prayer for justice modified the emotions of its author. Having transferred one’s own negative emotions onto the gods or having publicly vented them, a person could return to his everyday life with the certainty that he had been compensated for the injustices experienced. At the level of these prayers, every murderer was punished as deserved, every stolen object was given back, and slanders were publicly proved as false. This ritual practice aimed to calm social tensions. No cultural system allows an unrestrained flow of negative and destructive feelings between the members of its community. We have evidence in the form of tablets and other documents from a broad geographical area and from a span of one thousand years that show how, through the involvement of the divine dimension, the desire for retaliation spurred on an action that could be seen as a legal one. It would have been impossible to live in a community without a way to control the emotions here analysed. These texts were a way to soothe and cool the feelings behind a wish for revenge. Negative emotions, most likely felt against a neighbour, a kinsman, or a friend, were then overcome through a ritual.117 At the same time, this ritual was prompted by the emotions of the community: emotions had a role in the decision-making of what response should be taken after a victimisation.118 Praying to the gods for justice was an action of containment that hoped to prevent one’s rivals from retaliating ‘irrationally like an animal’.119 The desire for revenge was manifested in a typical display that was shaped by ritual conventions. The retaliatory emotions were channelled into a culturally constructed system of revenge and were expressed through a socially accepted custom. This allowed for a measure of containing emotions without suppressing them; because after all, taking vengeance on our enemies is the sweetest of all things.120 BIBLIOGRAPHY Ameling, W. (2004) Inscriptiones Judaicae Orientis II: Kleinasien, Tübingen. Anderson, J. E. A. (2009) Postures, Gestures and Body Actions in Hellenistic Art, D.Phil thesis, University of Oxford. Assmann, J. (1992) When Justice Fails: Jurisdiction and Imprecation in Ancient Egypt and the Near East, Journal of Egyptian Archaeology 78, 149–162. 117 See pp. 359–387 in this volume on how emotions played a role inside the Athenian courts. The epigraphic evidence examined in this chapter shows us a way of coping with crime outside the courts. 118 On the role of emotions in the decision-making process, see Loewenstein 2000. 119 Plato, Protagoras 324b: µὴ ὥσπερ θηρίον ἀλογίστως τιµωρεῖται. See Cohen 2005, 173. 120 Thucydides 7.68.1: ἐχθροὺς ἀµύνασθαι ἐκγενησόµενον ἡµῖν καὶ τὸ λεγόµενόν που ἥδιστον εἶναι. ‘That vengeance on enemies will be in our power, and that, as the proverb says, is the sweetest of all things’. See also Euripides, Herakles 732f.

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Audollent, A. (1904) Defixionum tabellae, Paris. Barmash, P. (2005) Homicide in the Biblical World, Cambridge. Barton, S. C. and G. H. R. Horsley (1981) A Hellenistic Cult Group and the New Testament Church, Jahrbuch für Antike und Christentum 24, 7–41. Belayche, N. (2005) Hypsistos. Une voie de l’exaltation des dieux dans le polythéisme grécoromain, Archiv für Religionsgeschichte 7, 34–55. ––– (2006) ‘Au(x) dieu(x) qui règne(nt) sur ...’. Basileia divine et fonctionnement du polythéisme dans l’Anatolie impériale, in A. Vigourt et al. (eds.), Pouvoir et religion dans le monde romain. En hommage à Jean-Pierre Martin, Paris, 257–269. Belayche, N. (2007) Rites et ‘croyances’ dans l’épigraphie religieuse de l’Anatolie impériale, in J. Scheid (ed.), Rites et croyances dans le monde romain (Entretiens Hardt 53), Geneva, 74– 103. Bergmann, J. (1911) Die Rachgebete von Rheneia, Philologus 70, 503–507. Bernand, É. (1969) Inscriptions métriques de l’Égypte gréco-romaine, Paris. Bies, R. J. and T. M. Tripp (2002) Hot Flashes, Open Wounds: Injustice and the Tyranny of its Emotions, in S. Gilliland, D. Steiner, and D. Skarlicki (eds.), Emerging Perspectives on Managing Organizational Justice, Greenwich, CT, 203–223. ––– (2005) The Study of Revenge in the Workplace: Conceptual, Ideological, and Empirical Issues, in S. Fox and P. Spector (eds.), Counterproductive Workplace Behavior: an Integration of both Actor and Recipient Perspectives on Causes and Consequences, Washington, 65– 82. Björck, G. (1938) Der Fluch des Christen Sabinus, Uppsala. Blümel, W. (1992) Die Inschriften von Knidos. I, Bonn. Blundell, M. (1989) Helping Friends and Harming Enemies: A Study in Sophocles and Greek Ethics, Cambridge. Bonneau, D. (1982) L’apotropaïque ‘abaskantos’ en Égypte, Revue de l’Histoire des Religions 199, 23–36. Bremmer, J. N. (1983) The Importance of the Maternal Uncle and Grandfather in Archaic and Classical Greece and Early Byzantium, Zeitschrift für Papyrologie und Epigraphik 50, 173– 186. Bruneau, P. (1970) Recherches sur les cultes de Délos, Paris. Casey, E. (2004) Binding Speeches: Giving Voice to Deadly Thoughts in Greek Epitaphs, in I. Sluiter and R. M. Rosen (eds.), Free Speech in Classical Antiquity, Leiden, 63–90. Chaniotis, A. (1997a) Tempeljustiz im kaiserzeitlichen Kleinasien: Rechtliche Aspekte der Sühneinschriften Lydiens und Phrygiens, in G. Thür and J. Vélissaropoulos-Karakostas (eds.), Symposion 1995. Vorträge zur griechischen und hellenistischen Rechtsgeschichte (Korfu, 1.– 5. September 1995), Vienna, 353–384. ––– (1997b) Reinheit des Körpers – Reinheit des Sinnes in den griechischen Kultgesetzen, in J. Assmann and T. Sundermeier (eds.), Schuld, Gewissen und Person. Studien zur Geschichte des inneren Menschen, Gütersloh, 142–179. ––– (2004a) Under the Watchful Eyes of the Gods: Divine Justice in Hellenistic and Roman Asia Minor, in S. Colvin (ed.), The Greco-Roman East, Cambridge, 1–43. ––– (2004b) Von Ehre, Schande und kleinen Verbrechen unter Nachbarn: Konfliktbewältigung und Götterjustiz in Gemeinden des antiken Anatolien, in F. R. Pfetsch (ed.), Konflikt, Heidelberg, 233–254. ––– (2004c) Der Tod des Lebens und die Tränen des Peneios: eine thessalische Grabelegie, in A. Hornug, C. Jäkel, and W. Schubert (eds.), Studia Humanitatis ac Litterarum Trifolio Heidelbergensi dedicata. Festschrift für Eckkard Christmann, Wilfried Edelmeier und Rudolf Kettemann, Frankfurt, 39–43. ––– (2008) Policing the Hellenistic Countryside. Realities and Ideologies, in C. Brélaz and P. Ducrey (eds.), Sécurité collective et ordre public dans les sociétés anciennes (Entretiens Hardt 54), Geneva, 103–145.

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PICTURE CREDITS Figure 1:

White marble stele from Rhenaia (late second/early first centiry BCE), now in the Bucharest National Museum. Drawing: Wilhelm 1901, 14 fig. 3.

ISIS ARETALOGIES, INITIATIONS, AND EMOTIONS The Isis Aretalogies as a Source for the Study of Emotions Paraskevi Martzavou 1 INTRODUCTION There exists a complex type of textual source related to the cults of the Egyptian goddess Isis, conventionally called aretalogies. In this type of text, the main body is constituted by a thorough description of divine qualities and powers either of Isis or of the divinities of her circle. These texts, because of their partially celebratory character, have been mainly considered as mere ‘hymns’ to Isis and her associates.1 In this study, I will use these texts in an attempt to write a detailed and sympathetic history of a particular type of human experience. I shall examine the aretalogies as a source for the combined study of religious history and the study of the socio-cultural construction of emotions. One key concept here is the concept of religious change, a complex phenomenon whose study requires the deployment of a variety of historiographical strategies. In the present study, as part of this volume, emphasis is put on the construction and expression of emotions as a way to help perceive and explain change. I consider this aspect as part of a wider explanatory model concerning religious change as it can be observed through various sources and in different aspects of religious life (space, time, humans, and objects); conversely, the study of religious change allows us to see emotions at work, and to look at their particular effect on individuals in the ancient Greek world.2 In using this particular body of evidence, I will try to detect the type of concepts and emotions that are suggested through the aretalogies and to observe how these are used in the construction of a life attitude and life goals. But firstly, I will try to reconstruct the context of performance of these ‘praises to Isis’. Such a reconstruction is absolutely crucial in the process of understanding the construction and re-enactment of specific emotions. In what follows, literary, archaeological, and epigraphic information will be taken into account and will be used in an imaginative way in order to propose a model of performance for these texts and an interpretation of their possible function. I will argue that a group of aretalogical texts – written in stone and set up in a particular place, namely in the precincts of an Isis sanctuary – had a particular role 1 2

There is analogy here with the ‘miracle inscriptions’ of Asklepios in Epidauros; see pp. 177– 204 in this volume. For the emotional aspects of religious change see Harris 2010, 17.

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in rites of initiation, in the context of a specific ritual tradition which developed in the context of the Isiac cults from the late second century BCE onwards. Consequently, these texts, embedded in ritual and performed by specific priestly officials, were instrumental in the construction of emotions intimately related to a specific perception of the divine, in its role as an instigator of change. Such emotions were important first for the self-construction of the person who underwent the initiation, through the individual performance of the initiation ceremony, and second, for the group, through the re-enactment of the initiatic rites when each new member joined the small but growing group(s) of initiates. This material therefore enables us to see religious and emotional phenomena in very diverse contexts, both individual and community-based, and in vivid detail. 2 THE SOURCES 2.1 What are the aretalogies of Isis? It may be helpful first to recapitulate what we know about the Isis aretalogies. The available evidence has been gathered, and it is easy to offer a synoptic view. 3 There exist a number of miracle narratives, invocations, and hymns for various Egyptian gods, that have mostly been studied as a group.4 These texts have, in their majority, an Egyptian (or pseudo-Egyptian) allure and possibly origin,5 but this is open for discussion. Some amongst them have as theme the goddess Isis. 6 The larger body of the aretalogical texts are dated between the second century BCE and the fourth century CE. However, it must be emphasised that these texts are not of the same nature. Notably, the texts that have Isis as their theme are not transmitted in the same manner; this is, they are not to be found in the same type of medium. As we shall see, this element is decisive for the interpretation of their function in wider contexts. For instance, we find a version of the aretalogy that was allegedly inscribed on the grave of Isis, according to Diodorus Siculus.7 3 4 5

6 7

For a brief and useful survey see Grandjean 1975, 1–15; see also the survey with analysis in Versnel 1990, 38–95. See for instance Peek 1930 as an example of such study. The main concern of past research, obsessed with ‘Quellenforschung’, has often been to determine the alleged origin of these texts, and more specifically, whether they are ‘Egyptian’ or ‘Greek’. Egyptologists and Hellenists have strongly polarized the debate but have not reached a compelling conclusion; see Smith 1971. This culturally unsettling question has remained open. See the two texts included in the Appendix (pp. 287–290). Diodorus 1.27; the historian gives the origin of his text as a grave-stele at Nysa in Arabia, where Isis and Osiris are supposed to be buried. But in 1.22.2 Diodorus cites an alternative tradition according to which Isis was buried at Memphis, where her shrine in the temple area of Hephaestus was famous in his day. Apparently there were various and even divergent traditions on the origin of this text and its content; the second tradition concerning the tomb of Isis in Memphis, which Diodorus reports, appears also in the aretalogy of Kyme (see Appendix no. 1 §2). However the text that Diodorus provides does not contain some of the

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Diodorus claims to give only one part of the inscription in question, which suggests that the historian was fully aware of the existence of a much longer text, from which he quotes only the opening lines.8 Diodorus says that he gives a partial text because the rest of it has been eroded by time – but this is nothing more than a literary topos in the so-called pseudo-epigraphic literature.9 A number of these Isis-themed texts can easily be grouped together in that they are inscribed on stone and set up in sanctuaries. There exist today seven such inscribed stones, all of which are found in harbour cities.10 As suggested by palaeographical criteria, the earliest of these inscribed texts seems to be the aretalogy of Maroneia (end of the second century BCE)11 and the latest the aretalogy of Ios (second/third century CE). The genre is exemplified by the two texts that appear in the Appendix – from Kyme (no. 1) and Maroneia (no. 2) respectively. Firstly, we should consider these inscribed stones as having religious significance, since they are clearly sacred dedications. The dedicatory formula with the characteristic term εὐχήν (‘in fulfilment of a vow’) in the Kyme text, which was found in situ in the Isis sanctuary, is well preserved (Appendix no. 1 §1). Even though there is no such formula preserved in the text from Maroneia, we may infer from its content that the inscription was dedicated in a sanctuary. These inscribed objects should be considered not as isolated documents, or even as isolated ritual acts, but as religious dedications in the widest possible way; that is, as part of a continuum in the communication between the divine and humans, and amongst humans themselves. The other constituent parts of that human-divine communication are rituals connected with sacrifice, prayer, performance of hymns, consecrations, and so forth.12 In the present study, I focus on aretalogies inscribed on stone, set up within a sanctuary. This is because what matters for our purpose here is not merely the formal and structural similarities of these texts and their shared subject matter from a strictly philological point of view. In the exploitation of these texts as sources for the study of emotions, their literary features cannot be studied independently from the monument, on which they were inscribed, the space, where they

8 9

10

11 12

verses that appear in the aretalogies written on stone, for instance: ‘I am she who is called God by women’ (Appendix no. 1 §10). Burton 1972, 115. In this kind of literature, to which the Hermetic texts belong, we have no knowledge about the authors and their environment. The Hermetic texts use the literary fiction that Hermes instructed his sons in the distant past and had these discussions written down on stelai in the Egyptian sanctuaries. RICIS 114/0202 (Maroneia, late second century BCE); 202/1801 (Andros; first century BCE/CE); 302/0204 (Kyme, first century CE?); 113/0545 (Thessalonike, first/second century CE); 202/1101 (Ios, third century CE); 306/0201 (Telmessos, late Hellenistic, unpublished); RICIS Suppl. 113/1201; SEG LVIII 583 (Kassandreia, second century CE?). RICIS 114/0202; Loukopoulou, Zournatzi, Parisaki, and Psoma 2005, no. 205; see Appendix no. 2. On this text see also p. 226 in this volume. For such a broad definition of the sacred dedications see recently Bodel 2009, 17–30 and mostly 18 and 27.

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were set up, the manner in which individuals interacted with the material objects, and the emotional impact of this interaction (cf. pp. 223–226 in this volume). In what follows, I will argue first that these documents, embedded in sequences of initiatic acts and discourse, had a specific role in the construction of experiences based on individual and collective emotional responses. I will then argue that the emotional function of these documents was essential in their role in helping the reader to construct a life attitude and a life goal – a phenomenon with wider social and political implications. 2.2 I am Isis, You are Isis The seven inscribed aretalogies of Isis, even though they present similarities in offering ‘praises to Isis’ and being set up in sanctuaries, also present significant differences, which allow us to proceed to some form of classification.13 Some of them, although they are not identical, present very strong similarities concerning the formulaic presentation and description of Isis; others (fewer) appear as poetic versions of the main body of the praise of Isis and are highly personalised, from the points of view of both style and content.14 Consequently, the aretalogies of Isis can be divided into two types: The ‘I-am-Isis’ type In four published documents,15 the praise/description of Isis, which forms the main body of the text, presents the following characteristics. After the dedicatory formula,16 the goddess introduces herself in the first person, gives a brief genealogy, and enumerates her qualities and her powers. In the end, she greets Egypt as her native land. In this way, the core of the text can be understood as a self-praise of the goddess. The self-presentation of a god in his hymn is an original feature in the context of the Greek-speaking hymnology. It is probably because of their ‘exotic’ resonance that these texts have not been included in a recent collection of Greek hymns to gods.17

13

14 15

16

17

I have not seen the aretalogy from Telmessos (RICIS 306/0201), since this text is unpublished, but according to RICIS the text is quite similar to the Kyme aretalogy; see Appendix no 1. Grandjean 1975, 10f. From Kyme (RICIS 302/0204), Thessalonike (RICIS 113/0545), Kassandreia (RICIS Suppl. 113/1201; SEG LVIII 583), and Ios (RICIS 202/1101) respectively. The better preserved among them is the text from Kyme (Appendix no. 1). Preserved entirely only in the texts from Kyme (Appendix no. 1 §1) and partially only in the texts from Ios and Kassandreia. It provides the name of the dedicant – preserved only in the text of Kyme – and constitutes a sort of prelude to the core of the text. Furley and Bremer 2001.

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The ‘You-are-Isis’ type In the two known documents of this type,18 in the strategic first lines of the main text, Isis is addressed in the second person, instead of introducing herself in the first person, as she does in the ‘I-am-Isis’ type of text. Isis’ powers are then enumerated in the main body of the text. Both types of texts can be described as personalised, rhetorical or poetic, and idiosyncratic variants of the main core of the ‘I-am-Isis’ type of text. But the second-person address to Isis is not a choice followed throughout the ‘You-are-Isis’ aretalogy. For example, in the Maroneia text (Appendix no. 2), which starts by addressing Isis in the second person, the second-person address is abandoned at line 22 and the discourse continues in the third person until line 29. In that way, the text is stylistically more similar to a traditional Greek hymn to a god.19 However, the text then returns to the second person until line 41, where it returns to the third person.20 Moreover, in the text of Andros, the second-person address lasts only until line 7; after that, Isis introduces herself in the first person, and enumerates her attributes in an extremely long quotation,21 which constitutes the core of the inscribed text. Even if the secondperson address is not respected throughout the length of these texts, the strategic placement of the address in the beginning of the text makes the second-person aspect of the document dominant; the crucial first lines in the Maroneia and Andros aretalogies suffice, in my view, to justify their classification in the ‘You-areIsis’ category. By its construction, this type of text seems to respond to the ‘I-amIsis’ text as a sort of confirmation or ‘awareness’ of the presence of the goddess. 3 APULEIUS AND HIS MODEL OF THE ISIAC INITIATION 3.1 ‘Aretalogical moments’ How did these texts work? In order to understand the function of the inscribed aretalogies of Isis, we must adduce a literary source: the text of Apuleius’ Metamorphoses, one of the major sources for the Isiac cult due to its autobiographical character.22 The narrative in this literary work is structured around the adventures of Lucius, a young man who, transformed into a donkey because of a failed experiment in magic, roams in Central Greece and experiences an impressive number of grotesque adventures, which occupy the first ten books of the novel. In the eleventh and final book, a literal and metaphorical transformation of Lucius

18 19 20 21 22

From Maroneia (RICIS 114/0202; Appendix no. 2) and Andros (RICIS 202/1801). On the hymnic style, see Furley and Bremer 2001. On the rhetorical nature and style of the Maroneia aretalogy see Papanikolaou 2009. This might reflect responses by different bodies of worshippers in a possible performance of this text. 178 lines are preserved. Festugière 1954, 76f. and Solmsen 1979, 104–113 insist on the value of Metamorphoses XI as an autobiographical testimony.

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occurs, through his encounter with ‘Isis’ and his initiation into the Isiac cult.23 In spite of the literary conventions in a piece of literary fiction, which must be considered, I believe that the text of Apuleius, because of its avowedly autobiographical character, should be taken as a serious religious text.24 Hence it provides good evidence for initiatic practices within the ritual tradition of the Isiac cult, in the particular form it took from the late Hellenistic period onwards. There are two moments in the XIth book of the Metamorphoses that can be described as ‘aretalogical’, in the sense that they present strong similarities with the texts from the inscribed stones, despite the different language – Latin in the case of the Metamorphoses and Greek in the case of Isis’ aretalogies. These similarities concern the content as well as the style of the two sets of texts. The first ‘aretalogical moment’ forms part of an experience, in sight and sound, of Lucius, which has the character of an epiphaneia (apparition) of Isis. The goddess emerges slowly from the sea and says:25 ... Lo, I am with you Lucius, moved by your prayers, I who am the mother of the universe, the mistress of all the elements, the first offspring of time, the highest of deities, the queen of the dead, foremost of heavenly beings, the single form that fuses all gods and goddesses; I who order by my will the starry heights of heaven, the health-giving breezes of the sea, and the awful silences for those in the underworld: my single godhead is adored by the whole world in varied forms, in differing rites and with many diverse names. Thus the Phrygians, earliest of races, call me Pessinountia, Mother of the Gods; thus the Athenians, sprung from their own soil, call me Kekropian Minerva; and the sea-tossed Cyprians call me Paphian Venus, the archer Cretans Diana Diktynna, and the trilingual Sicilians Ortygian Proserpine; to the Eleusinians I am Ceres, the ancient goddess, to others Juno, to others Bellona and Hekate and Rhamnousia. But the Ethiopians, who are illumined by the first rays of the sun-god as he is born every day, together with the Africans and the Egyptians who excel through having the original doctrine, honour me with my distinctive rites and give me my true name of Queen Isis. ...

This apparition comes after Lucius’ general invocation to the goddess for help, a sort of impersonal call by the miserable donkey at his wits’ end. Isis presents herself as a vision to the exhausted Lucius-donkey, and ‘reveals’ her different names and her powers. The long speech that Isis recites presents similarities in style and subject matter with the ‘I-am-Isis’ type of text. The second ‘aretalogical moment’ in the XIth book occurs in an episode which, even though it does not have the exalting character of the first ‘aretalogical moment’, is nevertheless a solemn ritual event. At the closure of Lucius’ initiation, three days after a ‘secret’ initiatic ritual of nocturnal ‘revelation’ has taken place, Lucius recites a prayer with tears in his eyes and with frequent sobs. He stands in front of the statue of the goddess in a ritual context, while the priest Mithras stands nearby. Lucius prostrates himself in front of the statue of the god-

23 24 25

For Apuleius’ Metamophoses XI see Gwyn Griffiths 1975; Sanzi 2008 (with bibliography). For other approaches which argue a non-serious character of this literary piece see Winkler 1985. Apuleius, Metamorphoses XI.5; translated by Gwyn Griffiths 1975. The similarities between Apuleius and the texts from Kyme and Maroneia is also noted by Sanzi 2008, 38–42.

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dess and although emotionally overwhelmed, addresses the divinity in a masterful way, in these words worthy of a skilful poet.26 ... Thou in truth art the holy and eternal saviour of the human race, ever beneficent in helping mortal men, and thou bringest the sweet love of a mother to the trials of the unfortunate. No day nor any restful night, nor even the slightest moment passes by untouched by thy blessings, but even on sea and land thou art guarding men, and when thou hast stilled the storms of life thou dost stretch out thy saving hand, with which thou unravelest even those threads of fate which are inextricably woven together; thou dost pacify the gales of Fortune and keep in check the baleful movements of the stars. Thee do the gods above honour and thou are worshipped by those below; thou dost revolve the sphere of heaven, and illuminate the sun, thou dost guide the earth, and trample Hell under thy feet. For thee the constellations move, for thee the seasons return; the divine beings rejoice for thee, and the elements are thy slaves. By thy command breezes blow and rain-clouds nourish, seeds sprout and buds grow. Awe of thy majesty imbues the birds that move in the sky, the wild beasts that roam the mountains, the serpents that glide on the earth, and the monsters that swim in the sea. But I am bereft of talent in singing my praises, and have scarce means to offer thee fit sacrifices. Nor have I the rich power of speech to express what I feel about thy majesty; indeed a thousand mouths and tongues are not enough for the task, nor an everlasting sequence of tireless talk. Therefore I shall try to do the only thing possible for one who is devoted but indigent; I shall keep forever, stored in my inmost heart, the memory of thy divine countenance and most holy godhead. ...

Chronologically, this is placed just before the departure of Lucius and his reintegration in the wider world after the secluded period he spent in the premises of the Isiac sanctuary. The newly initiated Lucius dedicates, or rather consecrates, 27 himself to the (service of the) goddess. Interestingly, even though the hero is presented in the narrative as emotionally moved by his recent initiation and his imminent departure, the prayer he is supposed to recite ‘spontaneously’ is not at all disjointed and incoherent, as one might expect. It is a literary piece exhibiting superb technical skill, with the composer in complete control. The Latin text of Lucius’ prayer exhibits correspondences with the Greek ‘You-are-Isis’ aretalogy. In addition, both texts claim artlessness on the part of the author and insist on the importance of the image of Isis for the initiate. There are abundant and significant counterpoints between Isis as presented in the Metamorphoses on the one hand, and in the inscribed Isis aretalogies on the other. Specifically, there is correspondence between the self-representation of Isis (p. 272) and the ‘I-am-Isis’ aretalogy (Kyme model); and between the prayer of Lucius and the ‘You-are-Isis’ aretalogy (Maroneia model). This invites us to think about a possible connection between these texts in the context of a conversational system; in other words, a dialogue having as theme ‘Isis’, the identity of the goddess. Despite the different languages, there is a common interface between these two sets of texts. In what follows, I will try to define it more clearly. I will argue that the two ‘aretalogical moments’ in Apuleius’ Metamorphoses XI correspond to two aretalogical events which formed part of the ‘real’ process 26 27

Apuleius, Metamorphoses XI.25; translated by Gwyn Griffiths 1975. For the difference between consecration and dedication, which eventually can have legal implications in the Graeco-Roman world, see Bodel 2009, 21f.

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of the Isiac initiation; thus indicating that both types of aretalogies were instrumental in this initiation. In the context of this hypothesis, I shall attempt a reconstruction of an initiatic ritual, demonstrating the ritual function of the Isis aretalogies. I shall argue that the aretalogies were embedded in a complex ritual modelled on a polarised stichomythia between divine and human. Here, both the ‘Iam-Isis’ and the ‘You-are-Isis’ texts had a performative role. I shall examine literary, epigraphic, and archaeological evidence in order to demonstrate this hypothesis. I shall start by exploring the significance of the strong impression of the ‘image’ of Isis in the imagination of Lucius, as we can perceive it first through the narrative immediately preceding the first ‘aretalogical’ and epiphanic moment of chapter 5. In chapters 3 and 4, the detailed description of Isis, as she appears emerging from the sea, is extremely vivid and appeals to all the senses. This image seems extremely ‘alive’ and some details help to construct an even more vivid picture: for instance, while an exquisite Arabic perfume fills the air, the divinity appears to rhythmically shake the sistrum while speaking in a ‘divine voice’ to Lucius.28 The importance of this visual impression in the literary economy of the Metamorphoses is explicit at a subsequent moment also, where we can perceive its function in the evolution of the plot. In chapter 25, which includes Lucius’ prayer, it is stated that the memory of the initial vision of Isis functions as a constant reminder of his devotion to the goddess, 29 and we understand that whatever Lucius does from that moment on, he is doing it as part of his service to the goddess. As André-Jean Festugière observes, this is an original touch, practically unknown among the ancients, which can be compared with religious devotion among the Christians.30 The image of Isis in this chapter is completely emotionalised to such a degree that Lucius is in tears while evoking this image. 31 The emotional attachment of Lucius to the image of the goddess is a very important element of the narrative because it propels the subsequent action of Metamorphoses XI. But at the same time, and given the autobiographical character of the book, the vividness of the description and the weight of the 28

29

30 31

Her description appeals to three out of five senses (Apuleius, Metamorphoses XI, 3 and 4); the goddess appears dressed in a impressive multi-coloured opalescent chiton (stimulating the sense of sight) and covered with a black fringed mantle; she is holding and rhythmically shaking a sistrum (sense of hearing), and a golden vessel, which together with other glittering objects (a flat disk above her forehead, glimmering stars and a crescent woven into her black mantle and contrasting with its colour) gave her quite a shiny appearance (stimulating the sense of sight). A distinctive Arabic perfume (sense of smell) accompanies her apparition and her presence, while she talks with an impressive ‘divine’ voice (sense of hearing). Apuleius, Metamorphoses XI 25: ‘…I shall keep for ever, stored in my inmost heart, the memory of thy divine countenance and most holy godhead’ (translated by Gwyn Griffiths 1975). The importance of some sort of portrait, which was placed nearby the inscribed aretalogy, is underlined in the text of Maroneia; see Loukopoulou, Zournatzi, Parisaki, and Psoma 2005, no. 205 with commentary. Festugière 1954, 80. For an assessment of this type, addressing the nature and function of Lucius’ tears in Metamorphoses, see Lateiner 2009, 277–295.

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attachment to the image conveyed by the author strongly suggest that this is a reference to a reallife experience of the author Apuleius; a memory held by him and conveyed through the description of the state of mind of his hero Lucius.32 It is probable then that behind this cherished memory would hide a strong visual experience of Apuleius himself, who was an initiate of the Isiac cult as we know from other sources.33 What could this experience be? 3.2 Epiphany: real or staged? Apuleius’ narrative offers some hints about the fact that part of the procedure of initiation must have included staged scenes imitating or presenting divine epiphanies. For instance, after his initiation, Lucius, at the priest’s behest, ascends a wooden dais, in front of the statue of the goddess, wearing impressive embroidered clothes:34 ... In my right hand I carried a torch with rearing flames and my head was garlanded gracefully by a crown of gleaming palm whose leaves stood out like rays. When I had thus been adorned like the sun and set up in the manner of a divine statue, suddenly the curtains were drawn and the people crowded to behold me. ...

In fact, this scene could be easily described as a ‘tableau vivant’ made out of disparate elements and, apart from Apuleius, there are other sources that suggest that some sort of spectacles, pantomime or other, were forming parts of the rites of the Isiac cults.35 There are other sources that indicate that some people, dressed in the manner of certain gods, played a role in initiatic rituals.36 It is important and significant for our purpose here that through the description of this scene in the narrative of Apuleius, we perceive not only the individual (Lucius) who is actually undergoing the initiatic ritual but also the crowd (of initiates) that is gathered to witness Lucius’ initiation. Evidence for the presence of a group of initiates as witnesses to initiatic rituals can be found in proclamation formulas.37 It is 32 33 34 35

36

37

For the importance of the autobiographical character of Metamorphoses book XI see Festugière 1954, 76f. See Solmsen 1979, 108–113. Metamorphoses XI, 24 (transl. Gwyn Griffiths 1975). See Merkelbach 1995, 113f. §§ 210f., who briefly suggests that the women appearing dressed in the manner of the goddess Isis in funerary reliefs (from Attica and elsewhere) had the role of representing the goddess during rituals and recited her revelation speech – that is, the ‘aretalogy’; see also 172f. §§ 329–331 for the possibility of existence of an initiatic rite in the cults of Isis and Sarapis and the possibility of a staged ritual with funerary character; see also 178–181 §§ 342–347 for theatrical scenes and theatrical devices used in such scenes in the context of the Egyptian cults in Alexandria of Egypt; see also Köhler 1996, 123–125 for spectacles with representations of scenes involving Egyptian and other gods as part of processions. The regulation concerning the initiation rites of the Andania mysteries provides evidence for representations of dances and pantomimes that were imitations of gods as part of initiatic rites; see Deshours 2006, 135–136; see also Chaniotis 2009, 34. For all this see Chaniotis 2011; for acclamations and emotions see pp. 295–314 in this volume.

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also important for our purpose that, according to Apuleius’s narrative, the principal initiatic scene, which has a revelatory character, takes place in the middle of the night. This lends a dream-like character to this scene which perhaps was intended by the ‘directors’ of such a staged display within the Isis ‘epiphany’. 4 INSCRIBED ARETALOGIES AND ISIAC SPACE Let us now return to our inscribed aretalogies from Kyme and Maroneia. How would they fit the picture reconstructed on the basis of the testimony of Lucius, hero of the Metamorphoses of Apuleius? In my view, they represent two different moments of the initiatic ritual. The setting and the situation may be reconstructed as follows. Type 1 (‘I-am-Isis’) fulfils the following function: written on stone, set up in a special place in the sanctuary, it was read out during initiatic rituals, probably by a female priestly official, dressed up in the manner of Isis; or by a male priestly official while another female priestly official (someone already initiated in the cult, and dressed up ‘in the manner of Isis’) was present as a sort of symbol of the divine presence. There is abundant evidence, archaeological and epigraphical, for the existence of female priestly officials in the Isiac cults, which could be perceived as initiates dressed up in the manner of the gods, and notably of Isis herself.38 We can assume that these officials had a prominent role in the Isiac initiation. In this case, the ‘I-am-Isis’ formula would have worked as the script for a ‘role’ in some sort of theatrical performance played out in front of the eyes of the initiated. This symbolic divine ‘presence’ would ratify religiously the initiatic moment and would enhance its solemn character. This performance would be staged as an artificial ‘epiphany’, and it would represent the divine epiphany.39 The initiate would have here a merely passive role, that of the simple spectator. In the model of initiation we try to reconstruct here, we have of course no possibility to speculate about the time of day that the initiatic ritual could have been performed, as there is no direct evidence for this; but we can assume, based on the testimony of Apuleius which reports a ritual of ‘revelatory’ character performed in the middle of the night, that it could have been a nocturnal ritual having the

38

39

As mentioned earlier (p. 275 n. 35), the hypothesis that women priestly officials dressed as Isis recited the ‘I-am-Isis’ text is proposed by Merkelbach 1995, §§ 210f. Funerary reliefs representing women dressed as Isis are attested especially in Athens from the early 1st cent BCE onwards, but we find representations of women dressed up as Isis in other contexts too; for Athens and the women dressed in the manner of Isis in the Attic funerary reliefs, see Martzavou 2011. See Rüpke 2010, 181–196 and especially 192: ‘…the presence of the gods is not arbitrary but it is statuesque. This presence draws its plausibility not from a specific form of material, but from an emotional experience, produced by the specific context of temples, perhaps heightened by rituals.’

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same ‘feel’ of dream-like experience as the one described by Apuleius. This suggestion might be supported by the profusion of lamps found in Isiac contexts.40 I have to stress here that the archaeological evidence not only does not contradict the model presented above but, on the contrary, corroborates it; the inscribed stone bearing the Isis aretalogy from Kyme was found, in situ, in the precinct of the sanctuary, but in a separate room.41 This fact would suggest a specialised use of this space in combination with the inscribed text of the aretalogy. Based on other evidence, we can easily perceive the Isiac sanctuary as a complex architectural ensemble formed by units with different degrees of ‘sacrality’.42 The differentiation in the function of space in the Isiac sanctuaries is attested through epigraphical evidence which testify to the existence even of physical restrictions to the access of some significant spaces;43 it is legitimate to connect the restrictions in the use of space of an Isiac sanctuary with rituals that introduce differentiations in a community of worshippers such as initiatic rituals; the restrictions would work to exclude the non-initiates. There is also epigraphical evidence, which attests the existence of groups with particular right of access to some part of an Isiac sanctuary closed off to others. I suggest that the separate space of the Kyme sanctuary was used for initiatic rituals; indeed, the excavator’s reading of the layout is similar, since he called the room where the Kyme aretalogy was found the ‘Hall of the initiates’.44 The sanctuary of Kyme was close to a cemetery; a funerary inscription was found re-used in the sanctuary. Under these circumstances, the information provided at the beginning of the Kyme aretalogy concerning the initial setting of the ‘Egyptian’ aretalogy on the tomb of Isis in the sanctuary of Hephaistos in Memphis would find a fitting context. I will return later to his ‘funerary’ character of the sanctuary of Kyme and its function in the context of a study on emotions. The ‘You-are-Isis’ type of text can also be understood as part of an initiatic ritual. This type seems to be a poetic variant of the praise of Isis written by a specialist, who could compose in a skilful way following literary rules. In that sense, it is significant that in the context of Isiac cults, a priestly functionary

40 41 42

43

44

See Podvin 2011; on the high number of lamps (70) found in the Isiac sanctuary of Marathon, see Dekoulakou 1999/2001, 113–126. Bouzek et al., 1980, 59, 67f. The modifications in the plan of the Isiac sanctuary of Eretria suggest the introduction of a ritual which might have imposed differentiations in the use of the space; see Bruneau 1975, 122 and fig. 8. In Delos the use of κινκλίδαι (barriers) is attested in a dedication found close to the temple of Isis in the precincts of the ‘Sarapeion C’ (RICIS 202/0328 line 2; 104/3 or 92/1 BCE); also RICIS 202/0426 line 19 (between 156/5 and 146/5 BCE) and 202/0433 lines 9f. The use of κινκλίδαι is also attested in Athens in the sanctuary of the south slope of the Acropolis (RICIS 101/0221 line 2, 120 CE) in Athens. In the Isis sanctuary of the deme of Teithras there were also κάνκελοι (barriers) dedicated (RICIS 101/0402, mid-first century CE); also the use of κάνκελλος is attested in Thespiai (RICIS 105/0402, first/second century CE); also in an inscription from Palmyra (RICIS 404/0201, 149 CE). Bouzek et al., 1980, 59.

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known as aretalogos is attested in the epigraphical evidence. 45 It is obvious from the significant differences between the texts of Maroneia and Andros that certain poetic ‘liberties’ were allowed in the composition, not only concerning style,46 but also concerning content.47 The best pieces of this category might have been presented in competitions, as is suggested by Yves Grandjean for the Maroneia piece.48 The ‘You-are-Isis’ types can be considered as part of the reception of the ‘I-am-Isis’ type. As free-floating compositions, they could be inscribed on stones and set up as dedications in sanctuaries, probably next to a representation of the goddess as the text from Maroneia suggests (lines 4f.).49 But at the next stage, in such environments, they could then be re-embedded into rituals. It would be legitimate then to suppose that these texts could have served as the basis for the ritualised responses of the newly initiated at the closing of the initiatic rites – something that was actually happening, as suggested in chapter 25 of Metamorphoses XI. For instance, the Maroneia text, inscribed on stone and set up in a special place,50 would be at the disposal of any would-be initiate to learn by heart while he was individually preparing for his initiation; and would be ritually recited at the end of his initiation as a sort of ritual closure and as a type of re-integration into the ‘profane’ world. These texts would work in the aftermath of an initiatic context in the following manner. We can imagine the setting; the inscribed monumental form of the text would be a constant reminder of the strong emotions of the initiatic experience and institute a regular relationship with the divine and with fellow initiates, past, present, and future. This relationship would be forged through text, by way of formulaic words and expressions. The same procedure would take place every time there was a new initiation to perform, a ritual attended by all those who were already enjoying the status of initiates. 45

46 47

48

49

50

An ἀρεταλόγος is known from Delos from the second century BCE (RICIS 202/0186, before 166 BCE; dedication of an aretalogos to Isis and Anubis) and an aretalogus Graecus is known from Rome (RICIS 501/0214, funerary epigram, third century CE). It is characteristic that the two texts of Andros and Maroneia, which are not very far apart chronologically, are yet stylistically very different. For instance, the Maroneia text gives an idiosyncratic version of Isis (interestingly, Athens is prominent in her discourse, and Isis is presented as the wife of Sarapis rather than of Osiris). Also in this text Isis is presented as daughter of Ge rather that as daughter of Kronos (the latter being the Kyme aretalogy version). Grandjean 1975, 109f., with suggestions as to one of the possible festivals for the performance of the aretalogy of Maroneia: the Sarapeia of Tanagra known from an inscription that dates to the early 1st cent BCE. The enkomion is presented as equal in words to the representation of the goddess. See Rüpke, 2010, 192 and note 59: he refers to a phrase of Gadamer – ‘a representation enhances the ontological reality of what is represented’ – which is a stronger notion than the aura of facticity provided by specifically religious ritual. The aretalogy of Isis is hence an ekphrasis of the goddess. Unfortunately we do not have information about the original setting of this stone. Note that the inscriptions are also movable objects so they could be transported, manipulated, and reintegrated while the rituals develop and become more or less sophisticated.

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What is noteworthy in the text of Maroneia is the emphasis on the representation of Isis, an image probably set up near the inscribed stone. The term πρόσωπον (‘face’, ‘representation’), placed strategically at the beginning of the text (line 5), probably refers to a real representation of Isis that functioned most likely as a focus of the initiatic ritual and as a constant reminder of the attachment of the initiate to the goddess; just as the text inscribed on stone, the image would have enhanced the sense of the goddess’presence. Some sort of material representation (statuette, token, amulet) might have been given to the initiate in order to enhance this constant ‘presence’ of the divinity in the spirit of the initiate, after his initiation and his re-integration into the profane world.51 On the other hand, according to the testimony of Apuleius, the initiatic clothes of the initiates were kept in the temple and were worn by them during festival days. This custom was a regular and constant reminder of the initiation, which enhanced the presence of the divinity in the life of the initiates and had an emotional weight.52 The emotional attachment to material things invested with value – almost a fetichisation of objects as it appears in Metamorphoses XI – is an interesting feature of the initiatic ritual in Isiac cult. I have argued that during the process of Isiac initiation, an early ‘epiphanic’ moment was carefully staged and performed in front of the initiate, where the ‘Iam-Isis’ type of text53 was recited. In some cases this was spoken by a female priest-like worshipper of Isis who represented the divinity; in all cases it provided a connection to the representation of the divinity as visual focus for the ritual. The event would unfold in front of the initiate who would assume the passive role of spectator. The initiate, at a later point nearer to the close of the initiation ceremony, would assume an active role in a mirrored ritual moment. He would ‘respond’ to the ‘epiphanic’ moment of the Isis self-representation with a ‘Youare-Isis’ type of text,54 written in advance by a specialist, learned by heart by the initiate and performed in solemn circumstances, possibly in front of a representation of the goddess (a statue or a painted portrait), with the active participation of priestly officials and in the presence of other initiates. This second ritual moment, where the ‘You-are-Isis’ text was instrumental, would function as a sort of closure of the initiation rite and as a sort of sealing of the pact between the goddess and the initiate. It would mark the ‘exit’ of the initiate back into the profane world and indicate his re-integration into wider society after a period of

51 52

53 54

See Merkelbach 1995, § 328 for a statuette of Isis which hides a mummy. On the use of sealed papyri in rituals in the Sarapieion C of Delos see Brun-Siard 2010, 195–221. While in Rome Lucius is reminded in a vision that he is not able to wear his initiatic clothes which are left in Greece (Apuleius, Metamorphoses XI, 29): ‘... the garments of the goddess, which you took upon you in Achaea, were stored in that temple and there remain, so that you will not be able, on festival days in Rome, either to make supplication in them, or, when the command is given, to be made radiant by that blessed robe ...’ See the Kyme text, Appendix no 1. See the Maroneia text, Appendix no 2.

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reclusion, which consisted of the period before, during, and after his initiation.55 In the remaining part of this paper I will concentrate on the text of the Isis aretalogy, embedded in initiatic rituals, in order to show how epigraphy can be used to write a religious history that includes experience, emotions, and close attention to the modes of the construction of the divine. 5 THE EMOTIONAL CONSTRUCTION OF THE DIVINE AND LIFE-GOALS 5.1 I-am-Isis ‘Type-1’ aretalogies are very impressive texts. The Ἐγώ εἰµί formula is generally an Oriental feature of presentation,56 achieving what Pierre Roussel, in his very effective analysis of the peculiar style of this genre, calls a ‘hieratic’ character. In addition, repetitions, assonances, alliterations, and figurative elements are put into use to give a solemn character to the self-presentation of Isis. These elements are not always used in the best possible way, to the detriment of the literary quality of the text. Nevertheless, even though the text is not stylistically impeccable, its selfassertive and ‘exotic’ (for a ‘Greek’ context) tone is overwhelming. If indeed the document had an instrumental role in initiatic rites, as I argue in the present study, the experience would leave a major impression on the person who underwent the initiation (and its witnesses), enhanced as it would be by the solemn character of the whole experience and by the initiatic paraphernalia: possibly singing and the use of musical instruments to enhance the rhythm of the spoken word; rhythmic, solemn movements; setting of the scene using special lighting and smells; etc. Apart from the overwhelming tone of the text, its conceptual spatial setting is emotionally suggestive as well. According to the introductory narrative,57 the original aretalogy of Isis was supposed to be standing at the tomb of Isis in Egypt.58 This fictional detail gives the document an alleged funerary character. Moreover, the final formula of greeting, χαῖρε Αἴγυπτε θρέψασασα µε, surely has funerary connotations, given the fact that an important number of funerary epigrams bear similar greeting formulas.59 We should remember here that the 55 56

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This is exactly the function of Lucius’ prayer in Metamorphoses XI, 25. See also Chaniotis 2011, 267–270, with parallels from Egypt and elsewhere. Found in royal discourse of the Near East and the Orient in general; in the Isis aretalogies, this formula operates at the same time as the means of glorification of the divinity. For all this, see the very instructive analysis of Roussel 1929, 149. See also Papanikolaou 2009, for an analysis of the rhetorical media in the aretalogy of Maroneia. Preserved in the Kyme and Kassandreia aretalogies. Interestingly this ‘detail’ is not recorded in the aretalogy of Ios and the preserved part of the aretalogy of Thessaloniki, nor in the aretalogies of Maroneia and Andros of the ‘You-areIsis’ type. In these documents, a greeting is addressed to the deceased, and the deceased in numerous cases replies with a greeting even though he/she recognizes that he/she cannot know the exact

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Isiac sanctuary of Kyme was neighbouring a cemetery, and this spatial context would certainly enhance the funerary tone of the Kyme aretalogy during its possible use in a ritual context. Of course, at the same time, the final formula is an address to Egypt, Isis’s native land; and this alludes to a conceptual space which is not the one in which the reader of this text finds himself. The funerary connotations in two strategic points of this text – the beginning and the end – create a very emotionally suggestive background; death, its monuments, and its language, presented in such a grand way, provoke awe. This fact, combined with the allusion to Egypt, a space with important cultural weight, tends towards the creation of a heterotopic space, which can inspire awe, wonder, and fear in a susceptible audience.60 As suggested by the testimony of Apuleius,61 the future initiate was fasting while awaiting his initiation, and fasting can lead to exhaustion and an altered state of consciousness. All these features (an imposing tone, a suggestive conceptual setting, fasting) would have weakened intellectual resistance and would have enhanced receptivity to emotionally suggestive arguments, hence playing an instrumental role in a narrative setting where the element of surprise could be used with great efficiency to shock the initiate. There would have been several moments of surprise when listening to and reading Isis’ alleged relationships to known figures of Greek mythology. To better understand their function, we will examine five of the initial immediately consecutive statements of Isis, hypothesizing about how a critical listener might have responded to them (Appendix no. 1 §§3b–8). 5.2 Isis and her credentials in the I-am-Isis text When Isis claims that she was educated by Hermes (Appendix no. 1 §3b), this would have generated surprise, since it is not part of the generally known Greek mythology around Hermes.62 Moreover, the information about Isis being the eldest daughter of Kronos (§5) would be equally puzzling for the audience.63 The information that follows immediately, however, presents Isis as the wife and sister of Osiris (§6), something more widely known and accepted for the Egyptian

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identity of the anonymous one who is passing by his/her tomb. See for instance, among the funerary epigrams of Thessalonike, IG X.2.1.286: Ἐπιγένηα Ἐπιγένους χαῖρε. Χαῖρε και σύ τὶς πότε εἶ; cf. IG X.2.1.295 and 316. On the concept of heterotopia and especially of the cemetery as heterotopic space see Foucault 1984, 46–49. Apuleius, Metamorphoses XI, 21: (while waiting for his initiation) ‘... in the meantime ... I should abstain from unhallowed and unlawful foods, so that I might the better make my way to the hidden mysteries of the purest faith ...’ However, Isis is associated with Hermes in the Hermetic tradition. In the excerpt from the Hermetic book entitled Kore Kosmou, Isis is presented along with Osiris as pupil of Hermes Trismegistus, who is equated with the Egyptian god Thot; see New Pauly VII, s.v. Kore Kosmou, col. 95. This affiliation is not attested in Hesiod’s Theogony for instance.

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goddess. Following this, Isis calls herself the inventor of crops for humans (§7); this again would be puzzling for the audience who traditionally knew and recognised Demeter in this role. But following that, Isis says that she is the mother of Horos (§8) – and again, this information would be more widely known about the Egyptian goddess. At the end of this list of claims, tactically put at the beginning of the Isis speech, the audience would be in a mild state of shock, bombarded with a combination of generally accepted opinions on the one hand and disputable information on the other. Moreover, the element of surprise is present also in the other claims of Isis, which are later in her discourse. For instance, Isis declares that she is the one who separated the earth from the sky, who taught stars their way, who coupled woman and man, who arranged that women should bring babies to the light after nine months, who legislated that parents should be loved by their child (§19), and so on.64 What could be the result of the listener’s confrontation with such information, controversial on the one hand and banal on the other? First, this alternation of known facts of Egyptian mythology (the double relationship of Isis to Osiris, her relationship with Horos) with completely never-heard-of ‘facts’ (Isis as eldest daughter of Kronos, Isis as inventor of crops), would be confusing indeed, the more so in a ritual context, which, because of its secretive character, would have the tone of a ‘revelation’. To escape this state of confusion, the listener had the possibility either to renounce completely his acquired knowledge about the facts and figures of mythology (which is not easy) or to become more receptive to the claimed attributes of Isis. It is perhaps easier to opt for the second solution. After all, mythology is such a vast field, with so many local traditions, that nobody could seriously claim to know the truth about the unknowable realms of myth and the gods. As for the authenticity of the claims of Isis concerning the invention of the facts of life, the options remained open from the moment when no other god claimed such a role. Here too, the text created room for receptivity and religious flexibility. The translation from receptivity to firm belief is, of course, more problematic. In my view, the exposure of an individual to such detailed information, which is of course beyond verification, instead of leading to his or her total conviction, could have effected a more blurred conception of all the divine personas involved in the narrative. Curiously, such a technique would be prone to lead to some sort of intellectual incredulity rather to firm belief. But this would not matter in this specific ritual context, since what is important is the religious experience rather than the intellectual act of believing (‘believing’ being the recognition of something as ‘true’ based upon an intellectual process). In addition, we should not consider our listener as too suspicious in the first place. The fact that he or she was already in physical contact with an Isiac sanctuary, that he or she was even within the premises of an Isiac sanctuary and was probably, as I have suggested in the first part of this study, in the process of being initiated, meant that the listener was already favourably curious. The few doubts 64

This part of text has been related to the movement of euhemerism; that is, the belief that mythological gods were deified versions of early heroes; see Henrichs 1984, 139–158.

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he might have concerning the exact deeds of Isis would not dominate his thoughts in such a solemn moment. 5.3 Emotions The deeds of Isis in her discourse are coming through as simple information. No word denoting emotion accompanies them. Emotions relevant to this text are – presumably – expected to arise potentially with the confrontation of the audience with such novel and shocking information. In that way, we can say that emotions are suggested by this text and not imposed or dictated. But of course, because of the important elements analysed in the previous paragraph, the person who experienced the initiation was expected to be very receptive to emotionally suggestive arguments. In my view, the emotions suggested by this text are the following: Firstly, admiration and gratitude for the achievements of Isis, which could be characterised as benefactions for the race of humans in general (invention of writing, introduction of crops, fishing and seafaring, enhancement of justice). Then, awe because of her role in some specific secretive rites and other inexplicable phenomena (Isis as teacher in the initiations, as guarantor of oaths and mover of the stars, as raiser of the islands from the deep). Finally, fear because of her role in the allotment of justice or hope for the attribution of justice. All of these emotions and especially the last two, fear and hope, are usually related to the communication between humans and the divine – they are not particularly original or unexpected in a religious context. What is original is that all these emotions, usually related to one divinity at a time in the context of polytheism, here are associated with a rather polymorphous and blurred perception of the divine. What is also original from the point of view of the content and form is a rather clear and simple idea, strategically placed at the end of the ‘I-am-Isis’ type of aretalogy (Kyme text). This is the concept of ‘change’. 5.4 An important concept: change The last sentences of Isis’ discourse indicate what André-Jean Festugière characterised as the most important part of the Kyme aretalogy: Isis’ power over Destiny.65 This claim implies that Isis presumably can change what was and what is meant to happen. Through this simple and quite clear statement (‘I can beat Fate’), Isis is represented as the instigator of change. The concept of change, which in itself is neutral and therefore not necessarily welcome, in the discourse of the goddess is represented as positive. It is mentioned at the end of the impressive list of personal gifts that Isis imparts to 65

According to Festugière 1949, 233f., the last two verses constitute a later addition to the ‘core’ of the aretalogical praise to Isis; we find it mostly in inscriptions. In that sense, it translates the spirit of this later period of the cult of Isis and bears the whole weight of the aretalogy of Isis of that period.

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humanity. The placement of the idea of change at the end of Isis’ discourse and as a culmination of the Isiac gifts entails its upgrading to something that has the quality of desirability shared by any gift, thus transforming the concept of change to something welcome and even sought-after, invested with desire. From ‘change’ to the ‘desire for change’: the shift makes a difference for the initiate because it provides him or her with a clear focus, a willingness to accept change as desirable. This point becomes relevant in the second part of the ritual where the initiate, originally a simple spectator of a performance that takes place in front of his eyes, is transformed into an active participant through his recitation of his part of the ritual text – the ‘You-are-Isis’ type of text according to the initiatic model we proposed above. In what follows, we will try to analyse the emotional impact of this type of text. 5.5 I-am-Isis, You-are-Isis; Who-is-Isis? Both texts arranged in the ‘You-are-Isis’ type of text are successful and sophisticated literary compositions, and are the antipodes of the ‘I-am-Isis’ type of text. In the Maroneia text, the sophisticated character is obvious from the beginning of the text (line 3), through the attention paid to literary tropes.66 It is obvious that the text reflects a scholarly elaboration of the portrait of the divinity67 and it is not the production of a simple mind, in spite of the fact that, through the ‘voice’ of the text, the human element is allegedly subordinated to the divine element.68 The author of this text stresses the fact that divinity – not humanness – hides behind such composition.69 Likewise, we noticed a sort of proclaimed artlessness in the ritual aretalogical ‘prayer’ of Lucius in the Metamorphoses.70 However, such a command of the poetic language is in itself intimidating – especially to the less educated, the less literate, and the non-native speakers. So, one of the first emotions of the person who comes into contact with this text is awe because of its sophistication: this is valid for the text of Maroneia as well as for the text of Andros.

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The language shows no influence of the koine: there is no hiatus, anaphora is used as well as assonance, the author exhibits considerable variatio, and the rhythm is diverse through the alternation of simple and complex sentences: Grandjean 1975, 109. For a detailed stylistic analysis see Papanikolaou 2009. The same is true for the other text that we classified in this group – the Isis aretalogy from Andros. The false-homely character of the text also fulfils a rhetorical function of accessibility. See for instance lines 8–13: ‘I am completely confident that you will come again. For since you came when called for my salvation, how would you not come for your own honour? So taking heed I proceed to what remains, knowing that this encomium is written not only by the hand of a man, but also by the mind of a god’ (translated by Horsley 1981). Apuleius, Metamorphoses XI, 25: ‘But I am bereft of talent in singing my praises, and have scarce means to offer thee fit sacrifices. Nor have I the rich power of speech to express what I feel about thy majesty; indeed a thousand mouths and tongues are not enough for the task, nor an everlasting sequence of tireless talk;’ see the remarks of Roussel 1929, 149 note 1.

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The text is addressed to Isis, and we might expect the representation of the goddess to agree with the self-presentation of the Isis as found in the ‘I-am-Isis’ texts. But, as we have already underlined, both texts are highly personalised. The Maroneia version of the ‘You-are-Isis’ type is very idiosyncratic.71 While this text replies in a way to the ‘I-am-Isis’ text, apparently recognising Isis as she presents herself, it also actively shapes the persona of Isis and makes her into something else. In that way, Isis becomes more concrete and familiar to the Greek audience who recognises in her a version of Demeter of Eleusis. This intervention in the portrayal of Isis’ image is potentially a source of tension between these two texts because their dialogue is definitely concurrent. We have attempted to understand the text of Maroneia as one of the multiple versions that represent the reception of the ‘I-am-Isis’ aretalogy; however, the ‘You-are-Isis’ aretalogies can be considered as equally authentic and legitimate. We cannot say that one version has more authority than the others. The emotions suggested through the ‘You-are-Isis’ discourse (Maroneia version) are the same as the ones identified in the ‘I-am-Isis’ aretalogy: admiration, awe, fear, and hope. But the addition of Athens to the circle of Isis acquaintances adds a new emotion; that is, admiration for Athens. As an inscribed monumental text, set up in a sacred space, this text functions as written testimony that supports the ritual tradition based upon the special relationship of Athens and Isis. Its use as a religious text within the context of initiatic ritual would have enhanced the power of this document to shape the perception of the divine experienced by the people who came into contact with it. As far as concerns the element that we identified as basic, notably the divine as an instigator of change, we cannot relate anything definite to the text of Maroneia since the crucial final lines of the text are missing. But concerning the other text we have placed in this category, that is, the text from Andros, the role of Isis as instigator of change seems to be confirmed even though also this text is quite fragmentary in the last sentences. 72 If these two compositions from Maroneia and Andros played an important role in the initiatic ritual, as we suggest, one technical detail of the whole procedure and of the ‘You-are-Isis’ aretalogy might have played a very important role in the emotional construction of the divine and in the self-construction of the individual who was being initiated. The significant detail is present only in the text of Andros: it is the shift to the first person in the enumeration of Isis deeds, attributes, and powers. This self-asserting formula, enhanced by the personhood-altering initiatic experience and by the blurred perception of the divine that we analysed in the previous section, would allow the initiate to experience a very powerful 71

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Notably, it presents Athens as the favorite place of Isis (lines 40–42), even while accepting all the elements found in the ‘I-am-Isis’ texts; namely the superiority of Isis and all her claims, the content of the main body of her praise, and the style of the presentation of her powers. We have the impression that the author of this particular text actively shapes the personality of Isis by giving priority to Athens. This peculiar Athenian colour probably reflects the relationship between Athens and Athenian Delos at the end of the second century BCE, where the Isis cult thrived until the Mithridatic wars; see Martzavou 2011. See the mention of Μοῖρα (line 171) and Ἄτροπος (line 172).

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identification with the divine, and allow him to ‘become’ god for the few moments that the recitation of this text lasted. This would be an extremely empowering device, which would considerably enhance the initiate’s perception of his own personhood and would lead to his temporary identification with the divine. The important last sentence especially, concerning the concept of change and the desire to change, would take on a completely new meaning in the mouth of the initiate and have an empowering effect. Uttered by the initiate who was experiencing the initiation, the possibility of change (personified by Isis) becomes a desire to change one’s self, one’s fate, one’s appearance. The reciting of the closing formula in the first person made the identification of the human element with the divine element possible, even for a few moments. 6 CONCLUSION: THE USE OF EMOTIONS IN THE SHAPING OF AN ATTITUDE AND IN THE SETTING OF A LIFE GOAL The functional role of these texts in the vision-like experience of a staged epiphany, namely the initiatic ritual in the Isis cult from the late second century onwards, must be assessed in relation to the emotions suggested by the Isis-performed discourse and the emotions experienced by the individual who came into contact with these texts. The initiate’s emotional construction of the divine element, as well as his own self-understanding in relation to the divine, are important issues here. The function of the emotions in the vision-like experience would serve to inculcate the initiate with the desire to change various lifestyle aspects: his religious status (by becoming an Isiac in the first place), his body (by shaving his head, for instance, or by wearing the special clothes of the initiates), and his fate (by doing whatever was possible to change such things as his social or political status). All this tends towards the construction of a life goal and a life attitude since the life of an Isiac initiate, an isiakos, would be conceived as entirely consecrated to the service of the goddess in as many ways as possible. This desire would be enhanced in a group context by the repetition of the ritual of initiation for every new initiate. As the text of Apuleius suggests, the initiatic experience, apart from being an individual experience for the new initiate, was also a spectacle for those already initiated, since they also had the right to attend such rituals. 73 In this way, the individual experience became a source of community experience but in a limited way, since not all people received the ‘calling’ for Isiac initiation. These two types of texts were stylistically overwhelming, either through the exotic tone (Kyme aretalogy) or the extremely skilful use of Greek poetic language (Maroneia aretalogy). They also were suggestive of a number of emotions, mediated through the discourse of Isis but also through the introductory ‘voice’ of the dedicants. Style, emotions, and the record of individual dedicants, were 73

The right to ‘walk in’ to the interior (σηκός) of the temple is attested for the members of a group in an inscription from Thessalonike (RICIS 113/0576, third century CE).

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powerful tools for inculcating the desire for change in an infinite number of individuals. These emotions – admiration, awe, and fear – were enhanced by ritual re-enactment in front of an audience. The ritual constituted a very powerful means of harnassing these emotions around one central idea within the persona of Isis and mediated through her discourse: her role as instigator of change. With the help of the ritual and the textually suggested emotions, this simple idea of ‘change’ transformed into an emotional concept, which was empowering for the individuals who experienced it. APPENDIX 1. The ‘I-am-Isis’ type of aretalogy. Inscription from Kyme (first century BCE/first century CE). Found in situ, in a separate room of the sanctuary of Isis in Kyme. Text: I.Kyme 41; RICIS 302/0204 §1 ∆ηµήτριος Ἀρτεµιδώρου ὁ καὶ Θρασέας Μάγνη[ς] ἀπὸ Μαιάνδρου Ἴσιδι εὐχήν. §2 τάδε ἐγράφηι ἐκ τῆς στήλης τῆς ἐν Μέµφει, ἥτις ἕστηκεν πρὸς τῷ Ἡφαιστιήωι. §3a Εἶσις ἐγώ εἰµι ἡ τύραννος πάσης χώρας· §3b καὶ ἐπαιδεύθην ὑπ[ὸ] Ἑρµοῦ καὶ §3c γράµµατα εὗρον µετὰ Ἑρµοῦ, τά τε ἱερὰ καὶ τὰ δηµόσια γράµµατα, ἵνα µὴ ἐν τοῖς αὐτοῖς πάντα γράφηται. §4 ἐγὼ νόµους ἀνθρώποις ἐθέµην, καὶ ἐνοµοθέτησα ἃ οὐθεὶς δύναται µεταθεῖναι. §5 ἐγώ εἰµι Κρόνου θυγάτηρ πρεσβυτάτηι. §6 ἐγώ εἰµι γ[υ]νὴ καὶ ἀδελφὴ Ὀσείριδος βασιλέως. §7 ἐγώ εἰµι ἡ καρπὸν ἀνθρώποις εὑροῦσα. §8 ἐγώ εἰµι µήτηρ Ὥρου βασιλέως. §9 ἐγώ εἰµι ἡ ἐν τῷ τοῦ Κυνὸς ἄστρῳ ἐπιτέλλουσα. §10 ἐγώ εἰµι ἡ παρὰ γυναιξὶ θεὸς καλουµένη. §11 ἐµοὶ Βούβαστος πόλις ᾠκοδοµήθη. §12 ἐγὼ ἐχώρισα γῆν ἀπ’ οὐρανοῦ. §13 ἐγὼ ἄστρων ὁδοὺς ἔδειξα. §14 ἐγὼ ἡλίου καὶ σελήνη[ς] πορέαν συνεταξάµην. §15 ἐγὼ θαλάσσια ἔργα εὗρον. §16 ἐγὼ τὸ δίκαιον ἰσχυρὸν ἐποίησα. §17 ἐγὼ γυναῖκα καὶ ἄνδρα συνήγαγον. §18 ἐγὼ γυναικὶ δεκαµηνιαῖον βρέφος εἰς φῶς ἐξενεγκεῖν ἔταξα. §19 ἐγὼ ὑπὸ τέκνου γονεῖς ἐνοµοθέτησα φιλοστοργῖσθαι. §20 ἐγὼ τοῖς ἀστόργς γονεῦσιν διακειµένοις τειµωίαν ἐπέθηκα. §21 ἐγὼ µετὰ τοῦ ἀδελφοῦ Ὀσίριδος τὰς ἀνθρωποφαγίας ἔπαυσα. §22 ἐγὼ µυήσεις ἀνθρώποις ἐπέδε[ι]ξα. §23 ἐγὼ ἀγάλµατα θεῶν τειµᾶν ἐδίδαξα. §24 ἐγὼ τεµένη θεῶν ἱδρυσάµην. §25 ἐγὼ τυράννων ἀρχὰς κατέλυσα. §26 ἐγὼ φόνους ἔπαυσα. §27 ἐγὼ στέργεσθαι γυναῖκας ὑπὸ ἀνδρῶν ἠνάγκασα. §28 ἐγὼ τὸ δίκαιον ἰσχυρότερον χρυσίου καὶ ἀργυρίου ἐποίησα. §29 ἐγὼ τὸ ἀληθὲς καλὸν ἐνοµο[θέ]τησα νοµίζε[σ]θαι. §30 ἐγὼ συνγραφὰς γαµικὰς εὗρον. §31 ἐγὼ διαλέκτους Ἕλλησι καὶ βαρβάροις ἔταξα.

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§32 ἐγὼ τὸ καλὸν καὶ αἰσχρὸ[ν] διαγεινώσκεσθαι ὑπὸ τῆς Φύσεως ἐποίησα. §33 ἐγὼ ὅρκου φοβερώτερον οὐθὲν ἐποίησα. §34 ἐγὼ τὸν ἀδίκως ἐπιβουλεύοντα ἄλλοις ὑποχείριον τῷ ἐπιβου[λ]ευοµένῳ παρέδωκα. §35 ἐγὼ τοῖς ἄδικα πράσσουσιν τειµωρίαν ἐπιτίθηµι. §36 ἐγὼ ἱκέτας ἐλεᾶν ἐνοµοθ[έ]τησα. §37 ἐγὼ τοὺς δικαίως ἀµυνοµένους τειµῶ. §38 πὰρ’ ἐµοὶ τὸ δίκαιον ἰσχύει. §39 ἐγὼ ποταµῶν καὶ ἀνέµων [κ]αὶ θαλάσσης εἰµὶ κυρία. §40 οὐθεὶς δοξάζεται ἄνευ τῆς ἐµῆς γνώµης. §41 ἐγώ εἰµι πολέµου κυρία. §42 ἐγὼ κεραυνοῦ κυρία εἰµί. §43 ἐγὼ πραΰνω καὶ κυµαίνω θάλασσαν. §44 ἐγὼ ἐν ταῖς τοῦ ἡλίου αὐγαῖς εἰµί. §45 ἐγὼ παρεδρεύω τῇ τοῦ ἡλίου πορείᾳ. §46 ὃ ἂν ἐµοὶ δόξῃ, τοῦτο καὶ τελεῖτα[ι]. §47 ἐµοὶ πάντ’ ἐπείκει. §48 ἐγὼ τοὺς ἐν δεσµοῖς λύωι. §49 ἐγὼ ναυτιλίας εἰµὶ κυρία. §50 ἐγὼ τὰ πλωτὰ ἄπλωτα ποι[ῶ ὅ]ταν ἐµοὶ δόξῃ. §51 ἐγὼ περιβόλους πόλεων ἔκτισα. §52 ἐγώ εἰµι ἡ Θεσµοφόρος καλουµένη. §53 ἐγὼ νσσους ἐγ β[υθ]ῶν εἰς φῶ ἀνήγαγον. §54 ἐγὼ ὄµβρων εἰµὶ κυρία. §55 ἐγὼ τὸ ἱµαρµένον νικῶ. §56 ἐµοῦ τὸ εἱµαρµένον ἀκούει. §57 χαῖρε Αἴγυπτε θρέψασά µε. Translation (Beard, North, and Price 1998, no. 12.4.a). Demetrios son of Artemidoros, also called Thraseas, from Magnesia on the Meander, fulfilled his vow to Isis. The following text was copied from the inscriptions in Memphis which is positioned in front of the temple of Hephaistos: ‘I am Isis the tyrant of the whole land. I was educated by Hermes and with the help of Hermes devised both sacred and secular scripts, so that everything should not be written in the same script. I established laws for humans, and created legislation which no one has the power to change. I am the eldest daughter of Kronos. I am the wife and sister of King Osiris. I am she who invented crops for humans. I am the mother of King Horus. I am she who rises in the Dog Star. I am she who is called God by women. By me was the city of Boubastos built. I divided earth from heaven. I appointed the paths of the stars. I regulated the passage of sun and moon. I invented fishing and seafaring. I made justice strong. I coupled woman and man. I arranged that women should bring babies to the light after nine months. I legislated that parents should be loved by their child. I inflicted punishments on those who are not affectionately disposed towards their parents. I, with my brother Osiris, ended cannibalism. I showed initiations to humans. I taught them to honour images of the gods. I founded sanctuaries of the gods. I ended the rule of tyrants. I ended murders. I forced women to be loved by men. I made justice stronger than gold and silver. I legislated that truth be considered a fine thing. I invented marriage contracts. I assigned languages for Greeks and barbarians. I made good and evil be distinguished by nature. I made nothing more respected than the oath. I delivered the person plotting unjustly against another into the hands of the person plotted against. I inflict punishment on those acting unjustly. I legislated mercy for the suppliant. I honour those who avenge themselves with justice. By me justice is mighty. I am mistress of rivers, winds, and sea. No one is held in honour without my assent. I am mistress of war. I am mistress of the thunderbolt. I calm and agitate the sea. I am in the rays of the sun. I accompany the passage of the sun. Whatever I decide is actually accomplished. To me everything yields. I free those in chains. I am mistress of seamanship. I make the navigable unnavigable

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whenever I decide. I built the walls of cities. I am she who is called Thesmophoros. I raised islands from the deep into the light. I am mistress of rainstorms. I conquered fate. To me fate listens. Hail Egypt who nourished me’. 2) The ‘You-are-Isis’ type of aretalogy. Inscription from Maroneia (late second/early first century BCE). No archaeological context known (chance find). Text: Loukopoulou et al. 2005, no. E205

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[- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -] [- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -]ΑΥΤΗΣ [- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - ἐλ]άµβανον γὰρ [- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -]ν θεωρήσειν, ὅτ̣αν πρὸς τὸ µέγεθος [τῆς εὐε]ργεσίας οἱ λόγοι τῶν ἐπαίνων µὴ ἐλλίπωσιν. ἧι δὲ [τὰ π]ρῶτα, τὸ µὲν ἐ̣γ̣κ̣ω̣µ̣ί̣ου, τὸ δὲ προσώπου θεῶι κείµενον [οὐκ ἀν]θρώπωι. ὥσπερ οὖν ἐπὶ τῶν ὀµµάτων, Ἶσι, ταῖς εὐχαῖς [ἐπήκο]υσας, ἐλθὲ τοῖς ἐπαίνοις καὶ ἐπὶ δευτέραν εὐχήν· [κα]ὶ γ̣ὰρ τὸ σὸν ἐγκώµιον τῶν ὀµµάτων ἐστὶ κρεῖσσον [ἅπ]αν, οἷς ἔβλεψα τὸν ἥλιον· τούτοις καὶ τὸν σὸν βλέπω κόσµον· πείθοµαι δὲ πάντως σε παρέσεσθαι. εἰ γὰρ ὑπὲρ τῆς ἐµῆς καλουµένη σωτηρίας ἦλθες, πῶς ὑπὲρ τῆς ἰδίας τιµῆς οὐκ ἂν ἔλθοις; θαρρῶν οὖν πορεύοµαι πρὸς τὰ λοιπά, γινώσκων ὅτι τὸ ἐγκώµιον νοῦς µὲν θεοῦ, χεῖρες δὲ γράφουσιν ἀνθρώπου. καὶ πρῶτον ἐπὶ τὸ γένος ἥξω, τῶν ἐγκωµίων ποιησάµενος ἀρχὴν τὴν πρώτην σου τοῦ γένους ἀρχήν. γῆν φασι πάντων µητέρα γενηθῆναι· ταύτηι δὲ σὺ θυγάτηρ ἐσπάρης πρώτηι, σύνοικον δ’ ἔλαβες Σέραπιν καί, τὸν κοινὸν ὑµῶν θεµένων γάµον, τοῖς ὑµετέροις προσώποις ὁ κόσµος ἀνέλαµψεν ἐνοµµατισθεὶς Ἡλίωι καὶ Σελήνηι. δύο µὲν οὖν ἐστε, καλεῖσθε δὲ πολλοὶ παρ’ ἀνθρώποις· µόνους γὰρ ὁ βίος ὑµᾶς θεοὺς οἶδεν. πῶς οὖν τῶν ἐγκωµίων οὐ δυσκράτητος ὁ λόγος ὅταν δέηι τὸν ἔπαινον πολλοῖς θεοῖς προναῶσαι; αὕτη µεθ’ Ἑρµοῦ γράµµαθ’ εὗρεν καὶ τῶν γραµµάτων ἃ µὲν ἱερὰ τοῖς µύσταις, ἃ δὲ δηµόσια τοῖς πᾶσιν. αὕτη τὸ δίκαιον ἔστησεν, ἵν’ ἕκαστος ἡµῶν ὡς ἐκ τῆς φύσεως τὸν θάνατον ἴσον ἔσχεν καὶ ζῆν ἀπὸ τῶν ἴσων εἰδῆι. αὕτη τῶν ἀνθρώπων οἷς µὲν βάρβαρον, οἷς δ’ ἑλληνίδα διάλεκτον ἔστησεν, ἵν’ ἦι τὸ γένος διαλλάσσον µὴ µόνον ἀνδράσιν πρὸς γυναῖκας ἀλλὰ καὶ πᾶσι πρὸς πάντας. σὺ νόµους ἔδωκας, θεσµοὶ δ’ ἐκαλοῦντο κατὰ πρώτας· τοι[γα]ροῦν αἱ πόλεις εὐστάθησαν, οὐ τὴν βίαν νοµικὸν ἀλλὰ [τ]ὸν νόµον ἀβίαστον εὑροῦσαι. σὺ τιµᾶσθαι γονεῖς ὑπὸ [τ]έκνων ἐποίησας, οὐ µόνον ὡς πατέρων, ἀλλ’ ὡς καὶ θεῶν [φ]ροντίσασα· τοιγαροῦν ἡ χάρις κρείσσων ὅτε τῆς φύσεως τὴν ἀνάγκην καὶ θεὰ νόµον ἔγραψεν. σοὶ πρὸς κατοίκησιν Αἴγυπτος ἐστέρχθη. σὺ µάλιστα τῆς Ἑλλάδος ἐτίµησας τὰς Ἀθήνας· κεῖθι γὰρ πρῶτον τοὺς καρποὺς ἐξέφηνας· Τριπτόλεµος δὲ τοὺς ἱεροὺς δράκοντάς σου καταζεύξας ἁρµατοφορούµενος εἰς πάντας Ἕλληνας διέδωκε τὸ σπέρµα· τοιγαροῦν τῆς µὲν Ἑλλάδος ἰδεῖν σπεύδοµεν τὰς Ἀθήνας, τῶν δ’ Ἀθηνῶν Ἐλευσῖνα, τῆς µὲν Εὐρώπης νοµίζοντες τὴν πόλιν, τῆς δὲ πόλεως τὸ ἱερὸν κόσµον. ἔγνω τὸν βίον ἐξ ἀνδρὸς συνεστηκότα καὶ γυναικός· ἔγνω [- - -]τερον τὴν γυναῖκα· πῶς ἔδει τὸ ἧσσον [- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -]

290

Paraskevi Martzavou [- -]Ν ἐσφραγισ[- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -] 45 [- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -]

Translation of lines 4–43 (Horsley 1981, modified) ... So, just as in the case of my eyes, Isis, you listened to my prayers, come for your praises and to hear my second prayer; for the praise of you is entirely more important than my eyes whenever with the same eyes with which I saw the sun I see your world. I am completely confident that you will come again. For since you came when called for my salvation, how would you not come for your own honour? So taking heed I proceed to what remains, knowing that this encomium is written not only by the hand of a man, but also by the mind of a god. And first I shall come to your family, making as the beginning of my praises the earliest beginnings of your family. They say that Ge was the mother of all: you were born a daughter to her first. You took Sarapis to live with you, and when you had made your marriage together the world, provided with eyes, was lit up by means of your faces, Helios and Selene. So you are two but have many designations among men. For you are the only ones whom (everyday) life knows as gods. Therefore, how would the account of your praises not be unmanageable when one must praise many gods at the outset? She with Hermes discovered writing; and of this writing some was sacred for initiates, some was publicly available for all. She instituted justice, that each of us might know how to live on equal terms, just as, because of our nature, death makes us equal. She instituted the non-Greek language for some, Greek language for others, in order that the race might be differentiated not only as between men and women, but also between all peoples. You gave laws, but they were called thesmoi originally. Accordingly, cities enjoyed tranquillity, having discovered not violence legalised, but law without violence. You made parents honoured by their children, in that you cared for them not only as fathers but also as gods. Accordingly, the favour is greater when a goddess also drew up as law what is necessary in nature. As a domicile Egypt is loved by you. You particularly honoured Athens within Greece. For there first you made the earth produce food: Triptolemos, yoking your sacred snakes, scattered the seed to all Greeks as he travelled in his chariot. Accordingly, in Greece we are keen to see Athens and in Athens, Eleusis considering the city to be the ornament of Europe, and the sacred place the ornament of the city. She determined that life should cohere from a man and a woman ...

BIBLIOGRAPHY Beard, M., J. North, and S. Price (1998) Religions of Rome. Vol. II. A Sourcebook, Cambridge. Bodel, J. (2009) A Problem of Definitions, in J. Bodel and M. Kajava (eds), Dediche sacre nel mondo greco-romano – Religious Dedications in the Greco-Roman World, Rome, 17–30. Bouzek J. et alii (1980) The Results of the Chehoslovak Expedition. Kyme II, Praha. Brun-Siard, H. (2010) Les sceaux du Sarapieion C de Délos, Bulletin de Correspondance Hellénique 134, 195–221. Bruneau, P. (1975) Le sanctuaire et le cultes des divinités égyptiennes à Érétrie, Leiden. Burton, A. (1972) Diodorus Siculus, Book 1. A Commentary, Leiden. Chaniotis, A. (2009) Θεατρικότητα καὶ δηµόσιος βίος στὸν ἑλληνιστικὸ κόσµο, Herakleion. ––– (2011) Emotional Community Through Ritual: Initiates, Citizens and Pilgrims as Emotional Communities in the Greek World, in A. Chaniotis (ed.) Ritual Dynamics in the Ancient Mediterranean: Agency, Emotion, Gender, Representation, Stuttgart, 264–290. Dekoulakou, I. (1999–2001) Νέα στοιχεῖα ἀπὸ τὴν ἀνασκαφὴ τοῦ ἱεροῦ τῶν Αἰγυπτίων θεῶν στὸν Μαραθώνα, Ἀρχαιολογικὰ Ἀνάλεκτα ἐξ Ἀθηνῶν 32–34, 113–126. Deshours, N. (2006) Les mystères d’Andanie. Étude d’épigraphie et d’histoire religieuse, Bordeaux. Foucault, M. (1984) Des espaces autres, Architecture, Movement, Continuité 5, 46–49. Grandjean, Y. (1975) Une nouvelle aréalogie d’Isis à Maronée, Leiden.

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Gwyn Griffiths, J. (1975) The Isis Book (Metamorphoses Book XI), Leiden. Harris, W. (2010) History, Empathy, and Emotions, Antike und Abendland 56, 1–23. Henrichs, A. (1984) The Sophists and Hellenistic Religion: Prodicus as the Spiritual Father of the Isis Aretalogies, Harvard Studies in Classical Philology 88, 139–158. Horsley, G. H. R. (1981) New Documents Illustrating Early Christianity. A Review of Inscriptions and Papyri Published in 1976, North Ryde. Festugière, J. (1949) A propos des arétalogies d’Isis, Harvard Theological Review 42.4, 209–234. ––– (1954) Personal Religion Among the Greeks, Berkeley. Furley W. D. and J. M. Bremer (2001) Greek Hymns. Selected Cult Songs from the Archaic to the Hellenistic Period, Tübingen. Köhler, J. (1996) Pompai. Untersuchungen zur hellenistischer Festkultur, Frankfurt/New York. Lateiner, D. (2009) Tears in Apuleius’ Metamorphoses, in T. Fögen (ed.), Tears in the GreacoRoman World, Berlin/New York, 277–295. Loukopoulou, L. D., A. Zournatzi, M. G. Parisaki, and S. Psoma (2005) Ἐπιγραφὲς τῆς Θράκης τοῦ Αἰγαίου, µεταξὺ τῶν ποταµῶν Νέστου καὶ Ἕβρου (Νοµοὶ Ξάνθης, Ροδόπης καὶ Ἕβρου) , Athens. Martzavou, P. (2011) Priests and Priestly Roles in the Isiac Cults. Women as Agents of Religious Change in the Isiac Cults, in A. Chaniotis (ed.), Ritual Dynamics in the Ancient Mediterranean. Agency, Emotion, Gender, Representation, Stuttgart, 62–84. Merkelbach, R. (1995) Isis Regina – Zeus Sarapis, Stuttgart/Leipzig. Papanikolaou, D. (2009) The Aretalogy of Isis from Maroneia and the Question of Hellenistic ‘Asianism’, Zeitschrift für Papyrologie und Epigraphik 169, 59–70. Peek, W. (1930) Der Isishymnus von Andros und verwandte Texte, Berlin. Podvin, J.-L. (2011) Luminaire et cultes isiaques, Montagnac. RICIS = Bricault, L. (2005) Recueil des inscriptions des cultes isiaques, Paris. Roussel, P. (1929) Un nouvel hymne à Isis, Revue des Etudes Grecques 42, 137–168. Rüpke, J. (2010) Representation or Presence? Picturing the Divine in Ancient Rome, Archiv für Religionsgeschicthe 12, 181–196. Sanzi, E. (2008) La trasmissione dei sistemi religiosi compless nel secondo ellenismo. Qualque esemplificazione dall’XI libro de le Metamorfosi di Apuleio, in C. Bonnet, S. Ribichini, and D. Steuernagel (edds), Religioni in Contatto nel Mediterraneo Antico. Modalità di diffusione e processi di interferenza (Mediterranea 4), Pisa, 33–48. Smith J. (1971) Native Cults in Hellenistic Period, History of Religions 11.2, 236–249. Solmsen, F. (1979) Isis Among the Greeks and Romans, Cambrigde, Ma./London. Versnel, H. (1990) Ter unus. Isis, Dionysos, Hermes. Three Studies in Henotheism Inconsinstencies in the Greek and Roman Religion. Vol. 1, Leiden/New York. Winkler, J. J. (1985) Auctor & Actor: A Narratological Reading of Apuleius's The Golden Ass. Berkeley/Los Angeles.

PART THREE Emotions in the public space

EMOTIONALITY IN THE POLITICAL CULTURE OF THE GRAECO-ROMAN EAST The Role of Acclamations Christina T. Kuhn 1 INTRODUCTION Some time in the early third century CE, a certain high-priest Eumelos, probably from the city of Tralleis (Karia), was sent to the Roman governor of the province to act as a petitioner on behalf of the neighbouring village of the Pylitai.1 When he returned from his mission and gave a report on his success in the city council, he was praised with effusive acclamations:2 The one and only Eumelos in history! Hurrah, bravo, for the high-priest! Great is the name of Dionysos! To Eumelos, the great protector of the Pylitai! Eumelos shall have all the privileges of the Pylitai inscribed on a stele!

The minutes of the council meeting were later recorded on stone and have, to this day, preserved the emotional reactions of the councillors – their enthusiastic pride in the diplomatic skills of one of their leading citizens, their great joy over his successful mission, their spontaneous eagerness to call him a ‘protector’ (κηδεµών) of the rural community of the Pylitai. The inscription on the marble stele captures and records for posterity a particular moment of emotional interaction and sense of community and solidarity in the council chamber. Its rendering of every word of the acclamatory chants no doubt lends a sense of immediacy and authenticity to the document and provides lively insights into the whole complex of powerful emotions in the civic institutions of the Greek East. The Pylitai inscription is not a singular document of public acclamation. In the rich epigraphic sources of Asia Minor we frequently find texts which show that the mention of people’s emotional involvement in the event was by no means viewed as less significant by the civic elites than the report focussing on the particular facticity of the event. In what follows I shall deal with acclamations in 1 2

SEG XXXVIII 1172 with Malay 1988 and Nollé 1990. Nollé suggests that the village of the Pylitai may have belonged to Magnesia on the Maeander. SEG XXXVIII 1172 lines 13–18: εἷς ἀπ’ αἰῶνος, Εὔ[µηλε]· οὐᾶ, καλῶς, ἀρχιερεῦ· µέ[γα τὸ ὄνοµ]α ∆ιονύσου· Εὐµήλῳ µε[γάλῳ κη]δεµόνι Πυλειτῶν· Εὔµη[λον, πάν]τα τὰ δίκαια Πυλείταις ἐν [στήλῃ] ἀναγράψαι.

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the Graeco-Roman East.3 The analysis does not aim at a general, ‘phenomenological’ approach to the subject, but examines acclamations from the special perspective of their significance for the study of the history of emotions. The term ‘acclamation’ is used here to refer to the unison shouting and chanting of (short) phrases by a group of people, who (often) employ conventional, sometimes emphatically rhythmic formulas to express an opinion or a request.4 In recent years acclamations have attracted much scholarly attention, yet a detailed study of the phenomenon in the context of emotions and emotionality has not been undertaken so far. Broadly speaking, two forms of acclamations in the ancient world have been the objects of scholarly research: religious acclamations and secular acclamations.5 This chapter will revolve around the latter, which usually took place at public meetings in the political institutions (council, assembly) or during civic festivals and games. Their addressees were mostly local benefactors, magistrates, governors or emperors. These acclamations have been recognised in recent scholarship as an important instrument of political communication in Rome and her provinces: they provided a vehicle for the citizens to express their will and thus functioned as an indicator of what may be called ‘public opinion’ in a twoway process of communication between ruler and ruled, elite and masses.6 It is evident, then, that they played much more than just a minor, purely ‘decorative’ role in the public sphere: they formed an integral part in the civic life of the poleis under Roman rule. The aim of the following chapter is three-fold: first, it will deal with some central aspects of secular acclamations with reference to the issue of emotions and emotionality; second, it will draw attention to certain striking developments in the history of emotions to illuminate the immediate cultural-historical context, which left its mark on the practice, function, and meaning of acclamations; and third, 3

4

5

6

On the phenomenon of acclamations cf. Peterson 1926; Klauser 1950; Colin 1965; Burian 1980; Roueché 1984, 1989b, and 1999; Quass 1993, 405–418; Aldrete 1999; Ando 2000, 199–205; Wiemer 2004; Chaniotis 2009a and 2012, 307f. and 314f.; Fernoux 2011, 134–150. Cf. also the following definitions of the term: Klauser 1950, 216: ‘Unter Akklamation versteht man die oft rhythmisch formulierten u. sprechartig vorgetragenen Zurufe, mit denen eine Volksmenge Beifall, Lob u. Glückwunsch, oder Tadel, Verwünschung u. Forderung zum Ausdruck bringt;’ Roueché 1984, 181: ‘the expression, in unison, of wish, opinion or belief, by a large gathering of the people, often employing conventional rhythms or tunes of phrase;’ Ando 2000, 200: ‘the unisonal, rhythmic chanting of religious or political formulas;’ Chaniotis 2009a, 201: ‘short texts performed orally by a group (or an individual) in the presence of an audience, expecting and eliciting the audience’s verbal approval.’ This categorisation is mainly focussed on the addressee of an acclamation: while religious acclamations address and honour a deity, secular acclamations are directed towards an emperor, an official, a citizen, or the city itself. A classic example for a religious acclamation is the case of the silversmiths at Ephesos, who gathered in the theatre to protest against St. Paul’s preaching, shouting in unison for hours: Μεγάλη ἡ Ἄρτεµις Ἐφεσίων (Acts of the Apostles 19.28). For religious acclamations see above all the studies by Petersen 1926, 141–240; Versnel 1990, 193–196, 242–244; Versnel 2000, 129–158; Belayche 2005 and 2006; Chaniotis 2009a. On the role of acclamations in political communication see e.g. Aldrete 1999, chapters 4–5; Ando 2000, 199–205; Roueché 1984, 182–188; Slootjes 2006, 122–129, 155–161.

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based on two exemplary case studies, it will elaborate some contemporary political and socio-cultural parameters that were characteristic of and constitutive for the emotional dimension of acclamations. Geographically and chronologically, the analysis mainly focuses on the Imperial Greek East; however, for purposes of clarity, it will occasionally draw on evidence from the Western parts of the Roman Empire. 2 ACCLAMATIONS AND THE STUDY OF EMOTIONS Acclamations are first and foremost acts of oral performance, whose memorisation in written form became a common practice in the course of the second century CE.7 They were recorded in the official minutes of the political institutions and, in addition, were often inscribed on stone and publicly displayed. The epigraphic evidence for secular acclamations in the Greek East is quite rich. 8 Whereas most of these inscriptions only inform us about the fact that an acclamation had taken place without providing the actual wording of the people’s chants (e.g. ὁ δῆµος ἐβόησεν; πλῆθος ἐπιβεβόηκεν),9 some inscriptions provide us with a literal rendering of the actual words or phrases of the acclamatory shouts – as in the case of the councillors from Tralleis.10 The value of acclamations for the study of the history of emotions lies in the fact that they are major carriers of collective feelings and passions, reactions and responses evoked in concrete, often highly emotionalised situations in the public sphere. When trying to trace their (hidden) causes, we must realise that manifest interests and intense rivalry – between individuals, political factions, or social groups, between neighbouring cities or between the Greek cities and the imperial power – frequently form the background of acclamations. This means that in any assessment of the emotional dimension of acclamations we must take into account the specific contemporary circumstances underlying their oral performance and written memorisation: Which socio-political and cultural factors generated an emotional situation for the performance of an acclamation? In what specific communicative situation did the acclamation take place, and how did the physical setting impact on the emotional reactions of the producers and recipients of an acclamation? These are only a few aspects which the historian of emotions must bear in mind when analysing the historical circumstances of acclamations. He should 7

8 9 10

Cf. Roueché 1984, 184f. Ando 2000, 202 suggests that the practice of recording acclamations in the provinces was influenced by the senatorial practice in Rome. On this practice in Rome see Talbert 1984, 298–302. For a collection of this material see e.g. Roueché 1984, 182f.; Chaniotis 2009a, appendix 2; Fernoux 2011, 134–150. See e.g. I.Stratonikeia 15; SEG XXVII 938; MAMA VIII 499; Paton 1900, 74 no. 2. The longest series of verbatim acclamations from Asia Minor recorded on stone are those from Tralleis (SEG XXXVIII 1172), Perge (I.Perge 331 col. II; see Appendix), Termessos (SEG LI 1813; see Appendix), and Aphrodisias (Roueché 1989a, no. 83; IAph2007 4.21).

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likewise be concerned with the language and, above all, the stylistic devices, to explore how they were employed as a means of emotional intensification. After all, acclamations in the ancient world drew on a standardised set of formulas and distinctive linguistic registers that could be adapted to the specific situation.11 These formulas were usually short and concise, mostly based on eulogy and praise. They were easy to remember and could be employed by a large crowd in unison without much prior instruction and planning. The repetition of similar sounds, the anaphoric use of words or the reiteration of entire phrases proved as an effective device to lend emphasis to the message and to increase the emotional impact of acclamations. The persuasive and emotionalising effects of this speech style were furthermore intensified by the strategy of the emphatic rhythmic clapping of hands. Towards the Byzantine period, acclamations often adopted a metrical structure and, because of the refrain-like repetition of phrases, even resembled songs.12 Anthropologists have pointed out the emotion-producing qualities of melody and rhythm, emphasising that music and rhythm are the ‘language’ of emotional arousal.13 They provide a shared form of emotion that, at least during the course of the song, carries along the parti14 cipants so that they experience their bodies responding emotionally in very similar ways.

While chanting together, people’s emotional responses are in synchrony and harmony. This common emotional experience is often further heightened through body movements and gestures that accompany the acclamatory chants such as the rhythmic clapping or waving of hands.15 A graphic impression of the effective rhetorical techniques and modes of persuasion broached above may be obtained from a papyrus from Oxyrhynchus (c. 300 CE), which minutely records a complex series of acclamations directed to the prytanis on the occasion of a festive assembly:16 11 12 13 14 15

16

For a collection and analysis of these formulas (e.g., ἄξιος, αὔξει, εἷς, νίκα, πολλοῖς ἔτεσι) see e.g. Klauser 1950, 227–231; Aldrete 1999, 128–164. Aldrete 1999, 141, 144–147. Richman 1987, 222. Richman 1987, 222 with Tuomela 2007, 260 note 49. Klauser 1950, 232: ‘Dem erregten Affekt ist durch Akklamation allein nicht Genüge geschehen; er macht sich auch in begleitenden Gebärden Luft. Diese sind wohl zu allen Zeiten im wesentlichen die gleichen: handelt es sich um Begrüßung, Segenswunsch usw., dann streckt man den rechten Arm u. die Hand in die Höhe; handelt es sich um einen Ruf des Abscheus, eine Verwünschung usw., dann macht man mit der Rechten eine abweisende Schleuderbewegung in Brusthöhe. Ist die Erregung besonders groß, dann wird aus dem Armheben ein leidenschaftliches Schwenken, vielleicht noch verstärkt durch In-die-Hand-nehmen eines Tuches.’ P.Oxy. I 41: […] ὠκεανὲ πρύτανι, ὠκεανὲ δόξα πόλεω[ς], ὠκεανὲ ∆ιό[σκ]ορε πρωτοπολῖτα, ἐπὶ σοῦ τὰ ἀγαθὰ καὶ πλέον γίνεται, ἀρχηγὲ τῶν ἀγαθῶν, ισ̣ι ην̣ φιλεῖ σε καὶ ἀναβαίνει εὐτυχῶς τῷ φιλοπολίτῃ, εὐτυχῶς τῷ φιλοµετρίῳ, ἀρχηγὲ τῶν ἀγαθῶν, κτίστα τῆς π̣[ όλεως ... ̣] ... ὠκεανὲ ... ου[...] ψηφισθήτω ὁ πρύ(τανις) ἐν τοιαύτῃ [ἡµέρ]ᾳ. πολλῶν ψηφισµάτων ἄξιος, πολλῶν ἀγαθῶν ἀπολαύοµεν διὰ σέ, πρύτανι. […] δεόµεθα καθολικέ, περὶ τοῦ πρυτάνεως· ψ[ηφισ]θ̣ήτω ὁ πρύτανις, ψηφισθήτω ἐν τοιαύτῃ ἡµέρᾳ. τοῦτο πρῶτον καὶ ἀναγκαῖον […] (translation by Kruse 2006). On this papyrus see Blume 1989; De

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[...] Long live the prytanis, bravo, glory of the city, Hurrah, Dioskoros, you foremost of citizens! Everything that is good will be increased under your administration, you initiator of good things! The Nile (Isies) loves you as the blessed and rises! Long live he, who loves his fellow citizens, long live he, who loves moderation, initiator of good things, founder of the city! ... Bravo ... A conferment (of honour) should be passed for the prytanis on this day! He is worthy of many conferments! Many are the blessings we enjoy through you, prytanis! (...) We beseech you, Katholikos, concerning the prytanis: a conferment (of honour) should be ratified for the prytanis, the conferment should be ratified today, this is the first and foremost duty! […].

It is obvious that some degree of direction and coordination must have been necessary to make a crowd articulate the above series of elaborate acclamations. It has been characterised as a ‘dramatic production of the ritualised speech of the crowd.’17 The whole gamut of psychotechnics applied in acclamations is used here to honour a deserving citizen: the heaping of excessive flattery and praise on this foremost citizen, the extensive use of rhythmic prosody and a metaphor (‘ocean’), the ostinato-like repetition of ὠκεανέ or ψηφισθήτω, the short phrases with simple syntactic structure – these are some of the most conspicuous devices to produce an emotional effect in a crescendo-like fashion. The historian of emotions should be well aware that in the ancient world subtle but powerful strategies could be adopted to arouse and manipulate emotions. For instance, we know from the evidence of extant source material that hired claqueurs were frequently involved in the running of public affairs, whose main function was to stimulate and lead the rhythmical shouts and chants of the crowd.18 For the Greek East this practice of deliberate manipulation is most evident in a scene in Aelius Aristides’ Sacred Tales, in which the orator vividly describes how a stirred-up crowd in the assembly tried to push him into taking over liturgies with acclamatory shouts. Aristides speaks of a kind of claque who had worked on the crowd beforehand.19 Such claques usually mingled with the public and tried to initiate applause, shouts of approval, cheers, and chants. They functioned as instigators and co-ordinators of acclamations, calculating that the audience would join in. On the other hand, one should not overrate the power of such claqueurs in producing, directing, and controlling the emotional reactions of the demos: after all, claqueurs could not force an unwilling audience to react favourably through acclamation. What they could do, however, was to intensify an existing favourable or critical attitude among a significant faction in the audience, try to give it a strong voice, and temporarily gain what in modern terms is called ‘opinion leadership’.

17 18

19

Ste. Croix 1981, 314; Slootjes 2006, 127f.; Kruse 2006, with an interpretation of the papyrus in the context of ‘ritual dynamics’. Kruse 2006, 310. On such claques see e.g. Cameron 1976, 230–249; Potter 1996, 133; Aldrete 1999, 135–138; Morstein-Marx 2004, 134–143. A well-known example is furnished by Nero, who introduced in Rome the so-called Augustani, a professional claque from Alexandria, to orchestrate acclamations (Suetonius, Nero 20.3; Tacitus, Annales 14.15; Dio Cassius 62.20). Aristides, Oratio 50.100–103.

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Those who joined in the acclamation constituted an ad-hoc ‘emotional community’.20 Its main pillar is what sociologists have termed a ‘we-feeling’. Such a ‘we-feeling’ develops when feelings are expressed and communicated in interaction with each other, and when the members of a group are linked to a collective cause.21 A common interest underlying an acclamation was, for instance, to put forward a demand, to bestow honours on a citizen (in particular local benefactors), to express pride in the polis, to display loyalty to Rome and the emperor – in short, to articulate goodwill and approbation, but also opposition, disapproval, and displeasure in civic and imperial politics (to name only the most frequent aims and intentions that can be identified in our sources).22 A good example for a situation in which such a we-feeling comes to the fore is furnished by an acclamation of the members of the Dionysiac association of the Iobakchoi in Athens (c. 178 CE). After they had unanimously passed new statutes for their organisation, which were to guarantee disciplined conduct during their celebrations, they gave voice to their feelings in the following acclamation:23 Long live our foremost priest Herodes! Now we are happy! Now our Bacchic club is the first among all (Bacchic) clubs!

The chants reveal that the Iobakchoi felt united not only as members of their club per se, but, in addition, by a common cause and the emotional reaction to their achievement: they were filled with immense joy and pride at being, from now on, superior to all the other Bacchic groups. The loud expression of a we-feeling in the group dynamics of mass acclamations does not preclude the existence of different degrees of intensity, as far as the depth of emotions and the individual identification with the common cause are concerned. We must assume that among the majority of highly emotionalised citizens there were a number of people who were more or less emotionally detached and who may even have felt indifferent to the issue but joined in the acclamation due to group pressure or purely out of habit. This point is touched upon in a passage in Tacitus’ Histories, where he critically notes that many Carthaginians who joined in the acclamations for Lucius Piso, proconsul of Africa, were ignorant of the actual reason and circumstances for their acclamatory chants. They did not even have a strong allegiance to Piso but participated in the acclamation only because the centurion, who had started the chants, had urged the bystanders to join him.24 Thus, even if the emotional community, as it takes shape in the act of acclamations, at first glance appears to be a homogeneous group in our sources, emotional diversity must be presupposed. 20 21 22 23

24

On a different usage of this term see Rosenwein 2006. On ad hoc ‘emotional communities’ in Greek cult see Chaniotis 2011, 265. Cf. Tuomela 2007, 259f. note 49. On the diverse functions of acclamations see Roueché 1984, 181–188; Chaniotis 2009a, 202. IG II2 1368 = LSCG 51: ἐξ(εβόσαν)· πολλοῖς ἔτεσι τὸν κράτιστον ἱερέα Ἡρώδην· Νῦν εὐτυχεῖς· Νῦν πάντων πρῶτοι τῶν Βακχείων! Discussions of this text: Baslez 2004, 118– 120; Chaniotis 2006, 232–234 and 2012, 305f. Tacitus, Historiae 4.49.

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3 ACCLAMATIONS AND THE EMOTIONALISATION OF THE POLITICAL CULTURE OF THE GRAECO-ROMAN EAST After these general remarks on some basic aspects of the emotional implications and functions of acclamations, we shall explore in the following section the wider cultural-historical context in which they are embedded and examine a striking phenomenon that can be observed in the second century CE, namely a remarkable increase in the epigraphic record of acclamations in that period. It has been argued that this development may be attributed to ‘a general increase in verbatim recording, which itself may have resulted from technological developments’25 (in stenography, for instance), but also to the fact that ‘the status of acclamations was in fact changing, and that they were coming to be seen as increasingly worth of record’.26 There is no reason to challenge these arguments. We should in this connection, however, not neglect the profound impact of another factor that may also account for this development, and which must be seen as another manifestation of the major changes in the political culture of the period: the marked trend towards the emotionalisation of political communication. In his comprehensive research on public communication in modern society, Barry Richards has pointed out that one contribution that sociology can make to the study of political communication is to identify broad social and cultural changes which are influencing the democratic process and so are 27 likely to have effects on political communication.

Under the impact of the ‘affective turn’ in the social sciences, the role of emotion in political communication has increasingly become an important object of research in recent years. In this connection, Richards, for instance, has persuasively argued that a cultural trend which can appropriately be labelled as ‘emotionalisation’ has profoundly transformed the context for political communication in modern society. According to Richards, the boundaries between ‘politics’ and ‘popular culture’ have become blurred, politics has become interwoven with popular culture and, as a consequence, political audiences are now expecting ‘certain kinds of emotionalised experience from politics’.28 To what extent, one may ask, can these observations on the emotional dynamics in contemporary political debate be of interest for the ancient historian? Can similar cultural developments which have led to a changed nature of political communication be observed in the ancient world? Of special interest in this regard is the Hellenistic period. It has been argued that theatricality – which encompasses a new trend of influencing and eliciting the emotions of the audiences – became a distinctive feature of civic life in the Hellenistic age.29 This is not to say that emotions did 25 26 27 28 29

Roueché 1984, 184. Roueché 1984, 184. Richards 2004, 339. Richards 2004, 339. Chaniotis 1997. Originating from the behavioural sciences, the subject of theatricality has made its advent in classical studies during the last two decades, where it has been fruitfully

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not matter in political communication before the Hellenistic period.30 It is the process of the intensification of theatrical elements in the civic life of the Hellenistic period that deserves our close attention.31 And it gained, as will be shown below, further momentum in the Imperial period and clearly left its mark on the culture of political discourse in the Greek East. In the first three centuries CE, the culture of the Graeco-Roman East was characterised by a highly theatricalised quality.32 There was a boom of performances of all kinds in the cities of the Graeco-Roman East: processions, festivals, plays, concerts, gladiatorial games, or declamations.33 It was notably the declamations that developed into a new form of entertainment and attracted large audiences, who gathered to enjoy the masterly display of epideictic oratory by the representatives of the so-called Second Sophistic.34 In Tim Whitmarsh’s words, it was ‘an extraordinary phenomenon’, and ‘it is hard for moderns to grasp the central cultural importance of this practice without resorting to misleading parallels: pop concerts, sports events, religious gatherings’.35 In their declamations the sophists slipped like actors into the roles of various (historical) characters, charming their audience with melodic speeches in effeminate voice, gestural accompaniment, and magnificent attire.36 The delivery of the sophists was indeed so impressive that even people who did not understand Greek poured into the theatres to be entertained by their declamations.37 We may gain some idea of the theatrical quality of sophistic oratory from an illuminating passage in Aristides’ Oratio 34, in which he makes derogatory remarks on the sophists’ mode of speaking: Indeed, I once actually caught one of those who grovels before the masses ... For to gratify his audience, he sang, modulating his voice, while he added the same final clause at the end of each sentence, as if in a song.38

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31 32 33 34 35 36 37 38

applied to the analysis of political discourse in the ancient world, though no systematic analysis of theatricality in the political culture of the Graeco-Roman East has been undertaken so far. For a definition of theatricality see Burns 1972; Chaniotis 1997 and 2009b. For theatricality in the political rhetoric of Classical Athens see Ober 1989; Ober and Strauss 1990; Slater 1995; for theatricality in the public life of the Hellenistic period see above all Chaniotis 1997 and 2009b; see also Bielfeldt 2012. For the Imperial period see Bartsch 1994. Chaniotis 1997. Connolly 2001. For an overview of spectacles and games in the Graeco-Roman East see e.g. Mitchell 1993, 217–225; Klose 2005; Marek 2010, 614–626; Leschhorn 1998; König 2005. On the Second Sophistic as a cultural movement in this period see Anderson 1993; Bowersock 1969; Swain 1996; Schmitz 1997; Whitmarsh 2001 and 2005; Borg 2004. Whitmarsh 2005, 3. On theatricality in the declamations of the sophists see Connolly 2001. Philostratos, Lives of the Sophists 491, 519, 589. Aristides, Oratio 34.47: ἐπεί τοι καὶ τούτων αὖ τινα τῶν περὶ τοὺς ὄχλους καλινδουµένων καλῶς ἐγώ ποτ’ ἐφώρασα τἀναντία πράττοντα ἢ ἔσπευδεν. ᾖδε µὲν γὰρ ἐγκλίνας τῶν χαρίτων ἕνεκα, ἀκροτελεύτιον δ’ ἐπεφθέγγετο ἐφ’ ἑκάστῳ τῶν κοµµατίων ὥσπερ ἐν µέλει ταυτόν (translation by C. Behr 1981–1986. Connolly 2001, 89 notes on this passage: ‘The criticism leveled by Aristides at the sophists who performed in sing-song and effeminate

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Interestingly, there were actually many points of contact between the theatrical world and the world of politics to facilitate the adoption of theatrical elements in political discourse. In most poleis, political meetings were held in the same locales where sophistic declamations and theatrical performances took place. The bouleuterion / odeion was not only the meeting place of the council; it was also the place where sophistic performances were given, as we learn from a passage in Aristides’ Sacred Tales.39 Likewise, the theatre was not only the place where the assembly deliberated about civic matters; it was also the place of spectacle (θέα), where people gathered to watch all kinds of theatrical and musical performances, celebrations, civic festivals, and carefully and aesthetically staged rituals such as the announcement of honours or the crowning of benefactors.40 Moreover, it was often the same men who were active both as political speakers and professional show declaimers.41 And even if political speakers were not professional sophists at the same time, they usually had received their rhetorical training from sophists – an education that was meticulous about the art of theatrical delivery and dramatisation. Against this background, it is not surprising that elements which were typical of sophistic performances were gradually taken over into political speech. There is indeed much evidence in the sources of our period for the dramatic evocation of strong emotions by political speakers. The contemporary rhetorical handbooks such as Anonymous Seguerianus’ The Art of Political Oratory (Τέχνη τοῦ πολιτικοῦ λόγου, c. end of the second century CE) or Apsines of Gadara’s The Art of Oratory (Τέχνη ῥητορική, c. 190-250 CE) devoted much space to teach the students sophisticated strategies of arousing emotions in the form of pity and compassion and how to move the audience to tears.42 The sophists in

39 40 41

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voices serves to highlight the fact that mimetic acts of some kind – even the imitation of women or Asiatics – were central to the sophistic profession.’ Plutarch (Moralia 623B) refers to the same phenomenon when he points out that orators and actors in their perorations often raise the pitch of their voice and approach song. According to Dio Chrysostom (Oratio 32.68) this ‘disease’ was a general phenomenon in Alexandria: ‘Since they observe your interest in singing and your passion for it, they all sing now, public speakers as well as sophists, and everything is done to music; if you were to pass a courtroom, you could not easily decide whether a drinking-party was in progress or a trial; and if there is in your neighbourhood a sophist’s lecture-room, you will be unable to distinguish the lecture’ (translation by H. L. Crosby [Loeb]) (ὡς γὰρ ὁρῶσι τὴν σπουδὴν ὑµῶν τὴν περὶ τοῦτο καὶ τὴν ἐπιθυµίαν, πάντες δὴ ᾄδουσι καὶ ῥήτορες καὶ σοφισταί, καὶ πάντα περαίνεται δι’ ᾠδῆς· ὥστ’, εἴ τις παρίοι δικαστήριον, οὐκ ἂν γνοίη ῥᾳδίως πότερον ἔνδον πίνουσιν ἢ δικάζονται· κἂν σοφιστοῦ δὲ οἴκηµα πλησίον ᾖ, οὐκ ἔσται γνῶναι τὴν διατριβήν). Aristides, Oratio 18.8; 51.31–34. On the locales of theatrical performances see Pernot 1993, 440; Korenjak 2000, 31f. On rituals that took place in the theatre see Chaniotis 2007. See the information in Philostratos, Lives of the Sophists e.g. on Niketes (511f.), Skopelianos (519f.), Dionysios (522), Ptolemy of Naukratis (595), Polemon (524f.), Heliodoros (625f.), Quirinus (621), Hadrian (579), Athenodoros (594), Apollonios of Athens (600), Damianos (606), Herakleides (613), and Philostratos of Lemnos (628). On pity (ἔλεος) see Seguerianus 6; Apsines 10.15–47; on compassion (πάθος) see Seguerianus 6.21f., 27, 94, 136, 139, 147f., 160, 203, 205, 206, 224–228; Apsines 10.48–58.

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particular seem to have been masters of these techniques. The following examples refer to occasions on which they appeared in the Roman courts, but we may with good reason assume that the same forms of ‘theatrical’ persuasion were mutatis mutandis employed by them when they were active in the civic institutions. Thus, when the sophist Niketes of Smyrna was brought before the governor’s court, he delivered an emotionally charged speech of defence that impressed the governor ‘so profoundly that the tears he shed over Niketes amounted to more than the water that had been allotted to him for his defence’.43 Niketes’ ability to move the governor by his words saved him his life, and the governor ‘sent him away not only unscathed, but singled out for honour even among the most illustrious of the citizens of Smyrna’. Equally successful in touching the emotions of the Roman emperor by the power of his words was Aristides, when he tried to elicit favours from Marcus Aurelius for the earthquake-stricken Smyrna. Pleading for the emperor’s help in a letter, Aristides lamented its fate to Marcus in such moving words that the emperor frequently groaned at other passages in the monody but when he came to the words: ‘She is a desert through which the west winds blow’, the emperor actually shed tears over the pages and in accordance with 44 the impulse inspired by Aristides he consented to rebuild the city.

Regardless of their trustworthiness, these anecdotes reveal the significance that was attached to dramatic self-styling by many politicians. All this was a concomitant not only of the increasingly theatrical quality of the rhetorical training but also of the novel expectations and demands of the political audiences. Since they were accustomed to (and spoilt by) spectacular celebrations and festivals in the civic life of their poleis, the audiences, whether in the council, the assembly, or the courtroom, expected to be ‘entertained’ by the politicians in the same way as in a theatrical performance. Plutarch alludes to this attitude when he remarks that the good statesman goes to the council and the assembly ‘not merely for amusement as if to see or hear a performance’.45 Plutarch’s criticism indicates that people had come to experience the management of political matters in the civic political arenas as a performance and a spectacle; consequently, they demanded from the protagonists of public life to meet their expectations.46 Thus, a statesman who wished to win the favour and the support of his audience had to adopt the 43

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Philostratos, Lives of the Sophists 512: διὰ µὲν δὴ ταῦτα ἐπὶ Ῥῆνόν τε καὶ Κελτοὺς ἦλθεν, παρελθὼν δὲ ἐπὶ τὴν ἀπολογίαν οὕτω τι κατέπληξε τὸν Ῥοῦφον, ὡς πλείω µὲν ἀφεῖναι ἐπὶ τῷ Νικήτῃ δάκρυα οὗ διεµέτρησεν αὐτῷ ὕδατος, ἀποπέµψαι δὲ οὐκ ἄτρωτον µόνον, ἀλλὰ περίβλεπτον καὶ ἐν τοῖς ζηλωτοῖς Σµυρναίων (translation by W. C. Wright [Loeb]). Philostratos, Lives of the Sophists 582: ... οὕτω τι ὠλοφύρατο πρὸς τὸν Μάρκον, ὡς τῇ µὲν ἄλλῃ µονῳδίᾳ θαµὰ ἐπιστενάξαι τὸν βασιλέα, ἐπὶ δὲ τῷ «ζέφυροι δὲ ἐρήµην καταπνέουσι» καὶ δάκρυα τῷ βιβλίῳ ἐπιστάξαι τὸν βασιλέα ξυνοικίαν τε τῇ πόλει ἐκ τῶν τοῦ Ἀριστείδου ἐνδοσίµων νεῦσαι (translation by W. C. Wright [Loeb]). Plutarch, Moralia [An seni respublica gerenda sit] 796F: ἄλλως δὲ διαγωγῆς χάριν ὡς ἐπὶ θέαν ἢ ἀκρόασιν, ὅταν ἐπέλθῃ, παραγιγνόµενον, ἀλλά, κἂν µὴ παραγένηται τῷ σώµατι, παρόντα τῇ γνώµῃ καὶ τῷ πυνθάνεσθαι τὰ µὲν ἀποδεχόµενον τοῖς δὲ δυσκολαίνοντα τῶν πραττοµένων (translation by H. N. Fowler [Loeb]). Cf. Chaniotis 1997, 252 and 2009b, 57–62 .

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role of an actor: he had to offer his audience an entertaining ‘show’ with novel effects, a powerful, dramatised presentation of arguments with highly emotional appeals. This dynamic, interactive relationship between speaker and audience is evident in Aristides’ report on his appearance in the court of the Roman governor:47 And when I came forward, I received all due respect from him and from the ranks of the assessors, as well as from the pleaders who stood by, and from all the others who were present, and there was more of the air of an oratorical display than a lawsuit. For their goodwill was wonderful, and then they signified their eagerness for my speech both by their hands and voices, and they behaved entirely like an audience at a lecture.

Aristides’ words nicely reflect the star cult atmosphere in the courtroom. His speech of defence takes on the character of a sophist’s lecture: the great orator here addresses the public in the role of the celebrated sophist, and, accordingly, his listeners behave in their reactions as if the courtroom had been converted into a lecture hall. The above observations on the increasingly dominant role that emotions came to play in the public sphere and political culture of the period quite plainly show the strong relationship between theatricality, emotions, and politics. It is this triad that was formative for the cultural-historical context of acclamations. The fact that the audience at a political meeting increasingly behaved in a way as if the political institutions were located in a theatrical context becomes most apparent in the practice of acclamation. Its emotionalised speech style and emphatic application of applause – features that were usually employed in the theatre and hippodrome to support actors, performers, artists, and competitors – surely added an increasingly ‘dramatic’ quality to public political discourse.48 It was an ideal instrument for the audience to express its emotional reactions to what was happening on the political stage: by singing, shouting, and clapping hands, they could give vent to their enthusiasm, joy, frustration, or anger. In this sense, one has interpreted the establishment of acclamations in civic politics in terms of a transfer of rituals from the world of the theatre to the political sphere.49 According to Frank Kolb, it 47

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Aristides, Oratio 50.91: καὶ ἐπειδὴ παρῆλθον, ἅπασαν αἰδῶ καὶ παρ’ αὐτοῦ καὶ παρὰ τῶν συνέδρων, ὡσαύτως δὲ ῥητόρων τῶν προσεστηκότων καὶ τῶν ἄλλων ὁπόσοι παρῆσαν, καὶ σχῆµα ἐπιδείξεως µᾶλλον ἦν ἢ δίκης· ἥ τε γὰρ εὔνοια θαυµαστὴ καὶ τὸ πρὸς τοὺς λόγους ὡρµηκὸς ἐπεσήµαινον τότε καὶ χειρὶ καὶ φωνῇ, καὶ πάντ’ ἦν ὥσπερ ἐπὶ σχολῆς ἀκροωµένων (translation by Behr 1981–1986). Roueché 1984, 184. Kolb 1999, 104: ‘Inschriftlich oder auf Papyri erhaltene Sitzungsakten verdeutlichen, dass förmliche Abstimmungsprozeduren weitgehend von geradezu als Chorgesänge zu bezeichnende Akklamationsritualen abgelöst wurden. Und in diesem Zusammenhang lässt sich eine Übertragung jener Sitte von der Festversammlung im Theater, wo sie schon seit klassischer Zeit auftaucht, auf politische Versammlungen nachweisen.’ Such a transfer of rituals can also be observed in modern society. During the World Youth Day in Cologne in August 2005, for example, the gathered crowd honoured Pope Benedict XVI in the ceremonies of the vigil and the church service by rhythmical acclamation (Be-ne-de-tto) as it is known from the football stadia, thus giving the traditional Catholic liturgy a new ‘theatrical’ flavour.

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became increasingly difficult to distinguish the ‘Volksversammlung’ (political assembly) from the ‘Festversammlung’ (festive meeting); the differences between the two became gradually blurred towards the third century CE.50 This emotionalisation is, of course, only one factor in the transformation that political discourse underwent in the civic institutions of the Imperial period. It was concomitant with profound institutional changes such as the remodelling of the civic councils after the Roman Senate or the increasing monopolisation of poli-tical discourse by the civic elites, which can primarily be attributed to external factors, above all the impact of Roman rule.51 Previous scholarship has argued that this transformative process resulted in a ‘decline’ of the post-classical polis or more specifically, in a ‘hollowness’ of the political institutions and a degenera-tion of the political debating culture.52 In recent years this scenario of decline has come under attack in favour of a model which emphasises the continuing vitality of civic life, its structures, and institutions.53 Such a reassessment encourages us to view acclamations not so much as ritualised acts of an apathetic, de-politicised demos, but as a powerful tool for putting forward demands, for expressing a collective opinion, and for exerting considerable pressure on the urban elites and the local government. The memorisation of acclamations must then be seen as symptomatic of a fragmentised, competitive elite, whose individual members tried to secure majorities in civic politics and publicly displayed on stone the support they had won as a token of their acceptance in society. 4 THE SOCIO-POLITICAL AND CULTURAL CONTEXT OF EMOTIONAL AROUSAL Public gatherings in the civic institutions were the ideal breeding ground for the arousal of strong emotions and their dramatic articulation through the medium of persuasive acclamations. In the following, the main focus will be on the sociopolitical and cultural circumstances giving rise to mass emotions as mirrored in the practice of acclamations and the communicative intention behind them. Particularly intriguing for our purpose is an inscription from Perge (Pamphylia), found in situ in the so-called Tacitus Street, which dates to the period between

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Kolb 1999, 104f. Cf. Lévy 1895; Quass 1993. See e.g. Lévy 1895, 205–218; Jones 1940, 170; Sherwin-White 1969, 84–86; De Ste. Croix 1981, 300–317; Veyne 1990; Schmitz 1997, 39–44, 91–96. A good overview of scholarship is provided by Harland 2006. Mitchell 1984; Quass 1993, 355–423; Lewin 1995; Salmeri 2000, 69–75; Ma 2000; Chaniotis 2005; Fernoux 2005; Harland 2006.

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275–276 CE.54 It lists a long series of acclamations in honour of the polis made at a public gathering of the citizens:55 Up with Perge, which alone has the right of asylum! Up with Perge, to/with/by whom Tacitus […! Up with Perge], neokoros since Vespasian! [Up with Perge], honoured with a sacred vexillum! [Up with Perge] honoured with silver coinage! Diana of Ephesus, Diana of Perge! Up with Perge, the treasury of the Emperor! Up with Perge, four times neokoros! Up with Perge, first among the assize-centres! Up with Perge, where consulars seek honour! Up with Perge, where consulars sponsor contests! Up with Perge, the head of Pamphylia! Up with Perge, which is not false in anything! All the rights (are confirmed) by senatorial decree.

This series of acclamations testifies to the citizens’ immense self-esteem and civic pride in the pre-eminence of their polis in the province as well as its good relationship with the Roman emperor and government. Their feeling of superiority and distinction finds a clear expression in the long list of Perge’s political, religious, and cultural assets – privileges and honours which had all been granted by Rome: the right to offer asylum, the right of having a temple for the imperial cult, the honour of hosting the Roman military standard (vexillum) and the treasury into which provincial taxes had to be paid.56 Many of these privileges are even further specified to underline their peculiarity and uniqueness. So it is highlighted by the acclamatory crowd that Perge alone had the right of asylum. This is a manifest statement about Perge’s outstanding status in comparison to other cities with asylum rights in Asia Minor such as the neighbouring city of Side, the other most important polis in the province. The acclamations, moreover, emphasise that Perge was four times neokoros. Again, this statement is clearly made with Side in mind, which had been named neokoros only three times by the Roman emperors. The acclamation also speaks of Perge as ranking first among the assize-centres (ἡ πρώτη τῶν ἀγορέων) and as the head of the province (ἡ κορυφὴ τῆς Παµφυλίας). All this is indicative of the specific socio-political context that generated these acclamations: it is the notorious rivalry and competition between the cities of Asia Minor for precedence (πρωτεῖον) within the province and for the award of privileges by the Roman government.57 Perge had been successful in securing many privileges, and accordingly, the citizens proudly celebrated the great prestige and the achievements of their city through acclamations. The concluding chant ‘up with Perge, which does not lie!’ (αὖξε Πέργη ἡ µηδὲν ψευδοµένη) was clearly addressed to Perge’s rivals, who obviously maintained that Perge was presenting false claims in the inter-urban competition for honour and prestige. Singing together and asserting claims against rival competitors – Side, in particular – fostered a distinct we-feeling among the acclamatory crowd and strengthened their sense of pride and identity. The 54

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SEG XXXIV 1306; I.Perge 331 II (see Appendix no. 1). See also Weiß 1981 and Roueché 1989b. The date of the inscription can be deduced from the reference to the Emperor Marcus Claudius Tacitus (275–276 CE). For the Greek text see Appendix no. 1. Translation by Roueché 1989b. On a detailed analysis of the meaning of these rights and privileges see Roueché 1989b. On discord between cities see Robert 1977; Sheppard 1984–86, 230–240; Price 1984, 126– 132; Mitchell 1993, 203f.; Meyer-Zwiffelhoffer 2002, 307–315; Heller 2006.

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repetitive, emphatic use of αὖξε (‘long live’), which counts among the most common acclamatory formulas, progressively increased the intensity of the emotions shared by the group. In addition, this strong group feeling may have been reinforced by a hierarchical communicative context: it is not unlikely that the event took place in the presence of the Roman governor or some high-ranking Roman official and that the citizens of Perge hoped that the mechanisms of acclamation left their emotional impact on the decision-making process of the ruling power.58 While collective pride is the underlying emotion in the acclamations from Perge, public apprehension about the well-being of the polis is the dominant feeling in the following document, a series of acclamations from Ovacik, a place situated in the territory of the polis of Termessos (Pisidia). The acclamations have come down to us as part of a long inscription on two blocks, which contains several documents.59 The main concern of this epigraphic dossier was to honour the local office holder M. Aurelius Hermaios and his son Kiliortes, who – presumably in the years 278–283 CE – had distinguished themselves by their outstanding services for Termessos and the surrounding countryside. The most vivid document of the whole dossier is certainly that of the acclamations for Hermaios:60 Let him who (acts) on behalf of the city reside! Let him who (acts) on behalf of peace reside! This is of benefit to the city. A decree for the brigand chaser! Let the well-born brigand chaser guard the city! Let him who has killed brigands guard the city! Let him who has often acted as ekdikos [legal representative] for the city guard the city! Let him who has acted as ekdikos for the city reside! Let him who has … sent annona [food supply] reside! Let him who (acts) on behalf of peace reside! Let Hermaios reside; let the son of Askoureus reside! Hermaios, son of Askoureus, as brigand chaser as long as we live! Let him reside so that we can live! Let him reside according to the order of the governor! Let him who has often saved the city reside! Let him who has sent suplies to the city reside!

While reading these acclamations one cannot possibly escape their powerful appeal of authenticity and immediacy: we almost seem to hear the rhythmically chanted or shouted words and feel the intense emotionality of the scene, which is magnificently captured in the text. Its emotional depth cannot be fully grasped unless seen in the light of its specific historical context. It was in the second half of the third century CE that the cities of southern Anatolia were faced with the problem of endemic banditry and brigandage, which assumed the dimensions of a 58

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It seems very likely that an inscribed copy of the document will have been sent to the Roman emperor. After all, since Constantine’s provision for acclamations to be made known to the central imperial authorities (Codex Theodosianus 1.16.6), the citizens could address the governor directly by chanting to him en masse in the theatre or on the occasion of his arrival; these acclamations were formally recorded and were sent to the emperor. The significance of such acclamations in Late Antiquity as an expression of opinion has rightly been emphasised by Brown 1992, 149: ‘Such acclamations carried with them an aura of divinely inspired unanimity. In them, the crowd expressed a group parrhesia, tinged with supernatural certainty.’ Most recent edition: SEG LI 1813 (see Appendix no. 2). Cf. SEG XXIX 1514 with Harrison 1979; Mitchell 1979, 1989, and 1995; Zimmermann 1996; Ballance and Rouéche 2001; İplikçioğlu 2004; Brélaz 2005, 285–320, 423–431; Fernoux 2011, 149. For the Greek text see Appendix no. 2. Translation by Ballance and Roueché 2001.

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serious regional plague.61 The bandits’ activities ranged from cattle rustling and highway robbery to uprisings and insurrections, culminating in the conquest of Kremna, one of the largest Pisidian cities, by Lydios, an Isaurian brigand leader, who used the place as a base for his looting raids until it was recaptured by the Roman army in 278 CE.62 The obvious weakness of governmental and military control and the corresponding lack of public security caused anxiety and fear among the population, since the bandits actually threatened the existence of whole rural and urban communities. No wonder that the citizens longed for a strong leader who could take effective action against brigand terror in Pisidia and give them a feeling of security.63 In the above quoted series of acclamations the citizens have voiced their existential fears, hopes, and demands, while highlighting the lasting merits of their fellow-citizen Hermaios, the ‘well-born brigand chaser’ (ὁ εὐγενὴς λῃστοδιώκτης). As we know, Hermaios had mobilised a group of selected young men and led them to Kremna to support the Roman troops against the rebels.64 In the acclamation, Hermaios is praised for having killed brigands (ὁ λῃστὰς φονεύσας). But his achievements for the city obviously went beyond fighting brigands. He is also honoured for having acted as representative for the city in legal affairs (ὁ πολάκις ἐκδεικήσας τὴν πόλιν)65 and for having provided food to the city (ὁ τροφὰς τῇ πόλει πέµψας), probably when there had been a shortage because of regional unrests. Against this background it is not surprising that the citizens celebrate him as the epitome of a ‘saviour’/σωτήρ (ὁ πολάκις σῴσας τὴν πόλιν). The 61

62 63 64

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On the problem of banditry in the Roman Empire see e.g. Shaw 1984, 1990, 1993, and 2000; Mitchell 1979; Hopwood 1999. Modern scholarship has much speculated about the identity, motivation, and ideology of these brigands. While Shaw 1984, in his classical article on banditry in the Roman Empire, has explained the phenomenon of organised crime in the Taurus region (esp. the Isaurian and Cilician Taurus) in terms of a structural conflict between highland and lowland regions, Mitchell 1979 – with reference to the siege of Kremna in 278 CE – has called for a regionally more refined interpretation and argued that ‘banditry’ in the Western Tauric region of Pisidia took ‘a somewhat different form from the pattern observable further east in the Taurus’ (159). According to Mitchell, the siege of Kremna should be construed as ‘a revolt from Rome’ by a group of rebels in a time in which Roman authorities were very present in this region due to Gothic raids and incursion by the Sassanians. On the siege of Kremna see Mitchell 1979, 1989, and 1995. On the problem of security and the activity of the elite guarding the cities and their territory in the Hellenistic and Roman periods see Brélaz 2005; Chaniotis 2008b. This becomes evident from a letter sent by the dux Ursio to Hermaios (SEG LI 1813 A I): [(?)Μ. Αὐ]ρ. Οὐρσίων ὁ δι|[αση]µότατος | δοὺξ̣ | [Ἑρ]µαίῳ Ἀσκου[ρ]|[έως] χαίρειν· | [ἅµ]α τῷ λαβεῖν | [τ]α̣ῦ̣τ̣α γ̣ρά̣µ̣µατα | τ̣οὺ[ς] ν̣[ε]αν[ί]σκους̣ | [ἐπ]ι̣λ̣έκ̣τους δεῖ | [πο]λ̣είτας ΤΟΝ̣Α̣ | [c. 7–9]Λ̣Τ̣ΟΝ | Ι̣[ c. 11–13]Ι̣ [ἡ]|µ̣ε̣ρ̣ῶν Ι̣[ c. 7–9] | ΘΕ α̣ὐ̣τοῦ εἰς Κρή̣|µνα ἀγαγεῖν̣ φ̣ρ̣ό̣ν̣|τισον παυό̣ντ̣ων | π̣αρ᾿ ὑµῶν ἐκεῖ ΚΕ̣ [ (?) ] | µελλόντων Κ̣Α̣ΘΕ̣-|Ε̣[.]Ξ̣Ε[.]̣∆Ω̣Ρ̣Η̣Ν οἷα̣ ἐσ̣|τα̣ι̣ ὅ̣τ̣ε̣ [.]ΕΛ̣Ω̣Ν̣ χρυ̣|σ̣όν̣ [..]ΗΚΕΙ̣Ν ΠΑ̣|ΡΑϹ̣ΚΕ̣ΘΗΝ̣Α Ι̣ δῶ̣|ρ̣ο̣ν τείνα̣ς· ἔρ̣ρ̣ωσο | [c. 12– 14]. (‘Marcus Aurelius Ursio, the most distinguished leader, sends greetings to Hermaios, son of Askoureus. As soon as you receive this letter, you must … the selected band of young men … bring them to Cremna’ etc.; translation by Ballance and Roueché 2001). On the meaning of the office of ekdikos see Ballance and Rouéche 2001, 111f.; Dmitriev 2005, 213–216.

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complexity and the length of this series of acclamations leaves no doubt that the scope of his help as well as that of his son, who may have been active as brigand chaser contemporaneously with his father,66 had obviously exceeded the citizens’ expectations of normal rural policing and euergetic activity. The narrative of his services for the city culminates in several succinct statements affirming the strongly held belief that Hermaios should continue to reside in the city. This collective insight is hammered staccato-like into everyone’s minds by the crowd itself, turning the acclamation into an act of collective self-reassurance. It is put in the form of a request or rather an insistent demand that makes use of highly emotional prosody to enhance the persuasive power of words. Major features of this device are, above all, the repetition of key words and concise phrases which are easy to remember and which bring to focus the essence of the message. The latter is encapsulated in the one word that, like a refrain or a pulse beat, is rhythmically repeated eleven times throughout the acclamation: ἐπιδηµείτω (‘let him stay’). Those participating in the chants for Hermaios were emotionally united as a ‘wegroup’ both by their eagerness to bring forward this demand and, in addition, by their enthusiasm to bestow honours on Hermaios (ψήφισµα τῷ λῃστοδειώκτῃ). The major motive for this appeal is rooted in the citizens’ anxiety that Hermaios could leave the polis and thus expose it again to great dangers. In three identical sentences they express their demand for public security, insisting that Hermaios should remain in office to protect (φρουρείτω) the Termessian territory. All these demands culminate in a bold, highly emotional statement of existential nature placed at the beginning and towards the end of the acclamation: ‘let him reside so that we can live’ (ἐπιδηµείτω ἵνα δυνάµεθα ζῆσαι; lines 5 and 29–31). Those chanting here make the whole future of the community entirely dependent on Hermaios’ office-holding and continued presence in the territory. Though this categorical statement may be tinged with flattery and exaggeration, it sheds some interesting light on the emotional component in the relationship between the urban elite and the demos in the poleis of the Graeco-Roman East – a relationship which too often has been discussed with a primary focus on its financial dimension in the context of euergetism. There is no direct evidence about the addressee of the acclamations nor the locale in which they were made. The most obvious setting for such an event appears to be a meeting of the council or a public assembly, possibly in the presence of Hermaios himself. It has been suggested that the crowd’s insistence that Hermaios should stay in the polis seems to convey a message intended for the Roman governor, who had to approve the extension of Hermaios’ command.67 But the governor seems to have already made a decision on the issue in favour of the Termessian petitioners: κατὰ τὴν κέλευσιν τοῦ ἡγουµένου ἐπιδηµείτω (lines 31f.). In the light of this statement it is well conceivable that an inner-urban conflict may have been underlying the acclamations of the crowd. Their highly emotional demands may hint at some disagreement and factionalism at Termessos 66 67

Ballance and Roueché 2001, 99. Ballance and Rouéche 2001, 108.

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concerning Hermaios’ role in the city. There may have been (leading) citizens and notables who viewed Hermaios’ continued presence – and the social power that arose from his function as brigand-chaser – with reservations and misgivings. If so, Hermaios was not necessarily an undisputed public figure of the whole civic community, as the demands of the acclamatory crowd in support of him make us initially believe. This interpretation would also explain the three emphatic initial chants, which explicitly stress that Hermaios only acts on behalf of the city and that his actions benefit the citizens (line 6: ὁ ὑπὲρ τῆς πόλεως; lines 7f.: ὁ ὑπὲρ τῆς εἰρήνης; lines 8f.; τοῦτο συµφέρει τῇ πόλει) – a message perhaps addressed to all doubters and critics. The whole series of acclamations can thus be read as an appeal directed to those citizens who could not share the passionate enthusiasm for Hermaios and saw the extension of his command in a negative light – rather than as an appeal directed to the Roman officials in support of a re-appointment of the popular local leader. This target group of fellow-citizens may also account for the high emotional involvement and commitment and the skilful persuasive strategies of all those making these acclamations. 5 CONCLUSION The acclamations recorded in the inscriptions from the Imperial Greek East which we have analysed (with special reference to two illustrative examples from Perge and Termessos) directly mirror the many-facetted emotional microcosm of a polis. They offer lively insight into the political culture of the communities in the Greek East – a political culture which was characterised by an increased degree of emotionality in the Ιmperial period. Our focus on emotions in acclamations has brought to the fore the human side of civic life. Under certain circumstances acclamations could function as a powerful tool that gave the crowd a voice to articulate their hopes and fears, their pride and enthusiasm, their joy and anger, and in this way to put forward their wishes and demands and exert pressure on members of local and imperial government. This is not to say that acclamations and the emotions they carried could not be manipulated by members of the urban elites, who had the possibilities to mobilise and direct the masses in pursuit of their interests. The texts of most acclamations were carefully composed in terms of structure, rhythm, and sentence melody to produce an immediate, highly emotional effect. In the moment of their performance, acclamations undoubtedly evoked a definite ‘we-feeling’ among the members of the crowd, thus demonstrating unanimity towards any listener and bystander.68 Their later memorisation on stone and display in the public sphere served as a visible reminder of the great emotional support that existed in the community for a notable or a specific political issue. It is difficult for the historian to reconstruct in detail the dynamics and forces which were at play. What, however, can be illuminated in many cases are the political, social, and cultural conditions that gave rise to the expression of 68 Cf. the remarks of Maria Theodoropoulou (p. 463 n. 179) in this volume.

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mass emotions. In view of the competitive and tense atmosphere in which many acclamations emerged, the inscriptions recording acclamations become silent witnesses to the continued vitality of civic life in the Ιmperial period. The study of acclamations in the light of emotions and emotionality thus highlights a dimension of political communication in the post-classical polis which so far has not been given the adequate attention it deserves. APPENDIX: THE ACCLAMATIONS FROM PERGE AND TERMESSOS 1. Acclamations from Perge. Text: I.Perge 331 col. II.

4

8

12

αὖξε Πέργη, ἡ µόνη ἄσυλος· αὖξε Πέργη, ᾗ Τάκιτος [- - - - - - - - - - - - - - -] [- - - - - - - - - - - - - - -] [αὖξε Πέργη ἡ] ἀπὸ Οὐεσ[πα][σιανοῦ ν]εωκόρος· [αὖξε Πέργ]η ἡ ἱερῷ οὐιξίλλῳ [τετ]ειµηµένη· [αὖ]ξε Π[έργ]η ἡ ἀργυρῷ νοµίσµατι τετειµηµένη· ∆̣ιάνε Ἐφεσίᾳ ∆ιάνῃ̣ Περγ̣ησίᾳ· αὖξε Πέργη ὁ θησαυρὸς τοῦ κυρίου·

16

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24

αὖξε Πέργη δ΄ νεωκόρος· αὖξε Πέργη ἡ πρώτη τῶν ἀγορέων· αὖξε Πέργη, ᾗ ὑπα[τι]κοὶ φιλοδοξοῦσιν· αὖξε Πέργη, ᾗ ὑπατικοὶ ἀγω[ν]οθετοῦσιν· αὖξε Πέργη ἡ κορυφὴ τῆς Παµφυλίας· αὖξε Πέργη ἡ µηδ[ὲ]ν ψευδοµένη· πάντ[α] τὰ δίκαια [δ]όγµατι Συνκλήτου

2. Acclamations from Termessos. Text: SEG LI 1813 A II.

4

8

12

16

[ . ] ε̣ἰρηναρ̣χ̣[- - - (?) Ἑρµοκρ]ά̣τει ἁ̣γ̣νῶς̣ [- - - - c. 6-7 - - - -] [ . ] Ἑρµοκράτει· Ἑ̣ρ̣µ̣[αῖος] [v?] Ἀσκουρέως τῇ̣ πόλε̣[ι] ἵνα δυνάµεθα ζῆσαι̣· ὁ ὑπὲρ τῆς πόλεως ἐπ̣ι̣δηµείτω· ὁ ὑπὲρ̣ τ̣̣ῆς̣ ε̣ἰ̣ρήνης ἐπιδηµείτ̣ω· το[ῦ]το συµφέρει τῇ πόλε[ι]· ψήφισµα τῷ̣ λῃστοδ[ει]ώκτῃ· ὁ εὐγ̣ε̣νὴς λῃ[σ]τοδειώκτ̣η̣ς̣ τὴ̣ν π[ό]λιν φρουρε̣ίτω· ὁ λῃστὰς φονεύσας τὴν πόλιν φρουρείτω̣· ὁ ἐκδεικήσας τὴν πόλιν τὴ̣ν πόλιν vacat φρουρε̣ίτ̣ω· ὁ πο̣λ άκι[ς]

20

24

28

32

36

ἐκδεικ̣ήσ̣ας τὴν̣ π̣[ ό]λιν ἐπιδ̣η̣µ̣εί̣τ̣ω̣· ὁ ἀ[ν]νώνας̣ ΕΝ̣Ν̣Ε̣ϹΑ̣[ . .] πέµψας̣ ἐπ̣ι̣δη̣µε̣ί̣[τω]· ὁ ὑπὲρ τ̣ῆς [ε]ἰ̣ρ̣ή̣[ν]η[ς] ἐπιδηµείτω· Ἑ̣[ρµαῖ]ος ἐπιδηµείτ̣[ω· (?) ὁ υἱ]ὸς Ἀσκουρέως ἐ[πιδη]µείτω· Ἑρ̣µ̣α̣ῖ̣ο̣ς̣ Ἀ[σ]κ[ου]ρέως λῃστοδει̣[ώκ]τη̣ς̣ ἕως ζῶµεν· ἐ̣π̣ι[δη]µείτω ἵνα δυ̣ν̣άµ̣ε̣θ̣α̣ [ζῆ]σαι· κατὰ τὴν κ̣έλε̣υσιν τοῦ̣ ἡ̣γουµέν̣[ ο]υ̣ ἐ̣πι̣δ̣η̣µ̣είτω̣· ὁ π̣[ ο]λάκις σῴ̣σ̣ας τὴν π̣όλιν ἐπ̣ι̣δη̣[µε]ί̣τω· ὁ τρ̣οφὰς τῇ πόλει πέ[µ]vacat? ψας ἐπι- vacat? vacat? δηµ̣είτω̣ vacat

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Quass, F. (1993) Die Honoratiorenschicht in den Städten des griechischen Ostens: Untersuchungen zur politischen und sozialen Entwicklung in hellenistischer und römischer Zeit, Stuttgart. Richards, B. (2004) Emotional Deficit in Political Communication, Political Communication 21, 339–352. Richman, B. (1987) Rhythm and Melody in Gelada Vocal Exchanges, Primates 28, 199–223. Robert, L. (1977) La titulature de Nicée et Nicomédie: La gloire et la haine, Harvard Studies in Classical Philology 81, 1–39 [= Opera Minora Selecta VI, Paris 1989, 211–249]. Rosenwein, B. H. (2006) Emotional Communities in the Early Middle Ages, Ithaca. Roueché, C. (1984) Acclamations in the Later Roman Empire: New Evidence from Aphrodisias, Journal of Roman Studies 74, 181–199. ––– (1989a) Aphrodisias in Late Antiquity, London. ––– (1989b) Floreat Perge, in M. M. Mackenzie and C. Roueché (eds.), Images of Authority: Papers Presented to Joyce Reynolds on the Occasion of her 70th Birthday, Cambridge, 206– 228. ––– (1999) Acclamations, in G. Bowersock, P. Brown, and O. Grabar (eds.), Late Antiquity: A Guide to the Postclassical World, Cambridge, Ma., 274–275. Salmeri, G. (2000) Dio, Rome and the Civic Life of Asia Minor, in S. Swain (ed.), Dio Chrysostom: Politics, Letters and Philosophy, Oxford, 53–92. Schmidt, J. (1894) Acclamatio, Real-Encyclopädie der classischen Altertumswissenschaft, Bd. I, 147–150. Schmitz, T. A. (1997) Bildung und Macht: Zur sozialen und politischen Funktion der zweiten Sophistik in der griechischen Welt der Kaiserzeit, Munich. Shaw, B. (1984) Bandits in the Roman Empire, Past and Present 105, 3–51. ––– (1990) Bandit Highlands and Lowland Peace: The Mountains of Isauria-Cilicia, Journal of the Economic and Social History of the Orient 33, 199–233, 237–270. ––– (1993) The Bandit, in A. Giardina (ed.), The Romans, Chicago, 300–341. ––– (2000) Rebels and Outsiders, in A. K. Bowman, P. D. A. Garnsey, and D. Rathbone (eds.), The Cambridge Ancient History, vol. 11: The High Empire, A.D. 70–192, Cambridge, 361– 403. Sheppard, A. (1984–86) Homonoia in the Greek Cities of the Roman Empire, Ancient Society 15– 17, 229–252. Sherwin-White, A. (1969) Roman Society and Roman Law in the New Testament, Oxford. Slater, W. J. (1995) The Theatricality of Justice, Classical Bulletin 71, 143–157. Slootjes, D. (2006) The Governor and his Subjects in the Later Roman Empire, Leiden. Swain, S. (1996) Hellenism and Empire: Language, Classicism and Power in the Greek World, AD 50–250, Oxford. Talbert, R. J. A. (1984) The Senate of Imperial Rome, Princeton. Tuomela, R. (2007) The Philosophy of Sociality: The Shared Point of View, Oxford. Versnel, H. S. (1990) Ter unus: Isis, Dionysos, Hermes: Three Studies in Henotheism, Leiden. ––– (2000) Thrice One: Three Greek Experiments in Oneness, in B. N. Porter (ed.), One God or Many? Concepts of Divinity in the Ancient World, Casco Bay, 79–164. Veyne, P. (1990) Bread and Circuses: Historical Sociology and Political Pluralism, translated by B. Pearce, London. Weiß, P. (1981) Auxe Perge: Beobachtungen zu einem bemerkenswerten städtischen Dokument des späten 3. Jahrhundert n. Chr., Chiron 21, 353–392. Whitmarsh, T. (2001) Greek Literature and the Roman Empire: The Politics of Imitation, Oxford. ––– (2005) The Second Sophistic, Oxford. Wiemer, H.-U. (2004) Akklamationen im spätrömischen Reich: Zur Typologie und Funktion eines Kommunikationsrituals, Archiv für Kulturgeschichte 86, 55–73. Zimmermann, M. (1996) Probus, Carus und die Räuber im Gebiet des pisidischen Termessos, Zeitschrift für Papyrologie und Epigraphik 110, 265–277.

A GLIMPSE INTO THE WORLD OF PETITIONS Aurelia Artemis and her Orphaned Children Chrysi Kotsifou 1 INTRODUCTION Petitions were documents that sought redress for abuses or help against injustice, and they often inaugurated a lawsuit. They survive from the Hellenistic, Roman, and Late Antique periods.1 This chapter will examine one petition by a woman from the end of the third century CE. It will analyze how expressions of emotion are employed in order to enhance the rhetoric of the document, and will explore the ways in which the theories of contemporary legal narratology2 can illuminate the reasons why emotions were so heavily used in such documents. According to Ari Bryen, ancient petitioners create ‘fictions’ – that is, they take care to shape individual instances of violence into narratives. Through retelling the events in question, petitioners present the information that they see as relevant to their case, as well as what they think will be convincing to legal 3 authorities.

As legal narratology theorists claim, narrative in law is a form of discourse that accommodates the desire to express emotion and emotion-laden thoughts.4 Lucinda Finley explains that these theorists react to the long-standing idea and practice that Law is a language firmly committed to the ‘reason’ side of the reason/emotion dichotomy. ... The inability to hear the voice of emotion, to respond to thinking from the emotions, is one of the limitations of the legal voice. ... Rage, pain, elation, the aching, thirsting, hungering for freedom on one’s own terms, love and its joys and terrors, fear, utter frustration at being 5 contained and constrained by legal language – all are diffused by legal language.

1

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3 4 5

Palme 2009, 377. He adds that petitions to officials are the most common type of record other than tax receipts. More than a thousand petitions survive from the entire papyrological millennium. Legal narratology is concerned with the story elements in law and legal scholarship. Cf. Gewirtz 1996, 135–137; Posner 1997, 737. On how language can be the primary tool in the manipulation of a narration of a story in order to achieve the desired outcome in a court case, see Ferguson 1994. Bryen 2008, 182. Cook 1994/1995, 101. Finley 1989, 903. Cf. Henderson 1987, 1575f.; Gewirtz 1996, 145f.

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Furthermore, since the case study of this chapter is a legal document composed by a woman (or at least meant to protect the interests of a woman), the importance that feminist legal narrative places on the notion of context is also applicable to this petition.6 2 ARTEMIS’ PETITION In 280 CE at Theadelphia in the oasis of Fayum, Artemis lodged the following complaint to the prefect of Egypt:7 To Hadrianus Sallustius the most eminent prefect, from Aurelia Artemis, daughter of Paësios, from the village of Thraso of the Arsinoite nome: Perceiving your love of moderation, my lord governor, and your care for all, especially for women and widows, I approach you, thinking myself worthy to receive aid from you. The matter is like this: Syrion, having become a dekaprotos [see note 14] from the same village, Thraso, persuaded my husband, Kaet by name, to shepherd his flocks – who unjustly took off with my aforementioned 6

7

By understanding context, they mean looking at the intricate details of complex human situations that give rise to conflicts; and by considering these, finding solutions that are tailored to the particularities of the situation. Cf. Cook 1994/1995, 114. On the value of emotional discourse, context and one’s subjective circumstances and law procedures, also see Heilbrun and Resnik 1989/1990, 1950; Cook 1994/1995, 145–147. These theorists also note that some members of marginalized groups such as women, by virtue of their marginal status, are able to tell stories different from the ones legal scholars usually hear. Cf. Delgado 1990, 95. Translation of Evans Grubbs 2002, 258 (modified). P.Sakaon 36: Ἁδριανίῳ Σαλλ̣ουστίῳ τῷ διασηµοτάτῳ ἡγεµόνι παρὰ Αὐρηλίας Ἀρτέµιτος Παησίου ἀπὸ κώµης Θρασὼ τοῦ Ἀρσινοΐτου νοµοῦ. τὸ µετριοφιλές σου αἰσθοµένη, δέσποτά µου ἡγεµών, καὶ περὶ πάντας κηδεµονίαν, µάλιστα περὶ γυναῖκας καὶ χήρας, τὴν προσέλευσιν ποιοῦµαί σοι ἀξιοῦ̣σα τῆς ἀπὸ σοῦ βοηθείας τυχεῖν. τὸ δὲ πρᾶγµα οὕτως ἔχει· Συρίων γενόµενος δεκάπρωτος ἀπὸ τῆς αὐτῆ̣ς κώµης Θρασὼ ἀναπείσας µου τὸν ἄνδρα Καῆτ ὀνόµ̣α̣τι ποιµαίνειν αὐτοῦ τὰ πρόβατα — ὅστις ἀδίκως τὰς τοῦ προκειµένου ἀνδρὸς αἶγας καὶ πρόβατα τὸν ἀριθµὸν ἑξήκον̣τα συναπέσπασεν αὑτῷ. καὶ ἐφ᾽ ὅσον µὲν περιῆν ὁ προκείµενός µου ἀνήρ, ἕκαστος τὰ ἑαυτοῦ ἐκαρποῦτο, ὅ τε ἐµὸς ἀνὴρ τὰ ἴδια καὶ ὁ προκείµενος τὰ ἑαυτοῦ. ἐπεὶ οὖν κατὰ τρόπον ἀνθρ̣ώπων ἐγένετο ὁ προκείµενός µου ἀνήρ, εἰσεπήδησε βουλόµενος ὁ Συρίων καὶ ἀφαρπάζειν τὰ τῶν νηπίων µου τέκνων τῇ τοπικῇ δυναστείᾳ χρώµενος παρὰ αὐτῆς τῆς κοίτ̣ης τοῦ ἀνδρός µου καὶ τοῦ σώµατος κιµένου ἐπεὶ δὲ ἐσπούδα̣σα τὰ ἡµέτερα ἀπολαβεῖν καὶ περιστεῖλαι τὸν ἄνδρα µου, µετ᾽ ἀπειλῆς µε ἀπέπεµψεν καὶ µέχρι τῆς σήµερον κατέχων τυγχάνει τὰ ἡµέτερα ποίµνια. διὸ παρακαλῶ σε, δέσποτα, πέµψ̣αι µοι βοηθὸν ἐκ τῆς σῆς προστάξεως, ὅπως τά τε τῶν νηπίων µου τέκνων καὶ τὰ ἐµοῦ τῆς χήρας ἀπολάβω καὶ δυνηθῶ̣ εὐµαρῶς ὑπακούειν τῷ ἀποτάκτῳ — οὐ γὰρ ἐν περιγραφαῖς κατελήµφθη ὁ προκείµενός µου ἀνὴρ ὑπὲρ τῶν διαφερόντων̣ τῷ ταµιείῳ, οἰκείωται δὲ τῷ προκειµένῳ Συρίωνι ἐµὲ τὴν χήραν̣ µετὰ νηπίων τέκνων ἀεὶ ἀποστερεῖν, ὥστε τὸν τοῦ τετελευτηκότος µου ἀνδρὸς σῖτον λαβόντα διὰ τοῦ βοηθοῦ ὑπὲρ τῶν ἐπιβαλλόντων µετρηµάτων σύµβολ̣ον µὴ ἐκδοῦναι — ὅπως τὰ ἴδια ἐκ τῆς σῆς, τοῦ κυρίου καὶ πάντων εὐεργέτου, φιλανθρώπου ὑπογραφῆς ἀπολάβω καὶ δυνηθῶ µετὰ νηπίων τέκνων ἐν τῇ ἰδίᾳ συνµενεῖν καὶ ἀεὶ τῇ τύχῃ σου χάριτας ὁµολογεῖν δυνηθῶ [- - -] διευτύχει. (hand 2) [c. 11]θ̣. πρὸς τὸ τοῖς φόροις χρήσιµον [c. 11] κατὰ τὸ δικαιότατον δοκιµάσει ὁ κράτιστος [ἐπιστράτηγο]ς. κό(λληµα) ξθ΄ τόµ(ου) α΄. All abbreviations of papyri are according to the Checklist of Editions of Greek, Latin, Demotic and Coptic Papyri, Ostraca and Tablets at http://scriptorium.lib.duke.edu/papyrus/texts/clist_papyri.html.

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husband’s goats and sheep to the number of sixty. And as long as my aforementioned husband was alive, each man reaped his own profits, my husband his own and the aforementioned (Syrion) his own. But when my aforementioned husband went the way of men, Syrion burst in, exploiting his local power, even wishing to snatch away the property of my infant children from my husband’s very bed and with his body lying there. And when I tried to take back our property and to cover up (the body of) my husband, he sent me away with treats, and up until today happens to have hold of our flocks. Therefore, I ask you, lord, to send help to me by your command, in order that I might get back the property of my infant children and of myself, a widow, and that I might be able to comply with my tax assessment readily. For my aforementioned husband was not caught out regarding property belonging to the Treasure, but it is in the nature of the aforementioned Syrion always to despoil me, a widow with orphan children – so that having taken the grain of my deceased husband through his assistant he did not give a receipt for the payment in kind that was due – in order that I might get back my property by your benevolent decision, lord and benefactor of all, and might be able to stay together with my infant children in my own home and always be able to acknowledge my thanks to your fortune. Farewell. [- - ] With a view to what is advantageous to the revenues, [- -] the excellent epistrategos will judge the matter according to what is most just. Sheet 69, Roll 1.

This petition, together with other documents concerning Artemis, belongs to the archive of Sakaon, an Egyptian farmer in the last century of Theadelphia.8 Normally in an archive of papyrological documents we find items addressed to the owner of the archive, such as letters, or documents that are drawn on his behalf, such as contracts and receipts. At the same time, there are documents composed by the owner himself, such as petitions. This can be explained by the fact that an original completed petition could be returned to the archive owner after a decision was made and could even contain a note by the official who dealt with the case.9 Sakaon is the most prominent person in the archive from 310 to at least 342 CE. As head of the family he apparently kept in his archive papers for other members, including those of his second wife Kamoution and her mother Artemis.10 Generally, these petitions come from people who view themselves as victims, and are directed to a variety of legal authorities at both the local and provincial level. In these petitions, the offended individual dictates to a scribe a narrative of the events that caused his or her suffering, and through a variety of formulaic addresses and requests, the individual asks for justice.11

8 9 10

11

Discussion of the entire Sakaon archive: http://www.trismegistos.org/arch/archives/pdf/206. pdf. Vandorpe 2009, 237. Many interesting papyri involving ancient women derive not from archives women themselves compiled, but from archives collected by their menfolk, for men appear to have been more ready to intersperse personal letters among their business papers. Cf. Hanson 2005, 3. Bryen 2008, 181f. For more on the role of formulas in petitions and their association to emotion, see pp. 60–65 in this volume. It has been noted, though, that an unfamiliar narrative invariably generates resistance; despite our best efforts, counter stories are likely to effect only small, incremental changes in the listener or reader. Cf. Delgado and Stefancic 1990/1991, 1933.

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3 ARTEMIS, HER FAMILY AND HER TRIBULATIONS Artemis was a widow, and three papyri from the early 280s CE feature her as a litigant or petitioner on behalf of her underage children.12 Only in the one quoted above does she name herself as her children’s guardian (kedestria), but she is clearly acting in that capacity in all three examples.13 Her troubles started after the death of her husband when a local notable invaded her home and stole some of her property.14 Almost a year after Artemis submitted her first petition, another document in the archive15 contains proceedings before an epistrategos. From these we learn that the children in question are boys, ἀφήλικες (underage), and that Syrion is still refusing to return the stolen livestock and to appear at court as he has to be away for business. Finally, in 284 CE Artemis petitioned the prefect again, because her sister-in-law was avoiding paying her taxes and Artemis was not able to bear the financial burden.16 She begs and beseeches the prefect for justice, and in order to provoke his pity, she repeatedly refers to her underage orphaned children and their suffering. 4 ARTEMIS’ PERSUASION STRATEGIES 4.1 Arousal of pity Aristotle, in his Rhetoric, explains:17 Let pity, then, be a kind of pain in the case of an apparent destructive or painful harm of one not deserving to encounter it, which one might expect oneself, or one of one’s own, to suffer, and this when it seems near.

More importantly for the purposes of this paper, we should note that Greek pity was not an instinctive response to another person’s pain, but depended on a judgment of whether or not the other’s suffering was deserved.18 Artemis’ method of narration is solely designed to justify that she does not deserve her suffering. How can we tell that this petition relates to pity? The evidence comes from both the specific vocabulary it employs and the way it unfolds its case. Regarding the first point, the composer of this document employs various terms that denote ‘pity’. 12

13 14 15 16 17

18

The importance of Artemis’ case is reflected in the interest it has created in contemporary scholarship. Cf. Parsons 1985; Beaucamp 1990–1992 ΙΙ; Krause 1995; Arjava 1996; Bagnall 1996; Evans Grubbs 2002; Adams 2006; Kotsifou 2009; Connolly 2010. Evans Grubbs 2002, 257. As dekaprotos of that area Syrion was in charge of the crops of the year and for collecting the relevant taxes. For the role of dekatropos see Bagnall 1978, 164; Bagnall and Thomas 1978. P.Sakaon 31. P.Sakaon 37. Aristotle, Rhetoric 2.8, 1385b 13–16: ἔστω δὴ ἔλεος λύπη τις ἐπὶ φαινοµένῳ κακῷ φθαρτικῷ ἢ λυπηρῷ τοῦ ἀναξίου τυγχάνειν, ὃ κἂν αὐτὸς προσδοκήσειεν ἂ p ν παθεῖν ἢ τῶν αὑτοῦ τινα, καὶ τοῦτο ὅταν πλησίον φαίνηται (translated by Konstan 2006, 131). Konstan 2001 and Konstan 2006, 201-218.

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Widowhood and orphanhood are key ingredients. The latter is mainly, if not exclusively, brought into play by women in their persuasion strategies. Generally speaking, the way petitioners narrate their stories chiefly aims at justifying pity. Petitioners usually commence their petition by stating that they know that the prefect is a just judge and a protector of all. Then they describe the dispute, usually with great detail, assuming that the more details they provide the more credibility they lend to their case.19 They often contrast the virtues of the poor with the vices of the rich and powerful. Furthermore, in order to provoke the pity of the authorities, petitioners employ strong language such as the verb ‘to despise’ (καταφρονέω; cf. p. 74 in this volume) or make repeated references to their unfortunate children, their weak feminine nature, or to their modest lifestyle if they are men. At the end of the document, some petitioners mention their continued gratitude to the prefect, should he help them attain justice.20 Admittedly, most of these features are standard formulas in most petitions, but the lengthy narrations combined with the pity-related vocabulary are not. All in all, petitions in the beginning of Late Antiquity start to become more fulsome and elaborate, and the petitioners artfully combine the pitiableness of their vulnerability as women or men with references to their wealth and status.21 Despite what is stated in these petitions, ultimately many of these women and men came from well-to-do families and may not have been as vulnerable as they claim. Their weakness is certainly exaggerated to provoke pity. The fact that most of the people who feature in these documents belonged to the propertied classes should always be kept in mind when their role in their families or in society more broadly is considered. In addition, as Dominic Rathbone has elaborated, these petitioners were hardly ever alone as they claimed. There must have always been some close or distant relatives nearby to assist them with the day-to-day business affairs or any legal matters that might have risen.22 The same applies to Artemis, of course. Looking specifically at Artemis’ petition, we observe that she petitions the prefect because sixty of her deceased husband’s goats and sheep were stolen.23 In general, she uses exaggeration, repetition of important facts, and a detailed account of events; all of these aspects are deeply immersed in a great deal of 19

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Besides credibility, details invite sympathy. Gewirtz 1996, 142, notes that ‘the account of the suffering of the victim’s survivors in individual cases is a particularization of a generally foreseeable harm. Particularization, the theorists of storytelling remind us, invites empathetic concern in a way that abstraction and general rules do not, and encourages appreciation of complexity.’ Cf. also pp. 67 and 107f. in this volume. For example, P.Col. VII 173 (Karanis, 330–340 CE); P.Diog. 17 (Arsinoite nome, second to third century CE); P.Oxy. XII 1470 (Oxyrhynchos, 336 CE); P.Oxy. XIX 2235 (Oxyrhynchos, ca. 346 CE); P.Oxy. XXXIV 2713 (Oxyrhynchos, 297 CE). Kovelman 1991, 135–137. Studies have also shown that the ideal of respecting the rights of the weak, the widow, and the orphan flourished in times of decay or at the beginning of a new period. Cf. Fensham 1962, 132. Rathbone 2006, 103–105. There might seem to be a discrepancy between the high rhetoric of the text and the humble matter of concern, i.e. theft of only sixty sheep; however, that amount of livestock in rural Egypt in the 280s constituted a considerable piece of property. Cf. Bagnall 1996, 142–144.

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pathos. She stresses her widowhood and the poor state of her orphaned children. Nonetheless, she is obviously a rich woman who belongs to the upper class of Theadelphia. Her petition starts with the statement: 24

perceiving of your love of moderation, my lord governor, and your care (κηδεµονία) for all, especially for women and widows, I approach you, thinking myself worthy to receive aid from you.

Artemis does not show up with a kyrios (male guardian or legal representative) in any of the documents that regard her, so this is an attempt to cast the prefect in this role and ‘oblige’ him to safeguard her children, interests, and property. She also uses various violent verbs relating to the perpetrator, such as ἁρπάζειν (‘snatch away’), to indicate Syrion’s aggravation and hostility and Artemis’ fear and anxiety. She also claims that ‘Syrion burst in, exploiting his local power’, thus making a direct association between status and emotion. In this case, the high status of the perpetrator induced his violent acts and negative feelings of contempt towards Artemis. Most importantly, Artemis makes repeated references to her infant children. In the course of this one petition, she mentions her children four times! The term ‘infant’ (νήπιος) is most certainly another exaggeration since in her second petition25 a year later at the most, Artemis’ children are referred to as ‘minors’ (ἀφήλικες). The former term referred to children aged approximately 3 to 7, while the latter to children or juveniles aged from 13-15 to 25.26 This change obviously could not have happened in the course of a year. A final possible exaggeration is her indication that if she receives justice, she and her children will not have to abandon Theadelphia. Becoming a fugitive due to unjustly imposed debts was another common theme frequently used in petitions for pity. Artemis’ lengthy narration also lends itself to the tools of narratology in an additional way. Contemporary studies of ancient Greek literature, narratology, and the role of time have noted that ‘rhythm’ (that is, duration and speed) refers to the amount of time which is devoted to an event in the story as compared to that in the fabula. ‘Fabula’ is defined as all events which are recounted in the story, abstracted from their disposition in the text and reconstructed in their chronological order.27 Since in practice it is very difficult to measure variations in actual time between fabula and story, the rhythm of a narrative is usually defined in terms of the amount of text devoted to an event. The more lines dedicated to an event, the more importance placed on this event.28 Therefore in Artemis’ case, to what could have been described in one line (namely, Syrion stole my husband’s animals after his death), Artemis dedicates at least fifteen lines! This is another ploy used to stress the importance of her case, the violent nature of the theft, and her worry and fear. 24 25 26 27 28

For the ambiguous use and role of ‘moderation’ in petitions, see Kotsifou forthcoming. P.Sakaon 31. Prinzing 2009, 20. De Jong 2007, 10. De Jong 2007, 11.

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4.2 Reciprocity and rationality It is also noteworthy that Artemis is attempting with this petition a combination of emotional display and rationality. Besides all the emotional ‘drama’ she recounts, she also stresses that it is not only out of personal gain that she is petitioning this case but out of her wish to be able to pay her taxes and make good her responsibilities towards the state. She also directly castigates Syrion’s abuse of power, by stressing the fact that he took her property ‘exploiting his local power’. This attitude is even more evident in the way she addresses the authorities that will judge her case. Various epithets are employed in order to remind the judge of his good qualities and that he is and should be acting according to the laws and as a protector for the weak.29 Similar expressions are found in all of the petitions in the Sakaon archive. While in her second petition30 the standard official title of the governor, ‘the most eminent prefect’ (διασηµότατος ἡγεµών) is used, in the petition we have discussed here the prefect is addressed with praising epithets that appeal to his pride. He is called ‘my lord, prefect’ (δέσποτά µου, ἡγεµών) and ‘the lord and benefactor of all’ (κύριος καὶ πάντων εὐεργέτης). Other petitions in the archive address the governor with expressions such as ‘your revered valor’, ‘your virtue’, and ‘your clemency’.31 Thus, the petitioner appeals to the governor’s pride, at the same time indirectly reminding him of the importance of reciprocity in the relations between subjects and authorities. At the end of the document Artemis stresses the fact that if she receives justice, she will always acknowledge her thanks to the prefect. Ultimately, this action can have two-fold benefit for the authorities. Firstly, it provides publicity for the prefect’s benevolence and justice, and secondly it will increase people’s faith in the effectiveness of the legal system, that is, of the petitions. Roger Bagnall further points out that widowhood in fourth century CE petitions simply did not have the central role it held in the later texts, and that even women with living and present husbands would submit petitions. There was a much lesser tendency to cite widowhood as a factor in being a victim or as something the officials should take into consideration. Arguments (however valid and fair) were made more directly on the basis of law and actions.32

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Widows and orphans have been in need of protection since ancient times. Regarding the ancient period, Fensham 1962, 139, notes that the attitude taken against widows, orphans, and the poor is to be looked at from a legal background. These people had no, or in some cases possibly restricted, rights. They were almost outlaws. Anyone could oppress them without danger that legal connections might endanger his position. To restore the balance of society these people had to be protected. Therefore, it was necessary to sanction their protection by direct command of the god and to make it the virtue of kings. For the status of widows and the care of their children in the Roman period, see Evans Grubbs 2002, 48f. P.Sakaon 31. P.Sakaon 38 and 42: ἀκαταφρόνητος ἀνδρία; P.Sakaon 40 and 41: ἀρετή; P.Sakaon 46 and 47: φιλανθρωπία. Bagnall 2004, 57.

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5 GENDER AND STATUS Papyrological data provide us with the rare opportunity to study emotions, events, people, and their paperwork as they are preserved in archives or dossiers. Thus, the association of emotions with gender or status – although it can still be raised by a single document such as a petition – is further highlighted and clarified if we look at a group of texts from the same collection. Therefore, a comparison between the petitions that were submitted by Artemis and Sakaon during the same era is very fruitful. Artemis and Sakaon petition the same local authorities with similar complaints: the theft of livestock and problems with tax-collectors. It is also very probable that the same scribes composed the respective documents. An examination of the emotional phraseology of the texts reveals, though, that Artemis always requests pity and justice while Sakaon always requests vengeance and justice. This phenomenon could be due to Artemis’ gender, her lower social status relative to that of Sakaon, or a combination of both.33 Revenge is associated with anger; and anger is mainly – perhaps only – demonstrated by the powerful.34 Sakaon and his co-workers belonged to the upper crust of village society. For all their complaints, they were relatively well-off landowners with diverse economic interests and the means to pay petition writers and even to travel to the prefect’s court on occasion. A survey of other preserved petitions from villagers confirms the impression that they came from the propertied classes.35 Status was a crucial factor in determining how a person would argue his or her case. As Jill Harries explains, the inadequacies and injustices in Roman law towards the underprivileged made their means of rendering legal redress both unattractive and dangerous. Harries notes that ‘the dispossessed, if without power, surely would have minimized the risk to themselves and sought restitution rather than revenge’.36 It is very possible that the lack of allusions to revenge reflect the real or alleged low status of the petitioner. It would be an exaggeration to claim that everything mentioned in these petitions is sheer rhetoric. The names of our petitioners (mainly Aurelia and Aurelius) indicate their low status, as recipients and descendants of recipients of Roman citizenship with the Constitutio Antoniniana of 212 CE.37 In general, petitions from the fourth century CE – especially ones concerning women – come from a wider social and cultural range than do later ones. But Artemis does not get discouraged either by her gender or her status. Instead she uses her ‘assets’ in order to achieve her goals. Finley explains that 33

34 35 36 37

A notable exception can be found in a petition a few decades later: P.Amh. II 141 (350 CE) is a petition to the praepositus pagus by a woman complaining of an assault committed on her by her brother and his wife. After she gives a detailed account of the event, the petitioner explains that she, being a weak widow woman, cannot rest or relax any more (due to worry and anger), and requests that the praepositus takes revenge on her behalf. Harris 2001, 139f. Bagnall 1996, 167f.; Adams 2006, 106. Harries 2006, 99. Cf. pp. 115–118 in this volume. Keenan 1973.

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law is, among other things, a language, a form of discourse and a system though which meanings are reflected and constructed and cultural practices organized. Law is a language of power, a particularly authoritative discourse. ... Legal language reinforces certain world views and understandings of events. ... In light of this power, those who seek to use law to help empower and positively change the status of a group, such as women, must in their theory and practice be concerned with the origins, nature, and structure of legal language and legal reasoning. To tame the beast you must know the beast. Thus, a crucial project for feminist law history must be to ask constantly and critically who has been involved in shaping law, in 38 selecting and defining its terms, and in deciding what is and is not one of those terms.

Therefore Artemis, working within the limitations set for her by society and its laws, uses emotional display and a direct appeal to pity in order to achieve the prefect’s empathy.39 It is relevant that her petition address the civil authorities and not a monarch. She can ultimately expect more empathy from the judge of her case if he is a prefect and not a king or emperor. Therefore, the scribe of her document can afford to use more expressions of emotion.40 BIBLIOGRAPHY Adams, C. (2006) Transition and Change in Diocletian’s Egypt: Province and Empire in the Late Third Century, in S. Swain and M. Edwards (eds.), Approaching Late Antiquity: the Transformation from Early to Late Empire, Oxford, 82–108. Arjava, A. (1996) Women and Law in Late Antiquity, Oxford. Bagnall, R. S. (1978) The Number and Term of the Dekaprotoi, Aegyptus 58, 160–167. ––– (1982) The Population of Theadelphia in the Fourth Century, Bulletin de la Société d’Archéologie Copte 24, 35–57. ––– (1996) Egypt in Late Antiquity, Princeton. ––– (2004) Women’s Petions in Late Antique Egypt, in D. Feissel and J. Gascou (eds.), La pétition à Byzance, Paris, 53–60. Bagnal R. S. and J. D. Thomas (1978) Dekaprotoi and epigraphai, Bulletin for the Society of American Papyrologists 15, 185–189. Beaucamp, J. (1990–1992) Le statut de la femme à Byzance (4-7 siècle) (Travaux et Mémoires du Centre de Recherche d’Histoire et Civilisation de Byzance, 5-6), Paris. ––– (1985) La référence au veuvage dans les papyrus byzantins, Pallas 32, 149–157. Bryen, A. Z. (2008) Visibility and Violence in Petitions from Roman Egypt, Greek, Roman and Byzantine Studies 48, 181–200.

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Finley 1989, 888f. I use ‘empathy’ here the way it is defined by Henderson: Empathy is 1) feeling the emotion of another; (2) understanding the experience or situation of another, both affectively and cognitively, often achieved by imagining oneself to be in the position of the other; and (3) action brought about by experiencing the distress of another (hence the confusion of empathy with sympathy and compassion). She adds that empathetic experiencing of emotion is probably influenced by cultural messages about which nonverbal and verbal cues manifest particular emotions. Cf. Henderson 1987, 1579 and 1586. On the differences as to how one addresses a king or civil servant in a petition, see White 1972, 25f. Ultimately, empathy cannot necessarily tell someone what to do or how to accomplish something, but it does alert him or her to moral choice and responsibility. It also reminds them of their common humanity and responsibility to one another. Cf. Henderson 1987, 1653.

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Connolly, S. (2010) Lives Behind the Laws. The World of the Codex Hermogenianus, Indianapolis. Cook, N. L. (1994/1995) Outside the Tradition: Literature as Legal Scholarship, University of Cincinnati Law Review 63, 95–164. De Jong, I. J. F. (2007) Introduction. Narratological Theory on Time, in I. J. F. De Jong and R. Nünlist (eds.), Time in Ancient Greek Literature, Leiden, 1–16. Delgado, R. (1990) When a Story is Just a Story: Does Voice Really Matter?, Vanderbilt Law Review 76, 95–111. Delgado, R. and J. Stefancic (1990/1991) Norms and Narratives: Can Judges Avoid Serious Moral Errors?, Texas Law Review 69, 1929–1983. Evans Grubbs, J. (2002) Women and the Law in the Roman Empire. A Sourcebook on Marriage, Divorce and Widowhood, London. Fensham, F. C. (1962) Widow, Orphan and the Poor in Ancient Near Eastern Legal and Wisdom Literature, Journal of Near Eastern Studies 21/2, 129–139. Ferguson, R. A. (1994) Story and Transcription in the Trial of John Brown, Yale Journal of Law and the Humanities 6, 37–73. Finley, L. M. (1989) Breaking Women’s Silence in Law: The Dilemma of the Gendered Nature of Legal Reasoning, The Notre Dame Law Review 64, 886–910. Gewirtz, P. (1996) Victims and Voyeurs: Two Narrative Problems at the Criminal Trial, in P. Brooks and P. Gewirtz (eds.), Law’s Stories. Narrative and Rhetoric in the Law, New Haven, 135–161. Hanson, A. (2005) Women and Family Archives on Papyrus, in M. B. Skinner (ed.), Gender and Diversity in Place: Proceedings of the Fourth Conference on Feminism and Classics. May 27th–30th 2004, University of Arizona, Tucson, http://www.stoa.org/diotima/essays/fc04/ Hanson.html. Harris, V. W. (2001) Restrainint Rage. The Ideology of Anger Control in Classical Antiquity, Cambridge, Ma. Harries, J. (2006) Violence, Victims and Legal Tradition in Late Antiquity, in H. A. Drake (ed.), Violence in Late Antiquity: Perceptions and Practices, Aldershot, 85–102. Heilbrun, C. and J. Resnik (1989/1990) Convergences: Law, Literature and Feminism, The Yale Law Journal 99, 1913–1956. Henderson, L. N. (1987) Legality and Empathy, Michigan Law Review, 85/7, 1574–1653. Keenan, J. G (1973) The Names Flavius and Aurelius as Status Designations in Later Roman Egypt, Zeitschrift für Papyrologie und Epigraphik 11, 33–63. ––– (2008) ‘Tormented Voices’: P.Cair.Masp. I 67002, in J.-L. Fournet (ed.), Les archives de Dioscore d’Aphrodité cent ans après leur découverte. Histoire et culture dans l’Égypte byzantine, Paris, 171–180. Konstan, D. (2001) Pity Transformed, London. ––– (2006) The Emotions of the Ancient Greeks. Studies in Aristotle and Classical Literature, Toronto. Kotsifou, C. (2009) Papyrological Perspectives on Orphans in the World of Late Ancient Christianity, in C. Horn and R. R. Phenix (eds.), Children in Late Ancient Christianity, Tübingen, 339–373. ––– (forthcoming) Womanly Weakness and Manly Moderation: The Use and Abuse of Pity in Fourth Century Petitions, in C. Kotsifou (ed.), Emotional Display, Persuasion, and Rhetoric in Papyri. Kovelman, A. B. (1991) From logos to Myth: Egyptian Petitions of the 5th–7th centuries, Bulletin of the American Society of Papyrologists 28, 135–152. Krause, J.-U. (1995) Witwen und Waisen im Römischen Reich III: Rechtliche und Soziale Stellung von Waisen, Stuttgart. Palme, B. (2009) The Range of Documentary Texts: Types and Categories, in R. S. Bagnall (ed.), The Oxford Handbook of Papyrology, Oxford, 358–394. Parsons, P. J. (1985) Review: The Archive of Aurelius Sakaon: Papers of an Egyptian Farmer in the Last Century of Theadelphia, The Journal of Egyptian Archaeology 71, 209–210.

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Posner, R. A. (1997) Review: Legal Narratology, The University of Chicago Law Review 64/2, 737–747. ––– (2009) Law and Literature, New Haven. Prinzing, G. (2009) Observations on the Legal Status of Children and the Stages of Childhood in Byzantium, in A. Papaconstantinou and A.-M. Talbot (eds.), Becoming Byzantine. Children and Childhood in Byzantium, Cambridge, 15–34. Rathbone, D. (2006) Poverty and Population in Roman Egypt, in E. Atkins and R. Osborne (eds.) Poverty in the Roman World, Cambridge, 100–114. Rowlandson, J. (ed.) (1998) Women and Society in Greek and Roman Egypt. A Sourcebook, Cambridge. Vandorpe, K. (2009) Archives and Dossiers, in R. S. Bagnall (ed.), The Oxford Handbook of Papyrology, Oxford, 216–255. White, J. L. (1972) The Form and Structure of the Official Petition, Missoula, Montana.

MAKE OR BREAK DECISIONS The Archaeology of Allegiance in Ephesos Jane Masséglia INTRODUCTION Having already identified three forms of emotional response towards archaeological evidence (emotions of Physicality, Image, and Use; see pp. 141–143), this chapter focuses on the latter. It examines three different processes, construction, destruction, and adaptation, which could change the significance of objects and spaces, and endeavours to show how they shaped both the visual and social landscape in antiquity. Following from the more recognisably interpersonal paradigm of honorific portraiture and its dedication, this chapter also considers the importance of archaeological spaces in the study of emotions. By placing these very different phenomena side-by-side, it demonstrates how both sculpture and spaces were used in very similar ways to express personal relationships and political allegiances within their community. By drawing on evidence from Ephesos, on the Aegean coast of modern Turkey, it also considers some of the contributions made and challenges posed by using archaeological evidence in the emotional study of a geographically-defined community. 2 CONSTRUCTION Reconstructing the appearance, location, and function of sculptural displays in Ephesos is not easy. The city had a long tradition of repairing and recycling its stone monuments, making the original contexts of many honorific statues difficult to determine.1 But, seen in more general terms, the very existence of such sculptures at Ephesos, wherever they are finally excavated, is significant enough: they are items that required the investment of time and money in their construction, inconveniences which were overcome by the desire to obtain certain results. Here ‘construction’ is not simply the act of creating the statue, but rather the combination of factors which affected its display and message, such as what it looked like, where it stood, and how it was dedicated, referred to, and used. Evidence for this construction of honorific portrait statuary comes in three forms: the 1

Aurenhammer 1990, 17.

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Figure 1. Plan of excavated remains at Ephesos.

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statuary itself, contingent evidence such as plinths and dedicatory inscriptions, and literary accounts.2 Ephesos has a sufficiency of all these forms of evidence to reveal a long history of constructing figurative images to signify, and moreover manipulate, its emotional relationship with individuals.3 2.1. Dedications, declarations, obligations The use of statues to denote allegiance was a social phenomenon familiar to Pausanias, the travel writer of the second century CE:4 When Alkibiades and the Athenian warships were in strength around Ionia, most of the Ionians paid court to him, and there is a bronze portrait-statue of Alkibiades in Hera’s sanctuary on Samos; but when the Athenian fleet was taken at Aigospotamoi [405 BCE], the Samians dedicated Lysander at Olympia and the Ephesians dedicated in the sanctuary of Artemis not only Lysander but Eteonikos and Pharax and other Spartans that hardly any Greek has ever heard of. Yet when the balance tipped again and Konon won the sea-battle off Knidos and Mount Dorion [394 BCE], the Ionians changed sides, and you can see a bronze Konon and Timotheos dedicated to Hera on Samos in the same way throughout the ages, and all mankind are like the Ionians: they pay court to the strongest.

The mimesis of a person’s body, set up by a community in a durable medium and publically displayed, manifests their wish for that person to be identified as one of them, literally among them.5 The ostensible emotions in Pausanias’ account are positive, connected with value (such as admiration), manifested in the Samians’ choice of bronze, and the uniformly prestigious locations of the constructions in the major sanctuaries.6 Here we also see the significance of space: the exclusivity of the sanctuary area enhances the positive associations of the statuary and so too the relationship between the two parties. But the motivating emotion behind these dedications, Pausanias hints, is fear. The Ionians shift allegiance in order to avoid conflict with the strongest. Similarly, his choice of verb (θεραπεύειν; ‘to serve’, ‘to pay court to’) implies the inequality of power, which made the Ionians anxious to please. In cities like Ephesos, this combination of images and prestigious spaces to construct positive relationships is particularly evident in the case of the Roman 2 3 4 5

6

For exemplary studies in combining these different forms of evidence, see Smith 1993; Ma 2007; Smith, Dillon, Hallett, Lenaghan, and Van Voorhis 2006; Lenaghan 2008. Cf. Ma 2007, 203. Pausanias, 6.3.15–16 (translted by Peter Levi). On statuary as ‘replacement’ for the absent, see Steiner 2001, 3–76; cf. Herodian 5.6.3–5 on the Emperor Heliogabalus’ allegiance with the Semitic goddess Astarte through a marriage ceremony with her statue. Hersey 2009, 31, 82; cf. Ma 2010, on this phenomenon with the agency reversed, as a means for Hellenistic kings to assert their power (one is reminded of Gell’s ‘Distributed Person’; Gell 1998, 96–154). On art and absence in Ephesos in particular, see Rogers 1991, 91–95; Schowalter 1999, 123. To give out the right message, a dedication required both the right appearance and location. In his account of an ugly but well-oriented portrait of Hadrian he has seen in Cappadocia, Arrian (Periplus 1.3–4) urges the emperor to send something ‘worthy’ (axios) to replace it. Ma 2010, 163.

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imperial cult, where the blurred distinction between honours for a political dominus and for a divinity resulted in imperial portraits within temples themselves. Simon Price’s study of the phenomenon suggests that despite the very positive connotations of such a spatial construction, there was often a careful distinction between the earthly divinities and the traditional ones, with emperors subordinated, if only sometimes subtly, from the gods proper.7 In Ephesos, this explanation could account for the sanctuary area around the Temple of Artemis, to the North-East of the city (figure 1, no. 74), which contains separate and distinct Imperial buildings and constructions; so too for the so-called Temple of Hadrian (figure 1, no. 41) on the so-called ‘Kouretes Street’, in front of which statues of later emperors were displayed,8 which may have been dedicated to Artemis within.9 Such a spatial distinction would suggest a degree of socially-constructed anxiety (or one could also say piety or modesty) in the placement of imperial portraiture, with both relative proximity and size used as a means to communicate relative importance. This phenomenon, however, is understood slightly differently by Steven Friesen in the context of sanctuary spaces; he observes a distinction not between traditional gods and emperors, but between the principal deity of a sanctuary and those introduced as ‘guests’.10 This interpretation fits well with the construction of both statuary and space in the sanctuary of the Sebastoi at Ephesos, where, in a reversal of the ‘Temple of Hadrian’ construction, sculpted images of ‘traditional’ gods appear to have stood in front of the temple dedicated to the imperial cult.11 If Steven Friesen is correct, then we also have a two-tier model of response to imperial portraiture constructed in the sanctuary space at Ephesos: one when the emperor is the principal deity, another when he is a member of the ‘supporting cast’. But if such a strict programme of hierarchical positioning is too dogmatic for varied cultic practices of the wider Roman Empire (which I suspect it may be), it is nonetheless noteworthy that the placing of imperial portraits in close proximity to those of gods, is an easily understood expression of power and stability intended to inspire admiration in the viewer.12 A similar use of privileged space to express positive relationships is implicit in the inscription recording the benefaction of the Roman equestrian C. Vibius Salutaris to Ephesos in 104 CE.13 Among his many gifts to the city, the instruction regarding twenty-nine gold and silver type-statues is not simply remarkable for

7 8 9 10 11 12

13

Price 1984, 146–156, esp. 147. Roueché 2009, 160, and passim on the imperial monuments and inscriptions of Kouretes Street; Thür 2009, on the current state of research on the area. Price 1984 149f. Friesen 1993, 73–75, 146–148. Ibid. 75. For a more flexible arrangement, compare the temple of Apollo Klarios at Sagalassos (SW Turkey) co-dedicated to the imperial cult; see Talloen and Waelkens 2004, 175–177. For local sculptural programmes outside Asia Minor, compare the mixture of imperial portraits and divine images so-called ‘Augusteum’ at Narona (Vid in Croatia): Marin 2001. I.Ephesos 27; Rogers 1991, Appendix 1.

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the lavishness of material stipulated or their great number.14 Great stress is also placed on the specific spaces in which these constructions should be displayed. Portrait statues of Trajan and Plotina, we are told, are ‘to be placed in the assembly meetings above the sector of the Boule, together with the gold statue of Artemis and the other images’.15 This indicates the seating area within the assembly space – which in Ephesos was the theatre (figure 1, no. 26) –, specially designated for members of the city council. The theatre itself is a powerful choice of venue for display, a place of both civic and political significance which lends a sense of communal approval to these sculptural constructions.16 The positioning of the statues behind the seats of the theatron (or Latin cavea), as opposed to the niches of the theatre exterior or of the skene building,17 also suggests their integration into (and therefore allegiance with) the citizen body: they are placed in the position of spectators.18 The further refinement of this placement to the Boule seats in particular, effectively combines the flattering implications of this civic camaraderie with the honorific implications of political weight and distinction.19 In the same foundation inscription, Salutaris also stipulates that the statues are to be carried through the streets of Ephesos in a circular route from the temple of Artemis to the great theatre and back.20 The treatment of the statues reflects the privileged status of the individual they depict: not only are they carried (subordinating the carriers), but the implied message is publicised more broadly by moving through the streets and interacting with the Ephesians.21 Such behaviour and use of space communicates to a larger number of people in a brief amount of time a ‘short and sharp’ emotional experience22 very different from those engendered by statues erected in a fixed spot which became a familiar part of the city’s visual landscape.23 Such a procession also had an additional connotation, one con14

15 16

17 18 19

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On the statues and their identity, Rogers 1991, 83 and Table 9. On the Ephesian appreciation of the relationship between precious metal and the honour done to the depicted, see Acts of the Apostles 19.23–41 (Demetrias the silversmith). I.Ephesos 27 lines 156–158; Rogers 1991, 159 (lines 157–159); Gebhard 1996, 121–123. On the widespread use of the theatres as venues for political, not simply theatrical, aggrandisement in the Hellenistic and Roman periods, see Gebhard 1983 and Chaniotis 2007, esp. 49. Which, by the Imperial period, provided ample opportunity for the display of honorific statuary: Gebhard 1983, 69. Gebhard 1996, 122f., 127. Cf. I.Ephesos 27 lines 468f., stipulating that a statue of Athena Pammousos should be dedicated to Artemis and to the paides (the age-class of the boys) of the Ephesians, and should be set up ‘at every regular assembly above the blocks where the paides sit’. It is significant that the statue is dedicated to the same group who are sitting below. Rogers 1991, 80–126, 195f., figs. 1–2; Gebhard 1996, 122. Cf. the ritual procession of imperial images during the festival at Gytheion in Sparta in the first century CE: SEG XI 923; Gebhard 1983, 67f.; Chaniotis 2007, 52f. Schowalter 1999, 123: ‘the emperor’s image got up and came to you ... in a way that demanded your attention.’ The statues were not to be permanently on display, but brought out during assemblies (I.Ephesos 27 lines 157, 468 and 476). The type-statues of the goddess were stored in the pronaos of her temple (lines 553–568).

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structed through association and repetition within the community: it was a ritual familiar in the worship of deities.24 And yet, while the performance of honorific acts may seem emotionally onesided, restricted to displays by the subordinate party, they are, in fact, only made successful by the construction of mutual obligation with the honorand. In Pausanias’ account of the fifth-century Ionians, the dedication of statuary is intended as a form of protection based on gratitude and reciprocity (that is, ‘we hope you won’t hurt us if we’re good to you’). While for the Ionians the fear was of war and invasion, the very same phenomenon of mutual obligation is very visible in Ephesos in the Imperial period in the recognition of euergetism (civic benefaction), where the risk was not bloodshed, but that such generosity might not be repeated. Similarly, the vocabulary of thanks-inscriptions can often be seen to maintain not only the relationship between the immediate benefactor and the community, but also the overall system of euergetism through observing certain emotional protocols which encourage its continuation. The lines conventionally given over in Hellenistic and Roman inscriptions to expressions of hope and encouragement (the hortative formula)25 can be explicit in their intention to encourage other citizens to emulate the recent benefaction.26 And so in Ephesos we find this conventional hortative formula in Aquillius Proculus’ addition to thanks offered to Salutaris for his generous foundation:27 I rejoice with you [i.e. the Ephesians] for having praised this man, and deemed him worthy of rightful commendation from us, so that there might also be more who, according to their means, are enthusiastic (προθυµούµενοι) to do similar things.

2.2 Construction, ambition, and piety This notion of obligation in the face of benefaction is also evident in another account of a constructed space in Ephesos, although with a very different outcome. After the Temple of Artemis had been destroyed by the fanatical Herostratos in 356 BCE,28 Alexander the Great’s offer to rebuild it was declined by the Ephesians, sensitive to the price of gratitude:29 And [Artemidoros says], Alexander offered to undertake both the expenses already incurred and any future ones, on condition that he would have the inscription [i.e. the credit]. But the Ephesians were no more willing to do this, than they would have been to gain glory by sacrilege and spoliation. He [Artemidoros] also praises the Ephesian who replied to the king, that it was ‘not proper for a god to make dedications to gods’. 24

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E.g. the Dionysos statue in the procession of at the Ptolemaia in Alexandria: Athenaios 200d; Caspari 1933; Rice 1983; Rogers 1991, 80. For the carrying of statues see also I.Magnesia 100; I.Ephesos 2. Pouilloux 1960, 18 and 23; Henry 1996; McLean (2002) 221f. See p. 13 in this volume. Ma 1999, 237f.; Lambert 2011, 194–197. I.Ephesos 27 lines 350–353 = Rogers 1991, 172f., with English translation. Valerius Maximus 8.14.5, who attributes it to ‘desire for glory”; cf. Thomas 2004, 145; Scherrer 1995, 17. Strabo 14.1.22 (my translation).

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Not only is the Ephesians’ refusal of Alexander’s offer remarkable as a record of an unrealised benefaction, but also as a careful construction of refusal, one which conceals the Ephesians’ negative emotions and presents instead a justification based on piety.30 Piety is a useful emotional position in the regulation of social interaction, and one that we find frequently in the context of euergetism at Ephesos. Not only can a claim to piety counter unwelcome behaviour (such as the case with Alexander),31 but it can also justify the welcome kind. In this way, the socalled ‘Stoa of Damianos’ (figure 2) was constructed over the Sacred Way to the Temple of Artemis in the late second to early third centuries CE, and justified by Philostratos (a pupil of the eponymous benefactor) as service to the goddess, asserting that ‘the idea behind the construction was that the worshippers would not stay away from the temple whenever it rains’.32

Figure 2. Reconstructed view of the Stoa of Damianos.

It is evident in Philostratos’ account of Damianos’ life that, if a flattering picture was to be painted, a balance had to be struck between stressing the material desirability of wealth, and the moral desirability of piety and altruism. The stoa was a considerable technical and financial undertaking, measuring more than 2.5 km in length, entirely in marble, and was, on completion, dedicated to Damianos’ wife (not the goddess). At the end of this route, inside the temple itself, Damianos dedicated a lavish banqueting hall in his own name. These details might smack of ostentation, were it not for Philostratos’ regular reminders of the wider public advantage of his benefactions: he gave to the poor, he gave to the state, he gave to his friends and, in building the stoa, he gave to the goddess. The explanation that the primary motive was to benefit the goddess and her worship places a different emotional spin on the construction. This is not to suggest that this pious motivation was false: rain was a strong possibility at this time, a period of frequent rainfall and flooding.33 But Philostratos’ account gives an excellent insight into the 30 31

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Murphy-O’Connor 2008, 23f. Cf. Salutaris’ Foundation Decree (I.Ephesos 27 line 217), in which any administrative changes to his stipulations, which we might consider secular concerns, are prohibited as hierosylia (sacrilege) and asebeia (impiety). Philostratos, Lives of the Sophists 2.23.1 (605); Scherrer 1995, 64; Knibbe 2002, 56f. Vetters 1995 and Knibbe 2002, 57 note 17, on the effect of a volcanic eruption on the climate in the second century CE.

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kind of ‘emotional negotiation’ which went on within the complex system of civic benefactions in Ephesos. Pride, gratitude, fear, envy, and admiration were built into the stoa from the moment the first stone was laid. Another particularly rich seam of evidence for the emotions of honorific behaviour is the competition between the cities of Asia Minor for the acquisition of city titles, especially those relating to the acquisition of a temple to the imperial Cult which brought with it the much-coveted status of neokoros.34 That civic pride was felt specifically in relation to other cities is implicit in the use of city titles in Asia Minor.35 The full implication of the title ‘twice neokoros’ for example, employed by the Ephesians on coins and in inscriptions,36 can only be understood when we observe the response of the wider emotional community: on receiving a second imperial cult in CE 114, the Pergamenes responded by declaring themselves ‘the first and twice neokoros’.37 While such competition is ostensibly critical of other cities, expressions of civic pride and superiority are dependent on a respect for their neighbours as meaningful competition. Such displays of pride and anxiety, therefore, not only established social relationships but could even be seen as contributions to the wider stability of the region.38 The abstract notion of civic competition is given physical form in the archaeological material. Most prestigious of these manifestations is the designated space and architectural realisation of the imperial temples themselves. The site of the temple to the Flavian Sebastoi (the Sebasteion) at Ephesos (figure 1, no. 53) combined an impressive elevated position with the powerful associations of the nearby political heart of the city.39 An expression of pride in this kind of built space is evident in the numismatic evidence, where we find depictions of temple facades used as symbols of the city, where the bee symbol of Ephesian Artemis had once sufficed.40 Even more interesting are those Ephesian coins where space is intentionally distorted, and proportions manipulated in order to present a scene with several, equally-sized temples in the same view. Two such coins in the British Museum (figures 3a-b) are examples of spatial reality subordinated to symmetrical composition and the desire to inspire admiration in the viewer. We are presented with artificial constructions, placing three (figure 3a) and even four (figure 3b) temples in a single vista. Intended for the eyes of both Ephesian and foreigner, 34

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See Friesen 1993, 236–239 for a critique of the existing scholarship relating to the motivations of this competition, including notions of vanity, patriotism, and anxiety. On competition to be a neokoros, see Tacitus, Annals 4.55, on eleven cities competing for the Temple dedicated to Tiberius in CE 23; Rogers 1991, 10. Heller 2006, esp. 283–342. Friesen 1993, 56f.; Burrell 2004, 59f. Friesen 1993, 58. Cf. the numismatic competition between the cities of Perge and Side: Burrell 2004, 176f.; Heller 2006, 287. See also pp. 306–308 in this volume. Price 1984, 64f., 132; Friesen 1995, 239; Heller 2006, 14f. Friesen 1993, 65-69; Biguzzi 1998, 287f.: ‘the selection of sites as hidden persuader.’ On bees in Ephesian religious titles, Pausanias 8.13.1; I.Ephesos 2109; Ransome 1937, 57– 60; cf. a coin showing a temple facade surrounded by bees (the symbol of Ephesos): London British Museum 1973.5-1-4; Burrell 2004, 60f., fig. 67. On the role of bees in the founding of nearby Smyrna, and their attachment to Ionia, see Philostratos, Imagines 2.8.6.

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these coins stress the greatness of a city of origin which enjoys a combination of divine and imperial favour, and express a civic pride in implicit competition with neighbouring cities. A comparison with the real positions of the temples in the Upper Agora41 reveals no such vista. Instead these numismatic ‘re-constructed constructions’ are evidence of a hierarchy: expressions of pride and competition, over spatial reality.

Figure 3a-b. Ephesian coins showing multiple temple facades. Left, coin of Septimius Severus, showing temple of Artemis Ephesia between the temples of Domitian and Hadrian. Inscribed ΕΦΕΣΙΩΝ ΠΡΩΤΩΝ ΑΣΙΑΣ (‘Of the Ephesians, foremost of Asia’); right, coin of Elagabalus, showing four temple facades. Inscribed ΠΡΩΤΩΝ ΑΣΙΑΣ ΔΙΣ ΝΕΩΚ ΕΦΕΣΙΩΝ (‘Of the Ephesians, foremost of Asia [and] twice neokoroi’).

2.3 Constructions and Emotional Hierarchies This notion of hierarchy is also evident in the cities’ architectural remains. In an urban area such as Ephesos, the construction of something new inevitably often meant the destruction of an existing object or space. This prioritisation of construction also gives us evidence for a corresponding hierarchy of emotions. Buildings (including domestic housing) on the Western edge of the Upper Agora, for example, were dismantled in order to allow the construction of the terrace which supported the Sebasteion (figure 1, no. 53), and redevelopment of the surrounding area.42 Motivations for keeping the district as it was (e.g. love of one’s home, fear of change, etc.) were, in the official reckoning, subordinate to those which drove the construction of the Temple (e.g. those concerning competition with neighbour41

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Or ‘Upper Square’, ‘State Agora’ or ‘The Temenos of Divus Julius and Dea Roma’. See Price 1984, 139, fig. 3 (plan); Scherrer 2004, 5 (on identification); Friesen 1993, 59 fig. 2 (plan); Knibbe 1981 (=Forschungen in Ephesos IX.2), fig. 71 (detailed plan of north side). Friesen 1993, 69f.; Scherrer 2004, 9.

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ing cities, desire to please the Emperor, etc.). We have, however, no record of any such objections. The positivist nature of archaeological evidence on its own gives instead a picture of unanimity. A related, but more puzzling emotional hierarchy is evident in the site of the ‘Library of Celsus’ built in around 120 CE (figure 1, no. 35),43 and the neighbouring enclosure of the so-called Sarapieion, in the West of the city (figure 1, no. 33). They are located in an area of the city dedicated to leisure, including the theatre, baths, and gymnasia. And yet the placement of these two buildings on the Southern end of this complex also prevents easy access from the city to the Sacred Way to Ortygia, which ran to the North-West. Indeed, it appears that the so-called Sarapieion was constructed directly on top of a former incarnation of the route.44 In an inversion of the emotional hierarchy implicit in the construction of the Sebasteion, this appears to be a subordination of religious space to the civic. It is unlikely that this represented a determined choice on the part of the Ephesians to demote Artemis Ortygia, since access to the Sacred Way could be gained from a different location. But it is clear that a change in priorities had taken place, and a more useful interpretation would be that esteem for the dead proconsul Celsus,45 or greater desire for the development of this district as a location for impressive civic amenities, was greater than the attachment to the original path of the Sacred Way.

3 DESTRUCTION The case of the Sacred Way to Ortygia highlights the difficulties in distinguishing between destruction and neglect. We might suppose that the former entailed a concerted effort, and the latter not; or that destruction implied a source of great interest, and neglect the contrary. But it is not necessarily the case that neglect can be equated with a lack of interest or a decrease in the value of the object or space. Even neglect (as the story of the Oath of Plataia demonstrates; see p. 137) can be an emotionally-driven and consciously undertaken social act in certain circumstances. Violent destruction of honorific objects and spaces, on the other hand, is one of the most recognisable metaphors for a shift in an interpersonal relationship. Just as the construction of statuary, architecture, and privileged areas can be used to forge positive ties, destruction can be used to dissolve them and to express negative emotions. The particular manner in which the destruction occurs (e.g. by fire, water, hammer blow, as part of a planned or impromptu act, etc.) is significant, with the object or space as a form of physical substitute for the absent party.

43 44 45

Housing the tomb of Ti. Julius Celsus Polemaeanus, proconsul of Asia in 105–107 CE, and also functioning as a library; Rogers 1991, 98; Scherrer 1995, 132–134 and 2004, 10–12. Scherrer 2004, 11. Both of his son who commissioned it and the city that ‘housed’ it.

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Whether this amounts to ‘volt-sorcery’46 or simply metaphor is difficult to determine (see p. 135 in this volume), so similar are the manifestations in the archaeological evidence (see p. 142 in this volume). 3.1 Destruction and Textual evidence The complication in studying the archaeology of destruction in its absolute form, however, is that there are, ipso facto, no physical remains to study. And this is particularly troublesome in the study of art objects such as statuary, which do not have the deep foundations of architectural work, for example. They can indeed be broken beyond recognition, burnt for lime, melted down, consigned to the sea, or otherwise entirely prevented from reacquiring any communicative context. And yet, again, textual evidence is able to restore a number of objects and spaces to the record, while simultaneously indicating particularly significant moments of use through deeming them worthy of record. So for Ephesos we have Arrian’s account of the destruction of Philip’s statue by the local oligarchs in the fourth century BCE;47 Appian’s account, of the Ephesians pulling down Roman statues under the influence of Mithridates VI in the first century BCE;48 an inscription of unknown Christian date, recording that one Demeas had toppled a figure of Artemis,49 and set up a cross in her place;50 and Proclus’ account of John Chrysostom, Bishop of Constantinople, ‘laying bare’ something belonging to Artemis (presumably either the cult statue or her temple).51 Each of these acts of destruction was apparently successful, both in contributing to the complete disappearance of the statues, and in communicating negative emotions, which the authors of the textual accounts acknowledged and recorded. While the personal associations of architecture and spaces may be less obvious than those of portraiture, nonetheless they can be vehicles for expressing emotions of allegiance. A space can take on associations, for example, with those that use it, those that pay for its construction, or those who take charge of its maintenance. These personal associations can be positive or negative, can quickly change according to the popularity of the individual,52 and can vary greatly according to the identity of the emotional community who interacts with the space. The Temple of Artemis at Ephesos and the space around it, for example, was de46 47 48 49 50 51

52

Gell 1998, 102. Arrian, Anabasis 1.17.11. Appian, Mithridatic Wars 21; Thomas 2004, 110. Scherrer 2004, 2 suggests from a location near the Gate of Hadrian. I.Ephesos 1351. See also Pont 2004, 561. Proclus, Oratio XX = Laudatio S. Ioannis Chrysostomi ed. Migne (Patrologia Graeca 65, 832): In Epheso, artem Midae [i.e. Artemidae] nudavit. The choice of nudavit and subsequent reference to the Artemis in Phrygia, as an individual, might suggest the figurative statue, although in comparing Dio Chryostom 31.55, it might simply refer to the decoration and wealth of her temple. E.g. the changing reception of Nero’s Domus Aurea at Rome, under the Flavians: DaguetGagey 2007, 119f.; Rosso 2008.

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stroyed and redrawn several times in antiquity to communicate different messages. In the case of the fanatical Herostratos (see p. 335), the reason given by Valerius Maximus is desire for glory, not directly a response to Artemis or to the sacred space.53 Instead the explanation given supposes a relationship between Herostratos and the great number of people whom he hoped would hear about his act. Similarly ‘emotional’ were the frequent changes to the boundaries of asylum surrounding the temple, including those made by Mithridates, Antony, and Augustus,54 intended to communicate relationships with more than just the goddess. In the case of Augustus, the annulment of Antony’s extension of the asylum area both communicated a negative relationship with his predecessor and acted as a demonstration of power to the Ephesians, who had had the misfortune to back the wrong horse on more than one occasion. 55 Strabo’s account certainly presents altering the boundary of the asylum area as an opportunity for great men to demonstrate (and with Augustus, retract) largesse, rather than a primarily pious act.56 Presented schematically (figure 4), these changes reveal how emotions can be manifested in a spatial phenomenon, and how text can restore largely invisible social developments to the archaeology of Ephesos.

c. 330 BCE

c. 88 BCE

Increased by a stadion under Alexander

Enlarged slightly by the flight of Mithridates’ arrow

30s BCE

c. 5 BCE

Doubled in size by boundaries Antony by Augustus Figure 4. Changes in the asylum of the Temple of Reduced Artemis at Ephesos. Schematic based on descriptions in Strabo 14.1.23 and Rigsby 1996, 390.

53 54 55 56

Although, of course, these construct the infamy of the act. Strabo 14.1.23; Rogers 1991, 6–8; Rigsby 1996, 388–393. Having backed Brutus and Cassius, and played host to Antony and Cleopatra in the winter of 33/2 BCE: Plutarch, Antony 56; Rogers 1991, 8. On Roman pragmatism regarding rights of asylum, see Chaniotis 2009a, 8f.

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The Ephesians clearly felt a strong attachment to this asylum space at the sanctuary, weaving a number of myths around it and arguing for its preservation to a senatorial enquiry under Tiberius, on the persuasive basis of divine foundation and historical precedent.57 The social forces which rendered the space inviolable (such as the veneration of tradition and fear of transgression) were nonetheless apparently stable in Graeco-Roman culture, and continued to regulate social behaviour even in the second century CE, when Aelius Aristides described it as ‘a refuge in time of need’.58 The destruction of the temple of Artemis by the Goths in CE 262, however, reveals different motives again. Without an interest in preserving social stability or historical precedent, there remained few of the obstacles which, according to Dio Chrysostomos (see above note 58), had checked the behaviour of previous invaders. We must ask, therefore, what value the Goths did place on the temple to warrant its destruction. Two reasons present themselves, and are by no means incompatible: one is the possibility that the Goths may have considered the temple as potentially dangerous, the headquarters of the Ephesian’s divine figurehead and so an advantage to the enemy.59 The second lies in the knowledge of its value to the Ephesians, and an awareness of the effect of such destruction on a community. Whether the sacking of the Athenian Acropolis, the bombing of Coventry Cathedral, or the attacks on the Twin Towers, in the destruction of architecture and the desecration of designated space, emotions are among the most potent weapons of war. 3.2 Adaptation But there remains one great sticking point in discussing the destruction of objects and spaces: those for which some evidence remains (even if only in the texts) were not entirely destroyed. If, as in the case of fire-damaged architectural remains, this is simply the result of luck, their partial survival cannot necessarily be attributed to a particular agent. If, however, we find an object or space which has been intentionally damaged only in part, then the emotional communication can be said to continue long after the destructive act. The ongoing communication of intentionally, partially destroyed objects and spaces lies at the heart of the official process which censored the traces of an individual in the public record, known in post-Classical parlance as damnatio (or abolitio) memoriae.60 Archaeologically manifested in the erasure of this individual’s name and image from official lists and from display, the process demonstrates the ancient appreciation of importance of memory in shaping social relationships. 57 58

59 60

Tacitus, Annals 3.61; Pausanias 7.2.7; Rogers 1991, 100; Rigsby 1996, 386f. Aelius Aristides 23.24 (Concerning Concord) ed. Behr 1981; cf. Dio Chrysostomos 31.54f., on the implication of fear in maintaining the safety of the money deposited there, ‘since no one had ever yet dared to violate that place although countless wars have occurred in the past and the city has often been captured’. Cf. Mango 1963, 63, on the behaviour of the Crusaders. For Rome, see Flower 2006.

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Portraits, named objects, and spaces with personal associations which are mutilated or altered are fossils of these negative expressions,61 while those completely obliterated risk being forgotten. Where evidence of this activity remains visible, we might do better to think not of destruction, but of adaptation: its original or previous reception may indeed be destroyed, but the object or space itself lives on as a new conception, communicating different messages. In some cases, this adaptation is the means by which the agent reveals their wish to have their sentiments recognised and preserved. However counterintuitive it may seem, damnatio memoriae (and indeed iconoclasm in general) is most effective as a communicator of negative emotions when it falls short of eradicating all memory of an individual.62 Such emotional fossils can be found in Ephesos in the obvious erasure of Domitian’s name from inscriptions. The survival of so many examples of this practice is a result of the continued use of the stones on which they were carved, whether in their existing contexts or new ones. One example (figure 5) of a redeployed stone displays an inscription detailing the bringing of water from the Marnas and Klaseas to Ephesos by Domitian,63 which was found in the front wall of the basin of Trajan’s Nymphaeum.64 The inscription is truncated on both sides, although the left by a greater amount, simultaneously removing the offending first word (‘To Domitian’), and producing a new sized block for its new position. Similarly, his campaign title ‘Germanicus’ was also erased from the top line, while still retaining most of the pleasingly appropriate ‘watery’ inscription (which may suggest that it belonged to a previous, Domitianic Nymphaeum). The overall programme of alterations is one that combines ideology with practicality. Similarly, the stone block, which described Ephesos’ first acquisition of the title neokoros (‘temple warden’) in the form of an imperial temple to Domitian, took on another function when it was later used as part of a supporting pillar near the furnace area of the so-called Baths of Varius.65 And fragments of the colossal figure of Domitian, which had originally stood in the Sebasteion,66 were subsequently incorporated into the western walls of the enclosure.67 In all these cases, this practical form of recycling expresses a change in the emotional climate of the community: an act which might previously have prompted indignation becomes acceptable through changes in the relative social value of (i.e. allegiance to) Domitian versus useful building material.

61 62

63 64 65 66 67

Varner 2008, 130f. (inscriptions), 134–136 (sculpture). Hendrick 2000, xi–xiv, 117; Vout 2008, 165f.; Savalli-Lestrade 2009, 127. Cf. the removal of heads from statues of Christian saints by the medieval Bohemian Taborites. See also Elsner 2003, 211–214; Pollini 2008 179; Smith 2012, on the Sebasteion at Aphrodisias. Smith argues that defacing represented and memorialised the incapacitation of the city’s old god. The Marnas and Klaseas were tributaries of the Kaystros river (modern Küçük Menderes). I.Ephesos 415 (92/93 CE); Miltner 1959, 343f. I.Ephesos 234, from Keretapa; Keil and Maresch 1960, 83f.; Friesen 1993, 30f. Ephesos Museum inv. 670 (head). For other fragments, see Meriç 1985, 239f.; Biguzzi 1998, 284f. Meriç 1985, 240; Varner 2004, 128; cf. Friesen 1993, 59f.

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Figure 5. Domitianic inscription, cut down and reused in Trajan’s Nymphaeum at Ephesos.

It is, however, important to consider the origin of the decision to censor an individual’s record. A decree issued in Rome might be driven by emotions which may not have the same reception in the provinces. An individual may be more popular in another city than in Rome,68 the erasure might be technically or financially too challenging to implement,69 the diffusion of the decree might be poor, or the decree itself might even be misunderstood.70 In the case of centrally-issued damnationes memoriae, we cannot presume that negative emotions were being experienced by the communities that acted on them: only that they were being formally expressed by them. The response of provincial settlements to such decrees may indeed tell us more about their emotional relationship with Rome than with the condemned individual. In the case of Domitian, we clearly see Ephesos’ willingness to comply with a programme of erasure; but for this community, who owed their precious title of neokoros to the now-disgraced regime, we may well suppose that this enthusiastic co-operation was to some extent fuelled by anxiety and a desire to please the new order. But the adaptation of honorific monuments was not always the result of international shifts in allegiance. They could result from entirely local circumstances too. The devaluation of civic statuary through a process of ‘rebranding’, for example, is the subject of great criticism by Dio Chrysostomos, who singles out the people of Rhodes for allowing the reuse of portrait sculpture by others. Especially abhorrent to him are the unscrupulous Rhodian salesman who pass off old statues as new, and magistrates who order the erasure of old inscriptions, both which

68 69 70

Kajava 1995, 204 note 11. Di Vita-Evrard 1990. Kajava 1995, 207, and Eilers 1996, 222, on the ‘wrong’ Piso at Samos.

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suggest that recycling of statuary was not an unknown phenomenon.71 This text is particularly illuminating because it hinges on a conflict within social and cultural parameters: Dio Chrysostomos finds the practice abhorrent, while certain Rhodians he identifies have, like the men behind the Domitian inscriptions in Trajan’s Nympheaum and the Baths of Vedius, apparently reconciled themselves with a different emotional hierarchy, e.g. love of money, dislike of unnecessary work, or an appreciation of old materials, above gratitude to old honorands or fear of causing offense.72 And beyond the archaeological traces of mortal lives in Ephesos, even the city’s patron goddess was the subject of adaptation, rather than straightforward destruction, at the hands of the new religious and social order. The discovery of the fallen and intentionally buried statues of Artemis at Ephesos certainly reveals a change in the behavioural protocols of the citizens. But the desire to attribute this to flamboyant iconoclasm should be resisted. These figures, which were only slightly damaged, appear to have been buried carefully. As Peter Scherrer writes: ‘There is no sign of a wilful Christian destruction as if often claimed.’73 And yet, by removing the statues of the goddess from sight, their burial is a response to what they represent both immediately and culturally (i.e. emotions of image and emotions of use). It does indicate a change in priorities and the relative subjugation of the goddess in the communal esteem, but was not, apparently, an act performed without inhibiting constructs (such as respect), emotions (such as fear), or in a blaze of hammer-wielding Christian fury. The same kind of care can also be detected in the erasure of the goddess’ names from public inscriptions. On a section of architrave once belonging to a monumental gateway,74 dedicated by the Ephesian people to Artemis and to the Emperor Trajan c. 114-115 CE (figure 6), the opening words ‘To Ephesian Artemis’ are erased, without disturbing the surrounding letters and mouldings.75 Interestingly, the pagan Emperor, his imperial title Sebastos (literaly, ‘most revered one’), and the city’s title of neokoros (referring to her role in the ‘pagan’ imperial cult), are all untouched. We might suppose

71

72

73 74

75

Dio Chrysostomos, Oratio 31, esp. 38, 47, 70–72, 95–100, 153–156. Significantly, at 31.153, he calls this recycling process ἡ τοιαύτη διαφθορά (‘this kind of destruction’), referring to the loss of the original reception. On this widespread practice, see Kajava 2003; Shear 2007. An inscription from Rhodes, from 22 CE (I.Lindos 419), reveals the community’s anxiety in not being able to afford proper honours for the gods, and subsequent recourse to recycling. Kajava 2003, 72; Sève 2008, 125f. Cf. Shear 2007, 223, for the more positive notion of ‘cultural capital’ in Roman recycling of Greek dedications. Scherrer 2004, 19; cf. Knibbe 2002, 50f.; Jacobs 2010, 297 catalogue no. 37; contra Miltner 1958, 101. On the Christian treatment of pagan imagery, see below note 80. We do not know in what kind of structure this architrave block continued to function. It appears to have been recycled from a gateway located elsewhere in the city. Miltner 1959, 347; Strocka 1978, 894. I.Ephesos 422, found on Kouretes Street. Faint traces of the letter shapes are still visible (allowing its reconstruction), and the final letters of the original conjunction καί (‘and’) remain. Nonetheless, the tools required for this generally neat finish does not suggest an act of spontaneous iconoclasm.

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that such terms had taken on sufficiently civic and secular overtones so as to avoid erasure.

Figure 6. Re-used architrave of a monumental gateway at Ephesos, with the name of Artemis erased at left edge.

From these examples, we can see that many of the events which might initially be called destructive actually have more to offer the historian when seen in terms of adaptation. Even if the only remains of the object or space are in memories or texts, they have found a form of preservation, serving a new purpose as a means to explain motivation. By understanding how a community changed archaeological material into another form, we gain an insight into the emotional atmosphere of the time. 3.3 Adaptation and Rehabilitation Clearly adaptation need not always be linked with negative emotions towards the original construction, nor is it always part of a destructive act. Indeed, adaptation can be based on an appreciation of the object/space as valuable. In Ephesos we find the case of an allegorical figure, originally one of the Virtues of Celsus set up outside his library, given a new inscription in order to rehabilitate the reputation of a certain Philip.76 The original inscription was removed and replaced by the phrase Ἔννοια Φιλίππου (‘The Thoughtfulness of Philippos’). Such a recarving indicates not only the acceptability of sculptural recycling,77 but also the importance of art objects in both expressing and managing relationships. 76

77

See Scherrer 2004, 17, who suggests Praefectur Orientis Flavius Philippus, whom Constantius II had wrongly suspected of defection, and subsequently honoured with statuary. See I.Ephesos I 41 for the emperor’s decree praising his loyalty and ordering several cities to set up golden statues to him. On the re-use of statues see Shear 2007. Cf. above note 71 on Dio Chrysostomos. We can only speculate whether he would have raised the same objections to the reuse of an allegorical figure as he does to the reuse of portrait images.

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A different form of rehabilitation can be seen in the treatment of a small number of portrait heads found in the Basilike Stoa, among which are those of Augustus and Livia (figure 7).78 Despite slight damage to the hair and nose in both figures, there is no evidence of hammer blows, nor of the ritualised damage often associated with the denigration of images.79 Instead we find small crosses carved into their foreheads, neatly centred and aligned so as to indicate an act of some care. Gerhard Langmann considers the possibility of these markers as a sign of baptism, although the specificity of the ritual is perhaps less important here than the fact that they were intentionally, publically and permanently Christianised.

Figure 7. Portrait heads of Augustus (left) and Livia (right) from seated group in the Basilike Stoa at Ephesos, with crosses carved into their foreheads.

In any case, such behaviour is highly significant for our understanding of their reception: firstly, it implies a strong tendency towards animism or metaphor among those who carved these crosses and among those Ephesians who were to view them. Secondly, like the carefully buried Artemis, it is another example of careful modification by early Christians in Ephesos, even towards objects and

78 79

Langmann 1985, 65; Scherrer 2004, 18; Jacobs 2010, 279f., 298, catalogue no. 45; cf. 295, catalogue no. 19. Such as the scarification of the eyes, mouths, nose and ears. Varner 2004, 3f. Cf. the emotive language of Eichler 1966, 11, who sees this as the work of Christian ‘fanatics’.

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spaces born out of a pagan context, in order to render them acceptable to their new emotional community.80 3.4 Adaptation and Practicality We have seen how the adaptation of portrait sculpture can be a highly emotive process. And yet we have also seen in the case of the ‘Thoughtfulness of Philippos’ that non-portrait sculpture offers a greater degree of flexibility for reuse, and indicates a strong tradition of pragmatism in the adaptation of material. Studies of the sculpture of Ephesos’ neighbour and competitor Aphrodisias have shown a remarkable willingness to redeploy even damaged and incongruous figures in new contexts as part of programmes to rejuvenate existing spaces.81 Dio Chrysostomos’ criticism of the Rhodians suggests that practical and economic advantages could prevail over the more abstract pressures of social constructs like honour. And there is plenty of evidence to suggest that this pragmatic attitude towards both art and its reuse was not unusual in the Christian period.82 Indeed, rather than ask how it was that communities reconciled themselves to the negative connotations of re-use, we might better understand this cultural phenomenon in terms of positive emotions: a value of the past, enjoyment of juxtaposition and variety, enthusiasm for economic and practical projects, etc. These kinds of response may seem largely alien to a modern Western society with a high regard for the new,83 but if we cannot accept that archaeological re-use had its own appeal, we would be condemning the communities of the Late Empire to living under a permanent cloud of anxiety and disappointment. Rather, we might compare how certain modern socially-enforced conventions can make re-use desirable, in introducing values such as ‘environmentally friendly’, ‘antique’, and the more recent meaning of ‘vintage’. Re-use lends itself particularly well to architecture and functional spaces, where changes in association and meaning are more easily made through changes in use. Thus in Ephesos we find the emotions associated with the funerary context of Sextilius Pollio’s tomb (97 CE), are adapted and replaced when the building was turned into a fountain. Similarly, the negative emotions associated with the fire-damaged remains of the Hadrianic Library of Celsus were replaced with a more positive construction when the facade was re-used as part of a nympheion; 80

81 82

83

Langmann 1985, 69. On this phenomenon beyond Ephesos, see Mango 1963 (on the adaptation of classical statuary in Constantinople); Saradi-Mendelovici 1990; Pollini 2008; Trombley 2008, 152f.; Chaniotis 2009b, 333f.; Jacobs 2010 and Smith 2012, on the Parthenon and the Sebasteion at Aphrodisias. As Smith argues, in Christian thinking the Sebasteion was not so much brutalised as made safe and good for its new function as a grand commercial mall. E.g. the repaired and re-used ‘Blue Horse’ set up beside the huge, similarly redeployed statue known to her excavators as ‘Megawoman’: Smith 2009. One need only think of the Arch of Constantine in Rome for such a ‘patchwork aesthetic’. See Ward-Perkins 1999, 227–233, although he does not completely rule out an ideological motive behind re-use. Although we have no such qualms about our similarly derivative approach to music.

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and the Tetragonos Agora, rebuilt under Theodosius I (c. 347–395 CE), seems to have put to good use stone from a number of older constructions damaged by the earthquakes and the Gothic invasion.84 Even spaces previously sacred to Artemis were adapted by the construction of Christian churches like that in the Basilike Stoa (figure 1, no. 64).85 There must have been appeal both in the existing social prestige of the location and the practicality of the existing stoa which suggested to the Christian community that this was a location suitable for them to construct a relationship with their God. 4 CONCLUSION: CHALLENGES AND NEW DIRECTIONS In the introduction to emotions in archaeology (pp. 142f. in this volume), it was proposed that emotional responses to material culture could fall into three broad categories: physicality, image, and use. The examples from Ephesos in this chapter have shown how statues and spaces could take on emotional connotations beyond their material and appearance, through their association with individuals, and how their treatment could come to express emotions of allegiance or division. Whether the setting up of Salutaris’ sculptural benefactions in the theatre, the redrawing of asylum space around the Temple of Artemis, or the re-use of stone blocks once bearing Domitian’s name, the use of these archaeological phenomena shows how emotional communities went about expressing their social relationships through their environment. But closer examination of this use, broken down into the processes of construction, destruction and adaptation, has raised further methodological challenges for scholars engaged in the study of emotions through archaeological phenomena. In the case of construction, in discussing how and why objects and spaces were formed, it has become apparent that archaeological remains are often not enough. So much has been lost, and that which does remain can often be difficult to decipher. The material skeleton must be clothed with social context, and can be reconstructed with the help of the people who speak through ancient histories, literature, inscriptions, and letters. Through Pausanias’ account of the Ionians we are told about statues we no longer have, and even why he believed they were set up. Through Strabo’s account of the asylum area, we can re-imagine lost boundaries, and their political potential. Through Salutaris’ foundation inscription we are able to return the benefactions, statues, and the procession to the ruins of Ephesos. Without these texts, we would not know about the lost archaeology. We are fortunate that Ephesos is, for scholars of the ancient world, a relatively well-documented environment. However, the same need for supporting textual evidence to corroborate our emotional readings of the archaeology also leads us to an un84 85

Scherrer 2004, 20, possibly even including parts of the Flavian Sebasteion. See also ibid. 15, on the effect of these catastrophes on the building programmes of the fourth century CE. Scherrer 2004, 19.

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avoidable problem: there is a great quantity of archaeological material at Ephesos which has no such description or record. Understanding the emotional associations of such material is very challenging. In such cases, the best we can do is draw comparisons with better-documented examples, but without specific details of the social context of the original, results can only be informed suppositions. Even more problematic is the wealth of material which has not been preserved either in archaeological or textual form. Unfortunately, this accounts for the majority of material culture and spatial phenomenon in antiquity. Artefacts and structures made from perishable materials, or spaces delineated simply by social observance, may leave no traces behind. Without traces, there can be no archaeological reconstruction other than in the imagination. This ‘missing majority’ has had two important effects, on our study of emotions in ancient Ephesos: firstly, that all cases of the intentional annihilation of an object or space (which would be fascinating to scholars of ancient emotions and allegiances), are necessarily lost. We have been confined in this chapter to the evidence which remains, but will almost certainly have missed episodes where allegiances were broken and confined to oblivion along with the evidence. We can, for example, well imagine that a love-letter was, at some time, burnt in ancient Ephesos, but this highly emotional expression, channelled through a physical object, is invisible to the archaeological record. Secondly, that within this ‘missing majority’ are the ephemeral objects and spaces which surround the lives of ordinary people. The inscriptions, the durable marble, and the sacred precinct considered in this chapter all tell stories focussed on wealthy and well-connected individuals, and display public, even political emotions. Such stories are essential for our understanding of political history, but they inevitably skew our image of Ephesos in favour of the adult elite. Tradesmen, slaves, farmers, entertainers, soldiers, even children, would all have engaged in the same process of using material culture to express their allegiances, but this is not well-represented in the evidence because the scale, material and public visibility was so very different (an imbalance exaggerated by the, albeit understandable, preference for excavations in urban centres and temples, and not on areas where such individuals lived). Archaeology certainly has the potential to illuminate the lives of a broad social spectrum in ways which would be impossible, for example, for ancient literature which is dominated by male elite authors and their concerns; but this potential cannot be easily realised with the material currently available in Ephesos. Until this changes, we must be aware of the limitations of our evidence and the forces which shape its availability. A final challenge in the study of emotions which this chapter has presented has been exemplified by the process of adaptation. We have seen how archaeological evidence can be reformulated and re-used by different groups of individuals to express very different emotions over time. Textual evidence, on the other hand, tends to be associated more firmly with a particular moment in history, such as when it was written, or the moment it describes. But if we wish to consider the emotions associated with an archaeological phenomenon, then we must take care to specify from which point in history we are looking out, and from within which

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social group. The very same statue of Artemis in Ephesos was a source of pride to one emotional community, and a source of suspicion and anxiety to another, and was used differently (displayed or buried, for example) to express this. The emotions associated with objects and spaces were not static, and however well-documented their construction may be (inscriptions usually accompany inauguration), we cannot suppose that such expressions were representative of their reception through time. So long as we take into account the elite bias in the material record at Ephesos, and properly identify the social context of objects and spaces, the city’s archaeology remains an invaluable complement to traditional textual evidence in conveying how public life was constructed and managed. Moreover, in communicating expressions of allegiance and dissent, it also reveals the critical mechanisms in forming a community’s identity: whether united in gratitude for a benefactor, or in disapproval for a pagan goddess, social groups were defined by expressions of common tenets. And so too in the case of Ephesos, we have seen how communities encoded their emotional relationships into their environment, not only towards fellow Ephesians, but absent individuals, deities and even communities remote in time. The potential for objects and spaces to outlive their original significance makes them complex subjects for study, but also highly rewarding as reflections of the ever-shifting nature of public opinion and the role of emotions as a historical factor. BIBLIOGRAPHY Aurenhammer, M. (1990) Die Skulpturen von Ephesos: Bildwerke aus Stein: Idealplastik I (Ephesos X/1), Vienna. Behr, C. (1981) P. Aelius Aristides: The Complete Works, vol. II, Leiden. Benoist, S. and A. Daguet-Gagey (eds.) (2008) Un discours en images de la condamnation de mémoire, Metz. Biguzzi, G. (1998) Ephesus, Its Artemision, Its Temple to the Flavian Emperors, and Idolatry in Revelation, Novum Testamentum 40.3, 276–290. Burrell, B. (2004) Neokoroi: Greek Cities and Roman Emperors, Leiden. Caspari, F. (1933) Studien zu dem Kallixeinosfragment, Athenaeus 5, 197c–203b, Hermes 68, 400–414. Chaniotis, A. (2007) Theatre Rituals, in P. Wilson (ed.), The Greek Theatre and Festivals, Oxford, 48–66. ––– (2009a) Dynamic of Rituals in the Roman Empire, in O. Hekster, S. Schmidt-Hofner, and C. Witschel (eds.), Ritual Dynamics and Religious Change in the Roman Empire. Proceedings of the Eighth Workshop of the International Network Impact of Empire (Heidelberg, July 5-7, 2007), Leiden, 3–29. ––– (2009b) Myths and Contexts in Aphrodisias, in U. Dill and C. Walde (eds.), Antike Mythen: Medien, Transformationen und Konstruktionen, Berlin, 313–338. Daguet-Gagey, A. (2007) Les avatars de quelques monuments romains, in S. Benoist and A. Daguet-Gagey (eds.), Mémoire et Histoire: les procédures de condamnation dans l’Antiquité romaine, Metz, 113–129. Di Vita-Evrard, G. (1990) IRT 20, le proconsulat de Cn. Calpurnius Piso et l’insertion de Lepcis Magna dans la provincia Africa, in L’Afrique dans l’occident romain (Ier siècle av. J.-C.–IVe siècle ap. J.-C.): actes du colloque organisé par l’École française de Rome sous le patronage

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de l’Institut national d’archéologie et d’art de Tunis, Rome, 3-5 décembre 1987 (Collection de l’Ecole française de Rome 134), Rome, 315–331. Eichler, F. (1966) Die österreichen Ausgrabungen in Ephesos im Jahre 1965, Vienna. Eilers, C. (1996) C. Sentius Saturninus, Piso Pontifex, and the Titulus Tiburtinus: A Reply, Zeitschrift für Papyrologie und Epigraphik 110, 207–226. Elsner, J. (2003) Iconoclasm and the Preservation of Memory, R. S. Nelson and M. Olin (eds.), Monuments and Memory, Made and Unmade, Chicago, 209–231. Flower, H. I. (2006) The Art of Forgetting. Disgrace and Oblivion in Roman Political Culture, Chapel Hill. Friesen, S. J. (1993) Twice Neokoros: Ephesus, Asia, and the Cult of the Flavian Imperial Family, Leiden. Gebhard, E. (1996) The Theater and the City, in W. J. Slater (ed.), Roman Theater and Society (E. Togo Salmon Papers I), Ann Arbor, 113–127. ––– (1988) Ruler’s Use of Theaters in the Greek and Roman World, Πρακτικὰ τοῦ 12ου ∆ιεθνοῦς Συνεδερίου Κλασσικῆς Ἀρχαιολογίας, 4-10 Σεπτεµβρίου 1983 IV, Athens, 65– 69. Gell, A. (1998) Art and Agency: an Anthropological Theory, Oxford. Heller, A. (2006) “Les bêtises des Grecs”. Conflits et rivalités entre cités d’Asie et de Bithynie à l’époque romaine (129 a.C.-235 p.C.), Bordeaux. Hendrick, C. W. (2000) History and Silence: Purge and Rehabilitation of Memory in Late Antiquity, Austin. Henry, A. S. (1996) The Hortatory Intention in Athenian State Decrees, Zeitschrift für Papyrologie und Epigraphik 112, 105–119. Hersey, G. L. (2009) Falling in Love with Statues: Artificial Humans from Pygmalion to the Present, Chicago. Jacobs, I. (2010) Production to Destruction? Pagan Statuary in Asia Minor, American Journal of Archaeology 114.2, 263–303. Kajava, M. (1995) Some Remarks of the Erasure of Inscriptions in the Roman World (with Special Reference to the Case of Cn. Piso, cos. 7 B.C.), in H. Solin, O. Salomies and U.-M. Liertz (eds.), Acta colloquii epigraphici Latini Helsingiae 3.–6. sept. 1991 habiti, Helsinki, 201– 210. ––– (2003) Inscriptions at Auction, Arctos 37, 69–80. Kantiréa, M. (2007) Statues de culte et damnatio memoriae: l’example du Métrôon à Olympie, in S. Benoist and A. Daguet-Gagey (eds.), Mémoire et Histoire: les procédures de condamnation dans l’Antiquité romaine, Metz, 181–194. Keil, J. and G. Maresch (1960) Epigraphische Nachlese zu Miltners. Ausgrabungsberichten aus Ephesos, Jahreshefte des Österreichischen Archäologischen Instituts 45, 83–84. Knibbe, D. (1994) Via Sacra Ephesiaca, in H. Friesinger and F. Krinzinger (eds.), 100 Jahre Österreichische Forschungen in Ephesos, Vienna, 449–454. ––– (1981) Die Basilika am Staatsmarkt in Ephesos; Kleinfunde, Forschungen in Ephesos: veröffentlicht vom Österreichischen Archaeologischen Institute, vol. IX. 2, Wein. ––– (2002) Private Evergetism in the Service of the City–Goddess: The Most Wealthy Ephesian Family of the 2nd Century CE Supports Artemis in her Struggle Against the Decline of her Cult after the Meteorological Catastrophe of 186 CE, Mediterraneo Antico 5.1, 49–62. Lambert, S. D. (2011) What Was the Point of Inscribed Honorific Decrees in Classical Athens?, in S. D. Lambert (ed.), Sociable Man. Essays in Greek Social Behaviour in Honour of Nick Fisher, Swansea, 193–210. Langmann, G. (1985) Eine Kaisertaufe (?) in Ephesos, Jahreshefte des Österreichischen Archäologischen Instituts 56, 65–69. Lenaghan, J. (2008) A statue of Julia Hera Sebaste (Livia), in C. Ratté and R.R.R. Smith (eds.), Aphrodisias Papers 4. New Research on the City and its Monuments (Journal of Roman Archaeology Suppl. 70), Portsmouth, 37–50. Ma, J. (1999) Antiochos III and the Cities of Western Asia Minor, Oxford.

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––– (2007) Hellenistic Honorific Statues and their Inscriptions, Z. Newby and R. Leader-Newby (eds.), Art and Inscription in the Ancient World, Cambridge, 203–220. ––– (2010) Le roi en ses images: essai sur les représentations du pouvoir monarchique dans le monde hellénistique, in I. Savalli-Lestrade and I. Cogitore (eds.), Des Rois au Prince: pratiques du pouvoir monarchique dans l’orient hellénistique et romain (IVe siècle avant J.-C. – IIe sièle après J.-C.), Grenoble, 147-224. Mango, C. (1963) Antique Statuary and the Byzantine Beholder, Dumbarton Oaks Papers 17, 53– 75. Marin, E. (2001) The Temple of the Imperial Cult (Augusteum) at Narona and its Statues: Interim Report, Journal of Roman Archaeology 14, 80–112. McLean, B. H. (2002) An Introduction to Greek Epigraphy of the Hellenistic and Roman Times from Alexander the Great Down to the Reign of Constantine (323 B.C.–A.D.337), Ann Arbor. Meriç, R. (1985) Rekonstruktionsversuch der Kolossalstatue des Domitian in Ephesos, W. Alzinger (ed.) Pro arte antiqua: Festschrift für H. Kenner II, Vienna, 239–241. Miltner, F. (1958) Ephesos: Stadt der Artemis und des Johannes, Vienna. ––– (1959) Vorläufiger Bericht über die Ausgrabungen in Ephesos”, Jahreshefte des Österreichischen Archäologischen Institutes 44, 243–379. Murphy-O’Connor, J. (2008) St. Paul’s Ephesus: Texts and Archaeology, Collegevile, Mi. Oster, R. (1990) Ephesus as a Religious Center under the Principate. I. Paganism Before Constantine, in Aufstieg und Niedergang der Römischen Welt II.18.3, Berlin, 1661–1728. Pfuhl, E. and H. Möbius (1977–1979) Die ostgriechischen Grabreliefs, Mainz. Pollini, J. (2008) Gods and Emperors in the East: Images of Power and the Power of Intolerance, in Y. Eliav, E. A Friedland, and S. Herbert (eds.), The Sculptural Environment of the Roman Near East, Dudley, Ma., 165–194. Pont, A.-V. (2004) Le paysage religieux grec traditionnel dans les cités d’Asie Mineure occidentale au IVe et au début du Ve siècle, Revue des Études Grecques 117, 546–577. Poullioux, J. (1960) Choix d’inscriptions grecques: Textes, traductions et notes, Paris. Price, S. R. F. (1984) Rituals and Power: the Roman Imperial Cult in Asia Minor, Cambridge. Ransome, H. M. (1937) The Sacred Bee in Ancient Times and Folklore, London. Rice, E. E. (1983) The Grand Procession of Ptolemy Philadelphus, Oxford. Richter, G. M. A. (1965) The Portraits of the Greeks I-III, London. Rigsby, K. J. (1996) Asylia: Territorial Inviolability in the Hellenistic World, Berkeley. Rogers, G. M. (1991) The Sacred Identity of Ephesus: Foundation Myths of a Roman City, New York. ––– (1992) The Assembly of Imperial Ephesos, Zeitschrift für Papyrologie und Epigraphik 94, 224–228. Rosso, E. (2008) L’exploitation de la condamnation de Néron dans l’idéologie flavienne, in Benoist and Daguet-Gagey (eds.) 2008, 43–78. Roueché, C. (2009) The Kurenstraße: the Imperial Presence in Late Antiquity, in S. Ladstätter (ed.), Neue Forschungen zur Kurentenstraße von Ephesos: Akten des Symposiums für Hilke Thür vom 13. Dezember 2006 an der Österreichischen Akademie der Wissenschaften, Vienna, 155–169. Saradi-Mendelovici, H. (1990) Christian Attitudes toward Pagan Monuments in Late Antiquity and Their Legacy in Later Byzantine Centuries, Dumbarton Oaks Papers 44, 47–61. Savalli-Lestrade, I. (2009) Usages civiques et usages dynastiques de la damnatio memoriae dans le monde hellénistique (323-30 av. J.-C.), in S. Benoist, A. Daguet-Gagey, C. Hoët-van Cauwenberghe, and S. Lefebvre (eds.), Mémoires partagées, mémoires disputés. Écriture et reécriture de l’histoire, Metz, 127–158. Scheer, T. (2000) Die Gottheit und ihr Bild. Untersuchungen zur Funktion griechischer Kultbilder in Religion und Politik, Munich. Scherrer, P. (ed.) (1995) Ephesos: Der neue Führer, 100 Jahre österreichische Ausgrabungen 1895-1995, Viena.

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––– (2004) The City of Ephesos from the Roman Period to Late Antiquity, in H. Koester (ed.), Ephesos: Metropolis of Asia. An Interdisciplinary Approach to Its Archaeology, Religion, and Culture, Cambridge, Ma., 1–25. Schowalter, D. (1999) Honouring the Emperor: the Ephesians Respond to Trajan, in H. Friesinger and F. Krinzinger (eds.), 100 Jahre Österreichische Forschungen in Ephesos, Vienna, 121– 126. Sève, M. (2008) Transformations et remplois dans la statuaire, in Benoist and Daguet-Gagey (eds.) 2008 , 119–128. Shear, L. (2007) Reusing Statues, Rewriting Inscriptions and Bestowing Honours in Roman Athens, in Z. Newby and R. Leader-Newby (eds.), Art and Inscriptions in the Ancient World, Cambridge, 221–246. Smith, R. R. R. (1993) The Monument of C. Julius Zoilos, Mainz ––– (2009) The Blue Horse from Aphrodisias, Paper presented at Classical Archaeology Graduate Seminar: Art In Context, University of Oxford, 19 October 2009. ––– (2012) Defacing the Gods at Aphrodisias, in B. Dignas and R. R. R. Smith (eds.), Creating the Present: Historical and Religious Memory in the Ancient World. Essays in Honour of Simon Price, Oxford, 283–324. Smith, R.R.R., S. Dillon, C. H. Hallett, J. Lenaghan, and J. Van Voorhis (2006), Roman Portrait Statuary from Aphrodisias, Mainz. Steiner, D. (2001) Images in Mind: Statues in Archaic Greek Literature and Thought, Princeton. Strocka, V. M. (1978) Zur Datierung der Celsusbibliothek, in E. Akurgal (ed.), The Proceedings of the Xth International Congress of Classical Archaeology, Ankara-Izmir, 23-30/IX/1973, Ankara, 893–900. Talloen, P. and M. Waelkens (2004) Apollo and the Emperors (I): the Material Evidence for the Imperial Cult at Sagalassos, Ancient Society 34, 171–216. Thomas, C. M. (2004) At Home in the City of Artemis, H. Koester (ed.), Ephesos: Metropolis of Asia. An Interdisciplinary Approach to Its Archaeology, Religion, and Culture, Cambridge, Ma., 81–117. Thür, H. (2009) Zur Kuretenstrasse von Ephesos: Eine Bestandsaufnahme der Ergebnisse aus der Bauforschung, in S. Ladstätter (ed.), Neue Forschungen zur Kurentenstraße von Ephesos: Akten des Symposiums für Hilke Thür vom 13. Dezember 2006 an der Österreichischen Akademie der Wissenschaften, Vienna, 9–28. Trombley, F. R. (2008) Destruction of Pagan Statuary and Christianization, in Y. Eliav, E. A Friedland, and S. Herbert (eds.), The Sculptural Environment of the Roman Near East, Dudley, Ma., 143–164. Varner, E. R. (2004) Mutilation and Transformation: Damnatio Memoriae and Roman Imperial Portraiture, Boston. ––– (2008) Memory Sanctions, Identity Politics, and Altered Imperial Portraits, in Benoist and Daguet-Gagey (eds.) 2008, 129–152. Vetters, W. (195) Der Taupo und das Klima um 200 AD in Europa, H. Friesinger, J. Terjal, and A. Stuppner (eds.), Markomannenkriege. Ursachen und Wirkungen,Vienna, 457–461. Vout, C. (2008) The Art of Damnatio Memoriae, in Benoist and Daguet-Gagey (eds.) 2008, 153– 172. Ward-Perkins, B. (1999) Re-using the Architectural Legacy of the Past, entre idéologie et pragmatisme, in G. P. Brogiolo and B. Ward-Perkins (eds.), The Idea and Ideal of the Town between Late Antiquity and the Early Middle Ages, Leiden, 225–244.

PICTURE CREDITS Figure 1: Figure 2:

Plan of Ephesos. Knibbe 2002, fig. 1. Reconstructed view of the Stoa of Damianos. Knibbe 2002, fig 7.

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Coin of Septimius Severus. London, British Museum, BMC 261(BM Ionia 83, no. 261). Photo: © The Trustees of the British Museum. Coin of Elagabalus. London, Museum, BMC 305(BM Ionia 83, no. 305). Photo: © The Trustees of the British Museum. Changes in the asylum boundaries of the Temple of Artemis at Ephesos. Schematic based on descriptions in Strabo 14.1.23 and Rigsby 1996, 390. Domitianic inscription cut down and reused in Trajan’s Nymphaeum at Ephesos. Photo: J.E.A. Masséglia. Re-used architrave of a monumental gateway from Ephesos, with the name of Artemis erased. I.Ephesos 422. Photo: J.E.A. Masséglia. Portrait heads of Augustus (left) and Livia (right) with crosses carved into the foreheads. Langmann 1985, figs. 3-4. Photo: M. Aurenhammer.

PART FOUR Emotions in interprersonal communication

‘HE IS A LIAR, A BOUNDER, AND A CAD’ The Arousal of Hostile Emotions in Attic Forensic Oratory Ed Sanders 1 INTRODUCTION1 In the Classical Athenian political/legal system of direct democracy (c. 479–322 BCE), the executive, legislative, and judicial branches of government were fused, all male citizens (collectively known as the dêmos) having the right, and indeed duty, to take part in assemblies and to sit on juries. In the lawcourt the same individuals were judges and jury.2 Greek rhetoric traditionally refers to three branches of oratory – ‘forensic’ (i.e. delivered in a court of law), ‘deliberative’ (i.e. delivered to the Assembly or other body), and ‘epideictic’ (i.e. display speeches, e.g. orations over the war dead)3 – though in fact other types exist (e.g. envoy speeches, addresses to an army, messenger speeches). Some 165 literary works survive from Athens in this period that are collectively known as the ‘Attic oratorical corpus’ – though a quarter of these are not in fact speeches, but tracts (written to be published, rather than delivered to a mass audience), rhetorical exercises, or letters (some pseudo1

2

3

I should like to thank Lene Rubinstein for her very detailed comments on an earlier draft of this chapter. For the names of all ten Attic orators I am using the Latinised spelling, consistent with the Oxford Classical Dictionary, (i.e. Andocides not Andokides). The quote in the title is taken from Blackadder the Third, episode 3 ‘Nob and Nobility’. Juries comprised 201 or 401 male citizens in private suits ([Aristotle], Athenaion Politeia 53.3), depending on the monetary amount at stake, and 501, 1001, or 1501 in public suits (Athenaion Politeia 68.1 – or 1000 or 1500, the text is incomplete) – see Harrison 1971, 47, 239–241; MacDowell 1978, 36–40; Rhodes 1981, 728f.; Todd 1993, 83; Rubinstein 2009, 507. See below for further discussion of the differences between public and private suits. E.g. Aristotle, Rhetoric 1.3 1358b6–8. I shall refer to Aristotle’s treatise The Art of Rhetoric (usually simply called the Rhetoric) frequently. This should not be taken as implying that I believe his views can be accepted without question – in many instances he is demonstrably wrong (as here). But as a theorist of rhetorical emotion arousal he was unparalleled in this period, and his views carry weight, especially when they can be independently verified by evidence from real-life oratory. Where I quote his views, I shall demonstrate that they are indeed supportable. Aristotle’s Rhetoric was written between 355–323 BCE (Kennedy 2007, 18). Another rhetorical treatise, with somewhat less to say about emotion, is the pseudoAristotelian Rhetoric to Alexander – dated by Chiron (2002, xl, cvii) to the second half of the fourth century BCE. This makes the composition of both treatises broadly contemporary with at least half of the surviving Attic oratorical corpus (see note 4 below).

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nymously attributed). Of the remaining three quarters, which are speeches, some are deliberative, a handful are epideictic, and the remainder are forensic. It is these last that I shall be exclusively concerned with in this chapter.4 A legal suit could be either private (dikê, pl. dikai) or public (graphê, pl. graphai).5 The reason for the prosecution is written afterwards in the genitive case (for instance graphê asebeias = public suit for impiety). It should be noted that, strictly, all cases were dikai, but this term was usually not applied to public suits (with the exception of homicide = dikê phonou). Those personally affected could sometimes choose whether to bring a public or private suit.6 In private suits, prosecution and defence were generally each allowed two speeches, the second providing a chance to respond to the opponent’s argument or to emphasise points. 7 From the point of view of emotion arousal, we might note that the follow-up speeches were the last chance to arouse an audience’s hostile emotions against the opponent (prosecution), or friendly emotions for the speaker (defence). However, the surviving evidence is extremely limited,8 and so it is hard to draw any mean4

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The ‘Attic oratorical corpus’ survives under the names of ten authors. Some are known or thought to be pseudonymously attributed (represented e.g. [Demosthenes] for pseudo-Demosthenes), though are often nevertheless genuine works of the period. The ten, with the number and approximate dates (BCE) of their surviving numbered works, are: Antiphon (six; c. 422– c. 410); Andocides (four; 411–391); Lysias (thirty-four; 403–c. 378); Isocrates (twenty-one, plus nine letters; c. 403–338 – though speeches actually delivered are all early); Isaeus (twelve; c. 389–c. 343); Demosthenes (sixty-one, plus a collection of prologues, and six letters; 364–323); Aeschines (three; 346–330); Hyperides (six; c. 338–322); Lycurgus (one; 331); Dinarchus (three; 323). For methodological reasons I exclude from consideration all works that were not performed in front of a mass Athenian audience, and cannot therefore be assumed to reflect the values of the Athenian dêmos: tracts (Lysias 34; Isocrates 1–15; Demosthenes 11–12, 61); rhetorical exercises (Antiphon 2–4; Andocides 4; Lysias 11; Demosthenes prologues); letters (Isocrates: nine; Demosthenes: six); resignation letter (Lysias 8); delivered outside Athens (Isocrates 19). I also exclude deliberative speeches (Andocides 3; Demosthenes 1–10, 13–17) and epideictic speeches (Lysias 2, 33; Demosthenes 60; Hyperides 6). Finally, I exclude fragments (even if forensic oratory and believed genuine), for practical rather than methodological reasons: generally these are not sufficiently complete for covert arguments to be reconstructed with confidence. In this chapter then, I work from a reduced corpus of 105 forensic (i.e. trial) speeches written to be delivered in front of a mass Athenian audience (Antiphon 1, 5–6; Andocides 1–2; Lysias 1, 3–7, 9–10, 12–32; Isocrates 16–18, 20–21; Isaeus 1–12; Demosthenes 18–59; Aeschines 1–3; Hyperides 1–5; Lycurgus 1; Dinarchus 1–3). Twenty-five of these were written for delivery by the author (see Rubinstein 2009, 511 for a list – she excludes Andocides 2, which I include as forensic in effect if not in form), the remainder written (often for pay) for delivery by someone else. MacDowell 1978, 57–61; Todd 1993, 99–102. See Osborne 1985 and Carey 2004 for detailed discussions of choice of procedure; see also below (§ 2.1), for the practical consequences (including for arousing emotions) of their choice. On the many differences between public and private suits, see Harrison 1971, 76–78; MacDowell 1978, 53–66, 235–259; Todd 1993, 99–146; in the main text I only mention differences relevant to this chapter. MacDowell 1978, 249. Only three follow-up prosecution speeches (Demosthenes 28, 31, 46), and no follow-up defence speeches, survive.

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ingful conclusions, and it is not obvious that the follow-up speeches that survive are more dedicated to emotion arousal than the first speech in each trial.9 In public suits there was one slot allocated to each of the prosecution and defence, but apparently (at least in some cases) no limit on how many speakers could speak within that slot.10 We have many examples of both prosecution and defence speeches, in both public and private cases, as well as speeches from ‘adjudications’ (in which neither side was formally prosecutor/defendant, and only one speech for each side was normally allowed). After a successful prosecution, the punishment (except where determined by statute) had to be assessed. The prosecutor and defence each made another speech regarding the punishment that should be imposed.11 Once again it may be assumed that these speeches frequently contained appeals to the emotions, but unfortunately we have little idea as not one (non-fictional) example has survived. Arousing the audience’s emotions was one vital technique of the Athenian, or indeed any, orator. According to Aristotle, arousal of an audience’s emotions is one of three modes of proof available to an orator, alongside rational argument and discussion of character.12 In modern scholarship on Attic oratory, most attention has so far fallen on explicit calls, of which there are many, for the jury to feel some emotion for an explicit reason.13 For instance, Demosthenes in Against Meidias calls explicitly for his audience to feel hatred (misos), resentment (phthonos), and anger (orgê) for his opponent because of his lifestyle and conduct, and explicitly tries to suppress any pity Meidias has deceived them into feeling.14 However, there are two problems with looking only at explicit calls for a jury’s emotional response. The first is that they frequently do not occur – for 9 10

11 12

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14

See, however, below p. 378, re Demosthenes 28. Dinarchus 2.6–7 mentions that the ten prosecutors in that trial could each give a short speech. Lysias 14 and 15 appear to be two supporting speeches from the same prosecution (unless one is a rhetorical exercise – a possibility given little credence by Todd 2000, 162, and roundly dismissed by Carey 1989, 142 note 1). On supporting speeches in general, in both public and private suits, see Rubinstein 2000. See Harrison 1971, 166–168; MacDowell 1978, 253f.; Todd 1993, 133–135. Rhetoric 1.2 1356a14–15: διὰ δὲ τῶν ἀκροατῶν, ὅταν εἰς πάθος ὑπὸ τοῦ λόγου προαχθῶσιν. For rational argument and discussion of character see Rhetoric 1.2 1356a1–4. I use the word audience here loosely. Since my concern in this chapter is exclusively with forensic oratory, the audience will be a jury. E.g. Johnstone 1999, 110–125 on pity; Allen 2000 on anger; Rubinstein 2000, 212–231 on gratitude; Fisher 2003 on envy; Kurihara 2003 on hatred; Rubinstein 2004 on anger and hatred; Bers 2009, 77–98 on pity. Demosthenes 21.196.4–6: µεγάλην µέντ᾿ ἂν ἀρχήν, µᾶλλον δὲ τέχνην, εἴης εὑρηκώς, εἰ δύο τἀναντιώταθ᾽ ἑαυτοῖς ἐν οὕτω βραχεῖ χρόνῳ περὶ σαυτὸν δύναιο ποιεῖσθαι, φθόνον ἐξ ὧν ζῇς, καὶ ἐφ’ οἷς ἐξαπατᾷς ἔλεον. οὐκ ἔστιν οὐδαµόθεν σοι προσήκων ἔλεος οὐδὲ καθ’ ἕν, ἀλλὰ τοὐναντίον µῖσος καὶ φθόνος καὶ ὀργή (‘You would certainly have discovered a great source of power – or rather of deceit – if you are able to gain for yourself two things that are most completely at odds with one another: resentment for the way you live and pity for your hypocrisy. There is no way that pity is the appropriate response for you, not in any respect, but the opposite: hatred and resentment and anger. These are the responses that your actions deserve’; translated by Harris 2008, 157, slightly modified).

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instance, explicit calls for anger and hatred are largely confined to public prosecutions,15 while calls for phthonos (resentment) are rare as the word normally has negative connotations (i.e. envy).16 The second problem is that explicit calls for an emotional response cannot emerge in a vacuum; rather they must be built up to (as those against Meidias painstakingly are), or subsequently explained, or at the very least arise naturally from narrated circumstances. It is notable that Aristotle, who makes the first and most explicit case for linking emotion arousal to rhetoric, does not tell an orator to call for emotions, but rather to show the audience that certain situations exist so these emotions will arise naturally – for example, he says a speech might need to prepare the audience to be disposed to be angry, and show the opponents as liable for such things that cause anger, and that they are the sort of people one should be angry at.17 This sort of covert emotion arousal has so far received far less attention from modern scholars of oratory, yet it is the kind most intimately bound up with the value systems of the audience and hence the cultural construction of such emotions.18 Barbara Rosenwein’s concept of ‘emotional communities’ may be fruitfully applied in this context.19 ‘Emotional communities’ are generally the same as social communities, in which members ‘have a common stake [and] interests’ and are ‘tied together by fundamental assumptions, values, goals, feeling rules, and accepted modes of expression’.20 At the highest level this could be a nation, a tribe, or a Greek polis. Within this overarching community, though, will be subordinate emotional communities, such as the family, Assembly members, tavern goers, celebrants at a sacrifice etc.; and as people move from one sub-community to another they will adjust their cognitive judgments and emotional displays accordingly.21 The Athenian male citizens who acted as jurors in the physical setting of the lawcourt were an emotional sub-community. There are certain emotional responses specific to this sub-community – for instance (as I argue below) Athenians respond to sykophants with hatred in the lawcourt, but might respond with a different emotion to them on stage in the comic theatre; Spartans, however, 15 16

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Rubinstein 2004. Bers 2009, 77–93 argues that appeals to pity too must be carefully nuanced. See further below on appeals to phthonos, and its meanings; also Sanders forthcoming, chapter 5, where I argue that phthonos is mainly used explicitly in oratory to allege motivation. Rhetoric 2.2 1380a2–5: δῆλον δ’ ὅτι δέοι ἂν κατασκευάζειν τῷ λόγῳ τοιούτους οἷοι ὄντες ὀργίλως ἔχουσιν, καὶ τοὺς ἐναντίους τούτοις ἐνόχους ὄντας ἐφ’ οἷς ὀργίζονται, καὶ τοιούτους οἵοις ὀργίζονται (‘and it is clear that it might be needful in a speech to put [the audience] in the state of mind of those who are inclined to anger and to show one’s opponents as responsible for those things that are the causes of anger and that they are the sort of people against whom anger is directed’; translated by Kennedy 2007, 120). See Harré 1986; Harré and Parrott 1996; Johnson-Laird and Oatley 2000 on the social construction of emotion; Griffiths 1997, 137–167 for a more critical account; Reddy 2001 for the implications of constructionism for the historian of emotions, though he too is critical. Rosenwein 2002 842f.; 2006, 24–26. The approach of this chapter is in line with Rosenwein’s methodology, despite not formally adopting it. Rosenwein 2006, 24. Rosenwein 2002, 842.

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might have no emotional reaction to them as sykophants are not relevant to Spartan life. This sub-community is expected to respond emotionally in certain culturallyspecific ways to verbal or theatrical stimuli. We have relatively little information contemporary with these speeches about non-verbal ways in which orators attempted to arouse emotions. However, it is certain that theatrical stimuli were employed as well as verbal. In Aristophanes’ comedy Wasps (staged in 422 BCE), a regular juror gives a satirical account of defendants’ speeches as they try to get off a charge: they flatter; they bewail (apoklaontai) their poverty and attribute their misfortunes to it; they quote myths, fables, and jokes to make him laugh; they drag their children out front to bleat (blêchatai) in concert, while the defendant himself trembles (tremôn) and entreats (antibolei) him as a god to approve his accounts, asking him to have pity on hearing his son, or be persuaded by his daughter – this, he says, makes him relax his anger (orgês) a little.22 In this chapter my interest is in verbal stimuli, words that act as ‘acoustic signals’,23 or that in other ways manipulate Athenian values by triggering memories based on personal and/or cultural experience. A number of emotions can be aroused in this way, but I concentrate here solely on hostile emotions (anger, hatred, and resentment), aroused against the speaker’s opponent.24 I will not exclude passages in which explicit calls for an emotional response occur, but my focus will be on those that prepare the audience to feel the emotion,25 whether an explicit call is subsequently made or not. This will show that it is only with a deep understanding of the cultural construction of an emotion, that we can reach a full understanding of the emotional strategies that might be involved when orators press certain cultural buttons, that may on the face of it have little or nothing to do with emotions. This will have implications far beyond Attic oratory. In dividing this chapter into separate sections on anger, hatred, and resentment, and considering certain actions or types of person under each, I do not mean to imply that such actions/people will not arouse more than one of these emotions – for instance I do not contend that the dêmos will only feel anger towards someone committing hybris, and not feel any hatred or resentment. Rather, I consider each type under the emotion which the ancient evidence suggests will

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Aristophanes, Wasps 562–574. See Plutarch, Life of Marcellus 20.5–6 (quoted on p. 162 in this volume), for a later example of an orator using theatrical effects to arouse his audience’s emotion. See also Slater 1995; Hall 1995; Wilson 1996. I borrow this phrase from Chaniotis 2009, 200; see also pp. 114 and 229 in this volume. [Aristotle], Rhetoric to Alexander discusses hatred, anger, and resentment as the three hostile emotions an orator should aim to arouse against his opponent (34 1440a28–40; 36 1445a12– 29), while friendship, gratitude, and pity are those he should aim to arouse for himself (34 1439b15–36, 1440a25–8, 1440a40–b4; 36 1444b35–1445a12). The causes of these emotions vary, as they are the product of socio-cultural conditions. In this chapter, I am concentrating on causes that are specifically connected with Athens in the period 420–322 BCE. In other media, one might compare the narratio of decrees, which are syncopated versions of deliberative speeches in the assembly; see Chaniotis 2013.

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principally be aroused, as the most logical way to draw out connections between them. It may well be that other hostile emotions are also roused alongside them.26 2 ANGER Anger (orgê) is the most obvious hostile emotion, and one referred to frequently in the oratorical corpus. It is nevertheless a difficult emotion for a speaker to arouse, because it is felt primarily in response to a personal slight.27 Accordingly the speaker has the challenge of persuading his audience that his opponent’s private slight against him himself, is equally a slight against the whole city. Unless he can do so, the jury will not themselves feel anger against his opponent.28 2.1 Hybris One slight that clearly arouses anger is hybris – a term implying wanton violence, with intention to insult, shame, and dishonour, for the aggressor’s pleasure. 29 Hybris rears its head frequently in the oratorical corpus, the hybr- root occurring some 425 times. Nearly a third of these (131) occur in just one speech, Demosthenes’ Against Meidias, in which Demosthenes prosecutes Meidias ostensibly for a punch the latter gave him while he was acting in his capacity as a chorêgos (i.e. performing a public liturgy as chorus producer – see below on liturgies). Demosthenes refers several times to anger the dêmos displayed against Meidias in a preliminary censure vote in the assembly, and in a number of places calls for them to feel further anger against Meidias by condemning him now,30 since his crime was committed against the entire city (the prerequisite for an angry response), for instance: 26 27

28 29 30

We might assume that if an orator wished to arouse hostility against his opponent, he would not balk at more than one such emotion being aroused. Aristotle tells us it is only felt for a slight against oneself or those close to one (Rhetoric 2.2 1378a30–32: Ἔστω δὴ ὀργὴ ὄρεξις µετὰ λύπης τιµωρίας [φαινοµένης] διὰ φαινοµένην ὀλιγωρίαν εἰς αὐτὸν ἤ τῶν αὐτοῦ, τοῦ ὀλιγωρεῖν µὴ προσήκοντος (‘Let anger be [defined as] desire, accompanied by [mental and physical] distress, for apparent retaliation because of an apparent slight that was directed, without justification, against oneself or those near to one’; translated by Kennedy 2007, 116). Rubinstein 2004, 193f. This would not preclude other emotions, e.g. a desire for justice on the speaker’s behalf. Aristotle, Rhetoric 2.2 1378b23–25, supported in numerous places in the oratorical corpus, some of which I quote below. See also Fisher 1992, 7–21; Cohen 1995, 143–162. Demosthenes 21: Anger already displayed: §§6, 36, 175, 183, 215, 226. Calls for anger: §§34, 42–43, 46, 100, 108, 123, 127, 147, 183, 186, 196, 222. The speeches in the Attic oratorical corpus are traditionally divided into sections. § indicates the section number referred to. Thus e.g. §11.2–4 indicates lines 2–4 (in the Oxford Classical Text, where these exist, else in the Loeb edition) of section 11 of this speech (Demosthenes 21). An alternative notation is Demosthenes 21.11.2–4.

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But if he clearly has committed all his crimes of outrage against your chorus producer during a sacred season, he deserves to receive the people’s anger and their punishment. For together with Demosthenes, the chorus producer was also the victim of outrage; he is a public official, 31 and this occurred on those days when the laws prohibit it.

Demosthenes argues that at the point Meidias struck him, he was not merely Demosthenes but also a representative of the city. Meidias’ blow against him was thus an act of hybris against the entire polis: it affected each and every citizen personally, and should therefore make each one of them angry.32 In order to call so explicitly (and so frequently) for juror anger, Demosthenes had to demonstrate that Meidias’ one act of violence against himself qua liturgist, was symptomatic of Meidias’ habitually hybris-tic behaviour against his fellow citizens33 – and he spends a good deal of the speech doing so. If Aristotle is right that anger is an emotional response to a personal slight, and if Demosthenes could persuade the jurors they had been slighted, then their anger against Meidias would be a foregone conclusion – allowing him to call for it explicitly so many times. A more interesting speech for covert arousal is Demosthenes’ Against Konon. Lene Rubinstein has demonstrated the remarkable extent to which calls for juror anger and/or hatred correlate with public prosecution speeches and are with only a very few exceptions almost entirely absent in private prosecution speeches and public and private defence speeches.34 Against Konon deals with two acts of much more severe violence than Meidias’ punch, committed by Konon and his sons against Ariston (the speaker) and his slaves. However it is known to have been a private prosecution: Ariston says at the start of the speech that he chose to bring a dikê aikeias (a private suit for battery, leading to a fine payable to Ariston) rather than a graphê hybreôs (a public suit for hybris, leading to the death penalty or a fine payable to the state).35 Bearing in mind Rubinstein’s findings, it is therefore especially notable that Ariston goes through almost the entire speech without calling for the judges’ anger. He refers to his own anger (orgê) and hatred (echthra) following the first attack,36 but immediately says that at that point he did 31

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Demosthenes 21.34: εἰ δὲ χορηγὸν ὄνθ’ ὑµέτερον ἱεροµηνίας οὔσης πάνθ’ ὅσ’ ἠδίκηκεν ὑβρίσας φαίνεται, δηµοσίας ὀργῆς καὶ τιµωρίας δίκαιός ἐστι τυγχάνειν· ἅµα γὰρ τῷ ∆ηµοσθένει καὶ ὁ χορηγὸς ὑβρίζετο, τοῦτο δ’ ἐστὶ τῆς πόλεως, καὶ τὸ ταύταις ταῖς ἡµέραις, αἷς οὐκ ἐῶσιν οἱ νόµοι (translated by Harris 2008, 99). It is also symptomatic of his contempt for the dêmos (a subject I treat separately below), which should also arouse their anger. Athenians believed that the wealthy were prone to behaving in certain ways incompatible with democracy, e.g. ostentatious lifestyle, arrogance, loud boasting, scorn for the democracy, and a propensity to drunken violence – see Dover 1974, 110f.; Fisher 1992, 19–31, 102–104; Ober 1989, 206–211. Rubinstein 2004. She argues that outside public prosecutions, it was much harder for the speaker to justify calls for anger or hatred without risking alienating the jury. See Demosthenes 21.25–8, 54.1, Isocrates 20.19 for comments on penalties and choice of case. For a detailed discussion of graphê hybreôs and dikê aikeias, see MacDowell 1978, 129–132 and Fisher 1992, 36–85. Demosthenes 54.6.1: τοῦ δὲ πράγµατος εἰς τοῦτο προελθόντος, ὡς δεῦρ’ ἐπανήλθοµεν, ἦν ἡµῖν, οἷον εἰκός, ἐκ τούτων ὀργὴ καὶ ἔχθρα πρὸς ἀλλήλους (‘The business came to such a

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not intend to prosecute, thus ostensibly divorcing his own emotions from the prosecution. Instead, he lets the narrative speak for him: he tells how his slaves were attacked by drunken assailants (Konon’s sons) in an army camp, and then he himself was assaulted verbally and physically by them; some time later he was attacked by Konon himself, his son and his friends in the city, and nearly beaten to death. Despite bringing the prosecution for battery, Ariston peppers his speech with references to hybris, the word or its cognates occurring twenty-eight times. But it is only at §42 (out of 44), when the idea of hybris will have lodged firmly enough in the jury’s mind, that the speaker finally asks that they not regard it as a private matter, but feel the same anger and hatred towards his assailant as he does, and punish them accordingly:37 So I ask you, gentlemen of the jury, since I have explained all my legitimate claims and have added an oath to them, that just as each of you, if you are injured, would hate your assailant, that you feel the same anger at this man Conon for my sake; and I ask you not to regard any affair of this sort as a private matter, even if it should happen to another man, but no matter who the victim is, to help him and give him justice and hate those men who before they are accused are brash and reckless but at their trial are wicked, have no shame, and give no thought to opinion or custom or anything else, except for escaping punishment.

A third speech in which hybris occurs is Isocrates’ Against Lochites.38 Again calls for anger (orgê) are built up to carefully. The speaker mentions Lochites’ striking him, talks at length about those for whom graphai hybreôs were instituted, states that Lochites’ blow involved hybris, then calls for anger and punishment.39 He compares hybris with temple robbery and theft as crimes demanding harsh punishment even for small breaches, and refers to the wider social behaviour popularly associated with hybris (presumably the sorts of behaviour described in note 33 above) and what it can lead to if unchecked (wounding, homicide, exile etc.), before calling again for anger on the grounds that hybris is greater than other

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point that when we returned to Athens, we naturally felt anger and hatred for one another over what had happened’; translated by Bers 2003, 68f.). Demosthenes 54.42: ἀξιῶ τοίνυν ὑµᾶς, ὦ ἄνδρες δικασταί, πάνθ’ ὅσ’ ἐστὶν δίκαι’ ἐπιδείξαντος ἐµοῦ καὶ πίστιν προσθέντος ὑµῖν, ὥσπερ ἂν αὐτὸς ἕκαστος παθὼν τὸν πεποιηκότ’ ἐµίσει, οὕτως ὑπὲρ ἐµοῦ πρὸς Κόνωνα τουτονὶ τὴν ὀργὴν ἔχειν, καὶ µὴ νοµίζειν ἴδιον τῶν τοιούτων µηδὲν ὃ κἂν ἄλλῳ τυχὸν συµβαίη, ἀλλ’ ἐφ’ ὅτου ποτ’ ἂν συµβῇ, βοηθεῖν καὶ τὰ δίκαι’ ἀποδιδόναι, καὶ µισεῖν τοὺς πρὸ µὲν τῶν ἁµαρτηµάτων θρασεῖς καὶ προπετεῖς, ἐν δὲ τῷ δίκην ὑπέχειν ἀναισχύντους καὶ πονηροὺς καὶ µήτε δόξης µήτ’ ἔθους µήτ’ ἄλλου µηδενὸς φροντίζοντας πρὸς τὸ µὴ δοῦναι δίκην. Translated by Bers 2003, 79. Mirhady 2000, 123 notes that it is not totally clear whether this was a graphê hybreôs or a dikê aikeias, and summarises the arguments each way. I believe the argument for it being a private case – that a penalty is payable to the speaker (20.19) – is decisive. Rubinstein 2004, 194 refers to it as a private case, but (bearing in mind her main argument referred to above) must then make a special plea for it to contain calls for anger, on the grounds that it deals with hybris, a public concern. When we consider this speech alongside Against Konon, we should not be surprised to see the same, probably intentional, confusion of the two charges and types of case. Isocrates 20.6: ὑπὲρ ὧν προσήκει τοῖς ἐλευθέροις µάλιστ’ ὀργίζεσθαι καὶ µεγίστης τυγχάνειν τιµωρίας.

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crimes.40 He says that cities have been destroyed because of hybris, and links Lochites’ hybris against himself with the coups against the democracy41 – by inference, as with Meidias, the entire city is the victim. He continues, saying that those who commit hybris show contempt for the laws;42 they want to, and can, band together to take over the city. He highlights that any citizen might suffer hybris, and argues that punishing it therefore helps all citizens. After a discussion of the retaliatory, educative, and deterrent aspects of punishment, he again calls for public anger (orgê).43 This speech is short, yet the speaker manages to cover economically many of the issues raised at much greater length by Demosthenes, thus showing how a jury’s anger might quickly be roused.44 2.2 Contempt Hybris was certainly not the only charge that would arouse public anger, but the speaker’s challenge would always have been to persuade the jury that his opponent had slighted them as well as himself. What types of charge might a speaker try to make? Aristotle suggests that, alongside hybris, there are two other types of personal slight causing orgê: spite (epêreasmos – a disinterested slighting), and contempt (kataphronêsis – showing you believe the other person to be of no account).45 While epêreasmos does not occur regularly in the Attic oratorical corpus, there is, however, a minor topos whereby speakers argue that their opponents have contempt for the laws, the courts, or the whole city. We saw above, for instance, that this forms part of the accusation in Isocrates’ Against Lochites;46 Lochites’ contempt for the laws (which had recently been re-linked to the dêmos

40 41

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Isocrates 20.9: Ἡγοῦµαι δ’ ὑµᾶς οὕτως ἂν ἀξίως ὀργισθῆναι τοῦ πράγµατος, εἰ διεξέλθοιτε πρὸς ὑµᾶς αὐτοὺς ὅσῳ µεῖζόν ἐστιν τοῦτο τῶν ἄλλων ἁµαρτηµάτων. Mirhady 2000, 123 dates the speech to c. 402–400 BCE, shortly after the oligarchic regimes of 411 and 404–403, when the crimes of the juntas would be fresh in jurors’ minds. Whitehead and Rubinstein (forthcoming) argue it should be dated a few years later, to the first half of the 390s, but the argument remains valid. Isocrates 20.10, 21, 22 – cf. note 32 above, and § 2.2 below. Isocrates 20.22: παρακαλέσαντες ἀλλήλους ἐνσηµανεῖσθε Λοχίτῃ τὴν ὀργὴν τὴν ὑµετέραν. Whitehead and Rubinstein (forthcoming) argue that we only have the latter part of the speech – this could be because the earlier portion has not survived, or because the speaker only commissioned part of the speech. Aristotle, Rhetoric 2.2 1378b14–25. This list is inadequate: for instance, many issues of social misbehaviour that Aristotle would try to file under to nemesan (indignation), in other authors will be said to arouse orgê (anger) – see Sanders forthcoming, chapter 4 for a critique of Aristotle’s to nemesan, from the point of view of its overlap with phthonos. Aristotle also misses out anger aroused by memory of past events – see Chaniotis 2012 on the repeated instructions to jurors in Lysias 12 that they should remember and be angry, or in Lysias 13 that they should remember and take revenge. On the connection between kataphronêsis and anger (or desire for revenge) in non-literary media see Chaniotis 2004, 18 and Chrysi Kotsifou’s remarks in this volume (pp. 74f.). See note 42 above.

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by the restored democracy’s vote to codify the laws) is arguably then contempt for the dêmos as a whole.47 The ‘contempt for the dêmos’ argument is also used twice by Aeschines, against Timarchos and Ktesiphon.48 But it is in the Demosthenic corpus that we regularly find the accusation of contempt for justice, the law, and the sovereign people, which appears in public prosecutions, private prosecutions, and arbitrations.49 Meidias is one of those accused of contempt – in his case the word kataphronêsis is not used, but two other phrases amount to the same thing: Demosthenes says that if Meidias cannot treat the whole tribe, Council, and nation with contumely (propêlakizein), then his life is not worth living; and later, that Meidias does not give two hoots (mêden phrontizein) for them.50 The first of these words (which literally means to trample in the mud) also occurs widely in the oratorical corpus.51 The second phrase only occurs a handful of times in surviving forensic speeches, but its occurrence twice in Demosthenes’ collection of stock prologues suggests that it might have occurred more regularly than we would assume from its limited survival.52 With no independent confirmation, we may not be able to rely fully on Aristotle that a display of contempt (whether for the laws, justice, performing civic duties, or for the dêmos directly) would arouse specifically anger in the jury. However, clearly these comments are intended to arouse some kind of hostility or animus against the opponent (kataphronêsis, particularly the kata- prefix, has derogatory force), and we should therefore realise that accusations of contempt 47

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This is a specifically Athenian cultural feature, connected with democracy – it could not occur in e.g. a monarchy (though a petitioner could argue that their opponent had shown contempt for the monarch). The fact that the dêmos can respond with anger suggests it is placed in a hierarchically higher position, like a king or a god – see the remarks of Angelos Chaniotis in this volume (pp. 115–118), and my comparison with prayers for justice and petitions below (pp. 383f.). On the personification and cult of Dêmos see Alexandri-Tzachou 1986. Aeschines 1.114 and 3.53 – both public prosecutions. Public prosecutions: 26.2 and 25 (contempt for justice); 59.12 and 77 (Neaira scorns your laws). Private prosecutions: 50.65–66 (contempt for performing trierarchies, i.e. outfitting warships, as per the law); 56.10 (contempt for ‘you’, i.e. the dêmos, and the laws). Arbitrations: 42.2; 43.72 and 78 (they committed hybris in their contempt for the laws). Again, as with hybris (see above § 2.1), we see that covert arousal of anger occurs as easily in private speeches as in public. Due to the regularity with which this argument is made, it is unsurprising to find it in Andocides’ Against Alcibiades (not a real speech, but a rhetorical exercise – see note 4 above), where the defendant is said to have contempt for the Archons (magistrates), the laws, and the other citizens (4.14). Demosthenes 21.131.8–10: ἀλλ’ εἰ µὴ φυλὴν ὅλην καὶ βουλὴν καὶ ἔθνος προπηλακιεῖ …, ἀβίωτον ᾤετ’ ἔσεσθαι τὸν βίον αὑτῷ (cf. §§ 61, 66, 72, 109, 220); 21.201.1–2: ὃς οὖν … τὸ δὲ µηδὲν φροντίζειν ὑµῶν νεανικόν. Public prosecutions: Lysias 15.6; Demosthenes 22.62; 23.89; 24.124 (twice); 25.50; [Demosthenes] 59.93, 59.113; Aeschines 3.248. Private prosecutions: Demosthenes 30.36; 36.47; [Demosthenes] 50.45. Defence speeches: Lysias 9.4; Isaeus 2.47; Aeschines 2.44. Lysias. 7.17; Demosthenes 25.39, 42.30; [Demosthenes] 54.42; Demosthenes Exordia 12.1, 32.2.

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are not merely part of the standard oratorical insulting that can easily be dismissed as ‘noise’ by the modern reader. 3 HATRED Hatred (misos), which for our purposes will include milder forms such as general hostility or dislike, is an easier emotion to arouse than anger, because no personal injury need be proved. Aristotle tells us that, while anger comes from what affects someone personally, hatred can arise both from what affects them personally (for instance anger, spite, or slander directed against them)53 and from what is not directed against them as an individual; that is if we think someone is a certain type of person (typically a type that is harmful to the community as a whole) then we hate them – and Aristotle gives as examples that everyone hates a thief (kleptês) or a sykophant (sykophantês).54 Labelling an opponent a thief or a sykophant is a character (êthos) argument rather than, ostensibly, an emotion (pathos) one (see §1 above). However, while characterisation of the opponent is an important oratorical tool in its own right, my contention in this section is that additionally certain characters arouse hostile emotions;55 thus while arguments may explicitly be directed at the opponent’s character, they also aim covertly to arouse an audience’s hostility towards him. Thieves (or murderers or other such criminals) are common everywhere, as is popular animus against them, and so they do not belong in a book that explores the social construction of specifically ancient Greek emotions.56 Sykophants, 53

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If Aristotle is correct (and he may not be), this suggests that all situations that principally arouse anger will also arouse hatred – see my comments above on arousal of multiple emotions. Rhetoric 2.4.30–31 1382a1–7: περὶ δ’ ἔχθρας καὶ τοῦ µισεῖν φανερὸν ὡς ἐκ τῶν ἐναντίων ἔστι θεωρεῖν. ποιητικὰ δὲ ἔχθρας ὀργή, ἐπηρεασµός, διαβολή. ὀργὴ µὲν οὖν ἐστιν ἐκ τῶν πρὸς αὑτόν, ἔχθρα δὲ καὶ ἄνευ τοῦ πρὸς αὑτόν· ἂν γὰρ ὑπολαµβάνωµεν εἶναι τοιόνδε, µισοῦµεν. καὶ ἡ µὲν ὀργὴ ἀεὶ περὶ τὰ καθ’ ἕκαστα, οἷον Καλλίᾳ ἢ Σωκράτει, τὸ δὲ µῖσος καὶ πρὸς τὰ γένη· τὸν γὰρ κλέπτην µισεῖ καὶ τὸν συκοφάντην ἅπας (‘The nature of enmity and hating is evident from the opposites [of what has been said about friendliness]. Anger, spite, and slander are productive of enmity. Now anger comes from things that affect a person directly, but enmity also from what is not directed against himself; for if we suppose someone to be a certain kind of person, we hate him. And anger is always concerned with particulars, directed, for example, at Callias or Socrates, while hate is directed also at types (everyone hates the thief and the sycophant)’; translated by Kennedy 2007, 127). I use the Hellenised spelling sykophant to avoid confusion with the English word sycophant – despite the obvious philological derivation, the Greek sykophant was an entirely different creature (see main text below). We recognise this occurs (rightly or wrongly) in our modern world – e.g. disgust at beggars, dislike of certain races, hatred of paedophiles – and it did no less so in ancient Greece. Anger occupies a smaller part of this chapter than one might expect for a similar reason: many of the crimes that naturally arouse anger (as part of a sense of justice) against the perpetrators are not culturally specific to Athens, or indeed ancient Greece, and so are not relevant to a volume on approaches to the cultural construction of emotion. This does not

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however, aroused hostility particularly in Classical Athens (see above), so are ripe for examination here. 3.1 Sykophants In some types of public suit, Athenian laws allowed anyone who wished (ho boulomenos) to prosecute; occasionally the successful prosecutor would even receive a proportion of a fine levied on his convicted opponent, or some other payment. 57 The sykophant was a busybody who sought to prosecute (frequently innocent) people on a regular basis, possibly in order to receive money from the fine, more likely as a bribe from the opponent to drop the case,58 or even for payment to act as another’s frontman.59 Many speeches in the oratorical corpus contain accusations that the opponent is a sykophant. Sometimes this occurs in prosecution, but the argument lends itself best to defence speeches, where the successful labelling of the prosecutor as a sykophant serves the important and wider strategic purpose of undermining the legitimacy of the prosecution case. It is well known that sykophants were unpopular,60 and the oratorical corpus provides plenty of evidence for commonly held views. Sykophants take bribes, prosecute those who have not committed any crimes to gain money, and are charged as criminals. They are generally poor but clever (deinos) at speaking,61

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mean they were irrelevant to the Greeks – see Allen 2000 on the centrality of anger to the punishment of crime. MacDowell 1978, 53–62; Todd 1993, 91–94. Osborne 1985, 44–48 argues that the surviving evidence suggests that prosecution purely for monetary reward was uncommon. MacDowell 1978, 62–66; Harvey 1990; Christ 1998, 48–71 and 2008, 170–174; Rubinstein 2000, 198–204; Fisher 2008, 297–299; for a different view see Osborne 1990. It is hard for us to know if sykophancy was a genuine problem, as allegations are so frequent that one might be tempted to conclude Athenians were seeing ‘reds under the bed’ (though, as in McCarthyera America, mass hysteria rarely allows the facts to stand in the way of an emotional response). It is almost certainly the case that public alertness to the possibility of sykophancy reduced its frequency, through the constant threat of exposure in the lawcourt or ridicule in the comic theatre: sykophants crop up several times as comic butts in Aristophanes’ comedies (Acharnians 818–828, Birds 1410–1469, Ploutos 850–958). In some cases, receiving less than 20% of the vote would result in the prosecutor being fined 1000 drachmas and losing the right to bring similar cases in future – Carey 2000, 12 notes this effectively disbarred them from future involvement in Athens’ highly litigious public life. In other aspects of political life too, taking a leading role carried risks. Rubinstein 2000, 202– 204 argues that politically active citizens might therefore choose to operate through a less politically active friend when initiating legal actions, to protect themselves. Thus in 336 BCE, when Ktesiphon proposed Demosthenes be awarded a crown, Aeschines was forced to prosecute Ktesiphon (Aeschines 3) rather than Demosthenes directly, for making an illegal proposal (on this procedure, the graphê paranomôn, see Hansen 1974); Demosthenes spoke on behalf of Ktesiphon (Demosthenes 18) and received more than 80% of the vote, forcing Aeschines, who had not taken the precaution of operating through a frontman, out of public life (and the city – Plutarch, Demosthenes 24). On the ‘badness’ of sykophants see Christ 2008, 170–174; Fisher 2008, 297–299. This perhaps suggests a link with sophists – another type of ‘bad person’ arousing hostility (see below). Deinos is not a compliment: it means over-clever, cunning, full of verbal tricks.

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and regularly prosecute rich men who are poor at speaking. They are all base, malicious, and censorious. Sykophantia is linked with injustice, baseness, lies, shamelessness, perjury, ingratitude, and slander.62 These comments, all made in front of a mass audience,63 suggest Athenians disliked sykophants very much indeed, and there is little reason to question Aristotle’s suggestion that this dislike was as strong as hatred. It is important for us to bear in mind this hostile emotional response. While, clearly, we would not expect Athenians to react viscerally every time a speaker labelled his opponent a sykophant with little to back it up (which happens with surprising frequency, and should perhaps be taken as part of the standard knock-about of Attic oratory), we have a large number of cases where charges of sykophantia are sustained throughout the speech, and we should certainly interpret these as instances of the speaker aiming to arouse the jury’s hostility against his opponent. Building on Lene Rubinstein’s argument that it is only public prosecutions that easily lend themselves to explicit attempts to arouse a jury’s hatred (see note 34 above), I propose that finding ways to label the opponent as one or other type of undesirable is a more subtle way of awakening a jury’s hostility covertly, and is thus suitable for wider use. While repeated labelling of the opponent as a sykophant does occur in public prosecutions, in light of Rubinstein’s arguments it is notable that this also occurs frequently in private prosecutions, and as a counteraccusation in public and private defence speeches – in all of which explicit calls for misos are uncommon.64 For reasons of space I shall discuss only three of these speeches here (none of them public prosecutions). In Isocrates’ Against Euthynos, the speaker plays on the idea that sykophants prosecute those who are rich but poor speakers, by arguing at length that, since his opponent is poor but a good speaker, he would not be a logical choice for some62

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Take bribes (Andocides 1.105); prosecute for money (Lysias 25.3); criminals (Aeschines 2.272); clever and prosecute rich, bad speakers (Isocrates 21.5); base, malicious, censorious (Demosthenes 18.242); injustice and baseness (Isocrates 18.55); lies, shamelessness, and baseness (Demosthenes 25.9); shamelessness, perjury, and ingratitude (Demosthenes 25.35); slander (Isaeus 11.4, Aeschines 2.145). Isocrates also says that sykophants do not support democracy (8.133), practise bitterness and evil (15.300; cf. 15.242), are hostile (dysmenês) to everyone (15.288), were judged by ‘our’ ancestors as responsible for most evils and are comparable to criminals (15.313), and he also regularly links sykophancy with slander (15.8, 15.175, 15.241; 15.163 also with envy). However these comments are made in tracts that were not intended for a mass audience, so we cannot assume his views were widely shared outside the wealth/education elite, except where corroborated in speeches intended for a mass audience (e.g. the comments linking sykophancy to slander, or the statement that sykophancy was a crime). Similarly, Xenophon, Memorabilia 2.9 has an anecdote showing some sykophants attempting blackmail, and being given a taste of their own medicine – this suggests that such blackmail attempts were real, though again as this work was not intended for a mass audience, it can only be taken as evidence for the views of Xenophon and his higher status readership. Public prosecutions: e.g. Lysias 28; Demosthenes 21, 25; [Demosthenes] 58, 59; Aeschines 1, 3. Private prosecutions: e.g. Isocrates 17, 18, 21; Demosthenes 33, 36, 37, 38. Counteraccusation in public defence speeches: e.g. Andocides 1; Demosthenes 18; Aeschines 2. Counter-accusation in private defence speeches: e.g. Demosthenes 29, 55, 57.

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one to prosecute sykophantically.65 This in fact anticipates his opponent’s expected defence argument, that the prosecution was brought through sykophantia. Isocrates’ Against Kallimachos is also formally a prosecution speech, though in reality it is again a defence: Kallimachos was attempting to prosecute the speaker, who in turn introduced a special plea (paragraphê) that Kallimachos’ prosecution was inadmissible, as it contravened the terms of the amnesty ending the civil strife of 404–403 BCE between supporters of the oligarchic junta and the restored democracy;66 it is this speech that survives. Again the word sykophantês occurs a number of times,67 many of them simply to label the opponent, others to make derogatory comments about sykophantia. In both speeches the accusations are woven into the narrative, and build on themselves throughout the speech. Finally, Demosthenes’ On the Crown, delivered when Demosthenes’ ally Ktesiphon proposed a crown be bestowed upon him, and his lifelong political enemy Aeschines prosecuted Ktesiphon for making an illegal proposal (see note 59 above). Demosthenes begins by arguing that Aeschines told lies and abusive slanders; he says that Aeschines has bad character, that he spoke abusively, and repeats that he lied and slandered. He adds that the case shows the spite, insult, abuse, and contumely of an enemy, and that Aeschines is acting out of spite and malice.68 The loidor- root (meaning abuse) appears fifteen times in the speech, blasphêm- (slander) eight times, pseud-/pseus- (lying) twenty times, and accusations of diabolê (also slander) nine times. The echthr- root (hatred/enemy) occurs no fewer than forty-six times – and enmity is a reciprocal relationship in Greece.69 Further, we find four accusations of epêreia (spite) and four of phthonos (envy), and baska(i)n- (envious/malicious person) appears nine times. Accusations of sykophantia fit well into this litany of malicious reasons for Aeschines’ prosecution – the word occurs twenty-two times in the speech, of which well over half are direct accusations.70 And all these accusations, these claims against Aeschines, are designed to rouse hostile emotions in the jury against him.

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The word sykophantês occurs eight times in this speech (Isocrates 21): §§ 5, 8, 10, 11, 13 (twice), 14, 19. Mirhady 2000, 96. See Wolff 1966 on the paragraphê procedure; MacDowell 1978, 214–219 and Todd 1993, 135–139 offer brief discussions in English. Isocrates 18: §§ 2, 3, 7, 10, 14, 22, 24, 37, 43, 55, 64. Demosthenes 18: Lies (§9); abusive slanders (§10); bad character, spoke abusively, lied and slandered (§11); shows spite, insult, abuse, and contumely of an enemy (§12); spite and malice (§13). See Rhodes 1998; Todd 1998. Demosthenes 18: Loidor-: §§3, 10, 11, 12, 15, 123 (twice), 126, 138, 180, 256, 274, 284, 285, 290. Blasphêm-: §§10, 34, 82, 95, 123, 126, 256, 272. Pseud-/pseus-: §§9, 11, 17, 21, 24 (twice), 41, 55 (twice), 57, 95, 126, 136, 141, 142, 150, 225, 291, 294 (twice). Diabol/diaball-: §§7, 11, 14, 20, 24, 28, 111, 225, 293. Echthr-: §§5, 12, 15, 16, 35 (twice), 40, 46, 61, 70, 82, 119, 123, 124, 125, 131, 138 (twice), 139, 141, 143, 145, 147, 161, 163, 176, 188, 197, 198, 234 (twice), 236, 257, 265, 277, 278, 279, 283, 286, 293, 294, 295, 302, 307, 309, 315. Epêreia: §§12, 13, 138, 320. Phthonos: §§13, 121, 279, 303 (excluding those that are not accusations). Baska(i)n-: §§108, 119, 132, 139, 189, 242, 252, 307, 317. Sykophant-: §§95,

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3.2 Sophists Another type that aroused hostility in Athens was sophists. These, at least in origin, were itinerant teachers, who wandered Greece taking on paying pupils – mainly the sons of the leisured classes.71 The main sophist movement flourished in the last third of the fifth century BCE. Many of its most famous names gravitated to Athens which, thanks to the revenues of its empire, had a large wealthy/ leisured class in this period, who wanted their sons trained (inter alia) to address the Assembly. Sophists had a variety of interests, but rhetoric was normally one of the main subjects on their curricula; they were also infamous for allegedly teaching their young pupils to question existing mores, including religious ones. The most famous depiction of sophists in literature written for a mass audience does not occur in the oratorical corpus, but in Aristophanes’ comedy Clouds (dated 423 BCE). In this play, Socrates is lampooned as representative of the sophistic agenda: corrupting the young, not believing in the traditional gods, introducing new divinities,72 and teaching his pupils to wield morally wrong arguments so well as to overcome morally right ones.73 Demosthenes provides evidence that sophist was still a highly negative term decades later, saying Aeschines calls others speechwriters and sophists as an act of hybris against them, and that Aeschines labels him personally clever (deinos – see note 61 above), a sorcerer, and a sophist. Demosthenes turns these labels back on Aeschines, calling him a sophist, and a wicked one at that, a speechwriter, and an enemy of the gods.74 Elsewhere, Aeschines calls Demosthenes a rascally sophist who thinks to overturn the laws by phrasery, and also labels Timarchos a sophist, coupling this with laughter and amusement at the dêmos’ expense.75 In each case such labels (coupled with accusations of sykophantia, lying, abuse, slander etc. referred to above) were more than mere denigration: they aimed to arouse hostile emotions (dislike or hatred) in the jury against their opponent. This background explains an extraordinary passage in Demosthenes’ Against Lakritos. The speaker, who has characterised himself as an ill-educated rustic, bluff but honest,76 uses unexpectedly violent language about his opponent, labelling him a rogue, a sophist, and unjust (adikos). Sophists, he says, pay cash to Isocrates for education; they feel contempt (kataphronêsis – see above) for others, and consider themselves clever (deinos); they covet and take away others’ pro-

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112, 113 (twice), 118, 121, 138, 189, 192, 212 (twice), 232, 233, 235, 239, 242, 249, 256, 266, 275, 289, 317. See Gagarin 2002, 9–36 on the sophist movement. The real-life Socrates was in fact executed on just these charges, according to Plato (Apology 24b). See Dover 1968, xxxii–lvii on the association of these charges with the sophist movement, and Aristophanes’ choice of Socrates to represent them. Demosthenes 19.246; Demosthenes 18.276 – cf. Demosthenes 29.32 for another juxtaposition of sophists and sorcerers; Demosthenes 19.250. Aeschines 3.16, 3.202; Aeschines 1.125, 1.175. MacDowell 2004, 133; 2009, 265.

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perty, and are base (ponêros). He makes repeated use of derivatives of the verb paideuein (implying sophistic education, as taught by Socrates in Clouds), ponêros, adikos, and deinos, while repeatedly using the verb pisteuein (trust) against him, and contrasting his own simplicity and honesty.77 The violence of the language in this passage, and (given the popular animus discussed above) the repeated use of such words and associations, seem calculated to arouse the jury’s dislike or hatred for his opponent. 4 RESENTMENT The author of the pseudo-Aristotelian Rhetoric to Alexander argues that when an orator cannot arouse hatred or anger, he should instead attempt to arouse phthonos, which he says is very close to hatred.78 Emotion labels (and indeed emotions) do not always correspond easily between languages,79 and phthonos is a good example.80 In its usual meanings it covers both English envy (felt when someone else has something I lack, and my impulse is destructive)81 and possessive jealousy (felt when I have something I want to retain exclusive possession of, and am willing to damage/destroy the object or a rival to do so), and can also have strong overtones of begrudging, spite, or Schadenfreude; it is thus a very negative emotion, and in fact so taboo that it is almost never claimed for oneself, but only ascribed to others.82 However, there are occasions when – at least in Athens – it becomes a morally positive emotion, and that is when someone is behaving in some way beyond what is generally thought acceptable: phthonos is then deployed to cut them down to size.83 In the handful of instances where an orator enjoins his 77 78 79 80

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Demosthenes 35.39–43. [Aristotle], Rhetoric to Alexander 1445a15–20. Wierzbicka 1999, 24–38; Cairns 2003, 9–14 and 2008, 45f.; Konstan 2006, 4–8. By contrast with orgê and misos, which can uncomplicatedly be translated anger and hatred respectively. Note this is not necessarily the case in reverse: I argue below (note 83) that phthonos can sometimes (i.e. in certain situations) best be translated into English as anger. This implies that ancient Greek orgê included only a subset of situations covered by modern English anger – the two are not direct equivalents. See my discussion of scripts below. Though not when my impulse is emulative or admiring (‘Oh what a lovely X, I really envy you’), which is covered by Greek zêlos. See Sanders forthcoming, chapter 3 for a detailed exploration of the scope of phthonos. Konstan 2003, 80–82. In the Rhetoric, Aristotle separates this emotion out as to nemesan (usually translated indignation), which he describes as being felt for someone’s undeserved good fortune, especially in relation to wealth or power, while phthonos is felt only by morally base people and is unrelated to desert (Aristotle, Rhetoric 2.9 1386b16–20, 2.9 1386b31–35, 2.11 1388a35–46). At Nicomachean Ethics 2.7 1108b1–5, Aristotle argues that nemesis (as he calls it there) and phthonos are part of a continuum, where nemesis is a virtuous ‘mean’ only felt when someone’s good fortune is not deserved, and phthonos is the excessive vice whereby nemesis is felt far too often (the vice is in being too morally untrained to ascertain deserts properly) – Sanders 2008, 268–270. However, there is no support for this separation in other literature of the period, and it is clear that to nemesan/nemesis is Aristotle’s reinvention of an

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audience to feel phthonos, all of which relate to the abuse of wealth or political power,84 it is clear that it is the morally-positive, censorious version that is meant. However, we must bear in mind that where we can distinguish different types of phthonos, for Greeks there was only phthonos,85 and it would always have retained some sense of ambiguity even when used positively – which is possibly why it is called for explicitly so rarely. For this reason I translate it ‘resentment’ here, which gives some sense of the ambiguity between envy and indignation in English. But it should constantly be borne in mind that phthonos covers a wider variety of situations and emotional reactions (psychological, verbal, and dramatic) to those situations, that in English might be best covered by any of the terms envy, jealousy, resentment, indignation, or even, in the right circumstances, anger (see note 83 above). To understand emotions such as phthonos effectively, Robert Kaster argues for the use of ‘narrative processes or scripts’ as an analytical tool.86 These are essentially different types of scenario in which the emotion occurs, and which play out differently, as regards their cognitive antecedents, psychological/physiological effects, characteristic speech/action, and resolution.87 Scripts may or may not be distinguishable by linguistic labels in the same, or another, language. For instance, English jealousy has four scripts which are distinguishable by English labels: jealous of my position, possessive jealousy, sexual jealousy, and envy. Phthonos, as we have seen, comprises several scripts which are not distinguishable by other labels in Classical Greek, including those relating to English envy, possessive jealousy, and indignation/resentment.88

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emotion term that had by then more or less died out, and been incorporated into the wider scope of phthonos – Sanders forthcoming, chapter 4. Konstan 2006, 68f. argues that Aristotle used to nemesan to cover one type of anger (i.e. a response to an injustice, where orgê is a response to a slight); my argument would mean that (outside Aristotle) it is phthonos that describes this sort of anger. Sanders forthcoming, chapter 3; this again tallies with what Aristotle says about his to nemesan – see note 83 above. The passages are: Lysias 27.11.2; Isocrates 4.184.1, 18.51.3; Isaeus 6.61.2; Demosthenes 21.29.4, 21.196.4, 21.196.6, 37.52.3; Aeschines 3.42.1. Kaster 2005, 7 makes the same point for Latin fastidium. Kaster 2005, 8. Cairns 2008, 46 also argues for the use of scripts, citing further scholarship (59 n. 17). Wierzbicka 1999 makes the case for meta-language (instead of English language) scripts, though this has attracted criticism – see e.g. Cairns 2008, 49f. Sanders forthcoming uses a script approach throughout. See pp. 157f. Sanders forthcoming, chapters 2 and 3. On the frequent use of jealousy for envy by laypersons, see Parrott 1991, 24; also Ben-Ze’ev 2000, 281f., who argues that the one-way confusion of envy and jealousy arises because of the frequency of situations in which these emotions co-occur, coupled with the social unacceptability of envy.

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4.1 Avoidance of Liturgies Unlike modern democracies, Athens had no income tax, though there were many types of indirect taxes that fell on all citizens.89 However, it also instituted a system whereby the rich (citizens and resident aliens) paid directly for certain expenditures for the military or cultural benefit of the polis: e.g. outfitting warships (triêrarchia), superintending the exercise halls (gymnasiarchia), producing choruses for the tragic/comic festivals (chorêgia), and giving public feasts (hestiasis).90 The benefit for the rich was that, if the system worked properly, they greatly reduced the risk of civil strife with the numerically far greater poor, in which they risked being killed and having their property expropriated.91 Over time, the traditional competition among the aristocracy found an outlet in competition to render services to the polis.92 A rhetoric of reciprocity grew up, whereby the rich performed liturgies and the polis responded with gratitude (charis) – which could be called on if ever they were on trial.93 When wealthy individuals avoided or evaded their duty to perform liturgies, the dêmos responded with phthonos (resentment).94 89 90

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E.g. customs dues, transaction taxes, production taxes, slave tax etc. – see Bresson 2008, 107–115; Migeotte 2009, 49–54. Payment was initially voluntary; it became institutional over time, but some still performed extra liturgies voluntarily – Ober 1989, 199; MacDowell 2009, 127f.; Harris 2008, 15 for a list of liturgies, with references to further bibliography. Some expenditures were allocated on a rota system, others by lot; some were defrayed by a group of moderately rich men, rather than one very rich. Aside from two brief, bloody oligarchic coups in 411 and 404–403 BCE, the Athenian democratic settlement was notably stable for its time. See Thucydides 3.69–85 for a detailed account of civil strife (stasis), between the rich (who wanted an oligarchy and alliance with Corinth) and the poor (who wanted a democracy and alliance with Athens), in the Adriatic island polis of Kerkyra in 427 BCE. As Thucydides makes clear throughout his account, stasis was a problem that bedevilled Greek poleis in this period. For a more theoretical account of civil strife and (frequently violent) changes in constitution, see Aristotle, Politics 5. For modern studies of stasis (excluding Athens), see Gehrke 1985; Ober 1989 for the most in-depth study of ‘mass’ and ‘elite’ relations in Classical Athens; see also Hansen and Nielsen 2004, 124–129. Hence the demagogue and general Alcibiades’ boast to the Assembly in 415 BCE that he had entered no fewer than seven chariots at the Olympic games, and taken first, second, and fourth prizes, and that this splendid display profoundly boosted the public image of Athens (Thucydides 6.16). On aristocratic competition in services to the dêmos see Whitehead 1983; Ober 1989, 84f., 291; 1996, 27f.; MacDowell 2009, 128 says they volunteered ‘to gain prestige and honour’. Ober 1989, 226–233; Fisher 2003. Ober 1989, 205f. argues that the attitude of the poor towards the rich was always shaped by phthonos (envy), though the evidence for this is questionable, being largely contained in texts written by and for men of higher wealth and status. Fisher 2003 and Cairns 2003, 244–249 argue, more plausibly, that economic differences – and the concomitant potential for the wealthy to avoid burdens that the poor could not avoid – ensured that phthonos (envy) was always a latent possibility, ready for exploitation as part of an orator’s strategy. On accusations of phthonos (envy) in the oratorical corpus, see Sanders forthcoming, chapter 5.

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The connection of phthonos (resentment) with under-performance of liturgies is most explicit in Demosthenes’ Against Meidias. We noted above frequent calls for anger, occurring throughout the speech, which are related to Meidias’ hybris. Demosthenes then tells us, at some length, of Meidias’ manipulation of the laws to have one Straton stripped of his citizenship.95 After describing this abuse, which (as it is achieved through malicious prosecution) is akin to sykophantia, and reminding them of Meidias’ impiety (in striking him on a religious festival), he denounces Meidias as ‘abusive and disgusting’ and calls for juror hatred.96 Finally, having put down a number of markers linking Meidias’ wealth to his arrogance (thrasos, hyperêphania, hybris) and other inappropriate behaviour, and making several general comments to the effect that bad behaviour resulting from wealth deserves punishment, he brings Meidias’ inappropriate use of his wealth centre-stage in a long section, deriding the small number of liturgies he has performed, and explaining why such liturgies as he has done should not be taken into account.97 It is only at this point that Demosthenes finally draws on his earlier allusions to the appropriate response, and calls for the jury’s phthonos (resentment, at Meidias’ lifestyle and conduct), without any trace of pity, to accompany the misos and orgê that he called for earlier.98 Confirmation that inadequate performance of liturgies deserves phthonos comes from Demosthenes’ two speeches Against Aphobos, which he delivered aged eighteen in the prosecution of his guardians (his father died when he was a minor) for misappropriation of his inheritance.99 Demosthenes asserts that Aphobos and his co-guardians have acted in such a way that his estate has little left, and asks rhetorically, ‘Surely this is worthy of indignation?’.100 The verb used here, diaganaktein, refers to a somewhat milder emotion than orgê and phthonos. However, Demosthenes then goes on to argue that his inherited estate, which used 95 96

Demosthenes 21.83ff. Demosthenes 21.98.3–5: ὅτι νὴ ∆ί’ ἀσελγής ἐστι καὶ βδελυρός· ταῦτα γάρ ἐστι τἀληθῆ· ἀλλὰ µισεῖν ὀφείλετ’, ἄνδρες Ἀθηναῖοι, δήπου τοὺς τοιούτους µᾶλλον ἢ σῴζειν (‘By Zeus, that he is abusive and disgusting? That is certainly true. But, men of Athens, you surely ought to hate such men, not protect them’; translated by Harris 2008, 121). On all of these charges, the hatred called for relates to the kind of person Meidias is, and thus accords with Aristotle’s comments on the nature of hatred (Rhetoric 2.4 1382a1–7) discussed above. 97 Wealth linked with arrogance etc.: §§20, 66, 96, 98, 109, 138, 198, 201. Bad behaviour from wealth deserves punishment: §§98, 124, 143. Inappropriate use of wealth: §§151–174. 98 Demosthenes 21.196.4–6: φθόνον ἐξ ὧν ζῇς, καὶ ἐφ’ οἷς ἐξαπατᾷς ἔλεον. οὐκ ἔστιν οὐδαµόθεν σοι προσήκων ἔλεος οὐδὲ καθ’ ἕν, ἀλλὰ τοὐναντίον µῖσος καὶ φθόνος καὶ ὀργή. From all we have seen about the cultural implications of these emotion words, we can now interpret this call as: ‘He has shown himself deserving of your enmity (so hate him), he has committed injustices through his wealth (so resent him), and he has injured each and every one of you personally (so be angry at him)’. 99 Demosthenes 27 and 28. Under Athenian inheritance law, the guardians of an orphaned minor administered the deceased father’s estate as if it were part of their own, and then passed it on (ideally suitably enhanced in value) to the son when he came of age. Demosthenes’ guardians, including Aphobos, claimed that there was little left (Demosthenes 27.6). 100 Demosthenes 27.63.4–5: πῶς οὐκ ἄξιον διαγανακτεῖν;

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to perform lots of expensive liturgies, can no longer perform even small ones: Aphobos and his co-guardians have hidden the will, used the profits to defray the expenses of their own estates, and appropriated the capital to enhance their own.101 What emotion is appropriate? By comparison with Against Meidias, we would expect him to be covertly manipulating the jury’s phthonos (resentment). Demosthenes does not call for it explicitly here, but in his second speech in the trial (see note 8 above) he does: ‘Which of you’, he asks, ‘would not be justly resentful at Aphobos…?’.102 Very similar arguments to those in Demosthenes’ Against Aphobos speeches are made in Isaeus’ On the Estate of Dikaiogenes, 103 another inheritance dispute, and one can assume the same emotion is being aroused. More explicitly, in Isaeus’ On the Estate of Philoktemon, the speaker says his friends (on whose behalf he is speaking) have performed lots of liturgies while their opponents have not, so ‘you should resent them not us’.104 A corollary of talking about one’s opponent’s avoidance of liturgies to arouse phthonos for them, is that if a speaker refers to his own liturgies at length, he might be trying to defuse jurors’ phthonos against him, whether called for explicitly by his opponent or not.105 In Demosthenes’ For Phormion, the speaker criticises his opponent Apollodoros, saying that he will claim he has performed many liturgies and then been treated shamefully; however, in reality, the liturgies were performed on Apollodoros’ behalf by his guardians during his minority, and since then Apollodoros has spent barely a fraction of the income, let alone the capital, on the city; instead he has shamefully and ignobly squandered his inheritance.106 Paraphrasing the emotions aroused and suppressed: Apollodoros is trying to awaken gratitude by talking of his many liturgies; the speaker, however, argues that gratitude is not due – and by inference phthonos (resentment) is – 101 Demosthenes 27.64. 102 Demosthenes 28.18.2–3: τίς δ’ οὐκ ἂν ὑµῶν τούτῳ µὲν φθονήσειε δικαίως ...; see §1 above on follow-up speeches. The juxtaposition of just and phthonos confirm it is the censuring type (resentment, indignation, even anger) that is meant. 103 Isaeus 5.34–45. 104 Isaeus 6.61.1–3: ὥστ’ οὐ φθονεῖσθαί εἰσιν ἄξιοι, ἀλλὰ πολὺ µᾶλλον, νὴ τὸν ∆ία καὶ τὸν Ἀπόλλω, οὗτοι, εἰ λήψονται ἃ µὴ προσήκει αὐτοῖς. 105 And might simultaneously be trying to arouse their gratitude, or indeed other favourable emotions. For instance, at Demosthenes 25.76.5–6 the speaker says his opponent might talk about his liturgies to arouse, not gratitude, but pity (eleos) and goodwill (philanthrôpia). However, this particular opponent has not performed any liturgies (25.77–78), so (says the speaker) these emotions should not be felt for him; we might instead read a covert attempt to arouse phthonos. 106 Demosthenes 36.39–41: ἀλλὰ νὴ ∆ία ταῦθ’ ἡ πόλις εἴληφεν, καὶ δεινὰ πέπονθας πολλὰ καταλελῃτουργηκώς. ἀλλ’ ἃ µὲν ἐκ κοινῶν ἐλῃτούργεις τῶν χρηµάτων, σὺ καὶ ἁδελφὸς ἀνηλώσατε· ἃ δ’ ὕστερον, οὐκ ἔστιν ἄξια µὴ ὅτι δυοῖν ταλάντοιν προσόδου, ἀλλ’ οὐδ’ εἴκοσι µνῶν. µηδὲν οὖν τὴν πόλιν αἰτιῶ, µηδ’ ἃ σὺ τῶν ὄντων αἰσχρῶς καὶ κακῶς ἀνήλωκας, ὡς ἡ πόλις εἴληφεν, λέγε. ἵνα δ’ εἰδῆτ’, ὦ ἄνδρες Ἀθηναῖοι, τό τε πλῆθος τῶν χρηµάτων ὧν εἴληφε, καὶ τὰς λῃτουργίας ἃς λελῃτούργηκεν, ἀναγνώσεται ὑµῖν καθ’ ἓν ἕκαστον. ... Τοσαῦτα µὲν τοίνυν χρήµατ’ εἰληφὼς καὶ χρέα πολλῶν ταλάντων ἔχων ..., καὶ τοσαῦτ’ ἀνηλωκὼς ὅσ’ ὑµεῖς ἠκούσατε, οὐδὲ πολλοστὸν µέρος τῶν προσόδων, µὴ ὅτι τῶν ἀρχαίων, εἰς τὰς λῃτουργίας, ὅµως ἀλαζονεύσεται καὶ τριηραρχίας ἐρεῖ καὶ χορηγίας.

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since Apollodoros has not been making the liturgies he should have. A further indication that phthonos is being covertly aroused is Demosthenes’ statement that Apollodoros squandered the assets he received from his father’s estate, as Lysias testifies that phthonos is the emotion felt towards those squandering their patrimonies.107 4.2 Embezzlement and Bribe-taking There was a widespread perception in democratic Athens that those who were politically active (in the Assembly and/or the lawcourts, or filling magistracies) did rather well out of the system.108 Some genuine rewards were available to them (voted honours and immunities from certain expenditures, free dining at public expense etc. – though most of these were very rare); but still they were seen to make money in all sorts of underhand ways, including bribery (by foreign allies, or to avoid malicious prosecution), corruption (i.e. kick-backs), and embezzlement.109 This prevailing assumption is underlined by the mid-fifth century demagogue Perikles’ pointed commendation of himself to the dêmos as incorruptible.110 Hyperides suggests that it was both expected and acceptable for public figures and generals to make significant personal profits, provided the money was used in the interests of Athens rather than against them,111 but this cannot have been the generally accepted view. Rather we might look to Demosthenes once again, who in his early political career castigates more established public figures: he says some have gone from being beggars to being wealthy,112 and have become eminent from obscurity, some of their private houses are grander than public buildings, and their personal fortunes have risen as much as the city’s have fallen.113 Demosthenes alludes to wholesale embezzlement by those who are 107 Lysias 27.11.1–2: καίτοι ἑτέροις ὑµεῖς ἔστιν ὅτε τὰ πατρῷα κεκτηµένοις ταῦτα ποιοῦσιν ἐφθονεῖτε. Ironically, Lysias is talking about people spending their patrimonies on the city, but he refers to a time in the past (Lysias’ speech is in any case set some 40 years earlier – Todd 2000, 282; MacDowell 2004, 152), and the implication is that in those times, rich citizens spending money on the city were bribing the dêmos for their support. In fact, squandering one’s inheritance was a crime in Athens, punishable by atimia (loss of many citizen rights) – see Hansen 1976, 55–82 on the crimes for which atimia is imposed. 108 Sinclair 1988, 179; Carey 1994, 73. 109 Harvey 1985, 89–102; Sinclair 1988, 176–186. 110 Thucydides 2.60.5.3–4: φιλόπολίς τε καὶ χρηµάτων κρείσσων – see Hornblower 1991, 333f. Harvey 1985, 98 notes that only four Athenian public figures are so described in literary sources, three of them from the mid-fifth century. 111 Hyperides 5.25.1–5: ὅπερ γὰρ καὶ ἐν τῷ δήµῳ εἶπον, πολλὰ ὑµεῖς ὦ ἄνδρες δικασταὶ δίδοτε ἑκόντες τοῖς στρατηγοῖς καὶ τοῖς ῥήτορσιν ὠφελεῖσθαι, οὐ τῶν νόµων αὐτοῖς δεδωκότων τοῦτο ποιεῖν, ἀλλὰ τῆς ὑµετέρας πραότητος καὶ φιλανθρωπίας, ἓν µόνον παραφυλάττοντες, ὅπως δι’ ὑµᾶς καὶ µὴ καθ’ ὑµῶν ἔσται τὸ λαµβανόµενον. 112 Compare ‘from poverty to wealth’ (note 117 below). 113 Demosthenes 3.29.5–9: ἀποβλέψατε δὴ πρὸς τοὺς ταῦτα πολιτευοµένους, ὧν οἱ µὲν ἐκ πτωχῶν πλούσιοι γεγόνασιν, οἱ δ’ ἐξ ἀδόξων ἔντιµοι, ἔνιοι δὲ τὰς ἰδίας οἰκίας τῶν δηµοσίων οἰκοδοµηµάτων σεµνοτέρας εἰσὶ κατεσκευασµένοι, ὅσῳ δὲ τὰ τῆς πόλεως ἐλάττω γέγονεν, τοσούτῳ τὰ τούτων ηὔξηται.

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politically active, made even clearer when he goes on to say that, when politicians spend public money, the dêmos are grateful for them spending their (the dêmos’) own possessions.114 These accusations will play to a range of hostile emotions: e.g. embezzlement is normally described as klopê (theft) in Greek, and in several speeches this is associated with explicit calls for orgê.115 Although we do not find explicit exhortations to phthonos, I contend that this is because phthonos generally had such negative connotations (i.e. envy, jealousy) that it was much harder to play with explicitly than orgê – hence why there are only nine explicit calls for phthonos in the corpus (see note 84 above). Nevertheless, it should be clear from the previous sections that accusations of elites abusing their positions with respect to money and political power, will at least potentially play to a phthonos agenda – and I believe this allows some speakers to arouse phthonos covertly alongside orgê. Close examination of several speeches about embezzlement and bribe-taking suggest this does indeed happen. In Lysias’ Against Ergokles, the speaker begins by listing a number of offences Ergokles has committed, and calls for orgê. 116 However, he focuses on just one of the charges: that Ergokles has become wealthy from poverty at ‘your’ (i.e. the dêmos’) expense,117 the latter phrase making clear who the rightful owners of the money are. The speaker states that Ergokles and his colleagues used to be poor and in need, but now have swiftly accumulated the largest property of all the citizens.118 He continues to contrast the impoverished jurors with his enriched opponent: the jurors are weighed down by the war tax (eisphora), so should not forgive embezzlers and bribe-takers; jurors would be rendered poor because of the eisphora, while Ergokles and his cronies became the most wealthy citizens; as soon as they had taken their fill of and enjoyed the dêmos’ possessions, they thought themselves apart from the city; now Ergokles and his cronies are rich and hate the dêmos, they want to rule over it and, fearing to

114 Demosthenes 3.31.2–7: ὑµεῖς δ’ ὁ δῆµος … τῶν ὑµετέρων αὐτῶν χάριν προσοφείλετε. 115 Lysias 27, 28, 29, 30; Dinarchus 1, 2 – some of which are discussed below. A notable counter-example is Demosthenes 24, which has extensive discussion of theft and a number of calls for orgê, but never connects the two. Aristotle connects theft with misos (see above), but this only finds support in the oratorical corpus in Dinarchus 2. 116 Lysias 28.2.5–6: ὑµέτερον τοίνυν ἔργον ἐστίν, ὦ ἄνδρες Ἀθηναῖοι, ἐπὶ τοῖς τοιούτοις ὀργίζεσθαι. 117 Lysias 28.1.6–7: καὶ ἐκ πένητος ἐκ τῶν ὑµετέρων πλούσιος γεγενηµένος. The phrase ‘wealthy from poverty’ (plousios ek penêtôn, or similar) appears a number of times in the oratorical corpus (Isocrates 5.89.7, 8.124.7; Lysias 1.4.6, 25.27.1, 25.30.4, 27.9.6, 28.1.6; Demosthenes 24.124.7, 57.45.10), and, as Aristotle notes in his description of to nemesan, while those who have been wealthy for a long time seem to be so justly, those lately wealthy do not (Aristotle, Rhetoric 2.9 1387a24–26: αἴτιον δ’ ὅτι οἱ µὲν [ἀρχαιόπλουτοι] δοκοῦσι τὰ αὑτῶν ἔχειν οἱ δ’ [νεόπλουτοι] οὔ· τὸ γὰρ ἀεὶ οὕτω φαινόµενον ἔχειν ἀληθὲς δοκεῖ, ὥστε οἱ ἕτεροι οὐ τὰ αὑτῶν ἔχειν). ‘Correcting’ Aristotle’s to nemesan (see note 83 above), we should read this phrase as aiming to arouse phthonos covertly. 118 Lysias 28.2.3–5: τούτους δὲ πένητας καὶ ἀπόρους ἐκπλεύσαντας οὕτως ταχέως πλείστην τῶν πολιτῶν οὐσίαν κεκτηµένους;

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lose what they have embezzled, they want to turn Athens into an oligarchy.119 This last charge, only a few years after the two bloody coups referred to earlier,120 aims at arousing far more than phthonos – fear, anger, and hatred are at least as likely. But the repeated ‘acoustic signal’ of ‘we’re poor, they’re rich; we’re poor, they’re rich’ should make it clear that phthonos is one of the emotions covertly being aroused throughout this passage. Similar themes can be found in Lysias’ follow-up prosecution Against Philokrates. Ergokles was convicted and executed,121 but since no money was found, the prosecutor alleges that he must have deposited it with the man he was closest to, Philokrates, who must now be convicted similarly for the money to be recouped. The speaker calls Philokrates one of those who possess the city’s property, and says that on conviction he would not be losing any of his own property, rather he would be giving the dêmos’ back to them; after a couple more references to the dêmos’ property, he says Philokrates was an accomplice of Ergokles in stealing their property, and they should grant no amnesty to those who steal their property; finally, he concludes that if they are wise, they will take back their property.122 The constant focus on the wrongful possession of ‘your property’ (the dêmos is addressed throughout in the second person) is striking, and seems calculated to arouse the jurors’ phthonos.123 One final speech I would like to draw attention to is Lysias’ On a Charge of Accepting Bribes.124 The speaker dwells at great length on his lavish expenditure on liturgies and his other services to the city. He then pleads that he not be 119 Lysias 28.3.1–3: καὶ γὰρ δὴ δεινὸν ἂν εἴη, εἰ νῦν µὲν οὕτως αὐτοὶ πιεζόµενοι ταῖς εἰσφοραῖς συγγνώµην τοῖς κλέπτουσι καὶ τοῖς δωροδοκοῦσιν ἔχοιτε. 28.4.5–7: καὶ ὑµᾶς µὲν διὰ τὰς εἰσφορὰς πενεστέρους ἀποδείξειν, Ἐργοκλέα δὲ καὶ τοὺς κόλακας τοὺς αὑτοῦ πλουσιωτάτους τῶν πολιτῶν ποιήσειν. 28.6.4–6: ἐπειδὴ τάχιστα ἐνέπληντο καὶ τῶν ὑµετέρων ἀπέλαυσαν, ἀλλοτρίους τῆς πόλεως αὑτοὺς ἡγήσαντο. 28.7.2–5: ἅµα γὰρ πλουτοῦσι καὶ ὑµᾶς µισοῦσι, καὶ οὐκέτι ὡς ἀρξόµενοι παρασκευάζονται ἀλλ’ ὡς ὑµῶν ἄρξοντες, καὶ δεδιότες ὑπὲρ ὧν ὑφῄρηνται ἕτοιµοί εἰσι καὶ χωρία καταλαµβάνειν καὶ ὀλιγαρχίαν καθιστάναι. 120 See note 91 above. Usher 1999, 99 notes this passage plays to the ‘tensions of those times’. 121 Lysias 29.2. 122 Lysias 29.8.3: τοὺς τὰ τῆς πόλεως ἔχοντας. 29.8.4–5: οὐδὲν γὰρ τῶν αὑτοῦ καταθήσει, ἀλλὰ τὰ ὑµέτερα αὐτῶν ὑµῖν ἀποδώσει. 29.9.3–4: τοὺς δὲ τὰ ὑµέτερα αὐτῶν ἔχοντας. 29.10.1: τὰ ὑµέτερα ἔχοντες. 29.11.5–6: οὗτος δὲ τὰ τῆς πόλεως Ἐργοκλεῖ συνειδὼς κλέπτοντι. 29.13.5–6: καὶ µηδεµίαν αὐτοῖς ἄδειαν δώσετε τὰ ὑµέτερα αὐτῶν διαρπάζουσι καὶ κλέπτουσιν. 29.14.3–4: ἐὰν οὖν σωφρονῆτε, τὰ ὑµέτερ’ αὐτῶν κοµιεῖσθε. 123 Many of the same themes that appear in Lysias 28 and 29 appear also in Lysias 27, Against Epikrates, including the phrases ‘they are stealing your property’ (27.6.1–2: νῦν δ’ ἀσφαλῶς αὐτοῖς ἔχει τὰ ὑµέτερα κλέπτειν) and ‘they have become wealthy from poverty out of your property’ (27.9.5–7: οὗτοι µὲν γὰρ ἐν τῷ πολέµῳ ἐκ πενήτων πλούσιοι γεγόνασιν ἐκ τῶν ὑµετέρων, ὑµεῖς δὲ διὰ τούτους πένητες) – see Usher 1999, 98f.; Todd 2000, 282. 124 Todd 2000, 228f. contends that the title of the speech may be misleading, and given various comments about being in possession of the city’s money it could be embezzlement that is the actual charge. It may be true that other charges are involved – however the speaker does beg not to be convicted of bribery (Lysias 21.21.4–5: ἐγὼ δ’ ὑµῶν δέοµαι καὶ ἱκετεύω καὶ ἀντιβολῶ µὴ καταγνῶναι δωροδοκίαν ἐµοῦ).

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deprived of ‘my own’ property (contrast the repeated insistence on ‘your’ property in the two speeches just discussed), as the vast amounts he has spent on the city should win him gratitude.125 Finally, he points out the sheer unlikelihood that someone who spends so much of his own money to the benefit of his city would then take bribes to harm it.126 This line of argument directly links the two issues we have been considering. The speaker recognises that the dêmos may feel phthonos for his supposed bribe-taking and/or embezzlement (see note 124 above; i.e. possessing the dêmos’ money), and he cleverly draws a parallel to phthonos at liturgy avoidance (i.e. not spending money on the dêmos). By conflating these two issues, the speaker effectively attempts to defuse phthonos for one type of action by showing phthonos for another type not to be deserved. And he even makes this explicit: ‘you should pity me for being poor’, he says, ‘rather than feel resentment (phthonos) for me for being rich’.127 5 SHARED CULTURAL VALUES AND AROUSAL OF EMOTIONS It is clear that there are a number of ways to arouse hostile emotions in a jury beyond explicit exhortation. Aside from crimes such as theft or murder, which might be expected to arouse hostile feelings anywhere, there are a good many that have culturally specific implications in the Classical Athenian democracy. I have explored a number of these at length, and there will be many others, both for hostile emotions and for other emotions such as pity, gratitude, friendship etc. The examples I have chosen have demonstrated a variety of ways in which the historian can determine the expected emotional response to a cultural stimulus. The most obviously useful evidence is explicit linkage in similar texts – here explicit statements in Attic forensic speeches that, e.g. someone has committed hybris and they deserve orgê in response, or that they have avoided their liturgical obligations and so deserve phthonos. However, even when such direct evidence does not exist, or is limited, it can be supplemented by evidence in other types of text, especially when their complementarity can be demonstrated. In the case of Attic oratory, the value system is that of the Athenian (mass) dêmos, and accordingly source evidence of similar standing was best provided by comedy (for in125 Lysias 21.12; cf. 21.17, 21.25. 126 Lysias 21.22. 127 Lysias 21.15.3–4: καὶ πένητα γενόµενον ἐλεῆσαι µᾶλλον ἢ πλουτοῦντι φθονῆσαι. This provides some assurance that the emotional response to bribe-taking (and embezzlement) indeed is – or at the very least includes – phthonos. The speaker also suggests that were he to need them to, he’d expect the dêmos to plead on his behalf, in the way he would do for his friends (§17; i.e. he claims friendship with the dêmos). This is interesting, alongside his pleas for gratitude and pity, in the light of [Aristotle], Rhetoric to Alexander’s advice that an orator should try to arouse his audience’s gratitude, pity, and friendship – see note 24 above. We can also note that Aristotle, Rhetoric 2.9 1387a3–5, 2.10 1388a27–30 argues that when one feels phthonos for someone one cannot feel pity for them, so the very fact that the speaker asks for pity suggests that he believes he has successfully dispelled the jurors’ phthonos.

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stance on sykophants and sophists) – another literary genre performed before the full dêmos, and having to work within its values. I have also used evidence (e.g. Aristotle on contempt and orgê, or pseudo-Aristotle on phthonos as an alternative hostile emotion to orgê and misos) from philosophers who analysed the oratorical corpus, despite their more limited audience, providing there was supporting evidence within other mass-audience literature – primarily within the oratorical corpus itself. This methodological approach has allowed me to determine, with a high degree of assurance, that certain acts and types of character really did arouse specific (and perhaps more generalised) hostile emotions. Accordingly they could be used to persuade a judge – in the case of Attic oratory, a number of judges – by arousing his/their emotions, thus affecting his/their judgment. That there are a great many ways to arouse a judge’s hostile emotions against an opponent, is important for an understanding of Attic oratory and the culture of the city in the democratic period. Of wider significance, though, is the conclusion that by identifying and playing on certain jointly-held cultural values, any supplicant can covertly influence a judge to take his or her part against an opponent – whether by arousing hostile emotions against the opponent (as I have concentrated on in this chapter), or by arousing friendly emotions towards him/herself. In Attic oratory, speakers address large audiences of their equals, though (as I suggest in note 47 above) the dêmos is placed in a hierarchically higher position than the prosecutor and defendant for the duration of the trial. Moving away from literary sources, we find other examples of addresses to those hierarchically superior, which seek to arouse emotions by appealing to common values, in order to influence their judgment against someone: inscribed prayers to a god for justice, for instance (see pp. 235–266 in this volume), or petitions written on papyri to Hellenistic (fourth-to first-century BCE) kings and their senior subordinates (see pp. 54f. and 57f.). There are a vast number of the latter, and many both show emotion and seek to arouse emotion in the person petitioned, for instance: To King Ptolemy greeting from Herakleides. ... As I was passing by her house an Egyptian woman, whose name is said to be Psenobastis, leaned out of a window and emptied a chamber pot of urine over my clothes, so that I was completely drenched. When I angrily reproached her, she hurled abuse at me. When I responded in kind, Psenobastis in her own right hand pulled the fold of my cloak in which I was wrapped, tore it and ripped it off me, so that my chest was laid quite bare. She also spat in my face, in the presence of several people whom I called to witness. The acts that I charge her with committing are: resorting to violence against me and being the one to start the fracas by laying her hands on me unlawfully…. I therefore beg you, O king, if it please you, not to ignore my being thus, for no reason, manhandled by an Egyptian woman, whereas I am a Greek and a visitor, but to order ... Psenobastis ... to be questioned on my complaint and to suffer, if what I say here is true, the 128 punishment (zêmia) that the strategos decrees. To King Ptolemy, greeting from Philista daughter of Lysias. ... I am wronged by Petechon. For as I was washing myself in the bathhouse ..., and had stepped out to soap myself, he being bath-man in the women’s rotunda and having brought in the jugs of hot water, emptied 128 P.Enteux. 79. Trans. Lewis 1986, 61. We can note the similarity of the charges made here against Psenobastis and some of those in Demosthenes 54 against Konon.

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Ed Sanders one over me and scalded my belly and my left thigh down to the knee, so that my life was in danger. ... I beg you, therefore, O king, if it please you, as a suppliant who has sought your protection, not to suffer me, who am a working woman, to be thus lawlessly treated, but to order Diophanes ... to bring Petechon before him in order ... [that] I may obtain justice 129 (dikaios). To Zenon, greeting. ... You know that you left me in Syria with Krotos and I did everything that was ordered with respect to the camels and was blameless towards you. When you sent an order to give me pay, he gave nothing of what you ordered. When I asked repeatedly that he give me what you ordered and Krotos gave me nothing, but kept telling me to remove myself, I held out for a long time waiting for you; but when I was in the want of necessities and could not get anything anywhere, I was compelled to run away into Syria so that I might not perish of hunger. So I wrote you that you might know that Krotos was the cause of it. When you sent me again to Philadelphia to Jason, although I do everything that is ordered, for nine months now he gives me nothing of what you ordered me to have, neither oil nor grain, except at two-month periods when he also pays the clothing allowance. And I am toiling away both summer and winter. And he orders me to accept sour wine for my ration. Well, they have treated me with scorn because I am a barbarian. I beg you therefore, if it seems good to you, to give them orders that I am to obtain what is owing and that in future they pay me in full, in order that I may not perish of hunger because I do not know how to speak 130 Greek.

In the first of the above petitions, we find a Greek man petitioning a Greek, that he might punish an Egyptian. He lays stress both on his own Greekness and the Egyptian’s non-Greekness, as well as describing in detail the barbarous way she has behaved towards him (including violence and other humiliating behaviour). The tone of the petition is outraged, and the writer clearly expects the king to share that outrage – and he demands ‘punishment’.131 The second petition is less straightforward, but again we have a Greek wronged by a barbarian, petitioning another Greek. Again the tone is outraged, and again the petitioner dwells on the ‘lawless’ behaviour (she ignores the fact that it was an accident, and pretends it was intentional violent behaviour), and demands ‘justice’. The contrast with the third petition is marked. Here a barbarian petitions a Greek about the behaviour of another Greek. There will be no shared Greek hostility toward barbarians to play to, and the Greek’s actions are accordingly not presented as outrageous, but as unjust. The tone throughout is one of suffering, and the petitioner’s clear intention is to arouse not anger, but pity. It is, once again, such attention to shared cultural values that allows us to interpret the emotions these petitions aim to arouse.132

129 P.Enteux. 82 (translated by Bagnall and Derow 2004, 234 no. 140). 130 P.Col. Zen. I 66 (translated by Bagnall and Derow 2004, 230–232 no. 137). 131 Rubinstein 2004 shows that explicit attempts to rouse anger go hand in hand with demands for punishment (kolaz-/ zêmi-/ timôr-) in Attic oratory. See also Allen 2000. 132 See Chaniotis 2005 for an instance where petitioners mistake their audience’s values.

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––– (2003) Let Envy Be Absent: Envy, Liturgies and Reciprocity in Athens, in D. Konstan and N. K. Rutter (eds.), Envy, Spite and Jealousy: the Rivalrous Emotions in Ancient Greece, Edinburgh, 181–215. ––– (2008) The Bad Boyfriend, the Flatterer and the Sykophant: Related Forms of the Kakos in Democratic Athens, in I. Sluiter and R.M. Rosen (eds.), KAKOS: Badness and Anti-Value in Classical Antiquity, Leiden/Boston, 185–231. Gagarin, M. (2002) Antiphon the Athenian: Oratory, Law and Justice in the Age of the Sophists, Austin. Gehrke, H.-J. (1985) Untersuchungen zu den inneren Kriegen in den griechischen Staaten des 5. und 4. Jahrhunderts v. Chr., Munich. Griffiths, P. E. (1997) What Emotions Really Are, Chicago/London. Hall, E. (1995) Lawcourt Dramas: The Power of Performance in Greek Forensic Oratory, Bulletin of the Institute of Classical Studies 40, 39–58. Hansen, M. H. (1974) The Sovereignty of the People’s Court in Athens in the Fourth Century B.C. and the Public Action against Unconstitutional Proposals, translated by J. Raphaelsen and S. Holbøll, Odense. ––– (1976) Apagoge, Endeixis and Ephegesis against Kakourgoi, Atimoi and Pheugontes: a Study in the Athenian Administration of Justice in the Fourth Century BC, Odense. Hansen, M. H. and T. H. Nielsen (2004) An Inventory of Archaic and Classical Poleis, Oxford/New York. Harré, R. (ed.) (1986) The Social Construction of Emotions, London. Harré, R. and W. G. Parrott (eds.) (1996) The Emotions Social, Cutural and Biological Dimensions, London/Thousand Oaks/New Delhi. Harris, E. M. (2008) Demosthenes, Speeches 20–22, Austin. Harrison, A. R. W. (1971) The Law of Athens. Vol. 2: Procedure, Oxford. Harvey, F. D. (1985) Dona ferentes: Some Aspects of Bribery in Greek Politics, in P. A. Cartledge and F. D. Harvey (eds.), CRUX: Essays Presented to G. E. M. de Ste. Croix on his 75th Birthday, Exeter, 76–117. Harvey, D. (1990) The sykophant and sykophancy: Vexatious Redefinition?, in P. A. Cartledge, P. C. Millett, and S. Todd (eds.), NOMOS: Essays in Athenian Law, Politics and Society, Cambridge, 103–121. Hornblower, S. (1991) A Commentary on Thucydides. Vol.1, Oxford. Johnson-Laird, P. N. and K. Oatley (2000) Cognitive and Social Construction in Emotions, in M. Lewis and J. M. Haviland-Jones (eds.), Handbook of Emotions, New York/London (second edition), 458–475 [first edition, 1993]. Johnstone, S. (1999) Disputes and Democracy: the Consequences of Litigation in Ancient Athens, Austin. Kaster, R. A. (2005) Emotion, Restraint, and Community in Ancient Rome, Oxford. Kennedy, G. A. (2007) Aristotle, On Rhetoric: a Theory of Civic Discourse, New York/Oxford. Konstan, D. (2003) Nemesis and Phthonos, in G. W. Bakewell and J. P. Sickinger (eds.), Gestures: Essays in Ancient History, Literature, and Philosophy Presented to Alan L. Boegehold, Oxford, 74–87. ––– (2006) The Emotions of the Ancient Greeks: Studies in Aristotle and Classical Literature, Toronto/Buffalo/ London. Kurihara, A. (2003) Person Enmity as a Motivation in Forensic Speeches, Classical Quarterly 53, 464–477. Lewis, N. (1986) Greeks in Ptolemaic Egypt: Case Studies in the Social History of the Hellenistic World, Oxford. MacDowell, D. M. (1978) The Law in Classical Athens, Ithaca. ––– (2004) Demosthenes: Speeches 27–38, Austin. ––– (2009) Demosthenes the Orator, Oxford.

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Migeotte, L. (2009) The Economy of the Greek Cities: from the Archaic Period to the Early Roman Empire, Berkeley/Los Angeles/London. Mirhady, D. C. (2000) Part One, in D. C. Mirhady and Y. L. Too, Isocrates I, Austin. Ober, J. (1989) Mass and Elite in Democratic Athens: Rhetoric, Ideology, and the Power of the People, Princeton. ––– (1996) The Athenian Revolution: Essays on Ancient Greek Democracy and Political Theory, Princeton. Osborne, R. (1985) Law in Action in Classical Athens, Journal of Hellenic Studies 105, 40–58. ––– (1990) Vexatious Litigation in Classical Athens: Sykophancy and the Sykophant, in P. A. Cartledge, P. C. Millett, and S. Todd (eds.), NOMOS: Essays in Athenian Law, Politics and Society, Cambridge, 83–102. Parrott, W. G. (1991) The Emotional Experiences of Envy and Jealousy, in P. Salovey (ed.), The Psychology of Jealousy and Envy, New York, 3–30. Reddy, W. M. (2001) The Navigation of Feeling: a Framework for the History of Emotions, Cambridge. Rhodes, P. J. (1981) A Commentary on the Aristotelian Athênaiôn Politeia, Oxford. ––– (1998) Enmity in Fourth-Century Athens, in P. Cartledge, P. Millett, and S. von Reden (eds.), KOSMOS: Essays in Order, Conflict and Community in Classical Athens, Cambridge, 144–161. Rosenwein, B. H. (2002) Worrying about Emotions in History, American Historical Review 107, 821–845. ––– (2006) Emotional Communities in the Early Middle Ages, Ithaca/London. Rubinstein, L. (2000) Litigation and Cooperation: Supporting Speakers in the Courts of Classical Athens, Stuttgart. ––– (2004) Stirring up Dicastic Anger, in D. L. Cairns and R. A. Knox (eds.), Law, Rhetoric, and Comedy in Classical Athens: Essays in Honour of Douglas M. MacDowell, Swansea, 187–203. ––– (2009) Oratory, in G. Boys-Stones, B. Graziosi, and P. Vasunia, The Oxford Handbook of Hellenic Studies, Oxford/New York, 505–517. Sanders, E. (2008) Pathos Phaulon: Aristotle and the Rhetoric of Phthonos, in I. Sluiter and R.M. Rosen (eds.), KAKOS: Badness and Anti-Value in Classical Antiquity, Leiden/Boston, 255–281. ––– (forthcoming) Envy and Jealousy in Classical Athens, New York. Sinclair, R. K. (1988) Democracy and Participation in Athens, Cambridge. Slater, W. J. (1995) The Theatricality of Justice, The Classical Bulletin 71, 143–157. Todd, S. (1993) The Shape of Athenian Law, Oxford. — (1998) The Rhetoric of Enmity in the Attic Orators, in P. Cartledge, P. Millett, and S. von Reden (eds.), KOSMOS: Essays in Order, Conflict and Community in Classical Athens, Cambridge, 162–169. ––– (2000) Lysias, Austin. Usher, S. (1999) Greek Oratory: Tradition and Originality, Oxford. Whitehead, D. (1983) Competitive Outlay and Community Profit: Philotimia in Democratic Athens, Classica et Mediaevalia 34, 55–74. Whitehead, D. and L. Rubinstein (forthcoming) Isocrates: the Six Forensic Speeches, Cambridge. Wierzbicka, A. (1999) Emotions across Languages and Cultures: Diversity and Universals, Cambridge. Wilson, P. (1996) Tragic Rhetoric: the Use of Tragedy and the Tragic in the Fourth Century, in M. S. Silk (ed.), Tragedy and the Tragic, Oxford, 310–331. Wolff, H. J. (1966) Die Attische Paragraphe: ein Beitrag zum Problem der Auflockerung archaischer Prozessformen, Weimar.

‘BEING UNABLE TO COME TO YOU AND LAMENT AND WEEP WITH YOU’ Grief and Condolence Letters on Papyrus Chrysi Kotsifou Who originated the most exquisite of inquisitions, the condolence system?... I wish I could go away! I wish I could go away and creep into the ground and die! If nobody need ever speak any more words to me! If anybody only knew what to say! ... The luxury of grief, like all luxuries, is pleasurable. ... Elizabeth Stuart Phelps, The Gates Ajar They told me, Francis Hinsley, they told me you were hung With red protruding eye-balls and black protruding tongue; I wept as I remembered how often you and I Had laughed about Los Angeles and now ’tis here you’ll lie; Here pickled in formaldehyde and painted like a whore, Shrimp-pink incorruptible, not lost nor gone before. Evelyn Waugh, The Loved One

1 INTRODUCTION Sometime between the third and the fourth centuries CE, Eudaimon wrote to his friend Hermodoros to offer consolation: Eudaimon to Hermodoros, my lord brother, greetings. By your health, if the duties that I have been assigned were not so numerous and so important as to be inexorable, I would have left everything and rushed to you myself to pay my respects to you, and to talk to you, (and) especially to (our?) sister about the human fate which has befallen (your?) daughter. For I know that you, being a man and having become one through the experience of many things, (being conscious of your human condition and one who has had the experience of many things) will be able to master yourself. But I beg you to tell (our?) sister the necessary things about that. For none of those who are born at all is immortal. Blessed is she (the girl) who has escaped this wretched and toilsome life before its disasters arrived. But it is necessary that (our?) sister, even though she is in such a sad (?) condition, nevertheless has the benefit of her nearest and dearest. I beg you, brother, if you have ever helped those in difficulties, now is the time 1 (?). To Hermodoros, exegetes of Alexandria, from Eudaimon, speculator, his brother.

1

SB XVIII 13946 (Hermopolis?, third to fourth century CE); cf. Chapa 1998, no. 8: Εὐδαίµων Ἑρµοδώρῳ τῷ κυρίῳ µου ἀδελφῷ χα̣ίρειν̣. νὴ τὴν σὴν σωτηρίαν, εἰ µὴ τὰ ἐπικί̣µ̣ε νά µο̣ι ̣ νῦν φροντίσµατα τοιαῦτα ἦν καὶ τηλικαῦτα ὡς ἀπαραίτητα εἶναι, π̣άντα ἂν καταλιπὼν

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In a much different light, Debra Hart May and Regina McAloney in their Everyday Letters for Busy People, state that ‘condolence letters are probably the single most difficult letters to write. Many well-intentioned people handle them poorly and actually offend rather than comfort the person grieving’. They then state that some wishes that should never appear in a condolence letter are: ‘Charlie’s in a better place’, ‘At least your baby won’t experience the hardships of life or did not live a long life of pain’, or ‘Don’t worry, you’ll see Tommy again in heaven’. They conclude that ‘one should also avoid trying to encourage a person back to a place of normalcy. Different people experience grief differently, and it is often a slow process’.2 Obviously, when Eudaimon was alive, this advice had not been written, but there was a large corpus of Greek and Latin consolation literary works, 3 epitaphs, 4 consolation decrees, 5 various epistolary theories 6 , and other condolence letters on papyri on which one could fall back for guidance. It is noteworthy that contemporary scholarship on consolation in the Greek and Roman world has never incorporated condolence letters on papyrus in its studies.7 Condolence letters on papyrus can, however, illuminate different aspects of grief and consolation from the consolatory literature mentioned above. This article therefore discusses how these letters described, expressed and attempted to control grief. First, they offer us an insight into private bereavement (grief) rather than public bereavement (mourning).8 Secondly, since some of the writers of these letters have also left dossiers of their other documents, the letters provide a fuller picture of these people’s familial situations and their relationships with their family and friends. The latter factor is important because in such cases we can find out whether the same person expressed the same emotions in different letters and also learn what sentiments characterized this individual’s domestic relations. Naturally, we can never definitely know if, and how much, the afflicted persons

2

3 4 5 6 7 8

αὐτὸς πρὸς ὑµᾶς ἀφικόµην ὅπως τε ὑµᾶς προσκυνήσω καὶ περὶ τοῦ συµβάντος ἀνθρωπίνου τῇ θ̣υ̣γ̣ατρὶ ὑ̣µ̣ῶν̣ διαλεχθῶ µάλιστα τῇ ἀδε̣λφῇ. οἶδα γὰρ ὅτι σύ, ἄνθρωπος ὢν καὶ διὰ πείρας πολλῶν γενόµενος, δυνήσει σαυτοῦ κρατεῖν, δέοµαι δέ σου καὶ τῇ ἀδελφῇ τὰ δέοντα ὁµιλῆσαι το̣ύ̣του ἕ̣νε̣κεν. οὐδ̣ε̣ὶ̣ς γὰρ τῶν ἁπλῶς γεν̣νωµ̣ένων ἀθ̣άνα̣τος. µακαρία µ̣ὲ̣ν̣ ἐκείνη ἡ π̣ρὸ τῶν σ̣υµφορῶν τὸν δύ̣στηνον̣ καὶ µοχθηρ̣ὸν βίον φυγ̣οῦσα, τ̣ὴ̣ν̣ δὲ δεῖ καὶ οὕτω κακῶς δι̣α̣κειµένην ὅµως τῶν ἀναγκαιοτάτων ἀπολαύεσθαι. δέοµαί σ̣ο̣υ, ἄδελφε, ε̣ἴ ̣ π̣οτε τ̣οῖς ἐν ἀνάγκῃ ἐχρησίµευσ̣ας, νῦν καιρός... Ἑρµοδώρῳ ἐξηγητῇ (design) Ἀλεξανδρ̣ε̣ί ας παρὰ Εὐδαίµονος σ̣π̣εκουλάτορος (design) ἀδελφοῦ. All abbreviations of papyri are according to the Checklist of Editions of Greek, Latin, Demotic and Coptic Papyri, Ostraca and Tablets at http://scriptorium.lib.duke.edu/papyrus/texts/clist_papyri.html. Hart May and McAloney 2004, 275–277. For more on contemporary psychiatric consultation on attachment and loss and on the various types of consolation, see Zunin and Stanton Zunin 1992. Ochs 1993; Sarres 2005; Konstan 2006, 244–258; Baltussen 2009; Graver 2009. Lattimore 1942. Buresch 1894; Strubbe 1998. White 1986, 189–191; Malherbe 1988. For example, Skountakis 2006. Eisenbruch 1984, 283.

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grieved for the departed,9 or if the sender of a condolence letter truly partook of the addressee’s suffering. Sarah Pomeroy, together with various other scholars, has noted that it is hazardous for the historian to attempt to probe the psychology of people long dead, since the application of modern psychoanalytic theory is anachronistic, and interpretations are invariably subjective.10 Thus, we can only examine the ways strategies of consolation were formulated, which emotions were expressed in them, and what role they performed. In general throughout the period that these letters span, one finds a common attitude towards death and the ways of dealing with it. Most of these letters, besides offering condolence at a time of great need, also exhibit deep concern about other people’s well-being and a strong love for the deceased. The emotional communities11 that are referred to in these letters are those of the extended family and close friends, and the emotional bonds and support systems that existed or were expected to exist between them. Finally, this chapter places condolence letters on papyrus, as far as is possible, within the framework of current psychological and anthropological research on grief, mostly in order to throw more light on these documents’ social and cultural construction. Placing grief as expressed in these papyri in its social and cultural context is of principal importance, as we know that grief belongs among the emotions that are not a pure response. Grief is conditioned by its dependence on an evolving cultural context, highly sensitive to 12 functional and larger cultural issues.

9

10 11

12

Equally important, the intensity of grief differs greatly from person to person when confronted with otherwise similar loss, as noted in Stearns and Knapp 1996, 132. Aristotle’s definition of grief is ‘a pain resulting from the death or loss of a one who is dear’ (Konstan 2006, 246). Pomeroy 1999, 75f. I use the term ‘emotional communities’ as defined by Rosenwein 2002 and 2006. Rosenwein’s definition of ‘emotional communities’ as communities that define and assess certain systems of feelings as valuable or harmful to them, and that they expect, encourage, tolerate, and deplore specific modes of emotional expression (Rosenwein 2002, 842) is most appropriate in the study of the cultural construction of grief, especially if one considers Walter’s statement that ‘clearly, whatever their inner experience, bereaved people live in a social context that promotes some ideas of grieving and pathologizes others’ (Walter 1999, xiv). Stearns and Knapp 1996, 149. Lutz 2001, 195, adds that while death and consequently grief are universal, mourning rituals – and condolence letters can be said to belong to this category – channel grief into a variety of funeral rituals, which are different from one culture to another. For an even stronger emphasis on the cultural aspect of grief and how grief underlies the constitution of any given society, see Good and Good 1988, 50; Walter 1999, xiv–xvi; Robben 2004.

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2 THE AUTHORS OF THE CONDOLENCE LETTERS Up to now there are sixteen edited letters of condolence on papyrus, dating from the first to the seventh centuries CE, most coming from the Roman era.13 We do not have any Ptolemaic condolence letters; all types of documents on papyrus from the Hellenistic period are underrepresented, however, especially private letters.14 Both men and women were the senders of such letters. Three of the letters were sent by women. As for the men concerned, we know with certainty that among them were a civil servant, a doctor, a speculator (an army officer or civil servant), a dyer in Oxyrhynchos, and a clergyman or priest: all and all, we can say, people who did not belong to the lower classes. The recipients are relatives or friends of the writers, and are therefore in most cases probably of the same social status.15 The general impression is that the senders of these letters were able to write for themselves and had received enough education to be acquainted with consolatory practices. Their level of education and high status are also reflected in the letters’ actual execution, which is sometimes of high quality and skill; at the very least, the high standard of the letters shows that these people could afford to employ professional scribes to write their letters for them.16 Notably, it is the expression of grief and compassion that results in letters that are, strictly speaking, associated with these middle-to-high status people. Grief, in itself, involves no judgment of intentions, no reckoning of relative power, and no reference to social status.17 The existence of hand-books about letter-writing in antiquity is wellattested,18 and all of them included guidelines about how a condolence letter should be phrased. In his Epistolary Types, Pseudo-Demetrios elaborated:19

13

14 15

16 17 18

Chapa 1998, has collected and re-edited thirteen of them. His analysis of the letters is exemplary and I draw upon it heavily for the authorship and social background of these documents, as well as for their literary antecedents. Chapa’s edition includes: SB XIV 11646 (first to second century CE), P.Oxy. I 115 (second century CE), BGU III 801 (second century CE), P.Wisc. II 84 (second to third century CE), P.Rainer Cent. 70 (second to third century CE), PSI XII 1248 (235 CE or later), P.Ross.Georg. III 2 (third century CE), SB XVIII 13946 (third to fourth century CE), P.Oxy. LV 3819 (first half of fourth century CE), P.Princ. II 102 (fourth century CE), P.Oxy. LIX 4004 (fifth century CE), P.Oxy. XVI 1874 (sixth to seventh century CE), and P.IFAO II 11 (second century CE). Since then, Papathomas 1998, has added two letters to this list: CPR XXV 21 and 33. Bagnall and Cribiore 2006, 15–18. Chapa 1998, 19f. Condolence decrees in inscriptions also date from the same period and involve people of the same status (Strubbe 1998, 64). For a general discussion of addressees, social structure, and the importance of education, see Dickey 1996, 8f. and 16f. For a discussion of the archaeological evidence that contradicts the up-to-now prevalent idea that the elite did not mourn for their children, see Schorn 2009, 342. The paleography of P.Ross.Georg. III 2, for example, confirms this idea. Konstan 2006, 247. White 1986, 189f.

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The consoling type [of a letter] is that written to people who are grieving because something unpleasant has happened (to them). It is as follows: When I heard of the terrible things that you met at the hands of thankless fate, I felt the deepest grief, considering that what had happened had not happened to you more than to me. When I saw all the things that assail life, all that day long I cried over them. But then I considered that such things are the common lot of all, with nature establishing neither a particular time nor age in which one must suffer something, but often confronting us secretly, awkwardly and undeservedly. Since I happened not to be present to comfort you, I decided to do so by letter. Bear, then, what has happened as lightly as you can, and exhort yourself just as you would exhort someone else. For you know that reason will make it easier for you to be relieved of your grief with the passage of time.

We also have an exemplar of a condolence-letter surviving on papyrus from the second century CE, which reads similarly to the text quoted above:20 -- for --, be of good heart. When the terrible news was signified to me about the deceased --, how I was distressed with all my household I cannot describe in words. You, brothers, as rational people who know what is in store for all of us and how you are neither the first nor the last to suffer this, bear what has happened courageously. I would have wished to meet you face to face, but I had no opportunity to set foot in the village. In remembering my fellowfeeling for the deceased and his good deeds, which he performed unstintingly for all, so I beg you not to hesitate to write to me about what you need. ...

In this model one had only to insert the required names in order to achieve a usable product. The copy is misspelled and syntactically abrupt, which shows, according to Peter Parsons, the hand of a writer with more ambition than education.21 Consequently, if we consider these standardized instructions about the composition of condolence letters together with all the philosophical commonplaces that the letters repeat, one could easily dismiss these documents as completely void of any individual information or true sentiment.22 But Antony R. Littlewood in his study of Byzantine condolence letters makes the valid point that in antiquity the recipients of condolence letters would have expected them to include all these classical allusions. They would have treated this factor as a sign of true

19

20

21 22

White 1986, 202f. and Malherbe 1988, 34f. Also see P.Bon 5 (third or fourth century CE); cf. Malherbe 1988, 46f. For similar instructions by orators about the proper way to express consolation, see Konstan 2006, 255. P.Hamb. IV 254 (second century CE): τί(ς) τι(νι) εὐθυµεῖν. τῆς ἀπευκταίας µοι ἀγγελίας σηµανθείσης περὶ τοῦ εὐµοίρου τι(νὸς) πῶς ἠχθέσθην πανοικε(σίᾳ) οὐκ ἔχω τῷ λόγῳ παραστῆσαι. ὑµεῖς δέ, ἀδελφοί, ὡς φρόνιµοι καὶ γινώσκοντες τὸ πᾶσι ἀποκείµενον καὶ ὡς οὔτε πρῶτοι οὔτε ὕστατοι ἐπάθετε τοῦτο γεν̣ναίως φέρετε τὸ συµβάν. ἐγὼ γὰρ θέλων αὐτοπροσώπως ὑµῖν συσταθῆναι οὐκ ἐπῆλθέ µοι τῇ κώµῃ ἐπιβῆναι. µιµνῃσκόµενος τῆς πρὸς τὸν εὔµοιρον συµπαθείας καὶ τῶν̣ ἐκείνου χαρίτων, ἃς πρὸς πάντας ἀφθόνως παρεῖχεν, παρακαλῶ οὖν ὑµᾶς µὴ ὀκνεῖν γράφειν µοι περὶ ὧν ὑµῖν ἐστιν ... (translated by Parsons 2007, 129f.). Parsons 2007, 129. Scholars have also questioned whether these letters could offer any consolation at all, given all the stereotypical expressions they use. For example, Worp 1995, 154.

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friendship. Ultimately, for the ancient reader it was the thought, as well as the time and effort spent, that counted.23 As mentioned above, the senders of these communications composed their letters because of the death of a family member or a friend. The deceased were both adults and children. Seven of the letters concerned the death of a child, six the death of an adult. Scholars in the past have mistakenly noted that condolence letters only refer to the death of children, and that the deaths of adults, whether young or old, were too routine a part of the human condition to call for special comment.24 This corpus, though, demonstrates that the same amount of grief and consolation was felt and shared for both adults and children. It cannot therefore be said that there is any strict relation between age and emotion in these documents.25 Interestingly in his discussion of consolation decrees, Johan Strubbe also notes that there is no difference in grief and its moderation, or consolation and consolatory ideas, between the consolation decrees for children and adults. Regardless of the age of the deceased, the decrees’ movers always expounded the same general, and wide-spread, consolatory ideas.26 3 THE FORMULA OF THE LETTERS The lay-out of these letters is standardized.27 To open, the senders primarily used the common greeting χαίρειν (greetings), though in some we find εὐψυχεῖν (take heart, be of good courage) or εὐθυµεῖν (be of good heart).28 Εὐψυχεῖν and εὐθυµεῖν were also frequently used in epitaphs as a farewell to the deceased, often in combination with the formula οὐδεὶς ἀθάνατος (‘no one is immortal’).29 Chairein, which strictly means ‘to rejoice’, is not really appropriate for such letters but was still used, which points to its non-emotional connotations and usage in these 23 24 25

26 27 28

29

Littlewood 1999, 34. For the use of letters as a token of friendship, see pp. 61–67 in this volume. Lewis 1983, 80f. These letters also contradict the long-standing attitude in modern scholarship that in the ancient world there was no great emotional attachment to children due to high mortality rates. For an acceptance of this theory in relation to the Byzantine world, see Littlewood 1999, 36f. For more on expression of care for children, see Bradley 1999, 184; Tsitsaroli and Valentin 2008; see also pp. 76–81 in this volume. Eisenbruch 1984a, also analyzes how similar misconceptions exist between western and eastern civilizations nowadays. He concludes (Eisenbruch 1984a, 293): ‘The question is not whether one society shows greater sensitivity to children than another, but rather that each has a special view of the significance of the child and his death for the bereaved family and for the whole community.’ Strubbe 1998, 72–74. The letters‘ formula is fully analyzed in Chapa 1998, 25–43. Χαίρειν is used in five letters: Chapa 1998, nos. 1, 4, 8, 9, 10; εὐψυχεῖν in two: Chapa 1998, nos. 2, 13; while εὐθυµεῖν is encountered in one: Chapa 1998, no. 6. Notably, the exemplar of a condolence letter, P.Hamb. IV 254, also recommends εὐθυµεῖν. In one condolence letter, Chapa 1998, no. 7, there is also the greeting εὖ πράσσειν (prosperity). Lattimore 1962, 253f.

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letters and others.30 It seems probable, however, that in some condolence letters it was felt important to seek a special greeting, something distinct from the normal practice, to emphasize the letter’s exceptional character. Their writers therefore chose the alternative greetings. The opening address is usually followed by an expression of sympathy and then an exhortation for the addressee to overcome grief and to return to normal daily activities as soon as possible.31 As part of their display of compassion, the letters’ senders mention how they have heard of the disaster that has befallen the addressee and how much they grieve with him or her. Given, though, that the letters’ composers were not together with the family of the deceased, we have to say that these could only have imagined the emotions that the latter felt after the death occurred. The use of euphemisms to refer to the deceased can also be considered an expression of sympathy towards the bereaved: the departed person is usually referred to as εὐµοίρως (‘of good fortune’) or µακαρίως (‘blessed’). In one letter, for example, the writer states: ‘I grieved and wept over the departed as much as I wept over Didymos’.32 Dead persons are called εὔµοιροι in other types of documentary papyri, such as general letters, and in Late Antiquity it became a way of referring to a late husband, especially in marriage contracts.33 Needless to say, this term was also frequently employed in Roman and Late Antique epitaphs.34 Similarly, the sender of a condolence letter states: ‘we were very much grieved when we heard about your blessed wife...’,35 and in another letter the deceased daughter is referred to as ‘blessed’.36 More specifically, consolations fall into three categories: ‘nothing can be done’; ‘death is common to all’; and ‘those who die escape the sufferings of life.’ All three themes can also be found in ancient authors and inscriptions. Plutarch, for example, gave his friend the following advice:37 So it is clear that he who tries to console a person in grief, and demonstrates that the calamity is one which is common to many, and less than the calamities which have befallen others, changes the opinion of the one in grief and gives him a similar conviction – that his calamity is really less than he supposed it to be.

30 31 32 33 34

35 36 37

For the distinction between lexical or referential and address meanings of certain words and how these meanings are separate but not unrelated, see Dickey 1996, 9–11. The latter will be analyzed fully in the following sections. P.Oxy. I 115 (second century CE): οὕτως ἐλυπήθην καὶ ἔκλαυσα ἐπὶ τῶι εὐµοίρωι ὡς ἐπὶ ∆ιδυµᾶτος ἔκλαυσα. The deceased son in P.Princ. II 102 is also referred to as eumoiros. Chapa 1998, 29. Eumoiros is a term commonly thought to be used primarily in Egypt; interestingly, though, a search of this term at the PHI Greek Inscriptions database shows that out of the 75 matches only 21 come from Egypt and Nubia. P. Oxy. LIX 4004 (fifth century CE). SB XVIII 13946 (third to fourth century CE). Plutarch, Moralia 106C (Consolation to Apollonios). For similar ideas in Classical poetry, see Lattimore 1962, 251: Simonides: ‘Death cannot be escaped; it hangs over all alike. Good and bad receive it equally;’ Euripides: ‘Death is the due to all mankind;’ Sophocles: ‘Death only is what he cannot escape.’

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The same idea is often repeated in inscriptions: ‘You are in ineluctable Persephone’s house, which is common to all’; ‘I saw the common daylight, and now I have death which is common to all forever’; ‘Time who crushes all has caught me’; ‘It is the common law for all men that they must die’; and ‘Do not weep, my much-grieved father, nor you, mother, this is the common end of all, and is fated’.38 ‘Nothing can be done’ is also what Sempronios advised both his brother and his mother: in his condolence letter to his brother, he says ‘... it is necessary, since we cannot do anything nor even help, to think of the human condition’; and to his mother, ‘But what can we do against which nobody can do anything?’39 Another letter asserts that ‘nobody among men is immortal’ (οὐδεὶς ἐν ἀνθρώποις ἀθάνατος).40 Lastly, the consolation ‘those who die escape the sufferings of life’ is noteworthy. As mentioned above, Eudaimon called Hermodoros’ deceased daughter makaria (‘blessed’), and justified the epithet by explaining that the girl was blessed because she had escaped ‘this wretched and toilsome life before its disasters arrived.’ Plutarch had expressed the same sentiments three centuries before, in his consolation for his friend Apollonios:41 Observe too the painfulness of life, and the exhaustion caused by many cares; if we should wish to enumerate all these, we should too readily condemn life, and we should confirm the opinion which now prevails in the minds of some that it is better to die than to live.

In his consolation to his wife after their two-year old daughter died, Plutarch added:42 That she has passed to a state where there is no pain need not be painful to us; for what sorrow can come to us through her, if nothing now can make her grieve?

A Late Antique Latin grave inscription from Trier also indirectly refers to the fact that the dead are blessed because they have escaped the toils of life:43 Here is buried a woman of senatorial rank, who merited, by the mercy of God, not to know about the death of her daughter which soon followed [her own] in peace; this consolation (solamen) was accorded to her.

38

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40 41 42 43

Lattimore 1962, 252–254. A notable difference, though, between the inscriptions and the papyri is that in the former, it is often the deceased person who offers consolation. For this phenomenon, see Lattimore 1962, 217f. and 230f. P.Wisc. II 84 (late second century CE). This euphemistic way of referring to death (ἀνθρώπινον, ‘the human condition’) is also commonly employed in wills. See, for example, the documents in P.Petrie2. P.Princ. II 102 (fourth century CE). Plutarch, Moralia 107A (Consolation to Apollonios). Plutarch, Moralia 611C (Consolation to his wife); translated in Pomeroy 1999, 601. On this text see Baltussen 2009. Rosenwein 2006, 68.

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4 GRIEF OR GUILT: DOUBLE-THEMED CONDOLENCE LETTERS Another question that should now be asked is whether there is a discrepancy between the expressed sorrow of the writer and the fact that he or she was not together with the addressee. What priorities did the writers of these letters have? What was the hierarchy of their values? No matter how much grief and sympathy they expressed in their letters, the fact that they were not together with their friends and family cannot be overlooked.44 As is to be expected, there was an inconsistency between what ancient epistolography maintained and the way people actually composed their letters. John White pointedly remarks:45 there was never a full integration of the practice and the theory. Ordinary letter writing, occasioned by practical necessities, influenced the theory but did not dominate it. Eventually, epistolary theory seems to have influenced the practice.

The above questions can be illuminated if we consider the condolence letters that do not deal exclusively with the consolation of the addressee but also refer to other family or business affairs in the same letter. There are five such doublethemed letters, all written by friends of the bereaved family and not family members. The letter of Theodoros (fifth century CE) is a characteristic example:46 To my truly most honoured lord brother Kanopos, Theodoros. We were much grieved when we heard about your blessed wife (or to hear about the fate of Makaria your wife?), and it is not surprising that your son Gratianos missed her so much and even more her other sons. But what can we do against mortality? So please console yourself and brave the journey and come to me with my lord Valentios at Neson, for I have need of your Nobility. I shall also have you brought by boat. Do not delay, for the river has risen (it is the time for the river to rise?). When you come please bring all the cleaned clothes that you have, that is: Nathanael’s tunic, a white cover, Syncletike’s tunic, Kyra’s headscarf and tunic. I greet Didymos and Philoxenos and all your people. (Written by a second hand) I pray for your health for many years, most honoured lord brother. Do not worry about the wheat. I did not send it myself, so that it could be measured out on your arrival.

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Contemporary scholarship has repeatedly noted, for example, how remarkable it is that Plutarch did not go to his wife when their daughter died but chose to send a letter instead. See Schorn 2009, 337f. White 1986, 190; Chapa 1998, 47. P.Oxy. LIX 4004; cf. Chapa 1998, no. 11; Rowlandson 1998, no. 258: κυρίῳ µου ἀλη̣θῶς̣ τι̣µιω̣τ̣ά̣τ̣ῳ̣ ἀ̣δ̣ε̣λ̣φ̣ῷ̣ Κανώπῳ, Θ̣εόδω̣ρος. πάνυ ἐλυπήθη̣µ̣ε̣ν̣ ἀκ̣ο̣ύσ̣αν̣τές τ̣ι̣ π̣αθεῖν Μα̣καρίαν τὴν σὴν ἐλευθέραν, κα̣ὶ οὐκ ἀ̣λ̣όγω̣ς̣ τοσοῦτ̣ο̣ν̣ ὁ̣ υἱός σου Γρατιανὸς ἐπόθησεν αὐτήν, κ̣α̣ὶ̣ ἔ̣τ̣ι̣ δ̣ὲ ο̣ἱ ἄλλοι αὐτῆς υἱοί. πλὴν τί δυνάµε̣θα π̣οιῆσαι πρὸς τὸ ἀνθρώπινον; καταξίω̣σ̣ο̣ν̣ ο̣ὖ̣ν̣ σ̣α̣υτὸν παραµυθήσασθαι καὶ σκυλµὸ̣ν ὑποµ̣ε̣ῖν̣αι καὶ ἐλθεῖν πρὸς µὲ µετὰ τοῦ κυ̣ρίου µου Οὐαλε̣ν̣τ̣ί̣νου ἐν τῇ Νήσων. χρείαν γὰρ ἔχω τῆς εὐγενείας σου καὶ πάλιν ποιῶ σε διὰ σκάφους προπεµφθῆναι. µὴ οὖν ὀκνήσῃς, ὅτι ἀνάβασίς ἐστιν. ἐρχόµενος δὲ καταξίωσον ἐνέγκαι ὅσα ἔχεις γνάψιµα. εἰσὶν δέ· στιχάριον Ναθαναῆλ, ῥάχνη λευκή, στιχάριον Συγ̣κ̣λητικῆς, µαφόριον τῆς Κύρας, στιχάριον Κύρας. προσαγορεύω ∆ίδ̣υ̣µον καὶ Φιλόξενον καὶ πάντας τοὺς σούς. (Second hand) ἐρρῶσθαί σε εὔχοµαι χρόνοις π̣ο̣λλ̣ο̣ῖ̣ς, κ̣ύ̣ρ̣ι̣ε̣ τιµι̣ώτα̣τε ἄδε̣λ̣φε. περὶ τοῦ σίτου µὴ ἀ̣µ̣φίβα̣λλε. ἐγ̣ὼ̣ οὐκ ἔπεµψα αὐτὸν ἵνα σ̣ο̣ὶ ̣ ἐλ̣θ̣όντι π̣αρ̣αµετρηθῇ.

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The letter starts as a consolation but it turns to business matters immediately afterwards. Kanopos’ wife had died, but once feelings of sadness and helplessness had been expressed, Theodoros asked Kanopos to sail down to him because the Nile flood had begun, and to bring garments which either needed fulling or had already been fulled. If anything else, Theodoros’ letter expresses feelings of urgency and anxiety, that Kanopos should not miss the opportune time to sail to him with all the required garments. His consolation is, therefore, kept to the bare minimum, using just the standard phraseology. Maurice Eisenbruch states that grief cannot occur without a preceding attachment, and that this need for attachment is universal.47 Did the writers of condolence letters, then, feel less attachment to the deceased than the addressees? More to the point, did the composers of the double-themed letters feel even less attachment? In all fairness, not everyone was as tactless as Theodoros. Eirene’s dossier of letters (second century CE) provides a good example. It contains three letters all composed on the same day and dispatched by the same slave to the same recipient. One is a condolence letter for Taonnophris and Philon, on the occasion of the death of their child. Eirene’s short consolation reads:48 Eirene to Taonnophris and Philo, take heart. I grieved and wept over the departed as much as I wept over Didymas. I and all mine, Epaphroditos, Thermuthion, Philion, Apollonios and Plantas, did all that was due. However, one can do nothing against such things. So, comfort yourselves. Farewell. Hathyr 30.

Then Eirene wrote two separate longer letters that concerned Philo and her business affairs with him. Quite sensitively, she seems to have wished not to combine the two issues.49 5 CONSOLATION AND CHRISTIANITY Another relevant topic is whether the new religious beliefs occasioned by the advent of Christianity affected the expression of grief and consolation.50 Barbara Rosenwein is firm that Christianity had the potential to effect seismic shifts in the emotions that were valued or disdained, as well as the norms of their expression.51 In the matter of death, however, the ‘calm and philosophical practicality’, as identified by Alan Bowman,52 that was employed to deal with it seems also to have been used in Late Antiquity. Certainly, the rationale that was expressed in Roman 47 48 49 50

51 52

Eisenbruch 1984a, 285. P.Oxy I 115 (Oxyrhynchos, second century CE); cf. Chapa 1998, no. 2. P.Oxy I 116 and SB XX 15180 (Oxyrhynchus, second century CE). Also see Parsons 2007, 130. For the religious affiliations of the persons mentioned in all the condolence letters, see Chapa 1998, 23f. For the literary consolation tradition in Late Antiquity by the Church Fathers, see Scourfield 1993, 15–33; for the later Byzantine period, see Littlewood 1999 and Sarres 2005. Rosenwein 2006, 42. Bowman 1990, 137.

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condolence letters – that ‘no man is immortal’ – is also found in later ones. Bernhardt Palme attributes this phenomenon to the actual formula of the letters: It can hardly be a coincidence that the consolatio established itself as a literary genre during just this period [the Imperial period]. Not a single example survives from the Ptolemaic period. Surprisingly, perhaps, all of the condolence letters express only moderate sorrow, sympathy, and encouragement. Their stereotyped style of writing also explains why there is no 53 significant difference between the pagan and the Christian letters of condolence.

In the Christian condolence letters on papyrus, the steps of expressing consolation remain the same. The letter of Alexander is typical of later examples:54 To my lord brother Kerdon, Alexander greetings. I would have wished to rush to you straight from here and pay due honour to the benevolence of your blessed son, but my not being able to travel and meet you has got into the way, since it is difficult for us to go up to the city. It is necessary to bear the human lot. Therefore, put away the grief of human fault and think that nobody among men is immortal, but only God, and remember the promise of the blessed Paul, as ... I pray that you be well for many years.

Of course, what changed was the view of the afterlife and that the blessed deceased person, who had avoided all the toils of life, was now in the bosom of all the prophets and angels.55 Ultimately, just as in previous eras,56 uncertainty seems to have existed about how one should feel when confronted with the death of a loved one. Both happiness and grief were legitimate alternatives. Therefore in Egypt on the one hand, the liturgy and psalms expressed joy for the deceased’s attainment of happiness, while on the other tombstones, Greek and Coptic, spoke of lamentation and tears. Various Church fathers demanded control of one’s grief, but manuscripts and condolence letters depicted sadness and loss in vivid colours.57 Peter Stearns and Mark Knapp claim that three related constraints operated to restrain elaborate open displays of grief, and possibly grief itself. First, undue grief could denote undue attachment to worldly ties, rather than appropriate focus on God’s majesty. 53

54 55 56 57

Palme 2009, 362f. This idea is also supported by Chapa 1998, 23. Eisenbruch 1984a, 287, notes that in overcoming grief, social training is much more important than any religious or ethical beliefs. He explains that ‘the suffering of grief will be eased by the ways in which the person can explain to himself the “cause” and “consequences for his system of values” of his loss. There is a human need to justify human inequalities or suffering. The Christian ethic explains loss and suffering in one way, the Buddhist ethic in another. It makes little difference whether the bereaved person is religious in a formal sense. What matters is how he was socialized to reconcile the pain of loss.’ P.Princ. II 102 (fourth century CE); cf. Chapa 1998, no. 10. For the development of the Christian concept of afterlife, see Bremmer 2002. For example, what Plutarch advised his family members and friends to do in periods of grief was opposed to prevailing practice; see Schorn 2009, 350. For the liturgy, psalms, manuscripts, and the Church Fathers: Wipszycka 1988; Thomas 2000, 50–55; for the request to lament or not to lament on tombstones: Roquet 1978, 1982a, and 1982b; van der Vliet 1988; SB Kopt. I 464 = O.Brit.Mus.Copt. 3 (Antinoopolis, eighth century CE); for Greek and Roman epitaphs: Lattimore 1962, 234f.; for the attempts of contemporary Christian missionaries to constrain mourning ‘performances’ and their repression of emotional display related to death: Feld 1995, 100.

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Secondly, emotional ties within families were usually muted; the overriding economic concerns of families could reduce the shock of death since this, however lamentable, was vital to keep family numbers within manageable bounds. Finally the nature of death itself provided the third cushion against great grief: many adults died what historians have labelled a ‘good death.’58 Only the first ‘cushion’, the undue attachment to worldly ties, can be said to be related, albeit indirectly, to our papyri, especially the ones from Late Antiquity. The other two constraints, if they even existed in Antiquity, are not evident in these letters. 6 A COPTIC CONDOLENCE LETTER? Now that the construction of the condolence letters on papyrus has been analyzed, our consideration will shift to a Coptic letter that was published as a condolence letter and subsequently accepted as such by various other scholars.59 The letter is from Hermopolis and dated to the seventh century CE.60 Written by a man addressing a monastic community, it opens with the customary prayers and greetings. The writer then asks the monks to intercede through their prayers to help him and, more particularly, his wife to overcome the grief for their miserable (ταλαίπωρος) daughter’s death. He explicitly states: Look, I have sent Apakyri south to you so he can bring your news to us. For without you, the distress that is upon us about our miserable small daughter is not small. It is God and your prayers that will console me about it. (And) because I cannot drive away the grief of her mother, also tread on/raise this grief ...

Notably, all the words that refer to consolation and grief are in Greek. The writer was most probably aware of the basic consolatory formulas. Nonetheless, judging from the condolence letters and their model which we have seen, I feel that this Coptic letter does not belong to the genre of condolence letters. First, in a condolence letter, condolence is always offered, not requested. Secondly, condolence letters do not attempt to evoke pity. They purport to extend consolation. This Coptic letter, however, with its references to the ‘miserable’ dead girl and the great suffering of her mother is clearly aiming to arouse pity in the addressee. Eleanor Dickey, in her book Greek Forms of Address has assembled twelve terms of pity.61 Only one term (δύστηνος, ‘wretched, unfortunate’) shows up in the condolence letters, and that only once. In Eudaimon’s letter, the writer refers to the life the dead girl escaped from as wretched and toilsome; quite carefully, he does not use these terms in relation to any of the persons he is addressing. It is a lot more probable therefore that this Coptic letter belongs to a much larger genre of private letters, namely those asking for intercession from various

58 59 60 61

Stearns and Knapp 1996, 133. It is quoted as such, for example, in Papathomas in CPR XXV 21. Edition and commentary in Schenke 1999. Dickey 1996, 161–165.

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monastic figures.62 Its vocabulary, tone, and request for prayers are perfectly compatible with this genre. Ultimately, as Nico Frijda explains, 63 whenever a situation can be viewed in alternative ways, a tendency exists to view it in a way that maximizes emotional gain. Emotions produce gains that differ from one emotion to another. … Grief provides excuses, confers the right to be treated with consideration, and gives off calls for… sympathy and mollification.

Three more letters can be brought in to illustrate this point:64 in the first, Isidora wrote to her husband to inform him that their son was dying (second/third century). Her anxiety, fear and possible grief are unmistakably stated: ‘Come here lest he die while you are not here. Know that if he dies in your absence, watch out lest you find that I have hanged myself’. Admittedly, her great fear seems to have been about dealing with her son’s death alone. In the second letter, a woman in Syria (fourth century CE) wrote to her aunt in Egypt to let her know that her mother/the addressee’s sister was dead. She stresses how her mother was all the family she had and that now she was all alone in a foreign place. She concludes with a request for news to be sent to her whenever possible. Two centuries later, Esther asked a holy man from the Monastery of Epiphanios for help. Her children had all died young; she was grieving and needed a commandment ‘which is presumably intended to avert the death of future offspring’ or to offer her consolation. 7 CONSOLATION AND GENDER On a different topic, this papyrological corpus can also offer important insight into the relationship seen between emotions and gender, more specifically the association of grief with women. Eudaimon’s consolation was addressed to the couple, but especially to the mother who was greatly affected by her daughter’s death. It has been noted that in the ancient world surviving the death of their children was considered one of the greatest misfortunes for parents, particularly for the mother. This was one reason for feeling particular sorrow for the mother, since it was thought that the loss was much more painful for her than for anyone else. 65 But it is not only the increased maternal instinct and love that Eudaimon was referring to here. He was making a direct association between emotions and control over them, and men and women. His male friend, being a man of the world, had knowledge of human nature and at the same time could control his emotions. Eudaimon was concerned, however, that his friend’s wife lacked this knowledge and

62 63 64 65

Rapp 1999. Frijda 1998, 282f. They are: PSI III 177 (Oxyrhynchos, second to third century CE); P.Bour. 25 (Apamea, Syria, fourth century CE); O.Mon.Epiph. 194 (Thebes, sixth to eighth century CE). Chapa 1998, 115.

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control. This was not a novel idea: Cicero and Plutarch in their consolation letters were of the same mind. Cicero in his consolation to his friend Titius notes:66 For if there was never even a woman so weak in mind that when she had lost her children she didn’t put a limit on grieving, certainly we [men] ought to anticipate by resolution what the passing days will bring, nor should we await the medicine of time, which we can anticipate by reason.

Nevertheless, Eudaimon, Cicero, and Plutarch could have a point: the three consolation letters by women seem more emotional than the rest, especially when they describe the sender’s emotions and actions of sympathy. For example, one of them reads:67 ... because when I remember such an extreme unexpected misfortune, not even for a little can I sleep. But you yourself are more worrying to me than that. And I puff myself up because I have no possibility of coming to you to lament and weep with you. Perhaps then I would have been relieved ...

This letter illustrates brilliantly one of the associations that Antonius Robben draws between grief and mourning, namely that crying relates in the same way to grief as weeping and wailing relate to mourning. Mourning 68 is not a spontaneous emotion but a collective obligation manifested in appeasement rites.

The composer of this condolence letter first allows us to suppose that she was crying by herself because of her grief at the addressee’s misfortune, but then she claims that if she had been with the receiver of the letter, then they would have wept and wailed together, thus achieving some solace. Such weeping and wailing, especially by women, was as controversial in antiquity as it is still in the 21st century. Ritual wailing is contentious because it can motivate others to action, through kindling in them either grief or the desire to demonstrate that they too possess socially appropriate sentiments.69 Anthropologists of religion note the discrepancy that characterizes the role of women in such rituals. On the one hand, women’s association with public grieving for the dead has always been strong, particularly because of women’s greater intimacy with birth, death, and a dead body, on the other, religious establishments often frown on an excessive display of female grief. It is often thought that lament can present ‘sub-theological’ complaints from the social margins; they may lend women a political voice.70 It is too strong to say that the condolence letters under consideration tried to control Roman women’s ‘political voice’. What is certain, 66

67 68 69

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Cicero, Ad familiares 5.16.6; cf. Wilcox 2005, 242f. For Plutarch and his exhortation to his wife to be continent in grief, see Bradley 1999, 195. For the belief concerning women’s weakness in dealing with grief also in the later Byzantine period, see Littlewood 1999, 27f. P.Rainer Cent. 70 (Hermopolis, second to third century CE); cf. Chapa 1998, no. 5. Robben 2004, 7. Urban 1998, 392. Lutz 2001, 199–205, also offers a thorough analysis of the ambiguity regarding hired mourners and their outbursts of grief throughout the ages and in different cultures. Raphael 2008, 188f.

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however, is that this corpus of letters provides solid evidence for attempts to control women’s feelings in both the public and the private sphere. To be fair, it should be stressed that, in theory at least, ancient Greek society tried to regulate mourning as much for men as for women. It is a commonplace in the consolation literature, and in the condolence letters on papyrus, that the bereaved, whether male or female, should stop grieving after a period.71 Various funerary regulations were very specific on such matters. David Konstan explains that the time allowed for grief has historically been subject to regulation. The imposition of limitations regarding the period of mourning, attire, and other facets reflects an understanding of 72 grief as a social function, not merely a private sentiment.

It has been noted, after all, that emotions tend to be targets for social norms, and indeed some norms are in fact only focused on the expression of emotions.73 This topic begs the question, however, about the efficacy of such laws given that as late as the mid-to-late Byzantine period extreme and emotional mourning practices still existed and continued to be criticized by the institutional Church.74 Leaving aside the issue of whether women are more emotional than men, and whether that is supported by psychological and anthropological studies or not,75 one issue that most of the letters quoted so far seem to point to is that of a strong bond between mothers and their children.76 Despite the high mortality rate of children in antiquity, parents still knew and maintained that children ought not to die before them.77 John Archer explains that the typical ways in which women and men cope with bereavement is as loss-oriented (facing the loss) and restorationoriented (avoiding or denying it). To deal with grief, both coping styles are usually necessary for successful resolution, but there are gender differences in the degree to which the styles are adopted. These different coping styles are perhaps more marked in the case of death of a child, with fathers showing more intense denial.78 Whether women felt sorrow more or not, we will never know; our letters 71 72

73 74 75

76

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Konstan 2006, 250; cf. Trapp 2003, 118f. Konstan 2006, 252. Cf. Sokolowski 1955, no. 16 = Frisone 2000, 139–154. This is a funerary regulation about the type and colour of garments to be worn during a funeral. It concludes that ‘they should perform the customary rites for the dead for three months at the most, but in the fourth month the men shall stop the period of grief, the women in the fifth month’. Also see, Kavoulaki 2005; Stavrianopoulou 2005. Elster 2002, 5f. Kyriakakis 1974, 61. Catherine Lutz’s work offers an insightful study of the various culturally-biased notions that are attached to emotions. Especially relevant to this discussion is the section ‘Emotion as Female’ (Lutz 1986, 299–301). As a counterpart to this idea, see the controversial study of Scheper-Hughes 2004 on the relationship between mothers and children in Brazil and child mortality. She maintains that the absence of a display of grief is not the repression of an inconsolable loss and that the mother feels pity rather than grief for the deceased baby. Bradley 1999, 184. Archer 1996, 912.

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seem to indicate that women were more ready to express their grief, or that society allowed women to express such feelings more than men. 8 CONSOLATION AND FAMILIAL RELATIONSHIPS In her discussion on burials in Pharaonic Egypt, Lynn Meskell notes that death represented a disruption to the social body more than it did the passing of an individual body. Identity was rooted more in the group than within the individual. In the past, ... death 79 meant that the society had lost part of itself, more than the individual had lost society.

This ‘disruption’ can certainly be seen in the condolence letters under consideration in the familial milieu of Roman Egypt. They highlight the break-down of daily routines and stress the importance of a family support-system in allowing people to deal with death and bereavement, and ultimately to return to their normal lives. Anthropological studies have shown that the ritual expression of sentiments, particularly in mourning obligations for kin, serves the function of enhancing the solidarity of the group which the death of one of its members has threatened. Emotions that develop within the group include sorrow and anger.80 Additionally, it has been argued that ‘grief work’ or mourning is the work that transforms the negative affects engendered through loss and bereavement, when successful, and may result in melancholia when it fails ... the work of culture is ‘the process whereby painful motives and affects such as those occurring in depression are transformed into publicly accepted sets of meanings and symbols’ ... it might 81 be argued that one of the causes of depressive illness is the failure of the work of culture.

The ‘work of culture’ can be seen in this study in the encouragement, assistance and provisions that existed and were made among family members. The case of Sempronios and his family is an excellent demonstration of the ways reciprocal relationships between parents and children developed and of how grief was treated in their midst. This family is an ideal example because we have several letters that were composed by its immediate members, so it is relatively easy to establish that the relationships mentioned in their letters were actually true.82 Sempronios’ condolence letters in full read:83 Sempronios to his brother Satornilos greetings. I have received two letters from you, one about what you communicated to our brother Maximos, the other about our lady mother, that she has been in danger and that she is still unwell. You must know, brother, that I am terribly anxious and not even able to sleep nights, until you let me know how she is doing. In this respect do not waste time (do not be a fool?) until you find someone who is sailing down to my direction. Console our brother Maximos as well as you can. I have also written to our brother 79 80 81 82 83

Meskell 1994, 36. Eisenbruch 1984a, 289. Good and Good 1988, 54. Sijpesteijn 1976; Chapa 1998, 21f.; Rowlandson 1998, 143f. P.Wisc. II 84 (late second century CE); cf. Chapa 1998, no. 4; Rowlandson 1998, no. 110.

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Valerios about that. I hope that he also realizes how deeply sorry we feel about her; but what shall we be able to help with that? Not he alone but all of us are bereft of her. Therefore it is necessary, since we (you?) cannot do anything nor even help, to think of the human condition, especially in such a crisis. Farewell.

Second letter: Sempronius to his mother Satornila, greetings. The moment you receive my letters let me know how you are because I am not a little worried until I learn about you. Concerning my brother Maximos I will now write to you so that you may console him --- I do not know if superfluously, for I am thinking of saying these same things to him, but the time is not right and this prevents me ---, for I fear that because of the sorrow he may turn to something else. I know that you, too, are in more sorrow than him. But, as soon as possible, be serene, because of my siblings and the child, for this perhaps relieves the daughters and (our) sister the housekeeper (Oikouron?). But what can we do against which nobody can do anything? Farewell. Deliver to my brother Valerios and to my brother Satornilos from Sempronios.

Both letters were executed on the same sheet of papyrus and deal with the same themes and concerns. Sempronios was first worried about his mother’s health and secondly about sending some words of consolation to his family. Thus, in a way, these communications are more than condolence letters, since they are also concerned with his mother’s health and happiness. Sempronios seems to have had the sense of repaying one’s debt to one’s parents much in mind. For example, in another of his letters to his family, he wrote as follows to his brother Maximos: ‘for we ought to honour as divine the lady who gave us birth, especially since she is so good. I wrote this to you, brother, knowing the sweetness of one’s revered parents.’84 The fact that in both letters the consolation part comes second shows that, in a way, Sempronios subordinated his consolations to his general concern for his family. He expressed his anxiety about his mother by telling his brother Satornilos that, ever since he was informed about their mother’s bad health, he was so anxious that he could not sleep at night any more. This common theme of not being able to sleep at night because of worry can also be found in other communications between family members.85 He repeats the same concerns and wish for more news to his mother. In the letter to his mother, however, he adds: ‘But, as soon as possible be serene, because of my siblings and the child, for this perhaps relieves the daughters and (our) sister the housekeeper (Oikouron?).’ This is Sempronios’ exhortation to his mother to return to her usual way of living. He appeals to his mother’s sense of duty towards her family and encourages her to overcome grief

84

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Sel.Pap. I 121 (Alexandria, second half of second century CE); see p. 79 in this volume. Similar feelings of high esteem and honour seem to have existed between Sempronios and his brothers. In P.Mich. III 209 (late second to third century CE), Satonirlos wrote to Sempronios and described him ‘not just as a brother, but also as a father and a lord and a god’. For the insight that these letters offer us into the character of their composers and the high probability that they could even reflect genuine feelings, see Sijpesteijn 1976, 171f. See for example, P.Alex.Giss. 58 (Apollonopolite Heptakomias nome, 113–120 CE); C.Pap. Jud. II 436 (Hermopolis, 115 CE); P.Rain. Cent. 70 (Hermopolis, third century CE).

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and concentrate on the rest of the family as soon as possible.86 Furthermore, in terms of the differences between the ways Sempronios consoled his brother and mother, we can say that the first letter was more ‘matter of fact’ and had a ‘what can we do?’ attitude, but when he wrote to his mother, the letter was more emotional: he admitted to being afraid about his brother’s state of mind, acknowledged his awareness of his mother’s even greater pain, and exhorted her to control her emotions and be serene, ultimately for the well-being of the rest of the family. As Tony Walter explains, condolence is a social interaction with rules that both parties must follow if comfort is to be 87 given and received ... both parties have to act on overcoming grief.

Sempronios offered his care, consolation, and advice to his mother, but she would also have to act upon it if she were to overcome her grief. 9 DEATH IN PRIVATE LETTERS ON PAPYRUS To conclude: we can say that, in order to fully appreciate the social and cultural connotations of these condolence letters and what they can contribute to the study of emotions, and grief in particular, a comparison between condolence letters and other letters that mention the death of a family member or acquaintance is necessary. It is remarkable that several letters between family members or friends that either announce that one of their family is dead or arrange funeral practicalities88 lack references to almost any emotion, let alone grief. The letter of Thaubas to her father is a telling example:89 Thaubas to Pompeios, her father, many greetings. Please come home as soon as you receive my letter, because your poor daughter Herennia has died. And she already came safely through a premature delivery on the ninth of Phaophi. You see, she gave birth to an eightmonth child, dead; she lived on for four days but then died herself. She received a funeral from us and her husband, as was right, and has been transported to Alabanthis. So, if you come and want to, you can see her. Alexander greets you and so do his children. Farewell.

The only emotional word used in this communication is the adjective ‘wretched’ or ‘poor’ (ταλαίπωρος) to describe the deceased sister. Even if references are 86

87 88

89

A similar exhortation is found in BGU III 801 (Fayum, second century CE); cf. Chapa 1998, no. 3. A woman advises her brother upon the loss of his wife: ‘bear it bravely, brother, for your children’s sake’. Time is of the essence in these exhortations, as well. The genre of the consolation was intended not so much to cut grief off at the root as to prevent it from settling in as a permanent habit; see Konstan 2006, 257. Walter 1999, 128f. PSI VIII 967 (first to second century CE); cf. Gonis 1997, 55–58; P.Haun. II 17 (second century CE); cf. Rowlandson 1998, no. 271; W.Chr. 499 (Thebes, second to third century CE); cf. Rowlandson 1998, no. 278 and Bagnall and Cribiore 2006, 289; SB I 5216 = Sel.Pap. 104 (Labyrinthos, Arsinoites nome, first century BCE); cf. Palme 2009, 371; Bagnall and Derow 2004, no. 174; White 1987, no. 61. P.Fouad I 75 (Oxyrhynchos, 64 CE); cf. Rowlandson 1998, no. 228. Also see Hanson 1987.

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made in letters to several deaths that occurred simultaneously because of plague or riots, in the best case scenario we find a sentence along the lines of ‘I was sorry to hear of the death of so and so’.90 Such documents also make similar, short, unemotional comments when it comes to the death of an acquaintance’s child.91 At the same time, there are some letters that employ the strong vocabulary related to death and grief, only to refer to everyday occurrences such as the loss of money, simply as a device for emphasis.92 Were, then, condolence letters the principal, socially acceptable form to express grief for a person’s death and to state one’s support and desire to relieve the pain of a friend or relative? This is a distinct possibility. If so, then why have only a few condolence letters survived? Juan Chapa quite rightly maintains that we only have a dozen or so condolence letters out of the thousand odd private letters because, ultimately, people undertook the journey necessary and offered their consolation face to face to those who needed it.93 As for the unemotional language of the other letters which refer to people’s deaths, several factors could have come into play. Lynn Meskell maintains that death invites individual responses not driven by social aspirations.94 But it is possible that this corpus of letters contradicts such a statement. If the senders of the letters were of a higher status than the recipients or the deceased, very probably they did not feel obliged to indulge the addressee with more compassionate language. Admittedly, the majority of the letters mentioned above report on a death that occurred in someone else’s family and not in that of the letter-writer, and their vocabulary lies in direct opposition to the evocative phrases found in the letters of parents that report the death of their own children. This material points to the fact that grief, consolation and support were offered and expected mainly from immediate family members. The writers of these communications therefore did not use more sentimental expressions. Roger Scruton in his study of emotion, practical knowledge and the notion of common culture stresses:95 To participate in a common culture is therefore, one might suggest, to be gifted with a certainty in one’s feelings, a certainty which the uprooted, alienated, and disenchanted may not have had, and may not want to have. By certainty I do not mean crass impetuousness: there are occasions when any man must hesitate. Certainty comes when the matter is, in the last 90

91 92

93

94 95

P.Grenf. II 36 (Pathyris, 95 BCE); cf. White 1987, no. 55; St.Pal. XXII 33 (Soknopaious Nesos?, second to third century CE); P.Mich. VIII 510 (Alexandria, second to third CE); P.Strasb.1.73 (third century CE); cf. Casanova 1984, 173. BGU XIII 2349, (second century CE); P.Lund. II 3 (second to third century CE). P.Tebt. III.1 760, (Tebtunis, 215/4 BCE); UPZ I 18 (Memphis, 163 BCE); P.Sarap. 88 (Alexandria?, 90–133 CE); SB XVIII 13613 (third century CE); P.Oxy. X 1298 (Oxyrhynchos, fourth century CE). Chapa 1998, 50; cf. a Greek inscription (Cayster Valley, second century CE): it is a decree of a funerary association that, besides recounting all the honours for a deceased priestess, also explains that it is important for the association to send a delegation that would offer consolation to the priestess’ sons in person; see SEG LVII 1188 lines 24–31; see Jones 2008. Meskell 1994, 42. Scruton 1980, 530.

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Chrysi Kotsifou analysis, settled for the agent, when he sees his situation in terms of objective imperatives rather than subjective choices, imperatives that record for him the fact of his shared humanity, even in the midst of a predicament that is uniquely his. In this way the question what to feel becomes ‘settled’ in a manner that no mere ‘authenticity’ could achieve.

This study has demonstrated that this certainty for the people of the ancient world about how to feel in the case of death and how to respond to it was achieved via the education of feelings,96 strong familial support-systems, and the fact that family and friends were actually physically present most of the time to offer consolation. It is also equally possible that it was this certainty and assurance that bereaved people would be surrounded by supportive, nearby relatives and friends which indicated to the writers of the unemotional letters mentioned above that they did not need to include any distinct expressions of grief in their letters. But Roman Egypt was not an ancient society always distinguished by care, sympathy, and constant support. A letter from the Great Oasis recounts:97 Melas ... to Sarapion and Silvanos ... greetings. I have sent you by the grave-digger the body of your brother Phibion and have paid him the fee for transporting the body, being 340 drachma of the old coinage. And I am much surprised that you departed for no good reason without taking the body of your brother, but collected all that he possessed and so departed. And from this I see that you did not come up for the sake of the dead, but for the sake of his effects. Now take care to have ready the sum spent ... You will therefore make every effort to serve the person who will bring the body by providing loaves and wine and oil and whatever you can, which he may testify to me. If you do not act ...

BIBLIOGRAPHY Archer, J. (1996) Sex Differences in Social Behavior. Are the Social Role and the Evolutionary Explanations Compatible?, American Psychologist 51.9, 909–917. Bagnall, R. S. and Cribiore, R. (2006) Women’s Letters from Ancient Egypt 300 BC–AD 800, Ann Arbor. Bagnall, R. S. and Derow, P. (2004) The Hellenistic Period: Historical Sources in Translation Oxford. Baltussen, H. (2009) Personal Grief and Public Mourning in Plutarch’s Consolatiom to his Wife, American Journal of Philology 130, 67–98. Bowman, A. (1990) Egypt after the Pharaohs, 332 BC–AD 642: from Alexander to the Arab Conquest, Oxford.

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Scruton 1980, 526. P.Grenf. II 77 (Great Oasis, 267–274 CE): [Μέλας ...] Σαραπίωνι καὶ Σιλβανῷ [... χ]αίρειν. ἀπέστειλα ὑµῖν [διὰ τοῦ ν]εκροτάφου τὸ σῶµα τοῦ [ἀδελφοῦ] Φιβίωνος καὶ ἐπλήρωσα [αὐ]τὸν [το]ὺς µισθοὺς τῆς παρακοµιδῆς τοῦ σώµατος ὄντας ἐν δραχµαῖς τριακοσίαις τεσσαράκοντα παλαιοῦ νοµίσµατος καὶ θαυµάζω πάνυ [ὅτι] ἀλόγως ἀπέστητε µὴ ἄραντες [τὸ σ]ῶµα τοῦ ἀδελφοῦ ὑµῶν, ἀλλὰ σ[υ]νλέξαντες ὅσα εἶχεν καὶ οὕτως ἀπέστητε. καὶ ἐκ τούτου ἔµαθον ὅτι οὐ χάριν τοῦ νεκροῦ ἀνήλθατε, ἀλλὰ χάριν τῶν σκευῶν αὐτοῦ. φροντίσα̣τε οὖ̣ν τὰ ἀναλωθέντα ἑτοιµάσαι ἔστι δὲ τὰ ἀναλώµατα ... [π]ᾶν οὖν ποιήσετε ὑπηρετῆσαι τὸν µέλλοντα ἐνεγκ[εῖ]ν τὸ σῶµα ἐν ψωµίοις καὶ [οἰ]ν̣αρίῳ καὶ ἐλαίῳ καὶ ὅσα δυνατὸν ὑ[µῖ]ν ἐστιν, ἵνα µαρτυρήσῃ µοι. µη[δ]ὲν δὲ δράσητε ...

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Bradley, K. (1999) Images of Childhood. The Evidence of Plutarch, in S. Pomeroy (ed.), Plutarch’s Advice to the Bride and Groom and A Consolation to His Wife, New York, 183–196. Bremmer, J. N. (2002) The Rise and Fall of the Afterlife, London. Buresch, K. (1894) Die griechischen Trostbeschlüsse, Rheinisches Museum für Philologie 49, 424–460. Casanova, G. (1984) Epidemie e fame nella documentazione greca d’Eggito, Aegyptus 64, 163– 201. Chapa, J. (1998) Letters of Condolence in Greek Papyri, Florence. Dickey, E. (1996) Greek Forms of Address. From Herodotus to Lucian, Oxford. Eisenbruch, M. (1984a) Cross-cultural Aspects of Bereavement. I: a Conceptual Framework for Comparative Analysis, Culture, Medicine and Psychiatry 8, 283–309. ––– (1984b) Cross-cultural Aspects of Bereavement. II: Ethnic and Cultural Variations in the Development of Bereavement Practices, Culture, Medicine and Psychiatry 8, 315–347. Elster, J. (2002) Norms, Emotions, and Social Control, in D. Cohen and E. Müller-Luckner (eds.), Demokratie, Recht und Soziale Kontrolle im klassichen Athen, Munich, 1–13. Feld, S. (1995) Wept Thoughts: The Voicing of Kaluli Memories, in R. H. Finnegan and M. R. Orbell (eds.), South Pacific Oral Traditions, Indiana, 85–108. Frijda, N. H. (1998) The Laws of Emotion, in J. M. Jenkins, K. Oatley, and N. L. Stein (eds.), Human Emotions: A Reader, London, 270–287. Gonis, N. (1997) Notes on Some Private Letters, Istituto Papirologico ‘G. Vitelli’. Communicazioni 2, 44–61. Good Delvecchio, M.-J. and B. J. Good (1988) Ritual, the State and the Transformation of Emotional Discourse in Iranian Society, Culture, Medicine and Psychiatry 12, 43–63. Graver, M. (2009) The Weeping Wise: Stoic and Epicurean Consolations in Seneca’s 99th Epistle, in T. Fögen (ed.), Tears in the Graeco-Roman World, Berlin, 235–252. Hanson, A. (1987) The Eight Months’ Child and the Etiquette of Birth: Obsit Omen!, Bulletin of the History of Medicine 61.4, 589–602. Hart May, D. and R. McAloney (2004) Everyday Letters for Busy People, Franklin Lakes, NJ. Jones, C. P. (2008) A Hellenistic Cult Association, Chiron 38, 195–204. Kavoulaki, A. (2005) Crossing Communal Space: The Classical Ekphora, Public and Private, in V. Dasen and M. Piérart (eds.), Ἰδίᾳ καὶ δηµοσίᾳ. Les cadres ‘privés’ et ‘publics’ de la religion grecque antique, Liège, 129–145. Konstan, D. (2006) The Emotions of the Ancient Greeks. Studies in Aristotle and Classical Literature, Toronto. Kyriakakis, J. (1974) Byzantine Burial Customs: Care of the Deceased from Death to the Prothesis, The Greek Orthodox Theological Review 19.1, 37–72. Lattimore, R. (1962) Themes in Greek and Latin Epitaphs, Urbana. Lewis, N. (1983) Life in Egypt under Roman Rule, Oxford. Littlewood, A. R. (1999) The Byzantine Letter of Consolation in the Macedonian and Komnenian Periods, Dumbarton Oaks Papers 53, 19–41. Lutz, C. (1986) Emotions, Thought, and Estrangement: Emotion as a Cultural Category, Cultural Anthropology 1, 287–309. ––– (2001) Crying: A Natural History and Cultural History of Tears, New York. Malherbe, A. J. (1988) Ancient Epistolary Theorists, Atlanta. Meskell, L. (1994) Dying Young: the Experience of Death at Deir el Medina, Archaeological Review from Cambridge 13, 35–45. Ochs, D. J. (1993) Consolatory Rhetoric. Grief, Symbol, and Ritual in the Greco-Roman Era, Columbia. Palme, B. (2009) The Range of Documentary Texts: Types and Categories, in R. S. Bagnall (ed.), The Oxford Handbook of Papyrology, Oxford, 358–394. Papathomas, A. (1998) Ein neues Zeugnis frühchristlicher griechischer Kondolenzepistolographie, Tyche 13, 195–206.

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Parsons, P. (2007) City of the Sharp-nosed Fish: Greek Lives in Roman Egypt, London. Pomeroy, S. B. (1999) Reflections on Plutarch, A Consolation to His Wife, in ead. (ed.), Plutarch’s Advice to the Bride and Groom and A Consolation to His Wife, New York, 75–78. Raphael, M. (2008) Gender, in J. Corrigan (ed.), The Oxford Handbook of Religion and Emotion, Oxford, 181–199. Rapp, C. (1999) ‘For Next to God, You Are My Salvation’: Reflections on the Rise of the Holy Man in Late Antiquity, in J. Howard-Johnston and P. A. Hayward (eds.), The Cult of Saints in Late Antiquity and the Middle Ages: Essays on the Contribution of Peter Brown, Oxford, 63– 82. Robben, A. C. G. M. (2004) Death and Anthropology: an Introduction, in id. (ed.), Death, Mourning, and Burial. A Cross-Cultural Reader, London, 1–16. Roquet, G. (1978) [Bên] et [men], morphèmes du vétitif akhmimique dans les épitaphes d’Edfou, Bulletin de l’Institut Français d’ Archéologie Orientale 78, 525–532. ––– (1982a) Désignation non euphémique de la mort dans l’épigraphie funéraire copte, Annales du Service des Antiquités de l’Égypte 68, 237–239. ––– (1982b) Épitaphes coptes d’Edfou: Compléments, Annales du Service des Antiquités de l’Égypte 68, 22. Rosenwein, B. H. (2002) Worrying about Emotions in History, The American Historical Review 107, 821–845. ––– (2006) Emotional Communities in the Early Middle Ages, Ithaca, N.Y. Rowlandson, J. (ed.) (1998) Women and Society in Greek and Roman Egypt. A Sourcebook, Cambridge. Sarres, B. A. (2005) Ἡ Βυζαντινὴ παραµυθητικὴ ἐπιστολή. Ἀπὸ τὸν Θεόδωρο Στουδίτη ἕως τὸν Εὐστάθιο Θεσσαλονίκης (9ος–12ος αἰ.), Thessalonike. Schenke, G. (1999) Die Trauer um ein kleines Mädchen: Eine Bitte um Trost, Zeitschrift für Papyrologie und Epigraphik 127, 117–122. Scheper-Hughes, N. (2004) Death Without Weeping, in A. C. G. M. Robben (ed.), Death, Mourning, and Burial. A Cross-Cultural Reader, London, 179–193. Schorn, S. (2009) Tears of the Bereaved : Plutarch’s Consolatio ad uxorem in Context, in T. Fögen (ed.), Tears in the Graeco-Roman World, Berlin, 335––366. Scourfield, J. H. D. (1993) Consoling Heliodorus: A Commentary on Jerome, Letter 60, Oxford. Scruton, R. (1980) Emotion, Practical Knowledge and Common Culture, in A. Oksenberg Rorty (ed.), Explaining Emotions, Berkeley, 519–536. Sijpesteijn, P. J. (1976) A Happy Family?, Zeitschrift für Papyrologie und Epigraphik 21, 169– 181. Skountakis, M. (2006) Ritual Criticism and Consolation, in E. Stavrianopoulou (ed.), Ritual and Communication in the Graeco-Roman World, Liege, 251–264. Sokolowski, F. (1955) Lois sacrées de l’Asie Mineure, Paris. Stavrianopoulou, E. (2005) Die ‘gefahrvolle’ Bestattung von Gambreion, in C. Ambos et al. (eds.), Die Welt der Rituale. Von der Antike bis zur Gegenwart, Darmstadt, 24–37. Stearns, P. N. and M. Knapp (1996) Historical Perspectives on Grief, in R. Harré and W. G. Parrott (eds.), The Emotions: Social Cultural and Biological Dimensions, London, 132–150. Strubbe, J. H. M. (1998) Epigrams and Consolation Decrees for Deceased Youth, L’Antiquité Classique 67, 45–75. Thomas, T. (2000) Late Antique Egyptian Funerary Sculpture: Images for this World and the Next Princeton. Trapp, M. (ed.) (2003) Greek and Latin Letters. An Anthology with Translation, Cambridge. Tsitsaroli, P. and F. Valentin (2008) Byzantine Burials Practices for Children. Case Studies Based on a Bioarchaelogical Approach to Cemeteries from Greece, in F. Gusi, S. Muriel, and C. Olària (eds.), Nasciturus, infans, puerulus vobis mater terra: la muerte en la infancia, Castello, 93–113.

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Urban, G. (1988) Ritual Wailing in Amerindian Brazil, American Anthropologist n.s. 90.2, 385– 400. Van der Vliet, J. (1988) A Note on jwk ebol, ‘To die’, Enchoria 16, 89–93. Walter, T. (1999) On Bereavement: the Culture of Grief, Buckingham. White J. L. (1986) Light from Ancient Letters, Philadelphia. Wilcox, A. (2005) Sympathetic Rivals: Consolation in Cicero’s Letters, American Journal of Philology 2, 237–255. Wipszycka, E. (1988) La christianisation de l’Égypte aux IVe–VIe siècles. Aspects sociaux et ethniques, Aegyptus 68, 117–165. Worp, K. A. (1995) Letters of Condolence in the Greek Papyri: Some Observations, Analecta Papyrologica 7, 149–154. Zunin, L. M. and H. Stanton Zunin (1992) The Art of Condolence, New York.

REASONS TO BE CHEERFUL? Conflicting Emotions in the Drunken Old Women of Munich and Rome Jane Masséglia 1 INTRODUCTION A crouching old woman embracing a large lagynos (wine jar) is one of the most celebrated statues of Hellenistic art. It is preserved in two monumental copies (figure 1, for the copy in Munich)1 and imitated in several small terracotta jugs. The dating of the monumental original is not wholly secure, but is reasonably viewed by the majority of scholars as a product of the late third century BCE,2 with its subject matter and manner of carving in keeping with other Hellenistic figures of old women and fishermen.3 Associated with a figure from Smyrna mentioned by Pliny the Elder, and almost certainly misattributed by him to the sculptor Myron,4 she has been the subject of a range of identifications, including: an Alexandrian priestess of Dionysos, an attendant of the same, a character from Plautus’ comedy Curculio, a moral warning advocating adherence to traditional virtues, an illustration of a proverb comparing life and wine, a subversion of the ‘Knidia’ (the celebrated bathing Aphrodite by the sculptor Praxiteles),5 a metaphor for relief in old age, and an elderly prostitute.6 Various emotions have been proposed regarding the emotional ‘message’ of the figure, including exhilaration,7 hope, 8 (misplaced) sexual desire, 9 shock, repulsion, and pity. 10 Moreover, the 1 2

3 4 5 6

7 8 9

The other is in the Capitoline Museum in Rome, inv. 299; Stuart Jones 1912, plate 18.8. Laubscher 1982, 118; Kunze 1999, 69. Cf. Pollitt 1986, 144, who sees them as a counterpart to the bucolic trends of late Republican poetry. This is contradicted by the terracotta examples, such as the Skyros figure (p. 421f., figure 5) with an earlier date; cf. Leroux 1913, 73f.; Waldhauer 1946; Salomonsen 1980, 87–89; Kunze 2002, 100. See notes 12 and 13 below. Naturalis historia 36.32; Smith 1991, 138; Kunze 2002, 99, 102; Dimartino 2008, 67. The original is lost but Roman copies provide a good impression of both her appearance and popularity, e.g. Vatican, Gabinetto delle Maschere, inv. 812. Priestess: Wrede 1991, 173; Szymańska 2005, 75 note 6; cf. Laubscher 1982, 118f. Attendant: Kunze 1999, 75, 78. Character from Plautus: Salač 1959; cf. Laubscher 1982, 118. Moral warning: Sande 1995, 49. Wine proverb: Beard and Henderson 2001, 142. ‘Knidia’ subversion: ibid. Hope metaphor: Dimartino 2008, 74f. Prostitute: Zanker 1989; cf. Wrede 1991, 170. Smith 1991, 137. Dimartino 2008, 75. Beard and Henderson 2001, 142.

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various emotional responses by modern scholars (from the nineteenth century onwards), ranging from enthusiastic appreciation to keen embarrassment,11 make the figure an important case study in the effects of social context on art historical interpretation. This raises fundamental questions about our ability to put aside our own socially-constructed emotions, and reconstruct those of an ancient civilisation.

Figure 1. ‘The Drunken Old Woman’ in the Munich Glyptothek. Marble Roman copy of a Greek original (height: 92 cm). The Greek original probably dates to the late third century BCE.

In order to reconstruct the emotional effects prompted by this image in the ancient viewer we must also reconstruct his or her values. These values were formed by experiences, reinforced by such things as stories, education, rituals, and law (a combination of influences more commonly called ‘culture’), and retained as memories which informed both subconscious and reasoned response. In trying to determine the viewer’s emotional reaction to the Drunken Old Woman, we must look for these shared memories and values in the visual and textual records, to see what they can tell us about the significance of old women, ritual drunkenness, and of the nuances of her body language and appearance.12 Having identified a process in the ‘Introduction to Archaeological Sources’ (pp. 131–150) by which an archaeological object might be approached, this short 10 11 12

Burn 2004, 73. When first joining the collection at the Munich Glyptothek, the Drunken Old Woman was relegated to a storeroom; see Dimartino 2008, 67f. See also pp. 223–225 and 229 in this volume.

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chapter focuses on the iconography and material comparanda which help to identify ‘emotions of image’. It focuses on the celebrated Hellenistic figure of the Drunken Old Woman whose appearance has generated a good deal of speculation, and considers both the emotions she displays and those intended to be roused in the viewer (that is, the internal and external emotions of image). 2 FIRST IMPRESSIONS: AESTHETIC RESPONSE AND SUBJECT RECOGNITION The Hellenistic viewer would have recognised the Drunken Old Woman as part of a wider fashion that was appearing in the sculpture and images of the period: in scale, quality, and subject matter she stands alongside works such as the New York ‘Market Woman’13 and the Conservatori Fisherman14 as an example of the Hellenistic fashion for highly detailed depictions of low-status individuals (known to modern scholars as ‘genre figures’), engaged in outdoor activities and visits to sanctuaries. Like these other high-quality examples, her scale (only three-quarters of life-size) would have suggested an alternative reality to the life-size and monumental scale which characterised the honorific monuments and portraits of the wealthy and well-known.15 Aside from any responses to the narrative meaning of her appearance, the viewer would also have engaged in the emotional process of ‘art-appreciation’, in admiring (or criticising) the artist’s technical skill, and responding to the composition as an aesthetically pleasing (or displeasing) artefact. While we have no record of such an aesthetic response to this particular figure, we do know from the texts that statues did provoke these kinds of considerations and responses.16 In the fourth mime of Herodas, a poet writing in the third century BCE, we are presented with an account of two poor women, Kynno and Kokkale, on a visit to a sanctuary. Their reaction to the votive statues set up there is illuminating. Their aesthetic appreciation of the works is manifested in repeated use of the Greek kalos (‘beautiful’), emotional interjections and imperatives,17 praise of the artists, and in sustained descriptions of the pieces’ lifelikeness.18 Despite being an artificial account of a sanctuary visit, we have in Herodas’ fourth mime what must have been a recognisable and plausible response to sanctuary offerings in situ, and moreover by two, non-elite, third-century women. These are not educated individuals, or those with a cultivated interest in art. This gives us good grounds to suppose that viewers of the original Drunken Old Woman in her sanctuary context, may also have been excited to see her life-like dynamic pose, taken pleasure in the compact composition and the quality of the finish, and admired the 13 14 15 16 17 18

New York Metropolitan Museum, Rogers Fund inv. no. 1909 (09.39); Dimartino 2008, figure 9; Smith 1991, figure 175. Conservatori inv. no. 1112; Smith 1991, figure 178. Smith 1991, 137. See p. 141 note 66. E.g. ‘Oh!’ (lines 20 and 34); ‘Look!’ (line 27). Lines 20–38.

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artist’s skill in carving the different and often complex textures and contours of her body and wrinkled face. Beyond this early aesthetic response, the ancient viewers who looked more closely would have noticed important differences between the Drunken Old Woman and the other ‘genre’ figures they may have seen. Unlike the images of fishermen, the stereotype for poverty in both contemporary art and text,19 they would have seen that the Drunken Old Woman wears an expensive, buckled chiton,20 that her fingers are decorated with rings, and that she holds an oversized (and so ritual) lagynos decorated with ivy motifs. The aesthetic impact of the Old Woman’s clothes and jewels must have been enhanced through the use of colour. Because of the emphasis on the lagynos in the composition, the figure has been associated with the lagynophoria, a Dionysiac festival instituted by Ptolemy IV in Alexandria and described in Athenaios.21 While many things are described in detail in the procession, included women in embroidered chitones and jewellery,22 and incense burners with ivy motifs, 23 lagynoi are conspicuously absent from Athenaios’ description. This seems to suggest that the lagynos was not as central to the festival as its name suggests. Similarly, the pre-existing use of lagynoi in figurines of standing drunken old women,24 popular in the Classical period, suggests that the shape should not be associated exclusively with the Hellenistic lagynophoria.25 Instead, it seems best to view Athenaios’ account as a useful indicator of the Hellenistic popularity of Dionysiac festivals, providing us with a general, rather than specific, historical context.26 This festival narrative suggests that the Munich-Capitoline figure originally served a votive function, set up in a sanctuary space, similar to the other three-quarter sized ‘genre figures’ of the Hellenistic period.27 Furthermore, the narrative of drunkenness was already well established in votive objects in the form of Silenus and satyrs, and other members of the Dionysiac thiasos. The Drunken Old Women may be thought to represent a ‘real life’ alternative to these mythological subjects.28 In addition to these first impressions regarding the size and identity of the figure, the ancient viewer would also have responded emotionally according to their reading of her body language. By examining the actions she performs, and the way in which she performs them, they would have instinctively and instantane19 20 21 22 23 24 25 26 27

28

E.g. Theokritos, Idylls 21; Greek Anthology 7.295 (Leonidas of Tarentum), and received into Plautus, Rudens 290–305. The peronema or peronetris, Pollitt 1986, 143. Athenaios, Deipnosophistai V 197e–198a. Ibid. 197e–f. Ibid. 198b. E.g. Athens Kanellopoulos Musuem inv. 1263; Schulze 1998, fig. 20.3. Zanker 1989, 55 and Wrede 1991, 164–167. Contra Beard and Henderson 2001, 141f. who dismiss it as a ‘modern myth’. Smith 1991, 138. Smith 1991, 138f. This votive function would also make the response of Kynno and Kokkale in Herodas 4 even more important in the reconstruction of the figure’s display and social context. Kunze 2002, 105.

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ously drawn on their own experiences of nonverbal communication in order to interpret the narrative nuances of the Drunken Old Woman. The complex combination of biologically-founded universals (such as smiling for ‘happy’) and culturally-specific conventions (such as the modern, Western ‘thumbs up’ for ‘good’) makes the retrospective interpretation of body language in the ancient art images a challenge. We cannot, for example, map our own body language ‘rules’ wholesale onto ancient art objects because the cultural context in which they were created potentially imbued them with quite different meanings. But we can make useful inroads into understanding the original significance of a figurative image if we draw together contemporary ancient evidence, both image and text, which sheds light on what individual elements of body language once signified. The study which follows reveals how, by breaking down the body language of the Drunken Old Woman into its constituent parts, and considering these in turn, we can reconstruct with greater security the internal emotions being communicated by the figure. 3 THE INTERNAL EMOTIONS OF IMAGE 3.1 Body Language Head thrown back The throwing back of the head can express both freedom from emotional inhibition and self-containment, since the performer can no longer engage with another individual. Indeed, it has an established pedigree in Greek art for images of women, expressing abandon in religious celebration, for example in the ecstatic maenads of the Kleophrades Painter29 and Skopas,30 or the dancing Hours in the relief in the Louvre.31 But while these idealised figures show the calm facial expressions (the norm for such figures in the Classical period), the old woman is shown with her mouth open, exposing toothless gums. With her head thrown back, she appears to be laughing or even singing, with the additional sideways tilt perhaps a sign of her rhythmic movement. This argues against the reading of the figure as sad or unwell. Hanna Szymańska’s description of the ‘tongue stretched in a vomitous grimace’ is highly problematic.32 The Old Woman’s tongue is not clearly visible, nor is nausea probable: sufferers of nausea are inclined to keep still, while the old woman’s body posture indicates the contrary. How Hellenistic artists depicted nausea is instead better demonstrated by a variant of the Drunken Old Woman motif in the form a bronze bottle found in thermal spring in Vichy (figure 2). Her little cup, and the bottle that her image it29 Cf. red-figure amphora, Munich inv. 2344, c. 490 BCE; Bieber 1961, fig. 21–24; Kunze 2002, 104, makes a similar observation. 30 The ‘Dresden Maenad’, Dresden Albertinum inv. 133, c. 450 BCE; Knoll, Protzmann, Raumschüssel, and Raumschüssel 1993, 9. 31 Paris, Louvre inv. 1449, second century BCE; Kaltsas 2002, no. 454. 32 Szymańska 2005, 76.

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self decorates, make explicit the connection between her appearance and alcohol. But she is a more pathetic drunkard than the Munich-Capitoline figures. While she peers dejectedly at the ground, with drooping shoulders and sagging cheeks around a downturned mouth, the Munich-Capitoline figure is shown in a dynamic moment of open-mouthed vivacity.33

Figure 2. Bronze bottle (height: 9.2 cm) in the form of a drunken old woman found in a thermal spring in Vichy, late Hellenistic period. Paris, Louvre.

Exposing the shoulder The chiton, slipped to reveal a bare shoulder, has prompted some strong emotional responses among modern scholars perceiving a sexualised narrative.34 But curiously, the same motif appears in the walking figure of the New York ‘Market Woman’ (see note 11), without having prompted similar remarks. In both these figures, this exposure is the result of movement. That such a detail contributes to the identification of the Munich-Capitoline figure as a prostitute is unlikely.35 The fact that all the small terracotta jugs which mimic the monumental composition show the figure with her chiton firmly on both shoulders indicates how insignificant this detail was in the reception of the piece.36 We would hardly expect such a 33 34 35 36

Cf. Bieber 1961, 141. E.g. Zanker 1989, 41f.; Smith 1991, 137f. Zanker 1989, 74. E.g., the miniature Drunken Old Woman figurine from Phanagoreia, (s.l.), second century BCE: Kobylina 1961, plate 24; the figurine from North Africa, late second century CE,

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detail to be overlooked by the copyists if the figure was strongly associated with erotic desire. Erotic emotions in an elderly subject are not, however, unheard of in Hellenistic art. It can be seen in a small terracotta in Dresden from the second century BCE (figure 3) depicting an old celebrant beside a wine jar. She stands with her right hand propped against her hip, and her head tilted alluringly to one side in a pose recalling infantile behaviour adopted as allure signals.37 However, the intentional flirtation of this little terracotta is intended to be humorous through its incongruity, while the exposure of the shoulder by the Munich-Capitoline figure is primarily intended to narrate the effect of wine on her self-control, and so functions as an external measure of her internal state. Nothing else about her body or body language suggests flirtation, or even interaction, but on the contrary narrative isolation.

Figure 3. Terracotta figurine (height: 9 cm) of an old woman celebrant with wine jar from Boiotia (?), second century BCE. Skulpturensammlung, Staatliche Kunstsammlungen Dresden.

37

Kunsthandel Deutschland inv. 1975: Salomonsen 1980, figure 43a; and figurine from Sousse, Tunisia, late second century CE, Utrecht University inv. BS 77.1: Salomonsen 1980, figure 41a. Morris 2002, 66, 275; Pease and Pease 2004, 173f.

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Clutching the lagynos Like the Dresden figure (figure 3) and similar standing figures from the Hellenistic period,38 the Drunken Old Woman clasps her wine jar close to her, in this case affectionately wrapping both arms around it in a pose which emphasises its large circumference.39 The firm hold also signifies a long period of drinking, with her retention of the bottle. In this respect, the pose might recall a more familiar motif for old women: that of the elderly nurse cradling a child. Certainly, coroplastic evidence from the Greek world presents drinking and childcare as the only two narrative possibilities for old women in classical antiquity, and in some rare cases, we see both presented simultaneously. In one terracotta figurine of the Classical period (figure 4), we see a plump old woman holding a grotesque baby in the crook of her left arm and the neck of a large lagynos in her right. Despite the great number of figures shown embracing children, however, we have no reason to consider the Munich-Capitoline figure a parody of the nurse motif, since the motif of old women drinking was already familiar in Classical terracottas, and because the position of the figure, sitting directly on the ground, is unlike any nurse figure that we have.

Figure 4. Terracotta figurine of an a old woman with child and lagynos (height: 9.3 cm) from Greece, c. 375–350 BCE. Athens Kanellopoulos Museum inv. 1263. 38

E.g. Dresden inv. no. ZV 1633 and inv. no. 1055, both from second century BCE: PfistererHaas 1989, figures 146 and 147. 39 Cf. the late Classical figurine from the Crimea of an elderly hetaira lovingly clutching her cup, Paris, Louvre inv. CA 2295: Pfisterer-Haas 1989, figure 95, cat. iii 27.

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The forward tilt of the Drunken Old Woman’s wine jar has also attracted comment: Christian Kunze’s suggestion, that it represents a challenge to the viewer, an offer to share in the wine, is improbable considering both her protective embrace and her entirely self-absorbed head position.40 Nor can the supposedly phallic connotations of her grip on the lagynos be considered central to the narrative or an intentional performance by the old woman, since we have already observed that the act of laughing or singing to herself, precludes interaction with others. Indeed, the phallic qualities of the gesture are less obvious in the Capitoline version where the right hand is partly obscured by the lip of the lagynos, a section which is lost in the Munich version.41 Instead, the tilt of the lagynos seems to be designed to mirror, and so emphasise her backward lean, giving an impression of drunken unsteadiness as both body and bottle splay out from the centre. Sitting on the ground Sitting, as opposed to standing, with her wine jar, and embracing it indicates the duration of narrative. By adopting a sedentary position, she confines her attention to one activity: a sustained period of drinking. But her sitting position also has social connotations. In Hellenistic art, sitting directly on the ground without a raised seat is usually an indication of low status, reserved for rustics and beggars. But the Munich-Capitoline figure’s dress and jewellery suggest that she is not poor. In addition, she is shown with her feet demurely crossed at the ankle, unlike the wide-kneed position of the nauseated old woman on the bronze bottle (figure 2). The sitting position is, therefore, paradigmatic of the overall composition in its depiction of conflicting emotional forces: the anxiety which regulates codes of social propriety and the emotional freedom enabled by wine.42 She attends a festival, presupposing communal celebration with her community, but cuts herself off from interaction and drinks alone; she puts on her best clothes, but one shoulder slips; she sits politely, but on the ground. 3.2 Emotions and Reception And yet while this low sitting position is present in all the terracottas jugs, the crossed ankles are not. A late Hellenistic jug from Skyros (figure 5) show instead the legs spread apart, perpendicular to the floor, with the lagynos held low between the shins. This symmetrical pose, without crossed ankles, appears in all the terracotta jugs, even in North African examples of the Roman Imperial period.43

40 41

42 43

Kunze 2002, 105. It is also possible that context of the display at the Munich Glyptothek (with a racy symplegma group displayed in a secluded niche behind the Drunken Old Woman) may also have rendered some modern scholars more receptive to a sexualised reading. Cf. Murray 1995, 4: ‘This anarchic quality of wine, this tendency towards anomie.’ See above, note 37.

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Figure 5. Terracotta jug from Skyros (height: 25.5 cm), late second/early first century BCE. Athens National Archaeological Museum.

Does this less demure leg position, therefore, imply different emotions of image? And does the fact that the terracotta jugs all sit with their backs straight and not leaning back, mean a completely different emotional narrative? Do they represent a different balance between social anxiety and emotional freedom? If we consider the emotions of the image purely as an art phenomenon, the answer to these questions is certainly ‘yes’. But if we also consider the emotions arising from the image as a practical object (which is to say, if we consider the figure in its ancient context), there are important considerations to be made with regards to both its fabrication and usage. The terracotta jugs are functional objects, hollowed out in order to hold wine. The symmetrical wide-legged position, with the lagynos between the knees, is not only easier to fabricate, but also makes for a wider, more regular and more stable

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bowl to the vessel. Similarly, the spout of the lagynos she holds on these jugs is pulled in towards to the body, not projecting out, and the straight back allows for the spout to be placed on top of the head. In short, the terracotta versions of the motif retain the essential elements of the narrative in order to make the figure recognisable, but adapt the finer details in order to better suit their function as jugs. In this low-cost medium, such practical considerations naturally overrule the emotional nuances accommodated in a larger, finer, votive figure. The terracotta copies, therefore, could be described as both visually and emotionally stream-lined. Having examined closely the pose of the Capitoline-Munich figure, we have seen love of wine implied in the hold on the lagynos, and an apparent tension between the social anxiety which regulates propriety, and the so-far unidentified emotional stimulus which prompts both her position on the floor and the tilt of her head. The nature of this emotional stimulus is, however, made explicit in the inscription on the base of the Skyros jug (figure 5). Despite the differences in appearance resulting from a different medium and function, the chronological and overall postural correspondence of the jug with the Capitoline-Munich figure makes this inscription the best evidence we have for understanding the original narrative: ‘This old woman sits here full of joy holding her wine.’ 44 And so we are to understand that, rather than a physical stimulus such as nausea, the reason for her sitting position and head thrown back (also mimicked in a titled head in the Skyros jug) is an emotional one. It is enjoyment which is offered as the explanation for her behaviour, and thus evidence for a not unfamiliar emotional hierarchy of personal pleasure over social constructions based on anxiety or shame, facilitated by wine.45 This association between joy and alcohol may seem entirely natural to many readers, but one only needs to compare attitudes towards alcohol in Islamic jurisprudence, or even the Prohibitionist literature of the 1920s to see that such associations are culturally and socially sensitive. That wine was widely held to be a source of pleasure for the Greeks is both well- and longattested in the textual evidence. In the fifth-century BCE playwright Euripides, for example, we find drunkenness euphemistically described as being ‘in the pleasures (hedonai) of Bacchus’,46 while, even earlier, we find in Homer an account of how wine is able to change the emotional hierarchy of the drinker: in what is clearly a metaphor for the power of wine to combat anxiety, Helen adds a special pharmakon (drug) which ‘banishes sorrow, allays anger and makes all ills forgotten’ to the mixing bowl being shared by Menelaos and Telemachos. Such is the power of this drink that it could stop any man from crying for a whole day ‘even if his mother and father were lying there dead, and if men killed his brother or son with a sword in front of his very eyes...’47 This is not to say that the effects of drinking to excess were overlooked in Greek culture,48 but that drinking itself for 44 45 46 47 48

Γραὺς ἥδε οἰνοφόρος κεχαρηµέ(νη ὧδ)ε κάθηται; Salomonsen 1980, 88. See also the discussion of epigrams, including that of Pallidas, below p. 428. Euripides, Ion 552; cf. Nilsson 1957, 131, who explicitly links the pleasure of drinking and symposia with the appeal of Bacchic Mysteries which offered ‘an eternal banquet’ after death. Homer, Odyssey 4.219–226. Cf. the sixth-century BCE poet Theognis 879–884. Cf. Theognis 211f., 873–876 and the nauseous old woman in figure 2 (p. 418).

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the (significantly) men mentioned here, was not socially inappropriate behaviour. If, however, we are to fully understand the meaning of the drunkenness in the case of the Drunken Old Woman, we must look beyond this simple interpretation. We need, instead, to consider how the piece may have been ‘read’, through introducing contextual information which illuminates the external emotions, those of the viewer. 3 THE EXTERNAL EMOTIONS OF IMAGE The introduction of a viewer into these considerations brings with it a second, exterior context. This is particularly significant in the case of the seated old woman figures due to the correspondence between the narrative depicted in the images, and the environment in which they were viewed: for whether a monumental votive dedication in a sanctuary or a terracotta wine-jug at a drinking party, the sitting old woman motif could mimic the narrative context of the person looking at her, who are themselves either sanctuary visitors or symposiasts. Would such a metanarrative have prompted an emotional response in the viewer? Did the man who picked up the Skyros jug, and read how the old woman enjoys her wine, also feel a degree of camaraderie, and take encouragement to drink himself? And did the woman who saw the Munich-Capitoline figure in a sanctuary take encouragement from this taboo figure to enjoy herself? Or would such proximity have had the opposite emotional effect, strengthening the feeling of disgust, and distancing the viewer from self-association with the subject matter? On such individual responses, we can only speculate. If, however, we are willing to engage with the viewers as a social whole, rather than as individuals, as Sarah Tarlow advocates,49 we find ourselves with a richer seam of supporting material. The response of the social whole has been often strongly-formulated in modern assessments, such as that of Mary Beard and John Henderson, who suggest that the Munich-Capitoline figures were seen as ‘a joke about beauty itself, and its desirability; a put down for women no doubt, but also a sneer at male desire.’50 But, as we have seen, the absence of the slipped chiton (the only faintly suggestive element in the composition) in both the Skyros jug and the later Roman copies, seems to imply that the notion of sexual desire was not central enough to the motif to warrant its retention. That this would have been the ancient viewer’s overriding response to the Munich-Capitoline figure therefore seems unlikely. It is possible however, that the viewer may have responded to the way she was dressed in another way: judging her moral worth through the appropriateness of her fine dress and rings.

49 50

Tarlow 2000, 728: ‘social emotional values rather than individual, subjective emotional experience’. Beard and Henderson 2001, 142.

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Inscriptions from various locations and periods of classical antiquity suggest that matters of dress had always been of concern in religious practice. But the picture is rather muddled: in some cases, we find cult regulations specifically prohibiting ostentatious dress and self-decoration. An inscription from Lykosoura in Arcadia from the late third century BCE records regulations for both jewellery and clothing for women who wished to enter the sanctuary of Despoina.51 The amount of gold worn is restricted (unless it was brought as dedication), and they should not wear ‘cloaks which are purple, or brightly coloured, or black or wear sandals or rings.’ Elsewhere, in an inscription from first century BCE Andania in Messenia, a cult regulation was also inscribed on stone warning, amongst other things, that the women’s clothes should not be transparent, should have only small decorative motifs, be made of linen, and be covered with a cloak worth less than a hundred drachmae.52 Similarly, in the first century CE, the authorities behind cult regulations in the town of Kios in Bithynia appear to have taken a firm stand against the wearing of jewellery at religious gatherings, a practice presented as hateful to the goddess:53 You are all to accompany the basket unshod and in clean clothes, but leave your gold at home, for this she (the goddess) heartily despises, but to those she is well-disposed.

From the marble copies that we now have, we do not know what colour the Drunken Old Woman’s dress was intended to be. But we can see that it was intended to be fine, fastened with buckels, and that she does wear jewellrey. Perhaps the viewer confronted with the Drunken Old Woman may have had some sense of her finery being misplaced, contributing to the interpretation of the figure as one engaged in social transgression. But even so, the cult regulations prohibiting ostentatious adornment come from quite particular contexts. The degree of detail, particularly visible in the Andania inscription, implicitly reveals an attempt to change current practices, to stamp out the kind of ostentation which must have become commonplace. In each case, these sartorial laws are slightly different, with varying terms, length, and phrasing which suggests that these were not well-worn, conventional prescriptions, but rules invented by and for the individuals in their particular locale. It is also interesting to note that these clothing regulations are also strongly associated with women-only rites, or parts of rites when the men withdrew. Whether it was felt that an all-female environment was more conducive to this kind of competitiveness, or whether the absence of men was thought a a risk to social regulation, we can only speculate. In the case of the Drunken Old Woman, we do not know whether she was intended to be associated with an allwomen celebration or not. If she were set up in a sanctuary space, one visited by both men and women, such a narrative seems less likely. But we cannot entirely 51 52

53

IG V.2.514; Sokolowski 1969, no. 63 lines 4–9; on the sanctuary cf. Pausanias 8.37. IG V.1.1390; Soklowski 1969, no. 65 lines 15–26; new edition and commentary: Deshours 2006; Gawlinski 2012; on the regulations concerning clothes see Deshours 2006, 102–106; Gawlinski 2012, 107–133. This passage also contains regulations for priestesses (including a ban on coloured trims and cloaks worth more than two minas), slave-girls, and freeborn girls. Sokolowski 1955, no. 6; I.Kios 19; trans. Rigsby 2009, 79.

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rule out the possibility that she may have been viewed critically by these visitors for her finery. But, to complicate matters further, we also have textual evidence which suggests the contrary, that dressing-up was positively encouraged in many religious contexts. Even in the passage of Athenaios describing the Ptolemaic lagynophoria procession, there is great emphasis on the glamour and ostentation of the occasion. Alongside the lavishly dressed individuals representing mythological characters, and the decorated images of the gods, even the mortal attendants are in coloured clothes and gold accessories.54 A similar attitude can be seen in decrees from elsewhere, such as that regulating the annual procession at Antioch on the Pyramos from c. 160 BCE. The text decrees that annual procession to celebrate an altar foundation should be ‘as beautiful and glamorous as possible’, that the sacrificial cows should have gilded horns and that ‘all citizens shall wear garlands’.55 More particularly sartorial are a regulation from the Pireaus from c. 180 BCE which describes how the women were to be provided with robes decorated with silver,56 and from Tlos, also of the second century BCE, decreeing that only women may wear bright coloured stolai.57 In short, the Drunken Old Woman, with her buckled dress and rings, may have been intended to signal more than simply wealth: it may have been an indicator of inappropriate ostentation, or it may have been intended to positively narrate her full participation in the celebration. Considering the ornate decoration of the lagynos she holds, which seems to suggest a highly ‘decorated’ context, and that fact that she was probably a votive offering herself, the latter seems more persuasive. Celebration seems better suited to a votive purpose than censure, and a means to encourage the viewer in his own pleasurable experience. And yet there are many who have provided largely unflattering assessments of the emotional response she would have provoked. Lucilla Burn’s is perhaps the most damning formulation, that it: deliberately sets out to shock and repulse, to evoke conflicting emotions of horror and pity 58 through its cruelly exaggerated delineation of what old age can mean.

This focuses squarely on the taboo of growing old, without giving serious consideration to the possible positive nuances of happiness and celebration embedded in the figure and its copies. But neither is a more positive reading entirely satisfactory, such as that of Alessia Dimartino who sees the Drunken Old Woman in terms of contemporary philosophical attitudes towards relief of one’s cares, in this case by combating old age with wine.59 In trying to wholly condemn or wholly 54 55 56 57 58 59

Athenaios, Deipnosophistai V 200e: ‘five hundred girls decked out in purple dresses with gold belts’, and ibid. 202d: ‘girls wearing expensive clothes’. Sokolowski 1955, no. 81; Chaniotis 2010, 211f.; cf. Chaniotis 2009 on ‘l’esthétique des rituels’ and the effect of local emotional experience on sacred laws. IG II2 1328/1329 A 7f. (Sokolowski 1969, no. 48) . SEG VII 775. On the implication of transvestism, see Sokolowski 1955, 77. Burn 2004, 73. Cf. Sande 1995, 49. Dimartino 2008, 75.

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rehabilitate the Drunken Old Woman, both these scholars are obliged to distance her from the wealth of epigrammatic and parodic evidence which irreverently present the very same motif, and which form part of the cultural backdrop to the ancient viewing experience. In this literary evidence we find strong support for a reading of emotional ambivalence (even polyvalence), based on combined ancient taboos concerning women, age, drunkenness and uninhibited behaviour. And taboo, as the texts make clear, can be both disgusting and funny. It both literature and art it is striking that, while older men could occupy the roles of eminent citizen or wise elder, old women had no such cachet. Instead the only recognisable incarnation of the ‘good’ old woman is the old nurse, whose primary role and indeed very identity rests in the care of her charge.60 Old women are entirely absent from Hellenistic portraiture, just as the freeborn are almost invisible in the texts. It is significant that the practice of wearing a short headscarf, just as we see on the Drunken Old Woman, is presented in an epigram by Antipater of Sidon as a corollary of old age in women: ‘... the scarf which tied up my hair shows that I was going grey’.61 The implication is that grey hair was undesirable, and was expected to be concealed. The headscarf seems paradigmatic of the general absence of ‘good’ old women in art and literature: they were not a subject to be drawn attention to. Doing so was a social transgression, one that provided ample material for comic authors. This taboo was harnessed, for example, in the fifth century BCE by the comic playwright Aristophanes. In his Ekklesiazousai (The Assembly Women), we are presented with the chaos which follows in the wake of a ‘sexually democratic’ decree: that any man wishing to make love to a young woman must first sleep with an old one. A scene with three over-dressed, highly-sexed old women gives the opportunity for a series of jokes about their ugliness and inappropriateness as they try to compete with a young girl, flirt with her young boyfriend, and finally strong-arm him into their house.62 In this instance, it is a novel legal catalyst which allows the old women the opportunity to behave as they do. They express emotions not usually considered appropriate for their age, and the audience can squirm in discomfort and laugh in Schadenfreude all at the same time. Aristophanes’ law is a unique construction for unleashing this behavioural and emotional chaos. Wine, however, as a catalyst for unseemly behaviour, is far more common. Indeed the Greek Anthology is filled with funerary epigrams for old women who, despite the disapproval of others, like to drink, and whose enjoyment of wine is used for comic effect. And so we laugh at the fate of tottering Ampelis (‘Young Vine’) who accidentally drowns like a ship going under as she tries to sneak a ‘cup of Cyclopean size’ from a vat.63 And we are surprised to hear 60 61 62 63

Such as the nurse character in Greek Tragedy, e.g. in Aeschylus, Choephoroi, Euripides’ Medea, Andromache and Hippolytus. Greek Anthology 7.423 lines 2–4. Lines 877–1111. Aristo, Greek Anthology 7.457.

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Maronis (‘Strong Wine from Maroneia’)64 speaking from beyond the grave, who only grieves, not for her family, but that the cup depicted on her grave marker is not full.65 The drunken old woman is a stock character in the epigrammatist’s armoury, just as it was in the coroplastic arts.66 But perhaps the most explicit formulation of these social taboos, bringing together expectations of appearance and behaviour, and the potential for wine to upset these, comes in a touching epigram by Pallidas:67 The women look me up and down for being old, and tell me to look at the remnants of my age in the mirror. But, if my hair is white or black, I don’t care, while I’m coming to the end of my life. And with lovely-smelling oils and lovely-petalled garlands and with wine, I put a stop to my troubled thoughts.

Even from women, it seems, we hear the kind of incompatible criticisms which mark the ‘no-win’ situation of a social undesirable: she is simultaneously criticised for being old, and for not behaving as an old woman should. No wonder, then, that the old narrator is herself inconsistent: she claims not to care, and still has ‘troubled thoughts’ (phrontidas argaleas). Pallidas’ old woman is valuable in our assessment of the Munich-Capitoline Drunken Old Woman because it acknowledges the kinds of social norms which surrounded old age and loss of beauty, and the power of wine to both undermine behavioural expectations and to comfort (that is to place personal pleasure into a superior position within the emotional hierarchy to social anxiety). Unlike the short inscription on the Skyros jug, referring only to happiness, it recognises the possibility of conflicting internal emotions within the old woman herself. And so we are faced with the prospect of polyvalence in both the internal and external emotions of the Munich-Capitoline Drunken Old Women: elements of her body language, the Skyros inscription, and certain epigrams from the Greek Anthology, all suggest a figure experiencing happiness and pleasure. Other epigrams point to relief, in response to anxiety and shame. As to the external emotions, wider art conventions and textual evidence make it clear that both her age and appearance were contrary to prevailing ideas of beauty. The appearance of her lined face, toothless gums, and unrestrained behaviour must have induced some degree of disapproval or disgust, just as we see in the response of the young man in the Ekklesiazousai and in Pallidas’ censorious women. And yet simultaneously, they will have responded to the figure as a technical and aesthetic achievement, enjoying the experience of looking at her in appreciation of the artist’s skill, and perhaps even with respect for the patron’s taste and wealth. Moreover, through the power of convention and the construction of art and literary motifs, the Drunken Old Woman would also have prompted emotionally positive associations with 64

65 66 67

Maron was the priest who supplied Odysseus with the strong wine with which he overcame Polyphemos, Homer, Odyssey 9.197. His name became synonymous with the drink. Maroneia in Thrace was producer of wine. Antipater of Sidon, Greek Anthology 7.35. See figures 3 and 4 (pp. 419f.); Pfisterer-Haas 1989 contains a large catalogue of examples. Pallidas, Greek Anthology 11.54.

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humour and enjoyment. Not only would the motif have recalled theatrical performances, comic poetry, and other humorous art images, but the viewer’s own familiarity with the pleasures of wine. Her clothing and jewellery too may have narrated the story of a woman really entering into the spirit of the occasion, emphasising religious celebration as a source of enjoyment to those who were visiting the sanctuary. And so, rather than trying to force a single emotional reading, such as horror, pity, or hope, in this extraordinary figure, we might do better to accept that more than one emotion is simultaneously possible and, moreover, that multiplicity is not a failure of understanding.68 Even the epigram of Pallidas shows that Hellenistic society was not unfamiliar with such emotional complexity, and it seems highly likely that the challenging appearance of the figure was an intentional attempt to prompt mixed emotions. If this was so, the variety of interpretations which the modern period has produced is a testament to its success. BIBLIOGRAPHY Beard, M. and J. Henderson (2001) Classical Art: from Greece to Rome, Oxford. Bieber, M. (1961) The Sculpture of the Hellenistic Age, New York (revised edition). Burn, L. (2004) Hellenistic Art: from Alexander the Great to Augustus, London. Chaniotis, A. (2009) Le visage humain des rituels: expérimenter, mettre en scène et négocier les rituels dans la Grèce hellénistique et l’Orient romain, Annuaire de l'École Pratique des Hautes Études (EPHE) Section des Sciences Religieuses 116, 171–178. ––– (2010) Dynamic of Emotions and Dynamic of Rituals. Do Emotions Change Ritual Norms?, in C. Brosius and U. Hüsken (eds.), Ritual Matters. Dynamic Dimensions in Practice, London/New York, 210–235. Deshours, N. (2006) Les mystères d’Andania. Étude d’épigraphie et d’histoire religieuses, Bordeaux. Dimartino, A. (2008) Anus Ebria: Immagini di una donna tra vecchiaia e ubriachezza, Prospettiva 129, 67–80. Gawlinski, L. (2012) The Sacred Law of Andania. A New Text with Commentary, Berlin/Boston. Kaltsas, N.E. (2002) Sculpture in the National Archaeological Museum, Athens/Los Angeles. Knoll, K., H. Protzmann, I. Raumschüssel, and M. Raumschüssel (1993) Die Antiken im Albertinum: Staatliche Kunstsammlungen Dresen Skulputrensammlung, Mainz. Kobylina, M. (1961) Terrakotovye statuetki Pantikapea i Fanagorii, Moscow. Kunze, C. (1999) Verkannte Götterfreunde. Zu Deutung und Funktion hellenistischer Genreskulpturen, Mitteilungen des Deutschen Archäologischen Instituts (Römische Abteilung) 106, 43– 82. ––– (2002) Zum Greifen nah: Stilphänomene in der hellenistischen Skulptur und ihre inhaltliche Interpretation, Düsseldorf. Laubscher, H. P. (1982) Fischer und Landleute: Studien zur hellenistischen Genreplastik, Mainz. Leroux, G. (1913) Lagynos: Recherches sur las ceramique et l’art ornamental hellenistique, Paris. Morris, D. (2002) Peoplewatching: The Desmond Morris guide to Body Language, London. Murray, O. (1995) Histories of Pleasure, in O. Murray and M. Tecuşan, In Vino Veritas, London, 3–17. Nilsson, M. P. (1957) The Dionysiac Mysteries of the Hellenistic and Roman Age, Lund. 68

Cf. Zanker 1989, 74 on the piece’s ‘complexity’ and ‘ambivalence’.

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Pease, A. and B. Pease (2004) The Definitive Book of Body Language, London. Pfisterer-Haas, S. (1989) Darstellungen alter Frauen in der griechischen Kunst, Frankfurt. Pollitt, J. J. (1986) Art in the Hellenistic Age, Cambridge. Rigsby, K. J. (2009) Notes on Sacred Laws, Zeitschrift für Papyrologie und Epigraphik 170, 73– 80. Salač, A. (1959) Ein Hymnus auf den Wein. Interpretation eines hellenistischen Kunstwerkes, Acta Antiqua Academiae Scientiarum Hungaricae 7, 201–209. Salomonsen, J. W. (1980) Die Trunkenbold und die Trunkene Alte, Bulletin Antieke Beschaving 55, 65–135 Sande, S. (1995) An Old Hag and Her Sisters, Symbolae Osloenses 70, 30–53. Schulze, H. (1998) Ammen und Pädagogen: Sklavinnen und Sklaven als Erzieher in der antiken Kunst und Gesellschaft, Mainz. Seltman, C.T. (1957) Wine in the Ancient World, London. Sokolowski, F. (1955) Lois sacrées de l’Asie Mineure, Paris. ––– (1969) Lois sacrées des cités grecques, Paris. Szymańska, H. (2005) Terres cuites d’Athribis, Turnhout. Smith, R. R. R. (1991) Hellenistic Sculpture: a Handbook, London. Stuart Jones, H. (1912) A Catalogue of the Ancient Sculptures Preserved in the Municipal Collections of Rome: The Sculptures of the Museo Capitolino, Oxford. Tarlow, S. (2000) Emotion in Archaeology, Current Anthropology 41.5, 713–746. Waldhauer, O. (1946) Myron’s Anus Ebria and the Drunken Woman in Munich, American Journal of Archaeology, 241–246. Wrede, H. (1991) Matronen im Kult des Dionysos. Zur hellenistischen Genreplastik, Mitteilungen des Deutschen Archäologischen Instituts (Römische Abteilung) 98, 163–188. Zanker, P. (1989) Die Trunkene Alte. Das Lachen der Verhöhnten, Frankfurt am Main.

PICTURE CREDITS Figure 1: Figure 2:

Figure 3:

Figure 4:

Figure 5:

‘The Drunken Old Woman’ of Munich. Marble Roman copy of a Greek original (height: 92 cm). Munich Glyptothek inv. no. 437. Photo: J.E.A. Masséglia. Bronze bottle (height: 9.2 cm) in the form of a drunken old woman, found in a thermal spring in Vichy, late Hellenistic period. Paris, Louvre 2936 (MNC 1916). Photo: akg-images / Erich Lessing. Terracotta figurine (height: 9 cm) of an old woman celebrant with wine jar from Boiotia(?), second century BCE. Skulpturensammlung, Staatliche Kunstsammlungen Dresden inv. no. 1055. Photo: Hans-Peter Klut/ Elke Estel, Dresden 2004. Terracotta Figurine of an a old Woman with child and lagynos (height: 9.3 cm) from Greece, c. 375–350 BCE. Athens Kanellopoulos Museum inv. 126. Photo reproduced by kind permission of the 1st Ephorate of Prehistoric & Classical Antiquities, Athens. Terracotta jug from Skyros (height: 25.5 cm), late second/early first century BCE. Athens National Archaeological Museum, inv. no. 2069. Photo: © Hellenic Ministry of Culture and Tourism /Archaeological Receipts Fund.

ENVOI

THE EMOTION SEEKS TO BE EXPRESSED Thoughts from a Linguist’s Point of View Maria Theodoropoulou 1 INTRODUCTION: THE TRAP OF ‘EMOTION’ Emotion, a research object long neglected, is presently at the center of an interdisciplinary interest as the meeting point of both biological and social-humanistic sciences. This interdisciplinary encounter is probably the strongest evidence of the complexity of the nature of emotion; it is at the same time a kind of warning that from whichever perspective one chooses to approach it one ought to look at the findings of other scientific fields – if not to have a dialogue with them. The situation becomes even more complex if one also takes into account that there is no interdisciplinary consensus as to what emotion is.1 The terminology is not in agreement either: the terms feelings, sentiments, affects are used instead of emotion even by researchers within the same fields –sometimes the adoption of a term aims to indicate the perspective from which the topic is approached.2 This last point with regard to terminology is only indicative of the crucial role that language plays in the study of emotion. It is not only that the concept of ‘emotion’ is not universal, since there are languages in which this word is absent. 3 It is mainly because the categorisations of the emotions that every language makes are culture-bound. Thus the danger becomes evident that a researcher might interpret the phenomena under investigation through the categorisations of his/her mother tongue, which may be incompatible with those of another culture or another language. This ascertainment has two aspects. On the one hand it questions

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I would like to thank Angelos Chaniotis and Ioannis Veloudis for their comments and Iliana Teazi-Antonakopoulou for editing the English version of this text. ‘“Emotion” is a relatively new superordinate category or hypernym’ that ‘conveys a model of reality related to modern(ist) psychology as it emerged in the UK in the middle of the 19th century and now circulates globally’ (Wilce 2009, 22f.). Concerning the anthropological literature Radcliffe Brown 1922, for example, uses the term ‘sentiment’, Palmer and Occhi 1999 as well; Lutz 1988 and Lutz and White 1986 use ‘emotion’; Massumi 1995 ‘links affect with sheer intensity, and emotion with cultural signification’. See Wilce 2009, 28–32, for these distinctions in anthropological literature, and Wierzbicka 1999, ch. 1, for the discussion concerning the terminology. Wierzbicka 1999, 3f.

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those studies which investigate emotions in their non-linguistic manifestation (for instance facial expressions);4 on the other hand it makes explicit that there is always ‘the trap waiting for those who declare that they want to study emotions as such and “are not interested” in language’.5 In other words, emotion cannot be investigated ‘naked’, because language always mediates between it and the researcher – and every language makes its own proper intersection in the spectrum of the emotional experience. For Anna Wierzbicka6 the danger of ethnocentrism – anglocentrism also (because of the domination of the English language in academic discourse) – can be avoided by using a Natural Semantic Metalanguage (NSM). NSM is constituted by the universal human concepts and their rules of combination (i.e. their ‘grammar’) – in this metalanguage FEEL is such a concept and not EMOTION as mentioned above. 2 UNIVERSALISM OR RELATIVISM ... Although Anna Wierzbicka’s approach has been criticised in many respects,7 her warning concerning the relativist tactic of the languages remains crucial. On the other hand, one could see Wierzbicka’s undertaking – irrespective of whether one agrees or not – as her contribution to a long lasting debate concerning the nature of emotion. The evolutionary approaches, which go along with Darwin’s views and derive mainly from neurosciences and psychology, argue that emotions are biologically determined processes that are grounded in the brain and use the body as their stage; emotions were developed during human evolution aiming at the maintenance of life, that is, survival.8 Furthermore, by adopting the distinction between primary or basic and secondary or psychosocial emotions, they argue that the primary ones are innate and, consequently, universal.9 At the other end, approaches that come from anthropology10 and psychology11 adopt a social/cultural constructionist perspective which argue that emotions are creations of culture; in this sense emotions are not innate but they are learned by the child during parent-child interaction and other interpersonal relationships – needless to say, language takes on an important role in this process.12 The approaches vary also as to the role they assign to language: in cognitive anthropology and cognitive linguistics paradigms language is sometimes considered the medium through which cultural knowledge is reconstructed, as it is reflected in cultural models, that is, in 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12

Ekman 1980. Wierzbicka 1999, 28. Wierzbicka 1999; see also Wierzbicka 1996. See Wilce 2009, 75–77: for example, ‘The idea that NSM is of a different sort than natural languages, while simultaneously being natural, is paradoxical at best.’ LeDoux 1998; Damasio 1999. E.g. Ekman 1980; LeDoux 1998; Damasio 1999. E.g. Lutz and White 1986; Lutz 1987; see also Wilce 2009. E.g. Averill 1974. Planalp 1999, 142f.; Oatley et al. 2006, 302.

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‘cognitive schemas that are shared intersubjectively by a social group’;13 sometimes it is language use that is explained through cultural models;14 in pragmatic approaches the focus is, among others, on how emotion talk works in social life15 or on the strategic uses of language;16 finally, many anthropological approaches adopt a semiotic perspective considering language as part of the context of communication. However, the situation regarding the evolutionary and the constructionist approaches is not as polarised as it might seem at first glance. For the issue here is the focus which each side emphasises, something which also becomes obvious in what it chooses to define as its field of investigation. The evolutionary approaches study the emotion primarily in a space outside language (for instance Joseph LeDoux focuses his research on the neuronal system of fear, Paul Ekman on the facial expressions), arguing that emotion phylogenetically precedes language. These points of view do not exclude cultural intervention: Ekman for instance speaks not only about universal facial expressions but also about acquired bodily movements that are typical of a culture and a product of cultural learning. Moreover, he has introduced the term display rules so as to bring forth the intervention of social conventions in the expression of basic emotions: these rules are part of an individual’s socialisation and define the specific emotion, towards what person it is directed, and in what degree it is permitted to be expressed; for instance the degree of pain expressed in case of death must be in proportion with the degree of kinship with the dead person.17 Despite the fact that the cultural factor has been introduced, the focus remains on what happens in the body, because it comes from the function of the unconscious brain systems. As Antonio Damasio says, ‘we can educate our emotions but not suppress them entirely’.18 For emotions encompass brain functions to which we have no access; consequently we can disguise our emotions – usually with no success – but we cannot intervene in areas where we have no access and no consciousness. Although biological approaches allow for cultural intervention with emotions, the way the constructionists treat the biological substrate varies: with the emphasis always on socio-cultural factors, this can range from the simple recognition of the existence of the biological substrate to the interweaving of the biological with the cultural. James Averill for instance argues that ‘some emotion-like responses have their roots in man’s biological heritage’ (e.g. the avoidance of danger). However, most standard emotional reactions transcend any biological imperatives related to self- or species-preservation. They are based instead on human capabilities above the animal

13 14 15 16 17 18

D’Andrade 1987, 112. Quinn and Holland 1987, 24. E.g. Lutz 1988. E.g. Caffi and Janney 1994. Ekman 1980, 87–89; 1984, 320. Damasio 1999, 49.

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However, sometimes the attempt to separate the biological aspect of the emotion from the socio-cultural one has caused a lot of discussion: for instance Donald Nathanson’s statement that ‘affect is biology, while emotion is biography’20 has been criticised by Elspeth Probyn who stressed the indissoluble interweaving of the social and the physiological: Our bodies and their biographies may be more complicated than we’ve given them credit for. Conceptually, they challenge any neat division of biological affect and biographical emotion, 21 the social and the physiological.

Maybe the most extreme version regarding the treatment of the biological substrate of emotion is expressed by points of view which argue that ‘social life, and perhaps even culture, shapes physiological process’.22 3 ... OR UNIVERSALISM AND RELATIVISM? No matter how much this latter point of view has aimed at winning the bet in the intense controversy between the biological and the cultural as regards emotions, experimental research on other experiential domains and their relation to language could offer evidence on how the biological/universal is interwoven with the culture specific. The first domain is the phonetic perception by newborns: as René Dirven, Hans-Georg Wolf, and Frank Polzenhagen say, ‘we are born as universal hearers’,23 insofar as the infant until the age of six months can perceive all the phonetic distinctions that the languages of the world make – this is the universal dowry by which the infant is equipped genetically; on the other hand, ‘we are socialised as culture-specific sound perceivers’, insofar as from six months onwards the infant starts narrowing down his/her acoustic perceptive spectrum under the influence of the language of his/her environment, perceiving only the sounds of his/her own mother tongue.24 The second domain from which one can draw clues is the colors – an experiential domain that has been connected to emotions:25 although color terms in the languages of the world obey a strict hierarchy that is determined by biological factors,26 that is, the retina’s capacity of perception, recent experimental researches have shown that the distinctions made by a language influence the way its speakers perceive the color continuum.27 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 26 27

Averill 1974, 181. Nathanson 1996, 13. Probyn 2004, 395. Wilce 2009, 30. Dirven, Wolf, and Polzenhagen 2007, 1209. Werker and Tees 1984; Kuhl et al. 1992; Kuhl 1993. Wilce 2009, 72. E.g. Berlin and Kay 1969. E.g. Winawer et al. 2008; Tan et al. 2008.

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If these findings suggest explicitly the existence of a universal substrate upon which culture acts, studies on the conceptualisation of emotions have argued that the same holds for the emotional field. According to Zoltán Kövecses, who studies emotion metaphors inter- and cross-culturally,28 biology creates a frame which each culture fills with its own details.29 For instance in Illongots (a former headhunting tribe living in northern Luzon, Philippines) an emotion that is experienced in the body, the liget (that is glossed as ‘energy/anger’ by Michelle Rosaldo), is conceptualised ‘as a generalised state of arousal that makes them to go out and take heads’ serving the tribe’s needs for survival.30 As Rosaldo says, the liget that Illongots associate with youthfull prowess and, for them, with the universal agitation that makes them want to kill, takes on reality and significance because it is bound up in 31 ... forms of relation central to Illongot social life.

It is obvious that this kind of conceptualisation is different from the one of anger,32 which reveals an ambivalent attitude towards this emotion.33 It must be noted that arguing that biology creates the frame, Kövecses means that physiology – and in this sense the biological – puts constraints in the metaphorical conceptualisation of an emotion.34 In other words, the metaphorical conceptualisation of an emotion cannot draw from elements that are inconsistent to the physiology of the emotion: for instance given that the physiology of anger is connected to the rise in body temperature and blood pressure,35 it is not to be expected that anger might be metaphorised in terms of cold. According to Zoltán Kövecses36 the physiological substrate of an emotion serves as a ‘pool’ from which cultures potentially select some components (see below p. 442); these components may change over time. This means that in the metaphorical conceptualisation of emotions different peoples may be attuned to different aspects of their bodily functioning in relation to a target domain, or that they ignore or downplay certain aspects of their bodily functioning as 37 regards the metaphorical conceptualisation of a particular target domain.

Kövecses’ arguments concerning emotion metaphors draw from the theoretical assumptions of cognitive linguistics, which argue for the universality of some metaphors and mainly for the universality of some image schemas used in the metaphorisation of emotions, that is, structures of bodily experience reflected in thought. However, it is important that Anna Wierzbicka, who studies the interlinguistic/intercultural variation, also recognises some universal elements in the lan28 29 30 31 32 33 34 35 36 37

See Kövecses 2000 and 2005 respectively. See Kövecses’ (2000, 190) ‘body based constructionism’. Kövecses 2005, 247. Rosaldo 1980, 138. Lakoff 1987, in collaboration with Kövecses. Kövecses 1990, 25. Kövecses 2000, 160 Ekman 1984,136. Kövecses 2005, 246f. This is the notion of differential experiential focus; see Kövecses 2005, 246.

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guages of the world. One such a ‘universal’ element is that languages have words to refer to such emotions as the basic emotions of fear and anger (the social emotion of shame included).38 Maybe the recognition that 39

in all languages people can describe ‘emotions’ a. via observably bodily ‘symptoms’ (that is, via some bodily events regarded as characteristic of these feelings); b. with reference to bodily sensations; c. via figurative ‘bodily images’

is more important as regards the crucial role of the biological substrate of the emotion.40 Although both approaches draw from diametrically opposed assumptions, one can point out the universal presence of the body in the intercultural/interlinguistic conceptualisations of emotions; in other words, the bringing forth of the biological aspect of the emotion into language. One could argue that in the constructionist approaches to emotion the body is faded. This is exactly the criticism addressed by Zoltán Kövecses and Gary Palmer41 to Catherine Lutz’s study of Ifaluk song glossed as ‘justified anger’:42 the neglect of feeling states that are inherent in the concept of song. James Wilce also argues something similar concerning relativist approaches to emotion in anthrpology: ‘their failure to offer an experience-near description of emotion itself.’43 However, according to Kövecses and Palmer, who try to offer a synthesis that merges social constructionist and experientialist approaches ... some emotion language is universal and clearly related to the experience of the physiological functioning of the body. Once the universal emotion language is isolated, the numerous and important remaining differences in emotional linguistic expression can be explained by differences in cultural knowledge and pragmatic discourse functions that work according to divergent culturally defined rules or scenarios.

Moreover: Emotion concepts must frequently blend universal experiences of physiological functions with culturally specific models and interpretations and emotion language must reflect this blend.

In this sense, it is argued that the concept of anger, for example, ‘is both motivated by the human body and produced by a particular social and cultural environment’.44 If the physiology of the emotion is what moderates the arbitrariness of the concept, the recognition of the biological substrate more generally may function as a norm basis, against which the intercultural differences can be detected; more specifically, the ways through which cultures intervene in emotions by attributing 38 39 40 41 42 43 44

Wierzbicka 1999, 286. Wierzbicka uses the term ‘emotion’ in inverted commas because it is nοt a universal concept as mentioned above. Wierzbicka 1999, 294–298. Kövecses and Palmer 1999, 253; see also Kövecses, Palmer, and Dirven 2002. Lutz 1988. Wilce 2009, 73. Kövecses and Palmer 1999, 238.

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meaning to what happens in the body for their own benefit. This is obvious not only in the conceptualisation of Illongot liget which is mentioned above. The same cultural intervention for the community’s benefit can be seen in the Ifaluk song ‘justified anger’, an emanation of a cooperative and nonaggressive life pattern, which has been developed in order to contribute to the community’s survival from the dangers that threaten it (typhoons etc.).45 This stress on the community’s needs for survival brings forth fundamental differences as to the way Western culture and Ifaluk society treat emotions: the former places the individual in the centre while the latter attributes social meaning in emotion. As Lutz says, In talking about emotions, the Ifaluk treat them as fundamentally social phenomena rather than, as in the case of American ethno-theory, as predominantly internal psy46 chophysiological events that are simply correlated with social events.

One could see a series of cultural interventions with emotions being linked on the basis of the bodily experience – and this happens not only in the sphere of the socalled ‘social emotions’, something which would be plausible. In the first place, a culture can attribute a new content to a ‘biological’ emotion par excellence, such as fear,47 maintaining however the threat as the common thread that connects the more ‘biological’ aspects to the more culture-defined ones.48 Moreover, a basic attribute of emotions, that of being experienced as inner states, does not seem to hold in some cultures as in Fidjian Hindi, as the moods in this place seem to be located in events themselves.49 How a culture evaluates an emotion and consequently which emotions are prioritised could be considered also as one of the cultural interventions: Jean Brigs for instance describes anger among the Utku Eskimos as an inferior way of being, characteristic only of people such as children, whites, and the mentally retarded,50 something which is in sharp contrast with the Illongot liget, as mentioned above. Likewise, ‘in Tahiti anger plays a prominent role in social cognition, whereas sadness and grievance are suppressed’.51 This prioritisation is obviously interwoven with the shaping of a community’s more general attitudes towards emotions.52 Furthemore, cultures differ as to how they relate emotion with gender or status: to quote Wilce, ‘who has the right to speak angrily? Who is stereotyped to speak emotionally?’53 One might think that the general characterisation of an emotion as ‘positive or negative’ is also a cultural intervention. This is a plausible idea if one takes into consideration the difference between the Illongot liget and the English anger or 45 46 47 48 49 50 51 52 53

Lutz 1988. Lutz 1987, 296. LeDoux 1998, 129. See the discussion of the fear of gods by A. Chaniotis in this volume (pp. 205–234). Brenneis 1990. Brigs 1970 (quoted in Kövecses 1990, 25). Foolen 2008, 377. See e.g. Wierzbicka 1995. See also p. 151f. in this volume on Thucydides’ comments on the different attitudes of Athenians and Spartans. Wilce 2009, 77. See pp. 71 and 115–117 in this volume.

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the Modern Greek θυµός (‘anger’). The importance of liget for the community’s survival obviously classifies it in the positive emotions; on the other hand, the anger or the θυµός are construed as negative emotions, as is evident from the metaphors that both languages use to denote the emotion’s dominance upon the self.54 Directly connected to the characterisation of an emotion as positive or negative is whether this emotion has to be controlled or not – this aspect of the conceptualisation of an emotion is an important part of the prototypical cognitive model of the emotion, at least for English from which Kövecses draws his data.55 In Western culture, of course, emotions have been connected with something that has the power to transcend reason taking its own course, and is thus something dangerous which must be controlled – a view that comes from Cartesian dualism and has been disputed by neuroscientific points of view opposing the idea of a pure reason, uncontaminated by emotions.56 This could offer an explanation as to why the control of emotions is an integral part of their conceptualisation, at least of the putatively negative ones.57 However this is not adequate as a valid explanation for all cultures. One answer might be that the so-called negative emotions (for instance fear or anger), by placing the individual at the centre have the power to threaten the social cohesion, and in this sense their control is crucial.58 Positive emotions are not only not a threat but, it has been argued, they either broaden an individual’s momentary thought-action repertoire and build the individual’s personal resources59 or they are associated with social benefits (sociability that leads to cooperation and mutual help) and with positive effects on the individual: physical health, mental health, work, creative thinking, sociability, and altruism.60 This suggestion of course needs further interlinguistic investigation.

54

55 56 57

58 59 60

See for example ‘I was seized by anger’ (Lakoff 1987, in collacoration with Kövecses) in English, µε κυρίεψε θυµός (‘anger seized me’) in Modern Greek. In these utterances anger is metaphorised as an enemy that captures the Self, who is imaged to resist in the emotion (Theodoropoulou 2004a, 390). Kövecses 1990, 184–186. Damasio 1995 and 1999; LeDoux 1998. See Theodoropoulou 2008a for a critical comment to Kövecses 1990 based on modern Greek data that both the prototypical cognitive model and the master metaphor of the emotion (EMOTION IS FORCE; see Kövecses 2000) applies to negative but not to positive emotions. It is questionable whether this ‘tendency’ of the prototypical cognitive model proposed by Kövecses 1990 indicates an attitude that shows a preference to negative emotions and which are the reasons of this preference in the Anglo-American culture. For this issue see the chapter by Irene Salvo in this volume (pp. 235–266). Fredrickson 2004. See Argyle 2001, 18. In this sense it would be interesting to see under what additional conditions the control of an emotion is built through language as well: for example, why joy, despite being a positive emotion, has a Control Stage in its cognitive model in English (Kövecses 1990), which does not hold for Modern Greek? In Modern Greek joy is concealed for social reasons – and for reasons of fear as well – but there is no attempt to suppress it (Theodoropoulou 2008a). One reason might be that some cultures allow the maintenance of pleasure (individual) which is inherent in some emotions such as joy, despite the fact that their public expression has to be controlled.

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The above observations have no other purpose than to denote the complexity of the interweaving of the biological and the socio-cultural; mainly that the universal biological body which experiences the emotions is constructed culturally through multiple cultural interventions – and this is reflected in language. This of course is not something new, if one thinks first, that it is typical of languages to endue a bodily organ with various symbolisms which have nothing to do with its biological function; and second, that it is almost a universal tactic of languages and cultures to refer to various parts of the body in order to conceptualise the mind, as well as the emotions – a tactic that obviously is culturally determined.61 Although this cultural process of shaping can neglect the biology in some of its aspects, it is important to note that it maintains something from the universal substrate of the human body and the cognition that draws from it:62 the case of the metaphorisation of anger in Chinese has been extensively discussed in literature63 providing strong evidence for this thesis, since ‘the different medical “ideology” and philosophy in Chinese culture have not had any fundamental influence on the basic conceptual metaphors for emotions’.64 Having taken into consideration the universal substrate, the cultural wealth that carves up the emotional experience can stretch out in front of him/her, giving access both to every culture’s ‘emotional universe’ and the ways by which emotions are conceptualised in it:65 languages differ in the ways they categorise emotional experience, in the distinctions that they impose upon it (for instance in the number of the words), and in the ways they label it.66 Despite the existence of universal metaphors languages additionally have their own ones; for instance only Chinese conceptualise happiness as FLOWERS IN THE HEART.67 In every language the whole grid of its resources that is used with regard to emotions, ‘Grammar ... phraseology, discourse structure, intonation, interjections, sweat words, forms of address’ as well as ‘culture specific facial expressions and bodily postures, gestures, and so on’68 differs in unique ways, sketching out ‘the tension between the universal and the cultural-specific’.69 The languages also change with respect to the means used. The changes in vocabulary are the space where cultural and socio-historical changes are reflected. According to Anna Wierzbicka, for example, ‘the shift from the Shakespearian wrath to modern anger both reflects and con61 62

63 64 65 66 67 68 69

Sharifian, Dirven, Yu, and Niemeier 2008. For the notion of ‘embodiment’, that is, the idea that cognition is mediated by the bodily experience and that more abstract domains of cognition (e.g. thoughts, emotions, etc.) are based on more concrete domains of experience (e.g. the human body) see Johnson 1987, Lakoff 1987, Lakoff and Johnson 1999, Gibbs 2006. For a criticism with regard to how the contribution of the socio-cultural factors to cognition has been neglected see Frank et al. 2008 and Zlatev 1997 for the notion of ‘situated embodiment’ Yu 1998. Dirven, Wolf, and Polznhagen 2007, 1211. Wierzbicka 1999, 29. Wierzbicka 1999, 24; see also Needham 1981, 99. Yu 1995. Wierzbicka 1999, 34. Dirven, Wolf, and Polzenhagen 2007, 1217.

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stitutes an aspect of the democratisation of society and the passing of the feudal order’.70 As she says, ‘Emotion words’ such as anger reflect, and pass on, certain cultural models; and these models, in turn, reflect and pass on values, preoccupations, and frames of reference of the society (or speech community) within which they are evolved. They reflect its ‘habits of the heart’ ... and the concomitant ‘habits of mind’.

On the other hand, Zoltán Kövecses also cites diachronic changes in the metaphorisation of emotions:71 a transition from a metonymic into a metaphorical understanding of emotions (more specifically concerning anger) in the USA in the 19th century, possibly due to the influence of the classical-medieval notion of the four humors from which the Anglo-American conceptualisation of anger derived.72 He also cites changes in the ways that an emotion is metaphorised: e.g. the metaphorisation of anger as heat did not remain constant during the history of English. This indicates that not only do cultures draw selectively from the components of the universal biological substrate but that a culture can draw different elements from it in various historical periods for reasons that have to do with the surrounding cultural context. According to Kövecses, languages differ in their cognitive preferences as well, that is, whether they enhance metonymic (that is bodily) or metaphorical reflections of the experience; this preference may reflect a culture’s evaluative attitudes and possibly is determined by socio-historical factors.73 More generally, metaphor is brought forth as the socio-cultural topos par excellence, inasmuch as the metaphorical conceptualisations are broadly determined from a large number of factors, apart from the embodied experience and the cognitive processes. These include essentially the different experiences of groups, such as the physical environment, the social and the cultural context, and the communicative setting, but also their differences in concerns and interests.74 Metaphor is, thus, the space where both a culture’s historical memory75 and the subject’s personal one are ‘registered’, a space where the meeting point of the socio-cultural and the subjective is sketched out. 4 LANGUAGE AND EMOTION: UNVEILING EMOTIONS If the human communication per se – linguistic or not – is embodied, that is, a living body is needed for it to become possible, the same holds true for emotion: this too cannot exist without the body which experiences it.76 In this way the body be70 71 72 73 74 75 76

Wierzbicka 1999, 32f. Kövecses 2005, 178, 248–252. Geeraerts and Grondelaers 1995. Kövecses 2005, 257f. Kövecses 2005, 231–246. Kövecses 2005, 241. In the emotional process the main participants are the brain and the body (i.e. changes in physiology caused by changes in the Autonomous Nervous System). The brain processes are

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comes the carrier of the subjective – and internal – experience of the emotion (as the subject experiences different kinds of feelings during the emotional process). At the same time, the body also becomes the bridge with the social, since part of the bodily changes which take place is communicated, very often unconsciously: the facial expressions, the voice, the postures, the gestures, etc., that accompany the emotion – what is called its expressive component –,77 ‘reveal me’, as Paul Dumouchel says, ‘to the others and evidence my dependence on them’.78 The undertaking of the project ‘The Social and Cultural Construction of Emotions: The Greek Paradigm’, of which this volume is a product, has itself to contend with the absence of this constitutive component of the emotion, deciphering not only the imprint of a body that once upon a time made an engravement motivated by emotion but also its very content. ‘The principle medium for the study of emotions in history ... is the text’, says Angelos Chaniotis (p. 14). This is a challenge because the so-called paralinguistic features (voice tone, rhythm, etc.), the main index of the emotion in the chain of speech, are absent; and this is crucial because they can have the power even to overturn the sentential content: ‘Feeling is the expression with which the sentence is said’, Wittgenstein argues.79 Given this lack, the recasting of the context of situation on the basis of the evidence offered by the text – in combination with the knowledge of the socio-historical context – is the main pathway towards this particularly demanding task. And it is such a task because there will never be evidence as to the subject’s immediate reaction to what arouses the emotion. What is offered instead is a reaction mediated in multiple ways: by the chain of the representations (such as the transition from the oral to written speech), by the scribe’s hand, his idiolect and education, including the constraints imposed by the genre. Thus, the role of the language as such is de facto reinforced in this undertaking. If the emotion accompanies language while it is uttered and if one banishes the talking and feeling subject, then this raises an important issue as regards the relationship between language and emotion; more specifically, it raises an issue with regard to the possibility of the emotion to be expressed – and not only described – through the abstract linguistic system. Edward Sapir’s point of view that ‘[emotions] are, strictly speaking, never absent from normal speech, but their expression is not of a truly linguistic nature’ is not made by chance.80 This point of view seems justified in the first place, if one takes into consideration the design features of language. More specifically, firstly, that language as the only second

77 78 79 80

unconscious, while the character of the bodily changes is twofold: on the one hand internal/ private and conscious, on the other hand a large part of these changes is at the same time external/public. See Damasio 1999; LeDoux 1998; see also Damasio’s (1999, 36) distinction between private feelings as inwardly directed and public emotions as outwardly directed. Argylle 2001, 27. Dumouchel 1999, 15. See also Damasio’s distinction between private feelings and public emotions. Wittgenstein 1960, 41. Sapir 1921, 38f.

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signal system does not work on the basis of the Stimulus-Response schema81 – on the contrary, emotions do operate on this basis, regardless of the nature of the stimulus (things, a situation in the world, but also thoughts or other emotions as well); secondly, that language analyses the dense experience, and the emotion could be considered as such;82 third, that experience in general and emotion more specifically is analogical, in the sense that there are no distinct boundaries in the same experiential area83 – language on the other hand is digital, in the sense that its units are discrete, and it does not allow fuzzy, intermediate nuances; finally, and maybe this is the most crucial for the relationship between language and emotion, the fact that there is an experiential loss while speaking: language categorises the experience since the meaning of a word is a generalised and abstract reflection of reality.84 Through the processes of generalisation and abstraction the perceived, concrete, and tangible thing is lost; it loses its particular characteristics that define its uniqueness and it is replaced by a mental image, a representation, which categorises things in a generalised and abstract way (cf. Hegel’s ’murder of the thing’). This issue has been emphasised by a number of disciplines: according to Daniel Stern, the entrance into language causes an – alienating – split in the way we experience ourselves and the Self-Other relatedness: the self as experiencer and the self as expressing him/herself linguistically’.85 Psychoanalysis also expresses the same point of view using other theoretical tools: according to Bernard Golse the experiential loss is the result of the transition from one representational system to the other.86 André Green states that the verbalisation of experience has as a consequence the quantitative moderation of affect – due to the transition to secondary processes.87 Although one may attempt to overcome this ‘inherent’ weakness of language by resorting to the context of communication, the question remains as regards the relationship between the emotional experience and the language. Whether one investigates for example how the language is used strategically so as to achieve something88 – even within the limits and the constraints imposed by genre89 – or how emotion talk works in social life90 the question remains: from where does the language, per se, draw the power to influence others’ emotions, or direct them to 81 82

83 84 85 86 87 88 89 90

This is the difference between the cry of pain and the word pain: the latter can be used without feeling pain; see Christidis 2007. Language separates, analyzes the dense experience – evidence for this is the sentence, which exists only in human language (Christidis 2007). When we perceive something we perceive it holistically (the entire thing); according to Hegel’s example we perceive a red apple all over and as a whole: both the object and its color. On the contrary, language analyzes this experience: it separates the object from its color: the apple is red. E.g. there is no point up to which we can distinguish between the great fear and horror. Vygotsky 1962. Stern 1985, 162f. and 174f. Golse 1999, 137f. Green 1973. See for example Caffi and Janney 1994. For petitions for example see pp. 51f., 54, 74f., 783–85, and 317–327 in this volume. E.g. Lutz 1988

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the intended purpose, or trigger other emotion events in order to reach certain goals?91 For in all cases the language is the main tool by which these aims are achieved. The language – the linguistic system – is the arsenal from which every use or practice draws. The question remains – possibly better articulated – even in Zoltán Kövecses’ and Gary Palmer’s unexpected observation: ‘It is a peculiar feature of emotion terms that they may accomplish both speech acts with a single utterance, both describing and expressing an emotion’.92 So if the abstract and generalised emotion terms show this peculiarity, that of both description and expression despite what has been said above, then the question of the relationship between language and emotion is unavoidable: why especially in the case of emotion terms does there seem to be this cleavage that leaves room for the constitutive distancing from the immediacy of the experience to break in? The answer should respect the design and distinctive features of language as well as the respective ones of the emotions in order to investigate what happens at their meeting. One crucial element that has to be taken into consideration in the first place is that emotion precedes language phylogenetically and ontogenetically.93 As Joseph LeDoux says, ‘consciousness and ... natural language are new kids in the evolutionary block’.94 And for Daniel Stern ‘early in life affects are both the primary medium and the primary subject of communication’.95 This point of view underlines the deeply socially embodied nature of affect and the pervasiveness of intersubjectivity and interaffectivity in the relation with the other before the emergence of language. It must be noted, however, that this intersubjctive and non linguistic dimension of our relationship with the other does not vanish with the entrance into language but it keeps on working simultaneously with the linguistic communication.96 So if the emotion is the primary medium of the prelinguistic communication, a plausible question might be whether it is maintained only as a paralinguistic and/or extralinguistic means of communication or if in some way the emotional experience survives into the abstract symbolic language. In other words: What happens when this which exists before language – the emotion – becomes language? Is it lost forever as it gets represented, as it is transformed into a word? Or is it that something of the primary experience remains preserved in some way? And if this is so, how does this get preserved? In other words, which features of the experience remain, keeping a relationship – 97 even hidden– with the womb that gave birth to them?

91 92 93 94 95 96 97

Lutz 1987. Kövecses and Palmer 1999, 239. LeDoux 1998; Damasio 1999; Bloom 1993; Locke 1993. LeDoux 1998, 71. Stern 1985, 133; see also Trevarthen 1998. Stern 1985, 174. On the neurobiological basis of intersubjectivity, and especially on the role taken on by mirror neurons, see Rizzolati and Arbib 1998. Theodoropoulou 2004a, 22.

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Such questions draw from a long – interdisciplinary, non formal – tradition which argues for continuity from the prelingustic phase to the linguistic one.98 Suffice it to mention Charles S. Pierce, who maintained that symbolic semiosis, that is, language, originates in its pre-linguistic – experiential – components, the icon and the index; in other words, the linguistic sign encapsulates its ‘pre-history’.99 Psychoanalysis also endorses the argument of continuity through its theoretical assumptions: language is situated on one end of the continuum of primary and secondary processes;100 it is part of the sequence of representations – of the thing and of the word –,101with the affect being an integral part of this sequence. In this line Julia Kristeva adopts the distinction between the semiotic and the symbolic, corresponding to the pre-linguistic and the linguistic stage respectively. 102 She argues that the former is suppressed after the latter is established. Here, the idea of repression is useful because it points to the possibility of the ‘return of the repressed’ (in Kristeva’s case) or the emergence of the primary process in the secondary one (in Freudian terms). Cognitive linguistics also stresses the role of the pre-linguistic, pre-conceptual experience in the production of meaning, arguing that the roots of meaning lie in pre-conceptual structures that are grounded in sensorimotor experience, perception, imagination, human physiology, and brain neuronal structure.103 In a sense, all these points of view, which are of different epistemological origin, highlight – and restitute – the embodied character of language and cognition. 5 THE MEANS OF LANGUAGE Expressive interjections (the cry of pain, the Modern Greek µπλιαχ or the yuk of disgust) admittedly have been considered as that part of the language that is closest to the experience – despite their partial linguistic shaping. This is so because they are immediate reactions to a stimulus – a typical feature of the First signal systems according to Pavlov’s distinction;104 they are indexes according to Charles S. Peirce’s distinction being always tied to the here-and-now of the context. As A.-F. Christidis says,

98 99

100 101 102 103 104

Theodoropoulou 2009. Pierce 1978. See also Vygotsky’s 1962 distinction between complex and concept. See Christidis 2007 who adopts Pierce’s perspective arguing for a consideration of language as a mixture of the analogical and the digital. See also Ioannis Veloudis’ argument on the grounding of the formal logic to the experience (Veloudis 2012). Freud [1911] 1958. Freud [1915] 1957; see also Green 1973 and 1997. Kristeva 1974. E.g. Lakoff 1987; Lakoff and Johnson 1999. Pavlov 1951, 335–336.

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The ‘cry’ possesses no structured semantic content; it is amorphous and diffuse. It ‘means’ in a holistic and not an analytical sense, and an affective dimension governs its diffuse, amor105 phous content.

Ad Foolen calls them a ‘symptom’, a reflex, arguing that they show that the speaker in the here-and-now has a specific emotion (for example disgust).106 If the interjections lie in a borderline area of language, the poetic and the magical language have been indicated as the genres par excellence through which the overcoming of the symbolic propositional language is attempted in order for the unmediated experiential immediacy to be highlighted:107 the tools of poetry, ‘the sound’ that ‘must be an Echo of the Sense’ according to Alexander Pope, 108 the domination of metaphor (see below), serve this purpose and acquire explosive dimensions in the magical language. The exclamatory, holophrastic character of magical language ... [with its] rythmic, hypnotic repetition of syllables ... aims at undermining and dissolving the proposition, the basic structure of symbolic language, through which is brought about the ‘removal from reality’ and the 109 entry into the ‘world of the abstract’.

No matter how one argues that the interjections belong to the limits of language, or that magical language that seeks to dismantle the analyticity of language and to return to the density of the experience is a marginal linguistic space, this does not refute the fact that they are parts of language, that they draw from it. This is precisely why they are evidence for the implicit dialectic that governs language as a whole: as mixture of linguistic/pre- and proto-linguistic, language-cognition/ emotion or in Peircian terms as mixture of symbol/icon-index, its experiential prehistory echoes inside the freedom of symbol. The phonetic symbolism, the repetitions,110 in other words the iconic ways (i.e. iconicity: cf. below pp. 462f.), are nothing more than movements so that something from this experiential prehistory, something from the immediacy of the experience can be evoked. 111

105 106 107 108 109 110 111

Christidis 2007, 28. Foolen 2012, 350. Werner and Kaplan 1963, 16, 35ff.; Christidis 2007, 61f. Jakobson 1981, 44. Christidis 2007, 62. For examples of repetition see pp. 68, 108, 111, 298f., 308, and 310 in this volume. From the descriptive means of language the adjectives and the adverbs have been considered as these forms of language that convey an evaluative attitude about something – this of course within the limits imposed by literality. The role of connotation, which is the secondary meaning of a word, is more crucial since it is considered as that part of the meaning that evokes feelings. Recently a discussion has been started concerning the expressive linguistic forms and their connection to emotion, see Foolen 2012, 354. Note must be made of the difference between this kind of research and the one examined in this paper, i.e. the detection of the experiential elements in emotion language.

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5.1 Word and Literality: Forming the Formless If on the one hand ‘language removes us from reality’ to quote Pavlov,112 that is to say that it removes us from the immediacy of the experience, because it functions as a mediator between us and the object through its representation, on the other hand it shapes the experience by analysing it, by making it a word or a sentence. This is one of the most basic characteristics of the symbolic linguistic signification and the subsequent arbitrariness of the signifier and the signified by which it is constitutively governed.113 However, the absolute nature of the arbitrariness seems to be moderated by identifying experiential elements in some – at least – emotion terms, i.e. in the ‘core’ of abstraction and generalisation An example: in Modern Greek the lexical field of the verbs of fear is organised around a prototypical one, φοβάµαι (‘I am afraid’), which displays the largest variety of nominal and sentential complements.114 These verbs form two interconnected groups on the basis of various criteria which will not be developed here as they are not within the scope of this paper. These verbs are: τρέµω /τροµάζω ‘I am terrified/I am frightened/ scared’115 φοβάµαι ‘I am afraid of’

αγχώνοµαι ‘I am stressed’ αγωνιώ ‘I feel anxiety about’ ανησυχώ ‘I worry’

Although all these verbs share a semantic core, that is, the feeling about something bad that is happening or may happen,116 it is interesting that they show a gradation from the weakest to the strongest point. Yet, this gradation is determined by the intensity of the emotional experience, that is, the analogical component of the emotion par excellence.117 So here, in the heart of the linguistic categorical distinctness, an experiential element is detected, which highlights the bodily basis of the emotion language and its categorisations. However, this very element is also the link with the deepest psychic layers: the intensity of the emotion or ‘quantum of affect’ according to Freud is considered one of the constituents of the drive,118 within the limits of the body and the psyche. The grounding, therefore, of the categorisation of the emotion terms in the analogical component of intensity, which links the body with the psyche, might be an answer for the two-

112 113 114 115

Pavlov 1951, 335f. Saussure 1916. Theodoropoulou 2004a, 239–245. The translation of the terms has been made with the reservations about which Anna Wierzbicka warns us. 116 See also Wierzbicka 1998. 117 LeDoux 1998, 19. 118 Freud [1915] 1957.

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foldedness of the emotion terms both to describe and express at the same time the emotional experience, as mentioned above.119 5.2 The Syntax The verb φοβάµαι (‘I am afraid’) displays also a number of complements that take the position of a Noun Phrase (prototypically as object). I shall omit the intermediate cases. Φοβάµαι τη γάτα (or το σκοτάδι) I’m afraid of the cat (or of the dark)

or a clause as object with three different kind of complementisers Φοβάµαι ότι / µήπως / µην δεν θα έρθει ο Γιάννης I am afraid that / lest John won’t come

Two things must be noted here. First, the distinction on the syntactic level between Noun Phrase-complement and clause-complement reflects the distinction between multivalent and univalent mental representation:120 the multivalent mental representation includes, in a condensed way, several attributes, while the univalent mental representation includes only one. The multivalent mental representation, because of its undiversified character, has been connected to primary, more holistic, ways of reception and processing of the reality; that is, this is a representation which is closer to the immediacy of the experience. Furthermore, since this kind of representation uses condensation it can be connected to the primary processes that work in the unconscious.121 On the contrary, the univalent representation can be considered as a more elaborate and developmentally mature representation, of a more cognitive character, since inferential processes of a different degree are involved: the clause-complements display an interaction between desire and reality, expressing the subject’s greater or lesser certainty that what is feared will happen (or what is desired will not happen): the utterance with ότι/πως means that I have sound clues that what I want will not happen (or the inverse). The µηνutterance foregrounds mainly the subject’s desire, as the clues offered by the reality are weak, while the utterances with µήπως stand in-between: lesser uncertainty that what is feared will happen (or the inverse). Second, what is interesting here is that the multivalent representation carries the connotation that fear has to do with something the self might suffer because of the object: I am afraid of the cat means that the cat will do something to me; on the contrary, the more elaborate and late developmentally univalent representation has to do with the subject’s fear that a desire will not be fulfilled. In this sense there is a metonymisation of the self into its desire. The point here is that the primary multivalent representation, connected to some kind of threat for the self, reflects what the emotion of fear is on a neurobi119 Kövecses and Palmer 1999, 239. 120 Renik 1972. 121 Freud [1911] 1958.

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ological level: it is the neuronal system that warns us about an impending danger that threatens the (bodily) integrity of the self. On the other hand, the more elaborate univalent representation illustrates the subject’s actual interaction with the reality focusing on the fulfillment or not of its desire. So, the syntax of φοβάµαι (‘I am afraid’) seems to portray the human being’s trajectory from a more primitive state of affairs, where survival (the self) in a holistic way is at stake, to the formation of its desire and the negotiation of its fulfillment. I think it is no accident that Lacan, arguing that the formation of desire is posterior to the need,122 connects it to the entrance into language: in this context this should be read as ‘the entrance into the analytic language’.123 5.3 Metaphor and Metonymy: Body, Emotion, Cognition, Language Metonymies: the return of the body Obviously as a result of the bodily nature of the emotion, the languages possess a large number of expressions that use some bodily or behavioral reaction of the emotion to refer to it – for instance µε έλουσε κρύος ιδρώτας (‘cold sweat swept over me’) to refer to fear. These expressions are metonymies, as they are instantiations of the general metonymic principle EFFECT FOR CAUSE and more specifically 124 THE PHYSIOLOGICAL (OR BEHAVIORAL) REACTION STANDS FOR EMOTION: e.g. the SWEATING instead of the emotion of FEAR in µε έλουσε κρύος ιδρώτας (‘cold sweat swept over me’) or LAUGHING instead of the emotion of JOY in γελούσαν και τα µουστάκια του (‘even his moustache was laughing’). Metonymies lie in-between the body and language offering a primary representation of the diffuse and dense experience of the emotion. In this sense metonymies are the cognitive and consequently linguistic space which is closer to the experience: as George Lakoff and Mark Johnson say, the grounding of metonymic concepts is ‘in general more obvious than is the case with metaphorical concepts, since it involves physical or causal association’.125 As regards this closeness to the experience, it is also no accident that metonymies are, also, cognitive mechanisms by which a mental entity is accessed through another one, as in the case of metaphor; the difference is that in the metonymy the mapping takes place within the same conceptual domain (emotion – body) and not between two separate conceptual domains. They take on a crucial role in the conceptualisation of the emotions because of their being close to the experience; this is evidenced by the fact that they are the basis upon which the cognitive model is built, highlighting the embodied character of the concept. Moreover, this conceptual representation of the body provides the grounding of some metaphors: for example the central metaphor of anger, ANGER IS THE HEAT OF A

122 123 124 125

Lacan 1966. Theodoropoulou 2004a, 273–335. Kövecses 1990. Lakoff and Johnson 1980, 39.

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is grounded by a bodily feature,126 the feeling of heat,127 which is caused by increased body temperature while experiencing anger. Considering metonymy as regards literality (that is, the abstract and generalised word) it is interesting that ‘metonymy makes primary a domain that is secondary in the literal meaning’:128 in literality the body (and/or the behavior) is ‘faded’ and what is highlighted is the emotion. Through metonymy the body is highlighted, foregrounded, the emotion being backgrounded as the domain matrix. 129 It is obvious therefore that the choice of a metonymic expression instead of literality signals a more immediate expression of the emotion which refers to – and evokes – the bodily basis of the experience. FLUID IN A CONTAINER,

Metaphor: experience, cognition and language In the history of linguistic ideas metaphor is a much debated issue for which multiple interpretations have been proposed. Many of these are riddled with implicit attitudes of negation or splitting: on the one hand there have been approaches that banished metaphor as the object of linguistic study; on the other hand, there have been approaches that actually recognised metaphor as the object of linguistic study but they identified it either with a violation of, or a deviation from, something normal – ‘normal’ being in this case the ‘main’ body of language,

that is, literality; ‘... these points of view covered with their voice Nietzsche’s thesis that metaphor is an integral part of language.’130 In the cognitive linguistics paradigm metaphor was feted to the forefront, located in thought and not in language:131 metaphor is considered to be conceptual, a cognitive mechanism of understanding the abstract or the unknown through the concrete or the known. This becomes possible through mappings from a source domain (the known) to the target domain (the unknown). To take a well-known example of a cross-linguistic metaphor, we talk about death in terms of departure,132 which instantiates the metaphorical mapping DEATH IS DEPARTURE; through this metaphor, we project the knowledge we have about (the known domain of) travel to the unknown domain of death; for instance, we use words like έφυγε (‘(s)he left’), πάει (‘(s)he goes’), αποδήµησε (‘(s)he emigrated’), µετανάστευσε (‘(s)he migrated’) etc. when speaking about death in Modern Greek). The argument for the conceptual nature of metaphor has been supported by experimental studies on gestures while speaking, that is, on an extralinguistic field,133 and points of view arguing for its neuronal grounding have also been proposed.134 126 127 128 129 130 131 132 133

Lakoff 1987, in collaboration with Kövecses; also in Kövecses 1990. For the notion ‘metonymic conceptual motivation of metaphor’ see Barcelona 2000, 10. Croft 1993, 48. Theodoropoulou 2012a, 158. Theodoropoulou 2004b, 141. Lakoff and Johnson 1980; Johnson 1987; Lakoff 1987; Lakoff and Johnson 1999. Lakoff and Turner 1989. See for example Cienki and Műller 2008; for a summary of these studies that investigate mainly the metaphorisation of time through space see Nikiforidou 2012. 134 E.g. Lakoff 2008.

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The emotions have been brought to the fore by the trend of cognitive linguistics as well. What was at stake is to prove that emotions are not just amorphous feelings but on the contrary they have both conceptual content and structure. 135 This trend, therefore, focused on the emotion concept, which is approached as a cognitive/cultural model.136 Cognitive models are structures by which knowledge is organised; in the case of the emotions, it is argued that the knowledge we have about a specific emotion, that is, its cognitive model can be represented by a fivestage prototypical cognitive model: we can think of it as a small narrative that describes the whole process that an emotion undergoes, starting from stage 0: The State of Emotional Calm, to stage 1: The Cause, to stage 2: The Emotion Exists, to stage 3: Attempt at Control, to stage 4: Loss of Control, to stage 5: Action, and finally the return to the emotional calmness. Furthermore, as the emotions were considered abstract entities the metaphor has been indicated as a key component in their conceptualisation, since it has been argued that a large part of the concept is structured metaphorically: this is what explains the abundant use of metaphor in discourse about emotions.137 Although the cognitive paradigm highlighted the cognitive aspect of metaphor, the points of view that were proposed as regards the emotions have received and are receiving a progressively escalating retort; this, if anything, creates pathways so that the interweaving of emotion, body, cognition, and language can be investigated; this discussion of course has consequences for the conception of metaphor as well. In the first place, the more general attitude of approaching the emotions as cognitive models has been criticised as an attitude that equates emotion with cognition, inasmuch as the focus is on the knowledge about the emotion;138 in other words, the conceptual knowledge (what a person ‘knows’ about emotion) is chosen as the exclusive object of investigation while the core affect (an ever-present, ever-changing, basic feeling state with both hedonic and arousalbased properties) is not included.139 This attitude has been repeatedly acutely criticised by some theorists working within the cognitive neuroscientific paradigm.140 As Joseph LeDoux has neatly put it, ‘instead of heating up cognition, this effort has turned emotion cold – in cognitive models, emotions, filled with and explained by thoughts, have been stripped by passion’.141 However, the adoption of this attitude that equates emotion and cognition and fails to recognise their initially separate nature is the main obstacle in the detection of the ways by which emotion and cognition are interwoven.142 To recall LeDoux, ‘emotion and cogni-

135 136 137 138 139 140 141 142

Lakoff 1987, 380. See Kövecses 1990. Kövecses 1990. Theodoropoulou 2004a and 2012a. For these distinctions see Lindquist 2009. LeDoux 1998; Damasio 1999. LeDoux 1998, 38. Theodoropoulou 2012a, 160.

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tion are best thought of as separate but interacting mental functions mediated by separate but interacting brain systems’.143 Furthermore, there have been objections concerning the function of metaphor as a mechanism of understanding the ‘unfamiliar’ on the basis of the ‘familiar’, since cases have been identified where both the source and the target domains were equally familiar and understood.144 The abstractness of the emotions has also been called into question; this has consequences for the argument of the metaphorical structuring of the emotion concepts and consequently of their broad use in the emotion discourse – these points of view do not ignore the metaphor’s contribution to the enrichment of the conceptual content.145 As Ad Foolen says: But is it really the case, that we need these figures of speech to talk about emotions because, due to their abstractness, we don’t have direct language for the emotions? Don’t we have nouns, like fear, hate, love, etc., and verbs and prepositions to conceptualize emotional processes? So why use the figurative ways of talking about emotions? ... Without denying the role of figurative speech in the conceptualization of emotions, I would like to stress its expressive 146 function here ...

This view raises the issue of the distinctive function both of literality and metaphor and essentially zooms into the language, reintroducing at the same time the issue of the function of metaphor as regards emotion. In other words: what are the metaphorical mappings all about if the emotions are not so abstract and if the metaphorical mappings are not the key part in conceptualisation of emotions? According to Foolen it is the need of expressivity. Emotions are typically not a neutral topic of conversation. When we talk about emotions, in particular when we talk about our own emotions that we have felt in critical situations, we are emotionally involved, and this stimulates the use of expressive lan147 guage.

For Lynn Cameron, Affect is fundamental to why and how people use metaphor ... This being so, the affective cannot be just added on to the conceptual but should be seen as a driving force in the use and 148 evolution of metaphors through real-time talk.

Through these points of view emotion seems to acquire its own status in the course of its investigation, since it is no longer equated to cognition, and it is brought out as the very factor that drives the use of metaphorical languge. The ascertainment that emotion mobilises metaphorical language does not adequately define the relationship – better, the interweaving – of language and emotion. It might be useful here to introduce to the discussion views that locate metaphor in language arguing that pre-conceptual, pre-linguistic elements of ex143 144 145 146 147 148

LeDoux 1998, 69. Grady 2007; as regards the emotions see Theodoropoulou 2012b. Foolen 2012; Crawford 2009; Barsalou and Wiemer-Hastings 2005; Haser 2005. Foolen 2012, 357, 360. Foolen 2012, 360. Cameron 2008, 13.

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perience are brought forth, ‘come back’ through metaphor. The common ground of these approaches is sensation, feeling, emotion/affect: Paul Ricœur speaks about ‘transfer des sentiments’;149 Iván Fόnagy about the ‘creation of a new term based on sensations’;150 Hannah Arendt maintains that ‘metaphor “gives back” to the word its “sensory substructure”’;151 finally, A.-F. Christidis argues that ‘metaphor is the best testimony of warmth, deictic warmth, which permeates the apparently “cold” generalisations and abstractions that compose the symbol – human language’. In this sense metaphor is a central part of language ‘which completes linguistic semiosis’ through its ‘opposition with the analytic, discrete’ aspect of language.152 Based on the above, an additional criticism on the theory of conceptual metaphor has been that it neglects the role of language in the metaphorical process since the role it assigns to language is to perform what cognition dictates.153 But what happens when the same conceptual domain is instantiated by several words? The theory does not recognise for example some difference between the instantiations of the same mapping such as µ’ έπιασε θυµός (‘anger caught me’) and µε κυρίεψε θυµός (‘anger possessed me’). In the second one, the intensity, the analogical and bodily component of emotion, is one of the factors that make the difference; and this difference is highlighted, evoked, through the word. Neither does this theory recognise some difference between (s)he left ..., (s)he goes, (s)he emigrated, (s)he migrated etc. that instantiate the metaphorical mapping DEATH IS DEPARTURE, which was mentioned above. However, the empirical analysis of two women’s discourse in mourning154 showed the twofold aspect of metaphor: as a cognitive mechanism, it structures the experience; as instantiation, as language, it fills with ‘passion’ the ‘cold’ metaphorical mappings according to Joseph LeDoux’s phrase, bringing forth the multiplicity of the experiences connected to the other’s death: absence, separation, denial of the fact of death in the first place, the direct or indirect speaker’s involvement, etc. At the same time, the choice of metaphor instead of literality as well as the choice of one of the instantiations of the same mapping is an instance of subjectivity: while the utterance (s)he died informs in the first place, the metaphor brings forth how the subject experiences the fact of the death. On the other hand, it is the choice of the word (for example (s)he left ...), and the word alone – and not the metaphorical mapping – which evidences the degree of the speaker’s involvement with the dead person. The view that metaphor, as language, evokes experiential elements is further supported through its investigation while interacting with metonymy, the other cognitive mechanism which is at work in emotion language. Maybe because in the Cognitive Models approach metonymies have been considered to be conductors of 149 150 151 152 153 154

Ricœur 1975, 41. Fόnagy 1991, 206. Arendt 1992, 19. Christidis 2007, 37, 41. Theodoropoulou 2004a, 354. Theodoropoulou 2008b.

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information about the bodily symptoms while experiencing an emotion,155 insufficient attention was paid to a pattern which is pervasive in the language of the emotions, although this has been discussed in relation to other conceptual domains:156 the fact that a metaphor occurs within the metonymy. The interesting clue is that in this case there is a double ‘cognitivisation’, in the sense that there is recourse to two cognitive mechanisms, both of which use mappings (see above pp. 451f.). Therefore, the question is: why especially in the case of the emotions is this double ‘cognitivisation’157 needed? The analysis of such expressions – for example κόντεψε να σπάσει η καρδιά µου από τη χαρά µου (‘my heart almost broke out of joy’) and µε έλουσε κρύος ιδρώτας (‘cold sweat swept over me’) –158 shows that in the pattern ‘metaphor within metonymy’ a ‘division of labour’ takes place: metonymy perspectivises a body part or a behavioral reaction, while metaphor highlights experiential elements of the emotion, for example the intensity. Since the former is clearly a cognitive process and the latter brings forth elements of the emotion per se such as the intensity, it can be argued safely that in this pattern the interaction between cognition and emotion as it is reflected in language becomes evident.159 This case at the same time indicates metaphor as a flexible cognitive mechanism which at some times organises the experience by structuring it (as for example in the metaphorisation of the time in terms of space), while at other times it evokes elements of the experience (as in the case of emotions). But this flexibity of metaphor might be one of the keys that might solve the riddle of its function. Indeed, metaphor is transition (understanding) from the abstract to the concrete in the case of metaphorisation of time through space; but in this case metaphor serves cognitive purposes, in the sense that time – as not directly understood – needs to be externally grounded. … On the other hand, the primary need with regard to emotion is not a cognitive 160 one, it is its expression: just as time is extralinguistically structured metaphorically, so the emotion is extralinguistically expressed – through the body. By manifesting itself into lan161 guage, the emotion could not bypass this constitutitive characteristic of its own.

‘Metaphorical language may make it possible for people to convey what would otherwise be difficult or impossible to express (emphasis added)’, Andrew Ortony and Lynn Fainsilber argue,162 underlining especially this ‘inadequacy’ in the case of very strong emotions. This sensitive observation is here to reinforce what is argued concerning the expressivity of metaphor. Its importance is that metaphor is indicated as that part of language which has the power to ‘cure’ the difficulty or the ‘insufficiency’ of another part of language, that of literality. This power can only 155 Theodoropoulou 2004a, 377; 2008c, 172. 156 Goossens 1990. Goossens (1990) argues that this patern is a random one, when its existence is not called into question (see Ruiz de Mendoza 2000). 157 Theodoropoulou 2008c, 172; 2012, 161. 158 See Theodoropoulou 2012a, 161 and 2012b, 178f. respectively. 159 Theodoropoulou 2012a, 165. 160 This has been proved by experimental researches on gestures; see note 133. 161 Theodoropoulou 2012b, 180. 162 Ortony and Fainsilber 1989, 181.

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derive from the metaphor’s property to evoke experiences: the metaphor by drawing from the experience brings us back to a non-linguistic space, to the space of sensation, of feelings, resupplying thus the subject with the immediacy that has been lost due to the processes of abstraction and generalisation. It is no accident that the very achievement of language, the categorical distinctness, falls apart in the case of very strong emotions, to which Ortony and Fainsilber refer. To what kind of emotion, for example, does the metaphor within the metonymy in µου κόπηκαν τα πόδια (‘my feet were cut off’) correspond? To great fear, terror, or fright? Metaphor diffuses what language could delineate through its categories. And maybe this is the safest evidence for the argument of the return to the pre- or non linguistic experience – a kind of ‘return of the repressed’ to recall Julia Kristeva. Or, to recall an old attribute assigned to emotions, the return to the space of passion, that is, where the orderliness of language seems distant. Metaphor ‘reaches down below the level of propositions into the massive embodied dimension of our being’,163 Mark Johnson says. But this embodied dimension of our being is multidimensional ... Metaphor within metonymy: The emergence of the psychological body The human body is not only biology, and what is reflected in language is not simply biology structured by cognition (cf. metonymy). There is proof of this in what is mentioned above, that it is almost a universal tactic of the cultures to endue either the body or some of its parts with functions that are far away from their biological function. The fact that some cultural investments of the body derive from theories or beliefs that become commonly accepted is indicative of the human being’s need to give meaning to what happens in his/her body. This subject’s psychological relationship with his/her body, in the sense that the body is invested with various meanings in addition to its biological function, is recognised by several disciplines. James Averill argues that ‘our body is as much substance as symbol and that the folk conception of the body is imbued with meanings, which have nothing to do with the physiological functions of a bodily organ’.164 Shaun Gallagher, in an attempt to connect phenomenology and cognitive science, makes a distinction between the pre-conscious body schema, which serves as a backdrop of intentionality, and the body image, which is ‘a (sometimes conscious) system of perceptions, attitudes, beliefs and dispositions pertaining to one’s own body’.165 Psychoanalysis also highlights the ‘subjective’ aspect of the body by introducing the distinction between body schema, that is, the non-representable biological body, and unconscious body image, that is, a representable body, which can be an object of symbolisation and susceptible to fantasy.166 163 164 165 166

Johnson 1987, 105. Averill 1990, 117. Gallagher 2005, 37. Dolto1984. See also McDougall 1981. It is important that for both of them the emergence of psychological body is connected to metaphor. Especially for McDougall (1981, 57) this process is inseparably connected to affect.

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As mentioned above, metaphor is the space of cultural investments of the body. But the same holds true for the psychological body: metaphor within metonymy is the space where the subject’s unconscious meanings are brought forth through the emergence of prelinguistic experiences. This argument is based on the analysis of idiomatic expressions of fear and mainly of the role played by the metaphors within the metonymies.167 In this analysis the role that a word –with its connotations – takes on, while instantiating a metaphorical mapping, is crucial, on the basis of what has been argued above. The neuroscientific evidence concerning the neuronal system of fear, that is, what ‘objectively’ happens in the body, will be used here as a comparative basis so that the unconscious meanings – by which the body is invested while experiencing this emotion – can be highlighted. These idiomatic expressions are presented according to the physiological and behavioral responses of the emotion of fear, as the Cognitive Μodel approach defines. After the Modern Greek expression, I present a literal translation and, whenever possible, an equivalent expression in English: A. Bodily responses 1. INABILITY TO MOVE παρέλυσα από τον φόβο µου: ‘I was paralyzed with fear.’ τον είδα µπροστά µου και κοκάλωσα: ‘I saw him before me and I was turned into bones.’ µου κόπηκαν τα πόδια: ‘my legs were cut off;’ English equivalent: ‘I was rooted to the spot.’ 2. INABILITY TO BREATHE µου κόπηκε η ανάσα/η αναπνοή: ‘my breath was cut off.’ English equivalent: ‘I gasped with fear.’ 3. INABILITY TO SPEAK µου κόπηκε η µιλιά: ‘my speech was cut off.’ English equivalent: ‘I was struck dumb.’ 4. INABILITY TO THINK τρελάθηκα από την αγωνία µου: ‘I went crazy from anxiety.’ τα ’χασα από την τροµάρα µου: ‘I lost it from fright.’ English equivalent: ‘I was out of my mind with fear.’ 5. PHYSICAL AGITATION τον είδα µπροστά µου και άρχισα να τρέµω/και µ’ έπιασε τρέµουλο: ‘I saw him before me and I started shaking/trembling possessed me.’ τρέµει σαν το φύλλο/το βούρλο: ‘(s)he trembles like a leaf/like a rush’. English equivalent: ‘to have the jitters’. 6. SWEATING µόλις τον είδα να µιλάει έτσι, µ’ έκοψε (κρύος) ιδρώτας: ‘when I saw him talking like that, (cold) sweat cut me.’ 167 See Theodoropoulou 2004a. For such an analysis of the idiomatic expressions of happiness see Theodoropoulou 2012a.

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µ’ έλουσε κρύος ιδρώτας: ‘(cold) sweat gave me a shower/swept over me.’ English equivalent: ‘there were sweat beads on my forehead.’ 7. BLOOD LEAVES THE FACE του είπα τα νέα και έχασε το χρώµα του/και έκοψε το χρώµα του: ‘I told him the news, and he lost his colour/his colour was cut off.’ πάνιασε: ‘(s)he turned to cloth.’ τον είδα και είχε γίνει σαν το κερί: ‘I saw him, and he had become like wax.’ English equivalent: ‘his face blanched with fear.’ 8. DROP IN BODY TEMPERATURE πάγωσα, µόλις άκουσα τα νέα: ‘I was frozen, when I heard the news’. πάγωσε το αίµα µου: ‘my blood froze.’ µου κόπηκε το αίµα: ‘my blood was cut off.’ English equivalent: ‘I was frozen in my boots/ in my tracks.’ 9. NERVOUSNESS IN THE STOMACH σφίχτηκε το στοµάχι µου: ‘my stomach was gripped.’ English equivalent: ‘a fear gripped me in the stomach.’ 10. ATTACK OF THE (MAIN) BODY PARTS/FUNCTIONS µου ’κοψες τη χολή: ‘you cut my bile.’ µου ’σπασες τη χολή: ‘you broke my bile.’ µου κόπηκαν τα ήπατα: ‘my liver was cut off.’ µου κόπηκε το αίµα: ‘my blood was cut off.’ 11. INCREASE IN HEART RATE κόντεψε να σπάσει η καρδιά µου απ’ τον φόβο µου: ‘my heart almost broke with fear.’ English equivalent: ‘my heart pounded with fear.’ 12. LOSS OF THE SPHINCTER CONTROL χέστηκα/κατουρήθηκα απ’ τον φόβο µου: ‘I shit/pissed on myself with fear.’ τα ’κανα επάνω µου: ‘I did it on myself.’ τα ’κλασε: ‘(s)he farted on them’. έκλασε µέντες: ‘(s)he farted mint.’ µου πήγε νά! – accompanied by a specific gesture: ‘for me, it went like that.’ English equivalent: ‘I was scared shitless’. 13. HAIR RISES UP τα άκουσα και µου σηκώθηκε η τρίχα (κάγκελο): ‘I heard this, and my hair rose (like bars).’ English equivalent: ‘this made my hair stand on end’. B. Behavioral reactions 14. FLIGHT Το έβαλε στα πόδια: ‘(s)he put it in the feet. έγινε λαγός: ‘(s)he became a jackrabbit.’ English equivalent: ‘I took to my heels.’

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15. WITHDRAWAL λούφαξε: ‘(s)he recoiled, (s)he shrunk’. µαζεύτηκε στη γωνιά του: ‘(s)he curled up in his corner.’ C. NO QUALIFICATION 16. τον είδα µπροστά µου και τα χρειάστηκα: ‘I saw him face to face and I needed it.’ English equivalent: ‘I saw him face to face and I found myself in a state of need’. Firstly, it must be said that from a neuroscientific perspective the (conscious) feeling of fear constitutes the orchestration of a deeper brain system which functions unconsciously and warns the subject about an impending danger, aiming at the survival of the species.168 According to Joseph LeDoux the reactions which are assigned to fear are: apart from a) urinating and defecation pointed by Darwin as a reaction common to man and animal (see 12 above), b) immobility (freezing) (see 1, 2, 3, and 8), c) withdrawal (avoiding the danger or escaping from it; see 14 and 15), d) defensive aggression, e) submission. At the same time bodily responses take place: tachycardia (see 11 above), stomach tension (see 9), sweat (see 6), cold feet; all these prepare the organism to cope with the impending danger. Two points must be noted here: first, that languages choose selectively from the biological substrate which bodily or behavioral reactions to codify; for example the bodily reaction of cold feet is codified in English but not in Modern Greek; and second, that Modern Greek codifies the dimension of passivity from the overall spectrum of responses connected with fear. In this sense Modern Greek brings forth what the Subject suffers from when (s)he is dominated by fear – the emphasis is put on the body. The only ‘active’ expression is that of flight (see 14).169 Turning now to the metaphors within the metonymies and taking into account the connotations of the words that instantiate the metaphorical mappings, in the first place one can easily observe that the connotations of death are obvious: immobility, the cold feeling, the cessation of respiration, the colour of a dead face. In this sense, part of these expressions refers directly to the relation between fear and death as it is evidenced at a neuronal level. On the other hand, when the human body is illustrated as a living body, it is illustrated in a state of emergency: as a helpless human being, in a situation of need (see 16 above), having lost all the crucial and indispensable ‘protective weapons’ in order to cope with this urgent situation: language, control of the sphincters, more generally the control of his entire body – all these that make the human being a rational being. All these illustrations of loss can only bring to mind a return to a period of time when no language existed and the human being had no control; a return to a period, also, when the human being experienced his/her own body as a fragmented body – an experience so painful that it returns in dreams, free associations and ‘in images of castration, 168 LeDoux 1998, 128; Damasio 1999. 169 One must notice the cultural intervention with the emotion in (11) above where there is an assault on bodily organs that is not evidenced by neuroscientific literature. In this particular case it is about ancient beliefs concerning the assault of bodily organs by the emotion: the liver as the seat of the emotions and the bile as the seat of the negative emotions specifically.

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mutilation, partition ... that haunt human fantasy’, says Jacques Lacan. 170 The emergence of the fragmented body cannot be ‘read’ only through the connotations. It can also be deciphered if someone notices that only in the case of fear the human body is imaged in such a fragmentary way. For no other metaphorisation of emotion evokes so many body parts.171 This point must also be connected with the persistent use of the verb κόβω (‘to cut’; see 1, 2, 3, 6, 7, 8, and 10 above), which is an issue brought forth only by the choice of the word. Consequently, the kind of passivity imaged by these expressions brings forth what the Subject underwent when it stayed there, close to the threat of death – the fourth reaction mentioned by LeDoux above. These expressions ‘speak’ about the force of the experience facing an ‘extreme’ threat – such a strong experience that the Subject ‘felt so helpless to the point of losing instantly all the characteristics which constituted his Ego and which allowed his painful fantasies to come to surface’. So, it is the Subject that speaks through language, in a state of an active and agonising interaction with reality. And what is said is not subjective, it is inter-subjective. It is the meeting point of 172 our subjectivities.

So, as a conclusion, the word while instantiating a metaphorical mapping is the space where the psychological body emerges, investing the bodily feelings with intersubjective meanings – intersubjective being ‘that which separates and simultaneously is shared, that which co-articulates two or more subjectivities’.173 If, as Zoltán Kövecses proposes, the collective unconscious (that is, the historical memory of a society) is ‘embodied in language’,174 there is no reason not to think that the historical memory of the subject is also embodied there. Metaphor with its power to structure, to express and to evoke experiences (pre-linguistic 175 or not) is a privileged means to express them.

6 LANGUAGE AND EMOTION EXPRESSION AND CULTURAL INTERVENTION Let me start this final section with an a posteriori awareness. An analytical and deep synthesis was necessary in order to detect the indissoluble connection of the metaphor with the emotional experience. This does not only have to do with the fact that metaphor was always a kind of puzzle for linguists and philosophers of language. It also has to do with the fact that the registration of experience in lan170 Lacan [1937] 1966, 104. 171 The same holds true in English. As Kövecses (1990, 70) notes, compared to other emotions ‘fear is an emotion that appears to be characterizable for the most part by a rich system of its physiological and behavioral reactions’. 172 Theodoropoulou 2004a, 415. 173 Ciccone 2006, 29 174 Kövecses 2005, 241. 175 Theodoropoulou 2012a, 177.

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guage does not easily disclose itself. This is not only an issue of an epistemological character, in the sense that interdisciplinary evidence is necessary for such an undertaking; it is closely linked to the fact that, as language has been considered a tool of communication, the emphasis has been on the information carried by it. But this stance has staved off the fact that the subject strives to break the barrier instituted by the processes of abstraction and generalisation and express him/herself through this deeply and inherently social tool which is the language. And metaphor is the locus of this striving par excellence. It is no accident that some points of view which argue for the connection of the so-called figurativeness with the emotion have been put forth recently within the cognitive linguistics paradigm.176 It is this inherent social nature of language that renders it one of the grounds for the cultural intervention with emotion; to put it differently: one of the grounds where every culture tries to break in and model emotion for its own profit. But what must be broken into has to do with the human being’s basic constitutive elements acquired in the course of evolution such as survival skills. Emotion, being a basic gear of the human being during evolution, is ‘written’ on the body. That is because emotion unavoidably seeks to be expressed. One aspect of this expression is definitely connected to subjectivity; the other one is connected to the others who receive this expression and are influenced by it in many ways. A reason for this impact has to do with the intersubjective nature of the emotional experience: whether it is expressed verbally or bodily, implicitly or explicitly, emotional communication has in its roots the primary intersubjective emotional interaction with the other as well as the intersubjective – that is, common – experiences that implicitly connect the subject with the others. Maybe that is the reason why emotional expression has such an impact on the other, its roots being in a place where there was no language capable of creating a distance from the immediacy of the experience. Thus, if the ‘ancient drama’ is played on the level of the expression of the emotion, then arguably the means a culture uses to channel or to control the expression of the emotion might be a characteristic feature of this culture. In other words: what characterises a particular culture might be the striving and the tension between the cultural, which institutes, and the subjective, which tries to be expressed – very possibly this striving and tension vary in the passage of history. If this is so, then language constitutes one of the grounds where this tension can be detected. So, the issues that have been raised above could illuminate some aspects of the material which is presented in this volume. Although they have to do with the language in its abstract dimension, i.e. the linguistic system, their contribution to this discussion is that they bring the arsenal of language to the table. Thus, this can be used as a basis to detect, through the uses of language, the choices made – both cultural and subjective. In this sense, the following questions that arise from what has been said above might become the guiding tool for the detection of the 176 E.g. Foolen 2012; see also Dirven 1993.

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interweaving and the tension between the cultural and the subjective: who is speaking? Is it the subject, trying to express what (s)he feels, or the culture, specifying what and how to feel it? And what is the means of this discourse? Is it literality, which creates and keeps a distance from the immediacy of the experience, or is it metaphor or metonymy in the subject’s attempt to find a way to express it? Does the body exist or is it faded by literality? And what about texts? Is there a possibility that some genres function in favour of culture, while some others allow fissures so that the emotion is expressed? Answers to questions like these can reveal folded facets of the interweaving of the subjective and the cultural but can also be used as the basis for the comparative examination of older and later phases of a particular culture – the conceptualisation of the emotion being part of it. The texts in this volume offer a variety of indications of this interweaving, highlighting, one could say, the domination of the cultural. And this is not without surprises in the first place. For one would expect that since the written text by definition eliminates what the subject can express through bodily – non linguistic – means, this would impose a further push towards an exclusive expression by language in the absence of the other means. Given also both the present day discussion concerning the abundant use of metaphor in emotion discourse as well as the previous analysis, one would expect to find an excess of figurative speech. But this is not the case, something which, due to the breadth of the material, questions the cognitive linguistics’ argument concerning the dominant role of metaphor in the conceptualisation of the emotions. And it is not the case because the texts (whether funerary stelai or different kinds of requests or yet texts that regulate different kinds of relations) despite their different functionality largely contain information, which leaves little room for an immediate expression of the emotion: informativity de facto favours literality. Therefore, one has no other way to express emotion than to resort to the ‘legal’ means of literality: adjectives and adverbs that denote an evaluative attitude, words with a strong connotation. However, the attempt to break in the distancing from the experience – to which literality is connected – takes place in the field of iconicity – linguistic or not: exclamations, reiterations, alliterations on the one hand and iconic signs engraved in the steles on the other (see pp. 237f. in this volume), as well as gestures and bodily movements registered in the texts (see pp. 81–85 in this volume).177 With all these the subject tries to break the barrier of literality and bring to the surface, to express, something from his/her emotional experience. If the de facto imposed literality is the barrier to the immediacy of the expression of the experience, the use of the formulaic language and the standardisation imposed by some genres could be considered as the very factors of cultural intervention since they channel in predetermined ways the subject’s linguistic expres177 Detailed narration of the facts could be considered as a kind of iconicity, inasmuch as the detailed re-presentation of the facts functions like the sequences of a film which narrates. It is in this sense that the detailed narration of a fact puts the receiver as a viewer in the situation, as if he had seen what was going on with his/her own eyes and had the time to develop the emotion. For the provocation of empathy see pp. 102–114 in this volume.

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sion – and his/her identity, one could say.178 So, where can the subject that strives to be expressed be detected? It is through the deviations from these standards that the subject is speaking (see p. 66 in this volume). It is the subject who by saying ‘You must know that I do not view the sun, because you are out of my view; for I have no sun but you’179 raises above the norm so as (s)he can express him/herself: and it is not by chance that (s)he does it by using a metaphor. One could of course object here that the letters, as the space of the interpersonal, plausibly offer an expedient ground for the expression of subjectivity and therefore favour immediacy. What could be stronger evidence for this privileged status of letters – as compared with the other genres – than the quote ‘and you sent me letters that could move a stone, that is how much your words have moved me’?180 Yet, how could one explain the deviation from the formulaic language in the public prayer for justice from Alexandria in Egypt, which is analyzed by Irene Salvo (pp. 245–249 in this volume)? How could one explain the presence of five metaphors181 in that part of the stele where the dead wife is supposed to be talking, which is in sharp contrast with the husband’s literal discourse – a discourse of recognition and promise? As Salvo says, it is the husband who talks all over the surface of the stele. But why resort to the other and not take full responsibility of 178 It is interesting that the formulaic language also exists in the case of acclamations, where a collective feeling, ‘a we-feeling’ to quote Christina Kuhn (p. 300 in this volume), is expressed. This by itself could be an indication for the manipulation of this collective emotional expression. Of course, one could bring as an objection that a ‘ready-made’ language would facilitate this collective expression. However, this issue must be approached by taking into account the other characteristics of acclamations as well. All these refer to characteristics of the early non linguistic communication as well as the first stages of language acquisition: in the first place the dominant participation of the body, the shouting as an immediate reaction, the predomination of rhythm – a basic characteristic of the early intersubjective and interaffective interactions between the mother and the infant – as well as of that of prosody; finally the simplicity of the syntactic constructions, something which is characteristic of the language acquisition of a two-year old child. One could see in all these manifestations a ‘regression’ to primary ways of communication – linguistic or not –, something which could be considered as the very factor of the emotional intensification, which Kuhn refers to. On the other hand if people regress – unconsciously – to such early stages of existence, the reactions may become uncontrolled and thus dangerous. So, it could be considered that the formulaic language functions as a ‘roof’ which by shaping the diffuse emotion with the labels of the language channels this emotional expansion. This hypothesis of course needs further investigation. 179 P.Oxy. XLII 3059 (Oxyrhynchus, second century CE); see pp. 66f. in this volume. 180 P.Oxy. III 528 (Oxyrhynchus, second century CE): καὶ ἔπεµψάς µοι ἐπιστολὰς δυναµένας λίθον σαλεῦσαι, οὕτως οἱ λόγοι σου κεκίνηκάν µε; emphasis added. See p. 85 in this volume. 181 ‘Wrecked foreign woman’ (τὴν ναυαγὸν ἀθλίαν ξένην), ‘the fruits of life’ (βιότου καρπόν), ‘my man, with him I was one soul’ (οὗ ψυχὴ µία ὑπῆρχέ µοι σὺν ἀνδρὶ), ‘sweet life’ (βίος γλυκύς), ‘the life proceeds without breaks’ (ἄθραυστον βίον). One should also notice two other culturally determined metaphors (‘great abyss of Hades and the doors of darkness’; Ἅδου µέγαν κευθµῶνα καὶ σκότου πύλας) as well as the two metonymies (‘led against my body or my life’; ἐµοῖς σπλανχνοῖσιν ἢ βίῳ ). The metaphor of love ‘with him I was one soul’ is much discussed in the literature; see Kövecses 1990, and for critical comments Theodoropoulou 2004a.

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his own emotions since the same person is capable of taking the responsibility of his promise? Is it the woman who is entitled – or allowed? – to express her pain publicly and directly or is it the foreigner? Is the immediacy of the expression, therefore, an issue of gender or ethnicity? And if it is so what kind of cultural evaluations can this contrast reveal? Furthermore: if it is the husband who attempts to express indirectly the immediacy of his own emotions, is this a unique case or is it something that heralds a change towards more freedom in the expressions of the emotions? Questions as such are put by the presence of metaphor; in other words they derive from the linguistic evidence. The linguistic evidence, though, does not suffice for a full approach of the interweaving of the cultural and the subjective; the knowledge of the socio-historical context is needed to get more definite answers. The linguistic evidence does not suffice because every language – despite the human being’s biological predisposition for it – is a cultural creation, it is part of the culture and as such it cannot explain the culture’s overall manifestations. Furthermore, because no matter how much a language has the power to ‘evoke experience that transcends words’ and this ‘is perhaps the highest tribute to the power of language’,182 language does not suffice to subdue the impetus of that which flows from the depths of the body when the emotion is strong. Or, to recall Freud,183 it does not suffice to discharge it. Language may be a means of discharge184 but this does not mean that the entrance into language amounts to the breaking away of the bodily means of discharge. As evidence for this shortcoming of language to dissolve the strong emotions – the language itself and nothing else but language – is the fact that cultures do not confine themselves to the verbal discharge but they create compensative practices for the negative emotions, such as rituals, in which the language is only a part of them. For cultures aim at controlling, at channeling this discharge, i.e. the expression of the emotion. It is not by chance that a large part of the texts in this volume deals with the outcome of the emotions, in other words, with the actions dictated by the emotion; that is, with the space where the emotion ceases to be mainly internal and becomes mainly external, to recall Antonio Damasio’s distinctions.185 This is the reason why the display of the emotions is so much culturally defined. However, because the emotion is internal in the first place and presupposes a subject who experiences it, there is always the interweaving and the tension between the cultural and the subjective. The linguistic deviations from the linguistic norms imposed by the culture are evidence for this. But these are the very ones which also make the quote ‘you sent me letters that could move a stone, that is how much your words have moved me’186 sound so timeless ... 182 183 184 185 186

Stern 1985, 176. See Freud [1895] 1966 for the notion of discharge; Sharpe 1950, 157. Sharpe 1950, 157. Damasio 1999, 36. See Bråten’s (1998) notion of ‘e-motion’, a complex consisting of motion and emotion; see also Zlatev et al. 2012 for the tendency of many languages to denote affective processes on the basis of expressions originally denoting physical motion.

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ABBREVIATIONS Agora XV

B. D. Meritt and J. S. Traill, The Athenian Agora, XV. The Athenian Councillors, Princeton 1974. BE Bulletin épigraphique, in the Revue des Études Grecques 1888–. BGU Aegyptische Urkunden aus den Königlichen (later Staatlichen) Museen zu Berlin, Griechische Urkunden. Berlin 1895–. BIWK G. Petzl, Die Beichtinschriften Westkleinasiens (Epigraphica Anatolica, 22), Bonn 1994. CCCA M. J. Vermaseren, Corpus Cultus Cybelae Attidisque, Leiden 1977–1989. CEG P. A. Hansen, Carmina epigraphica Graeca saeculorum VIII–V a.Chr.n., Berlin/New York 1983–1989. CID Corpus des inscriptions de Delphes, Paris 1977–. CIG Corpus Inscriptionum Graecarum, Berlin 1828–1877. CIJ Corpus Inscriptionum Judaicarum, Città del Vaticano 1936–1952. C.Pap.Gr. Corpus Papyrorum Graecarum, eds. O. Montevecchi et al., Milan/Azzate 1984– 1985. C.Pap.Jud. Corpus Papyrorum Judaicarum, eds. V. A. Tcherikover et al., Cambridge, Ma. 1957–1964. DTA R. Wünsch, Defixionum Tabellae Atticae (IG Vol. III, T. 3), Berlin 1897. F.Delphes Fouilles de Delphes, Paris 1909–. FgrH F. Jacoby et al., Die Fragmente der griechischen Historiker, Berlin/Leiden 1923–. GIBM The Collection of Ancient Greek Inscriptions in the British Museum, Oxford 1874–1916. GV W. Peek, Griechische Vers-Inschriften. Band 1. Grabepigramme, Berlin 1955. I.Alexandreia Troas M.Ricl, Die Inschriften von Alexandreia Troas (IGSK 53), Bonn 1997. IAph2007 J. Reynolds, C. Roueché, G. Bodard, Inscriptions of Aphrodisias (2007), available at http://insaph.kcl.ac.uk/iaph2007. I.Assos R. Merkelbach, Die Inschriften von Assos (IGSK 4), Bonn 1976. I.Beroia L.Gounaropoulou and M.B.Hatzopoulos, Ἐπιγραφὲς Κάτω Μακεδονίας (µεταξὺ τοῦ Βερµίου Ὄρους καὶ τοῦ Ἀξιοῦ Ποταµοῦ). Τεῦχος Αʹ. Ἐπιγραφὲς Βεροίας, Athens 1998. I.Cret. M. Guarducci, Inscriptiones Creticae, Rome 1935–1950. I.Délos P. Roussel, M. Launey, Inscriptions de Délos: décrets postérieurs a 166 av. J.-C. (nos 1497–1524), dédicaces postérieurs a 166 av. J.-C. (nos 1525– 2219), Paris 1937. I.Didyma A. Rehm, Didyma, II. Die Inschriften, R.Harder (ed.), Berlin 1958. I.Ephesos H. Wankel, R.Merkelbach et al., Die Inschriften von Ephesos (IGSK 11–17), Bonn 1979–1981. I.Erythrai H. Engelmann, R. Merkelbach, Die Inschriften von Erythrai und Klazomenai (IGSK 1–2), Bonn 1972–1973. IG Inscriptiones Graecae, Berlin 1873–. IGDOP L. Dubois, Inscriptions grecques dialectales d’Olbia du Pont, Genève 1996. IGLS Inscriptions grecques et latines de la Syrie, Paris 1929–.

470 IGR IGSK IGUR I.Histriae

IJO I I.Kios I.Knidos I.Kyzikos

I.Lindos: I.Magnesia I.Metropolis I.Mylasa

I.Napoli IOSPE IPArk I.Pessinous I.Priene I.Oropos I.Sestos I.Smyrna I.Stratonikeia IvOlympia Kaibel, EG KRU LGNP LSAM LSCG Suppl. MAMA New Docs. OMS P.Amh.

P.Ammon

Abbreviations R. Cagnat et al., Inscriptiones Graecae ad res Romanas pertinentes, Paris, 1906–1927. Inschriften griechischer Städte aus Kleinasien, Bonn 1972–. L. Moretti, Inscriptiones Graecae Urbis Romae, Rome 1968–1990. Inscriptiones Daciae et Scythiae Minoris Antiquae, Series Altera. Inscriptiones Scythiae Minoris Graecae et Latinae, I. Inscriptiones Histriae et Viciniae, Bucharest 1983. D. Noy, A. Panayotov, H. Bloedhorn, Inscriptiones Judaicae Orientis I: Eastern Europe, Tübingen 2004. T. Corsten, Die Inschriften von Kios (IGSK 29), Bonn 1985. W. Blümel, Die Inschriften von Knidos (IGSK 41), Bonn 1992. E. Schwertheim, Die Inschriften von Kyzikos und Umgebung, I. Grabtexte (IGSK 18) Bonn 1980; II. Miletupolis: Inschriften und Denkmäler (IGSK 26), Bonn 1983. C. Blinkenberg, Lindos. Fouilles et recherches, II. Fouilles de l’acropole. Inscriptions, Berlin 1941. O. Kern, Die Inschriften von Magnesia am Mäander, Berlin 1900. B. Dreyer, H. Engelmann, Die Inschriften von Metropolis (IGSK 63), Bonn 2003. W. Blümel, Die Inschriften von Mylasa, I. Inschriften der Stadt (IGSK 34), Bonn 1987; II. Inschriften aus der Umgebung der Stadt (IGSK 35) Bonn 1988. E. Miranda, Iscrizoni Greche d’Italia: Napoli, 2 volume, Rome 1990–1995. V. Latyshev, Inscriptiones antiquae orae septentrionalis Pontis Euxini Graecae et Latinae, St. Petersburg 1885–1901. G. Thür and H. Taeuber, Prozessrechtliche Inschriften der griechischen Poleis: Arkadien (IPArk), Vienna 1994. J. Strubbe, The Inscriptions of Pessinous (IGSK 66), Bonn 2005. F. Hiller von Gaertringen, Inschriften von Priene, Berlin 1906. B. C. Petrakos, Oἱ ἐπιγραφὲς τοῦ Ὠρωποῦ, Athens 1997. J. Krauss, Die Inschriften von Sestos und der thrakischen Chersones (IGSK 19), Bonn 1980. G. Petzl, Die Inschriften von Smyrna, I–II 1/2 (IGSK 23–24), Bonn 1982– 1990. M. Ç. Şahin, Die Inschriften von Stratonikeia, I–II 1/2 (IGSK 21–22), Bonn 1981–1990. W. Dittenberger, K. Purgold, Inschriften von Olympia, Berlin 1896. G. Kaibel, Epigrammata Graeca ex lapidibus conlecta, Berlin 1878. W. E. Crum, Koptische Rechtsurkunden des achten Jahrhunderts aus Djême (Theben), Leipzig 1912. A Lexicon of Greek Personal Names, Oxford 1987–. F. Sokolowski, Lois sacrées de l'Asie Mineure, Paris 1955. F. Sokolowski, lois sacrées des cités grecques. Supplément, Paris 1962. Monumenta Asiae Minoris Antiquae, Manchester/London 1928–. New Documents Illustrating Early Christianity, North Ryde, NSW et al. 1981–. L. Robert, Opera Minora Selecta, I–VII, Amsterdam 1969–1990. B. P. Grenfell and A. S. Hunt, The Amherst Papyri, Being an Account of the Greek Papyri in the Collection of the Right Hon. Lord Amherst of Hackney, F.S.A. at Didlington Hall, Norfolk, London 1900–1901. W. H. Willis, K. Maresch and I. Andorlini (eds.), The Archive of Ammon Scholasticus of Panopolis, Opladen/Paderborn 1997–2006.

Abbreviations P.Ant. P.Apoll. P.Berenike P.Bodl. I P.Brem. P.Cair.Masp. P.Cair.Isid.

P.Cair.Zen. P.Col. P.Coll.Youtie P.David P.Diog. P.Dubl. P.Enteux. P.Fay. P.Flor. P.Giss. PGM P.Grenf. I P.Lips. P.Lond. P.Kell.Copt. P.Köln P.Masada P.Mert. P.Mich. P.Mil. P.Münch. P.Naqlun P.Ness. P.Oxy. P.Petr. P.Sakaon

471

C. H. Roberts, J. W. B. Barns and H. Zilliacus (eds.), The Antinoopolis Papyri, London 1950–1967. R. Rémondon (ed.), Papyrus grecs d’Apollônos Anô, Cairo 1953. R. S. Bagnall, C. Helms, and A. M. F. W. Verhoogt (eds.), Documents from Berenike. II, Texts from the 1999–2001 Seasons, Brussels 2005. R.P. Salomons (ed.), Papyri Bodleianae I, Amsterdam 1996. U. Wilcken (ed.), Die Bremer Papyri, Berlin 1936. J. Maspero (ed.), Papyrus grecs d’époque byzantine, Catalogue général des antiquités égyptiennes du Musée du Caire, Cairo 1911–1916. A. E. R. Boak and H. C. Youtie (eds.), The Archive of Aurelius Isidorus in the Egyptian Museum, Cairo, and the University of Michigan, Ann Arbor 1960. C. C. Edgar, Zenon Papyri, Catalogue général des antiquités égyptiennes du Musée du Caire, Cairo 1925–1940. Columbia Papyri, New York 1929–. A.E. Hanson (ed.), Collectanea Papyrologica: Texts Published in Honor of H. C. Youtie, Bonn 1976. E. Boswinkel, B. A. van Groningen, and P.W. Pestman (eds.), Antidoron Martino David oblatum, Miscellanea Papyrologica, Leiden 1968. P. Schubert, Les archives de Marcus Lucretius Diogenes et textes apparentés, Bonn 1990. B. C. McGing, Greek Papyri from Dublin, Bonn 1995. O. Guéraud, ΕΝΤΕΥΞΕΙΣ: Requêtes et plaintes adressées au Roi d'Égypte au IIIe siècle avant J.-C., Cairo 1931–1932. B. P. Grenfell, A. S. Hunt, and D. G. Hogarth, Fayum Towns and their Papyri, London 1900. Papiri greco-egizii, Papiri Fiorentini, Milan 1906–1915. O. Eger, E. Kornemann, P.M. Meyer, Griechische Papyri im Museum des oberhessischen Geschichtsvereins zu Giessen, Leipzig/Berlin 1910–1912. K. Preisendanz, Papyri Graecae Magicae. Die griechischen Zauberpapyri, Revised by A. Henrichs, Stuttgart 1973 (second edition). B.P. Grenfell, An Alexandrian Erotic Fragment and other Greek Papyri chiefly Ptolemaic, Oxford 1896. Griechische Urkunden der Papyrussammlung zu Leipzig, Leipzig 1906– 2002. Greek Papyri in the British Museum, London 1893–1974. Papyri from Kellis, Oxford 1995–2007. Kölner Papyri, Opladen/Paderborn 1976–2007. H.M. Cotton and J. Geiger, Masada II, The Yigael Yadin Excavations 1963– 1965, Final Reports: The Latin and Greek Documents, Jerusalem 1989. A Descriptive Catalogue of the Greek Papyri in the Collection of Wilfred Merton, London/Dublin 1948–1967. Michigan Papyri, Cleveland 1931–1999. Papiri Milanesi, Milan 1928–1966. Die Papyri der Bayerischen Staatsbibliothek München, Stuttgart 1986. T. Derda et al. , Deir El-Naqlun: The Greek Papyri, Warsaw 1995–2008. Excavations at Nessana, London/Princeton 1962–1958. The Oxyrhynchus Papyri, London 1898–. J. P. Mahaffy and J. G. Smyly, The Flinders Petrie Papyri, Dublin 1891– 1905. G. M. Parássoglou, The Archive of Aurelius Sakaon: Papers of an Egyptian Farmer in the last Century of Theadelphia, Bonn 1978.

472 P.Sarap. P.Strasb.

PSI P.Tebt. P.Ups. 8 P.Yadin P.Yale P.Zaki Aly SB SEG Sel.Pap. SPP Strubbe, Arai Epitymboi Syll.3 TAM UPZ W.Chr.

Abbreviations J. Schwartz, Les archives de Sarapion et de ses fils: une exploitation agricole aux environs d'Hermoupolis Magna (de 90 à 133 p.C.), Cairo 1961. F. Preisigke, P. Collomp. J. Schwartz, Griechische Papyrus der Kaiserlichen Universitäts- und Landesbibliothek zu Strassburg, Leipzig/Paris/Strasbourg 1912–1989. Papiri greci e latini, Florence 1912–. The Tebtunis Papyri, London 1902–2005. G. Björk, Der Fluch des Christen Sabinus, Papyrus Upsaliensis 8, Uppsala 1938. N. Lewis et al., The Documents from the Bar Kochba Period in the Cave of Letters, Jerusalem 1989–2002. Yale Papyri in the Beinecke Rare Book and Manuscript Library, New Haven 1967–2001. Z. Aly. Essays and Papers. A Miscellaneous Output of Greek Papyri from Graeco-Roman Egypt, Athens 1994. Sammelbuch griechischer Urkunden aus Ägypten, Berlin 1915–. Supplementum Epigraphicum Graecum, Leiden 1923–. A. S. Hunt, C. C. Edgar, and D. L. Page, Select papyri, London 1932–1942. C. Wessely (ed.), Studien zur Palaeographie und Papyruskunde, Leipzig 1901–1924. J. Strubbe, Arai Epitymbioi. Imprecations against Desecrators of the Grave in the Greek Epitaphs of Asia Minor: a Catalogue, Bonn 1997. W. Dittenberger, Sylloge inscriptionum graecarum, Leipzig 1915–1924 (third edition). E. Kalinka et al., Tituli Asiae Minoris, Vienna 1901–. U. Wilcken, Urkunden der Ptolemäerzeit (ältere Funde), Berlin/Leipzig 1927–1957. L. Mitteis and U. Wilcken. Grundzüge und Chrestomathie der Papyruskunde, I Historischer Teil, II Chrestomathie, Leipzig/Berlin 1912.

INDEX abuse 48, 54, 58, 80 acclamation 29, 93, 99, 106, 205, 218, 222, 225, 228–229, 295–312, 463 n. 178 acoustic signal and emotional arousal 81, 114, 229, 363, 381 action, resulting from emotion 158 address, form of 59 n. 119; 65, 69, 236, 323 admiration 99, 146, 283, 287, 337 adultery 91–92, 104 Aeschines 368 Aeschylus 141 affection 40, 44–45, 55, 61, 66, 76, 80–81, 92, 96–98, 106, 109 afterlife 47, 97, 104, 399 age 85, 156, 160, 394; see also s.v. old age ‘age’ of (an emotion) 11, 53, 124 age-class 18, 123 Akraiphia 106 Alexander the Great 119, 335–336 Alexander of Abonou Teichos 205 Alipheira 92 allegory 139, 346 alliteration 14, 111, 240–241, 280 amnesty 15, 98, 381 Amorgos 100, 257, 260 anatomical votive 181, 226, 229 Andros 278, 285 anger 11, 18–24, 28–29, 46 nn. 41–42; 51, 54, 57–59, 62, 68–69, 71–72, 77, 81, 92, 96–97, 114–115, 152, 209, 216–217, 228, 239, 247, 249, 252, 305, 324, 361– 362, 364–369, 381, 384, 404, 450–451; of a demon 116; of gods 92, 96, 99, 113, 117–118, 158, 161, 163, 167, 169, 207, 210, 212, 216, 218, 223–224; cf. s.vv. indignation, wrath of God anti-Semitism 59 anxiety 99–100, 116, 122, 135, 182–188, 194–195, 333; social anxiety 421–423, 428 Aphrodisias 93, 95, 109–110, 118, 120, 348 Apollo 144, 208, 213, 223; Klarios 212 appraisal 15 Apuleius 271–276 archaeology 27, 29, 131–147, 329–351

architecture 18 archive 52, 73, 319, 324 aretalogos 278 aretalogy 28–29, 216, 223–224, 267–290 Aristides, Aelius 185 n. 27; 299, 302–305 Aristonikos, War of 123 Aristophanes 177, 363, 427 Aristotle 24, 156, 163, 167 n. 59; 361–362, 364, 367, 369, 374, 382 arousal of emotion 102–103, 105, 108, 161, 182–193, 299, 303, 306–311, 359–384; covert arousal of emotion 161, 362, 369, 371, 378–381, 383; see also s.v. acoustic signal and emotional arousal, detailed description and emotional arousal, exaggeration, image and arousal of emotion, visual signal and ermotional arousal art 14, 18, 27, 133–136, 413–429 Artemis 345; Kynagos 216 Asklepios 28, 144, 177–203, 206, 209–210, 212, 216, 223–224 assembly 115, 303–304, 306, 310 association, cult 213 asylia, of sanctuary of Ephesos 341–342 Athena Lindia 206 Athens 29–30, 96, 102, 152, 167 Attalos II 92 Augustus 122 authority 22 awe 180, 283–285, 287 Babatha 42 barbarian 115 belief 209–210 benefaction, benefactor 13, 91, 103, 106– 107, 115, 119, 121, 166, 296, 300, 310, 335–337 benevolence 98 betrayal 249 biography 27, 162 birth 144 body and emotion 134; see s.vv. eyes, physiological aspects of emotion, physical contact, tears

474 body language 14, 108, 417–421, 428; movement 298; see also s.v. clapping hands, eyes, gesture, hands raised in prayer, nose booty 145–146 bribe-taking 379 burial 133, 244, 404 burial customs; see s.vv. grave, polyandreion catharsis 178, 195 change 283–287; change and emotion 17–18, 97, 121 character, national 152 Chariton 158 child, childhood 26, 44–45, 47, 50, 55, 60– 61, 64, 76–78, 98 n. 39; 108, 133, 146, 187, 320, 322, 394, 436; relation to parents 46, 62, 76, 78–81, 84, 401, 403–405 Christianity 25–26, 47–48, 55–57, 59 n. 119; 60–62, 65–66, 81, 349, 398–400; treatment of statues 345, 347–348; see also s.vv. monastery, Montanists civil strife 376 n. 91 clapping hands 298, 305 class, social 156, 160 climate, emotional 17 co-existence of emotions 23, 251 cognition 12, 446, 450–455; cf. s.vv. appraisal, decision-making coin 337–338 collective feeling 13, 96, 106, 259, 297, 306; cf. s.v. unanimity communication 13 n. 8; 20, 23, 28–30, 103, 105, 114, 123, 134, 153, 179, 296, 301– 302, 308 community, emotional 17, 23, 26–27, 29, 42, 59, 76–81, 105–107, 139, 141–142, 144–145, 195–196, 229, 244, 247, 251, 300, 337, 340, 349, 351, 362–363, 391 compassion 105, 195 competition between cities 307, 337 composition of text 54, 62–64, 66–67, 85, 94, 103, 114, 120, 182–195, 320; cf. s.v. scribe concealment of emotion 14, 20, 26 condolence, letter of 30, 389–410 confession 218, 220, 253 ‘confession inscription’ 96, 100, 216, 223, 228, 260 n. 116 conflict management 255

Index conflicting emotions 235, 427–428 connection between emotions 163 consolation 62–63, 97, 104, 247–248, 407; see also s.v. condolence consolatory decree 98 contempt 48, 57, 60, 67, 69, 71, 74–75, 81– 83–84, 97, 322, 367–368, 373 contract 43; wet-nursing c. 44; see also marriage contract control of emotion 15–17, 72, 98, 121, 124, 259–261, 390, 399–401, 403, 406, 440; cf. s.v. management, prescription Coptic text 46, 400 council 303, 306, 310 courage 98, 107, 119, 156, 206 court 304–305 crime 251, 259, 366; see also s.vv. injustice, murder, poisoning, theft, violence cult regulation 28, 98, 180, 212, 214, 224, 228, 425–426 culture and emotion 15–16, 382–384, 438– 442, 460–466 curse 91–92, 95, 100–101, 120, 214, 217, 223–224, 235–261; cf. s.v. imprecation damnatio memoriae 342–344 day, dedicated to an emotion 12 Dea Syria 251–252 dead, untimely 239–240; speaking from the grave 104–105, 246, 249 death 111–112, 121, 133, 144, 164 n. 49; 391–408, 451; suspicious 237–251; untimely 238, 256; cf. s.v. epigram, epitaph, grave declamation 302 decision-making and emotion 13 decree 13, 97–98, 102–103, 108, 114–121, 211; biographical decree 98 dedication 28, 95–96, 133, 135, 141, 179, 181, 210, 216, 224, 226, 269; see also anatomical votive deification of emotions 155 Delos 119, 144, 223, 225, 251–253 Demeter 100–101, 223, 253–256, 260 democracy 376 Demosthenes 361, 364–366, 372–374, 378 desire 91–92, 99, 160 destruction of objects 339–342 detailed description and emotional arousal 48, 52, 54, 67, 75, 82, 107–109, 187, 192, 321, 324 n. 33; 462 development of emotion 52–53

475

Index Dio Chrysostomus 131, 141, 344–345, 348 dipinti 99 diplomacy and emotion 98 disability 133 disappointment 46 disease 45–46, 177–203, 212, 226, 246; mental disorder 181; as punishment 117, 219, 226 disgust 16, 17 n. 30; 59, 428 dishonour 364 disinheritance 46 display of emotion 13, 16–17, 20–23, 29, 53, 69, 72, 97–98, 118–119, 123, 248, 254, 257, 300, 323, 325, 402 disposition 123, 152 distress 42 divine punishment 28, 100 207–208, 210, 212, 214–218, 222, 225, 227–228, 235– 261; cf. s.v. miracle (punitive) divorce 26, 48–49, 56, 71 Dodona 92, 99, 210 dream 50–51, 177–203, 206, 217 dress 425–427 drunkenness 413–429 education 21, 26, 60–62, 64, 85, 121, 153, 167, 373, 392, 408; cf. s.v. literacy Egypt 39–86, 317–325; Egyptian 58–59, 71, 85, 384; Egyptian gods 226; cf. s.vv. Isis, papyri, Sarapis elite 13, 29, 122, 124, 213, 295–296, 306, 310, 350, 374–376, 380 embezzlement 379 emotional culture 122 emotionalisation 29, 301–306, 311–312 emotionality 97–98, 165 eemotion, see s.vv. affection, anger, arousal of emotion, awe, change, climate (emotional), co-existence of emotions, collective feeling, community (emotional), compassion, concealment of emotion, conficting emotions, connection between emotions, contempt, control of emotion, courage, culture and emotion, decision-making and emotion, deification of emotions, development of emotion, disgust, display of emotion, disposition, distress, emotional culture, emotionalisation, emotionality, empathy, envy, episode (emotional), fear, frustration, gratitude, grief, guilt, habitus (emotional), hatred, hierarchy of emo-

tions, hope, indignation, ingratitude, intensification of emotion, jealousy, joy, love, mercy, norm (emotional), personality and emotion, personification of emotion, pity, pride, relief, resentment, Schadenfreude, script (emotional), politics, prescription of emotion, script (emotional), sexual desire, shame, sorrow, space and emotion, style (emotional), translation of emotional terms, value system and emotion empathy 247, 325 emperor, Roman 93, 121–122, 307, 333–334 enargeia 107–109, 161 n. 38; cf. s.v. vividness envy 13, 18, 83–84, 91–93, 96–97, 100, 119, 158–159, 162–164, 169, 238, 251, 258, 337, 362, 372, 374 Ephesos 20–21, 29, 99, 119, 212, 329–351 epic poetry 25 Epidauros 28, 96, 144, 177–203, 209, 216, 223–224 epigram, grave 95, 110–111, 249–250 epiphany 182, 228, 272, 275, 279, 286 episode, emotional 22, 157 epitaph 96–97, 104–108, 120, 238–245, 250; dialogue with the passer-by 106, 109; interaction with passer-by 239 erasure of inscription 343–345 Eros 18, 154–155 ethnicity 57–58, 60, 85, 118; cf. s.vv. Egyptian, Jew euergetism 335–336 eulogy 228; cf. s.v. praise Eumenes II 113 eunuch 105, 117 euphemism 395 Euromos 214 evil eye 42, 60, 251 exaggeration 80–81, 310, 321–322 exaltation of god 216 exclamation 67 excuse 21 exemplum 110, 228 explanation through emotion 27 exposure of child 44, 77 eyes 134–135 face, loss of 70, 101, 250; cf. s.v. shame facial expression 14, 134, 435 faith 13, 17 n. 31; 211

476 family 40, 43–45, 55–56, 62, 74, 76–81, 247–249, 390–391, 404–405, 407–408 fasting 281 fate 238, 283, 393 fear 17–18, 20–22, 28, 42–43, 47, 50, 54, 60–61, 68, 84, 92–93, 96, 99–100, 103, 114–116, 118, 122, 135, 142, 144, 146, 152, 156, 178, 180, 227–229, 239, 251, 283, 285, 287, 309, 322, 332, 335, 337, 381, 449; of death 16; of gods 205–230 feeling 15 festival 106, 416 flattery 166, 310, 363 footprint, in sanctuary 226 foreigner 241, 246 formulaic language 26, 43, 57, 60–61, 64–65, 85, 110, 121, 155, 158, 194, 244, 258– 259, 298, 321, 394–396, 462–464; cf. standardisation of expression, stereotypical formulation friendship 16, 44–45, 59, 61–63, 65–66, 97, 167, 391 frustration 48 funeral 98, 106 funerary imprecation 117–118, 223 funerary rite 45, 103; cf. s.vv. lament, mourning Furies 117 Gambreion 214 gender 18, 26, 29, 48, 72, 81, 85, 123, 147, 153, 156, 160, 324–325, 401–404; see also s.v. women gesture 14, 81–82, 244, 298, 302; cf. s.v. hands raised in prayer ghost 239 n. 17 Glykon Neos Asklepios 205 gnomic phrase 109 god 24, 28, 118, 179, 190–191, 196, 280– 286; image of 278–279; impersonation of gods 275–276, 279; see also s.v. anger of gods, Apollo, Artemis, Asklepios, Athena, Dea Syria, Demeter, divine punishment, epiphany, Eros, fear of gods, Glykon Neos Asklepios, Isis, Kore, Mes, Meter Theon, Nemesis, Pan, Phobos, praise of god, punishment (divine), Sarapis, Sun, Syria (Dea), wrath of God, Zeus gossip 91, 250, 252; cf. s.v. rumour governor, Roman provincial 307 graffiti 97, 99

Index gratitude 13–14, 18, 28–29, 74, 78, 96, 98, 102, 106–107, 110, 114–115, 119, 165– 166, 181, 226–227, 283, 321, 323, 335, 337, 376, 378, 380; cf. s.v. ingratitude grave, of war dead 140; violation of 117, 221; see also s.v. polyndreion grave goods 146 grave stone, see s.v. epitaph greed 162–164 greeting 64, 394–395; cf. s.v. address grief 15 n. 22; 16–18, 46, 81, 84, 97, 104– 107, 112, 140, 248, 389; cf. s.v. sorrow guilt 51, 397–398; collective 210 n. 19; inherited 210 n. 19 habitus, emotional 21 n. 44 hands, raised in prayer 237, 226, 229, 244, 252; crossed 243; see also s.v. clapping hands hatred 46, 92, 97, 99, 162–164, 361–362, 365, 369, 381 healing miracle 28, 96, 100, 177–203, 209, 222–224, 228 Hellenistic period 41, 97–98, 108–109, 114, 121, 165, 208–230, 237–261, 301–302 Herodas 415 Herostratos 335, 341 Hierapolis 213 hierarchy 116, 118, 122, 258, 307, 333, 368 n. 47, 383, 407; cf. s.v. status hierarchy of emotions 338–339 historiography 27 history, study of emotions in 12–19, 26 Homer 24, 169, 206 n. 6; 210, 235 homosexuality 160 honorary inscription 110 honour 17 n. 30–31, 100, 228, 258, 260; honouring 13 hope 16, 18, 28–29, 47, 81, 97–99, 104, 107–108, 121–122, 146, 151–152, 178, 180, 182–190, 193–195, 205, 210, 226– 229, 242, 248, 283, 285, 335; deception of 104, 106, 111, 121 hortatory formula 13, 335 humiliation 70, 82, 101, 146 humour 185, 429; cf. s.v. irony hybris 364–367 hygiene, neglect of 84 hymn 100, 268 identity 123, 140, 307, 351 illness, see s.v. disease

477

Index image, and arousal of emotion 136, 142, 223–225, 229, 237, 244, 252, 278, 413– 429; cf. s.vv. art, statue, visual signal imperial cult 333, 337 Imperial period 10–109, 121, 208–230, 237– 261, 302–312 impiety 215; cf. s.v. piety imprecation 28–29, 210, 22; funerary imprecation 117–118; see also s.v. impurity curse100, 210, 213, 217; cf. s.v. purity incubation 177–203 indignation 11, 17 n. 31; 18, 96–97, 100, 105, 107, 113–115, 230, 249, 374 n. 83; 377; cf. s. anger individual characterisation 110 ingratitude 79, 222; cf. s.v. gratitude initiation 29, 211 n. 26; 268, 270–275, 277, 279–281, 284, 286 injustice 29, 100–101, 107, 238, 251, 253, 255–256; cf. s.v. justice inscription 13, 25–29, 91–124, 136, 177–203, 206–230, 236–261, 269–271, 276–290, 295–297, 306–312, 333–335, 343–344, 350, 396; destruction of 102–103; loud reading of 101, 103, 121, 214, 216, 224–225, 276, 278; as monument 103, 114; reading of 105, 186, 194–195, 226, 239; see also s.v. erasure, honorary inscription insult 364 intensification of emotion 299 interjection 446–447 intervention, see s.v. control invocation 268 Iobakchoi 300 Iolkos 210 irony 67; cf. s.v. humour Isaeus 378 Isis 28–29, 211–212, 223, 226, 267–290 Isocrates 166, 366–367, 371–372 Isyllos 180, 206, 212 jealousy 17 n. 30; 101, 158–160, 168–169, 374 Jew, Jewish 57, 59, 82 n. 239; 210 n. 23; 237–245 joy 93, 95, 97, 99–101, 106–107, 109, 120, 295, 300, 305, 423–424, 428–429 justice 101, 207, 230, 239–241, 249, 251, 255, 283, 320, 322, 324; divine justice 215, 228, 242–243; cf. s.vv. divine punishment, injustice

king 116, 118 kinship between cities 98 Knidos 223, 253–257, 260 Kore 253–256 Kritias 207 Kyme 276–277, 281, 286–289 Kytenion 92 Kyzikos 106 lament 402; cf. s.v. mourning language and emotion 14, 17, 20–21, 26, 30, 41, 48, 52–53, 55–56, 58, 62, 66–67, 73, 75–76, 79, 97–98, 111, 118, 121, 179, 240, 246, 258, 298, 320–322, 324, 373– 374, 407, 434–469; cf. also acoustic signal, address, alliteration, enargeia, exclamation, formulaic language, humour, interjection, irony, metaphor, metonymy, oratory, repetition, rhetoric, rhythm, simile, standardisation of expression, synonym, vividness, vocabulary Late Antiquity 48, 53–55, 321, 398–400 law 96, 317–325 lawsuit 361–384 legal narratology 317 letter 40–42, 49–50, 52–53, 56–57, 61–65, 69, 76–79, 81, 85, 98, 401, 405–408, 463; cf. s.v. condolence Leukopetra 215 lex sacra, see s.v. cult regulation Lindos 206, 213 literacy 26, 60, 73, 121, 392; cf. s.v. scribe literature 27, 151–170; literary topos: 169; cf. s.v. novel love 17 n. 31; 18, 56, 92, 97, 154, 157, 160, 246–248, 250; love at first sight: 155– 156; love magic 100 n. 48; 239 n. 17; see also s.v. desire loyalty 300 Lucian 158, 205 Lykourgos 97, 119 Lysias 160–161, 379–382 magic 83–84, 246, 258; see also love magic management of emotion 16; cf. s.v. control, prescription Maroneia 211, 226, 271, 276, 278–279, 284–286, 289–290 marriage 40–41, 43, 45, 48–49, 56, 81–82, 85, 109, 154, 246–248; marriage contract 43

478 Masada 42 Medea 24 Meidias 364–365, 368 Meleagros 235 memorial 137 memory 47, 98, 140, 342, 367 n. 45; 414 mercy 257 n. 96 Mes 218–221, 229 metaphor 14, 66, 112, 188, 437, 442, 450– 464; metaphor within metonymy 456– 464 Meter Theon Autochthon 215 metonymy 112, 442, 450–466 miracle 28, 51, 108, 206, 208, 222, 225, 268; collection of miracles 225; punitive miracle 185–187, 216; see also s.v. healing miracle Mithridates VI 21, 107, 118–119, 340 monastery, monasticism 56–57 monk 400 Montanists 211 n. 23 Mother of Gods, see s.v. Meter Theon motivation 13, 163 mourning 91, 104, 402–403; cf. s.v. lament murder 104–105, 237–239, 243–245, 249– 250 music 30 n. 60; 298, 303 n. 38 mystery cult 213; cf. s.v. initiation mythology 281–282 naming practices 18, 42, 44, 77–78, 104, 111, 122, 123, 250 narration 178, 182–196, 463; oral narration 181–182 narratology 317, 322 Neapolis 102 Nemesis 18, 95, 155, 230 night 275–276 norm, cult 212; emotional 17; social 123 nose, as locus of physical manifestation of emotion 81–82 novel 154–155 oath 48, 217, 251–252; cf. s.v. perjury obeisance 65–66 Oinoanda 119 Olbia 22, 92, 115–120 old age 79, 99; care in 45, 47, 78–81, 100, 414 Olymos 113

Index oracle 99, 212–213, 217, 219, 224; alphabetical 206 n. 3; dice 206 n. 3; oracular enquiry 50, 99 orality 181–182, 195–196, 213, 226, 297; cf. s.vv. gossip, recitation, rumour oration 208 orator 160, 305; cf. s.v. sophist oratory 25, 27, 29, 112, 159–162, 359–384; cf. s.v. oration, orator, rhetoric orphan 48, 74–75, 321–323 ostentatious behaviour 425–426 ostracism 96–97 ostraka, in Athens 96; in Egypt 43 pain 109, 111, 248 Pan 206–207 Panamara 222 papyri, papyrology 25–26, 29–30, 39–86, 225, 298–299, 317–325, 383–384 paroemiographoi 167 performance 223–224, 226, 267–268, 274, 276 Perge 306–308 perjury 252; cf. s.v. oath personality and emotion 21 personification of emotion 18, 142, 155 persuasion strategy 18, 23, 26, 29, 51–52, 81, 103, 119, 133, 160, 240–241, 246, 254, 258, 320–323 Pessinous 92 petition 29, 42, 48, 51–52, 54, 61, 70, 72, 74–75, 79, 81, 83–85, 98, 99 n. 39; 295, 317–327, 383–384 Phazimon 243–244 Philadelpheia 103, 213, 224 philosophy 25, 167 Philostratos 209, 304, 336 Phobos 18, 155 Phylarchos 165–166 physical contact 109 physiological aspects of emotion 14, 21, 26, 81–85, 156–158, 437–439; cf. s.vv. facial expression, nose, tears piety 144, 210–212, 228, 336; cf. s.v. impiety pilgrimage 65–66 pity 29, 55, 68, 75, 80, 92, 105, 109, 114, 161, 164, 178, 229, 246, 303, 320–322, 324–325, 361, 378 n. 105; 382, 400, 426

Index Plato 157 pleasure 167 Plutarch 155, 162, 164–165, 167–168, 304, 395–396 poisoning 237, 239–240, 245–246, 253–254, 258 politics and emotions 11, 17 nn. 31, 34; 29, 98, 295–312 pollution 144 polyandreion 140 Polybios 165, 254 Polykrates 144 potion 105 praise, of god 180, 212, 216–218, 220–221, 226, 228, 241, 267; of man 110; cf. s.v. eulogy prayer 13, 95, 100–101, 205, 210, 216, 226; for justice 28, 46 n. 45; 100 n. 49; 223, 228, 236–261, 463–464 pregnancy 50, 100 prescription of emotion 99, 106 pride 16–17, 29, 95–97, 99–100, 140–141, 146, 163, 180, 300, 307–308, 323, 337 priest 177, 185, 212–213, 216–217, 219–221, 224, 276, 279 procession 98, 334, 335 n. 24 propitiation 216, 228 proskenyma 65–66 prostitution 160 Protesileos 209 Protogenes 114–120 Pseudo-Demetrios 392 Ptolemaic Egypt 54 punishment, divine 28, 51, 93, 185–187, 223, 225, 230; cf. s.v. justice (divine) purification 144, 213, 215, 217 purity 213; cf. s.v. impurity Pylitai 295 rationality 323 reciprocity 13, 211, 226, 323, 335 recitation of text 212, 223–226, 279, 284; cf. s.v. inscription, reading of record of divine punishment 216 relief 50, 428 relief (sculptural) 178, 217, 227 religion 28–29, 49, 51, 99–100, 135–136, 144, 177–203, 205–230, 235–261, 267– 290; see also s.vv. Christianity, curse, divine punishment, epiphany, festival, Furies, god, healing miracle, impiety, impurity, incubation, initiation, Jews,

479 miracle, oracle, piety, pilgrimage, pollution, praise of god, prayer, priest, procession, propitiation, proskenyma, punishment (divine), purification, purity, record of divine punishment, ritual, sanctuary, temple, vow repentance 219 repetition 14, 68, 79, 99 n. 39; 108, 111, 240, 280, 298–299, 308, 310, 321 resentment 46, 361–362, 374–375 restrain, see s.v. control revenge 29, 46, 71, 235–261, 324 Rheneia 143, 237-245 rhetoric 47, 55, 62, 74, 98, 106–107, 111, 121, 211 n. 26; 226, 303–304, 373; cf. s.v. oratory rhythm 280, 298–299, 310 ritual 28–29, 98, 103, 140, 208–210, 212, 214–215, 217, 219-221, 224, 238, 244, 252, 254, 256, 261, 274, 277–278, 286– 287, 404, 425 Rome, Romans 59, 92, 107, 118, 123, 211, 344 rumour 181, 195–196 Salutaris, C. Vibius 333–334 sanctuary 212–230, 256, 260, 267, 269-270, 277, 282, 426; cf. s.v. temple Sarapis 50–51, 66, 225 Schadenfreude 92, 101, 251, 257–258, 260, 374, 427 scholia 168–169 sceptre 229 scribe 54, 60–61, 64, 73, 319, 324, 392 script, emotional 17, 375 sculpture 329; cf. s.v. relief, statue sexual desire 160 shame 51, 82, 152, 160–161, 166–168, 256, 364, 428 sharing, social 97 Sidyma 208 signal, see s.vv. acoustic, visual simile 76 slander 252–253, 256 slave, slavery 44–45, 48, 66, 70, 99, 101 sleep 177 social sharing 97 ‘social toxin’ 256 society; social change 18; social function of emotion 13, 15, 17, 254, 256, 259, 261, 403; social norm 123; social role 123; cf. s.vv. class, elite, hierarchy, norm,

480

Index

reciprocity, sharing (social), slave, social toxin, status solidarity 295 song 280, 302–303, 305 sophist 302–305, 373 Sophistic, Second 302 sorrow 101, 404; cf. s.v. grief space and emotion 18, 29, 103, 132, 136– 137, 143, 152, 156, 223–224, 276–277, 303, 305, 329–351, 426; cf. s.v. sanctuary, temple Sparta 152, 155, 162, 168 staging 286 standardisation of expression 54, 64, 229, 253, 298, 394–396; deviation from standard 66, 463 statue 29–30, 69, 120, 131 n. 2; 135 n. 34; 137, 142, 275, 329, 332–334, 343–349, 413–429; burying of 345; carrying of 334; destruction of 340, 345; re-use of 344–346, 348; cf. s.v. sculpture status 21–22, 26, 29, 63, 67, 70–71, 78, 85, 123, 153, 160, 322, 324–325 stereotypical formulation 18, 26, 109, 121, 229; cf. s.v. formulaic language, standardisation of expression Stratokles 119 Stratonikeia 222 style, emotional 17 stylisation 54 suicide 401 Sun, as avenging deity 241 superstition 56, 60, 239; see also s.vv. evil eye, fate, magic surprise 282 sykophant 369–372 synonym 14 Syria, Dea 251–252 tears 14 n. 16; 104, 106, 109, 112, 272, 274, 304 technology and emotion 18 temple 137–137, 139 Teos 210–211 Termessos 308–311 testament 98, 99 n. 39; cf. s.v. will Thasos 102

theatre 334; theatrical performance in Isis cult 276 theatricality 161–162, 301–305, 363 theft 253 Theognis 167 Theokritos 144, 154–155 Thesmophoria 254 Thucydides 144, 151–152, 163 tragedy 25 Tralleis 295 translation of emotional terms 14, 155, 158, 168–169, 257 n. 97; 374–375, 433 Tyriaion 113 unanimity 106–107 value system and emotion 29, 159, 161, 382–384, 414 veiling 14 n. 16 vengeance, see s.v. revenge Vergina 145 village 56–57, 324 violence 48, 70, 81–84, 92, 116, 158, 161, 260 n. 113; 317, 364–366; see also s.v. crime, murder vision 272, 286 visual signal and emotional arousal 229 vividness 107–109, 190–193, 274; cf. s.v. enargeia vocabulary, choice of 113–114 voice 14, 303 n. 38 vow 216 war 93, 107, 123, 206 n. 5; 342–343; booty 145–146 wealth 374–377 widow 320–323 will 44–47; cf. s.v. testament wine, see s.v. drunkenness women 18, 41, 48–49, 54, 57, 64, 66, 72–76, 78, 80, 82, 123, 161, 213–215, 253–257, 317–325, 401, 413–429; cf. s.v. widow wrath of God 24 Xanthos 92 Zeus 92, 99, 208, 213, 220, 222, 249

SELECTED GREEK WORDS ἀγάασθαι 168 ἀγανακτέω 160 n. 35; 165 n. 50

ἀγανάκτησις 115 ἀγαπητός 59 n. 119

481

Index ἀγωνιῶ 76 n. 212 ἀθυµία 84 n. 243 ἀθύµως 118 αἰδώς 167, 168 n. 62 αἰσχρός 166 n. 58 αἰσχύνη 50 n. 73; 166 n. 58; 167 αἰσχύνοµαι 160 n. 35; 161 n. 38 ἀκλήρηµα 92 n. 6 ἀλύπως 164 n. 48 ἀναιδής 113–114 ἀνδρεία 155 n. 13 ἀντελπίζω 152 n. 1 ἀντιλύπησις 156 ἀσεβής 215 ἄσπλαγχνος 46 n. 46 ἀστόργως 287 αὐθάδεια 83 n. 240 ἀφοβία 155 n. 13 βασκα(ι)ν- 372 βδελυρεύοµαι 59 βλασφηµ- 372 γοερός 106 n. 67 γηροκοµία 45 γηροκόµος 119 n. 121 γηροτροφέω 100 n. 46 γηροτροφία 78 δάκρυα 106 n. 67; 109 n. 79; 304 nn. 43–44 δακρύω 97 n. 30; 104 nn. 60–61; 106 n. 68 δέδια 155 n. 13; 167 n. 60; 381 n. 116 δειλότατος 155 n. 13 δεισιδαιµονία 210 δέος 155 n. 13 διαγανακτέω 377 διαγωνιάω 118 διάθεσις 123 δόλος 237 n. 11 δυσµένεια 162 n. 42 ἔκπληξις 162 n. 41 ἐκπλήσσοµαι 165 n. 50 ἔλεος 163 n. 47; 248 n. 62; 303 n. 42; 320 n. 17; 377 n. 98; 378 n. 105 ἐλεόω 161 n. 40; 164 n. 48; 222 n. 55; 288 ἐλπίζω 84 n. 242; 107 n. 73; 122 n. 130; 152 n. 1 ἐλπίς 106 n. 69; 107 n. 75; 109 n. 79; 119 n. 121; 121 n. 130; 122 n. 131; 152, 248 n. 62 ἐνάργεια 178

ἐντρέποµαι 50 n. 73 ἐπιεικής 110 ἐπιθυµέω 156, 160 n. 35, 38 ἐπιθυµητικός 156 ἐπιθυµία 156 ἐπιστενάσσω 304 n. 44 ἐπιχαίρω 258 n. 101 ἐποικτίρω 206 ἔρως 154, 159–160, 164 n. 48 εὔελπις 151 n. 1 εὐθαρσής 206 n. 3 εὐθυµέω 394 εὔνοια 49, 98, 123 εὔνους 110 εὐσέβεια 210, 211 nn. 24–25 εὐσεβής 110 εὐτυχέω 394 εὐτυχής 300 n. 23 εὐφροσύνη 109 n. 79 εὐχαριστία 13 n. 12; 106 n. 70 εὐχάριστος 13 n. 12 ἐχθ- 372 ἔχθρα 365 n. 36; 369 n. 54 ζηλήµων 168 n. 65; 169 ζηλοτυπία 158–159, 168, 169 n. 72 ζηλότυπος 169 ζηλωτής 13 n. 12 ἡδέως βλέπω 100 n. 49 ἡδέως ὁράω 92 n. 7 ἡδονή 166 n. 58 θαρραλεώτατος 155 n. 13 θαρρέω 205–206, 211 n. 26; 212, 226 n. 66; 289 θάρσος 206 n. 5 θεοσεβής 210 n. 23 θεουδείη 212 θεραπεύω 332 θλίβοµαι 55 n. 95 θλῖψις 55 n. 95 θρηνέω 248 n. 61 θυµός 115, 155 n. 8; 162 n. 42; 169 n. 72 ἱλαρώτατα 93 n. 11 καταπλήσσω 21 n. 43; 119 n. 123; 208 n. 12 καταστεναχέω 112 n. 96 καταφρονέω 74, 83 n. 240 καταφρόνησις 367–368, 373

482 καταχαίρω 100 n. 49 κατοδύροµαι 248 n. 60 κλαίω 395 n. 32 λοιδορ- 372 λυπέω/οµαι 78 n. 223; 395 n. 32; 397 n. 46 λύπη 100 n. 49; 111, 166 n. 58; 320 n. 17; 364 n. 27 µῆνις 24 µήνισµα 210 n. 23 µισέω 91 n. 4; 100 n. 49; 366 n. 37; 369 n. 54; 377 n. 96; 381 n. 119 µισητός 99 n. 42; 164 n. 48 µισοπόνηρος 110 µῖσος 91 n. 4; 361, 369, 377 n. 98 µνασιχολέω 92 µοχθηρός 92 n. 7; 113–114 µῶµος 120 νεµεσάω 115, 225 n. 61; 367 n. 45; 374 n. 83; 380 n. 117 νέµεσις 374 n. 83 νεµεσητός 115 νήπιος 322 οἰκειότης 98 οἰκτίρω 105 n. 65 ὀλοφύροµαι 304 n. 44 ὀργή 22, 24, 115–116, 156, 158 n. 26; 166 n. 58; 361, 364 n. 27; 365 nn. 31, 36; 366 n. 37; 367 n. 43; 377 n. 98; 380, 382; ὀργὴ δαίµονος 116 n. 112; ὀργὴ θεοῦ 116 n. 111 ὀργίζοµαι 71 n. 190; 116 n. 110; 362 n. 17; 366 n. 39; 367 n. 40; 380 n. 116 ὀργίλος 209 πάθος 303 n. 42; 369 παραµυθέω 397 n. 46 παραµυθητικὸν ψήφισµα 98 πάσχω 397 n. 46 πενθαλέος 250 n. 68 πενθέω 106 n. 71 πένθιµος 109 n. 79 πένθος 85 n. 245; 112 n. 94 περιοράω 99 n. 39; 114, 118 περιπέτεια 178 περίφοβος 22, 115–116 πλεονεκτέω 164 n. 48 πλεονεξία 162 n. 42; 163 n. 45 πόθος 163 n. 43

Index πολυγόητος 109 n. 79 πρᾶος 110 προαίρεσις 123 προπηλακίζω 368 προσκύνηµα 65 σεµνός 110 σπουδή 123 στέργοµαι 287 στοργή 49, 91 n. 4 συγγένεια 98 συµπάσχω 105 n. 66 ταλαίπωρος 406 τέρποµαι 120 n. 125 τόλµα 206 n. 5 τολµέω 83 n. 240; 113–114, 162 n. 41 τολµητής 151 n. 1 ὑβρίζω 365 n. 31 ὕβρις 72 n. 191 ὑπερχαρής 93 n. 11 ὑπότροµος 162 n. 41 ὑφοψία 92 n. 7 φθονερός 164 n. 49 φθονέω 163 n. 44; 378 nn. 102, 104; 379 n. 107 φθόνος 83 n. 240; 91 n. 2; 92 n. 6; 93 n. 13; 120 n. 125; 162 nn. 42, 45; 164, 169, 361–362, 372, 374–376, 377 n. 98; 378–382 φιλανθρωπία 378 n. 105; 379 n. 111 φιλάνθρωπος 318 n. 7 φιλία 62 n. 134; 91 n. 4; 123, 164 n. 48 φιλόδοξος 110 φιλόπατρις 110 φίλος 112 n. 94; 166 n. 58 φιλοστοργέω 287 φιλοτιµία 163 n. 45 φιλότιµος 110 φίλτατος 65 n. 150 φοβέοµαι 84 n. 244; 155 n. 13 φοβερώτερος 288 φόβος 91 n. 4; 97 n. 31; 119 n. 124; 155 n. 13; 208 n. 14; 211 n. 23 φρίκη 162 n. 41 χαίρειν 394 χαίρω 423 n. 44 χαρά 100 n. 49; 107 n. 72

483

Index χάρις 74 n. 204; 98, 102 n. 55–56; 164 n. 48; 165 n. 52; 245 n. 51; 318 n. 7; 376, 380 n. 114

χόλος 91 n. 4; 115, 116 n. 110; 117, 212 n. 28; 235 n. 2; χόλος δαιµόνων 116 n. 110; χόλος θεῶν 116 n. 110 χολόω/οµαι 116 n. 112; 117 nn. 114–116; 118 n. 118

SELECTED SOURCES

Literary Sources Aeschines 1.114: 368 n. 48 3.53: 368 n. 48 Anthologia Graeca 7.35: 428 n. 657.423: 427 n. 61 7.457: 428 n. 63 7.700: 250 n. 66 11.54: 428 n. 67 Apuleius Metamorphoses XI: 271–276 Aristides, Aelius, Orationes 34.47: 302 50.91: 305 Aristophanes Ekklesiazousai 877–1111: 427 Ploutos 649–763: 177 Wasps 562–574: 363 n. 22 Aristotle de anima 1.1 403a30–32: 156 n. 19 Nicomachean Ethics 2.7 1108b1–5: 374 n. 83 Politics 5.4. 1304a34–38: 163 n. 44 Rhetoric 2.2.1378a30–32: 364 n. 27 Rhetoric 2.2.1378b14–25: 367 n. 45 Rhetoric 2.2.1378b23–25: 364 n. 27 Rhetoric 2.2 1380a2–5: 362 n. 17 Rhetoric 2.4 1382a1–7: 369 n. 54; 377 n. 96 Rhetoric 2.9 1386b16–20: 374 n. 83 Rhetoric 2.9 1386b31–35: 374 n. 83 Rhetoric 2.9 1387a3–5: 163 n. 47; 382 n. 127 Rhetoric 2.10 1388a27–30: 382 n. 127 Rhetoric 2.11 1388a35–36: 374 n. 83 Rhetoric 2.12 1389a3-6: 156 n. 15

1.1.4: 154 1.4.7: 158 Cicero Ad familiares 5.16.6: 402 Demosthenes 18: 372 21: 364–365, 377 21.196.4–6: 361 n. 14 27.64: 378 n. 101 28.18.2–3: 378 n. 102 35: 373–374 54: 365–366 Dio Chrysostomus Oratio 12.52: 141 n. 71 Oratio 12.53: 131 n. 2 Oratio 31: 344–345, 348 Firmicus Maternus De errore profanorum religionum 23.5: 211 n. 26 Herodas 4: 415 Homer Iliad 11.58: 169 Isaeus 5. 34–45: 378 n. 103 6.61-1–3: 378 n. 104 Isocrates 1.15.4–5: 166 n. 58 1.15.7–16.2: 166 n. 58 1.21.2–4: 166 n. 58 18: 372 20.6: 366–367 21: 371–372

[Aristotle] Rhetoric to Alexander 1445a15–20: 374 n. 78

Lucian Alexander 8: 205 Dialogi meretricii 8.300: 158

Athenaios 6.66 (254f–255a): 165 n. 52

Lysias 3.3–8: 160–161 21: 381–282 27.11.1–2: 379 n. 107

Chariton, Chaireas and Kallirhoe 1.1.3: 154

484

Index

28: 380–381 29: 381

Life of Kleomenes: 155 n. 13 Life of Marcellus 20.5–6: 162 moralia 106c: 395 moralia 107a: 396 n. 41 moralia 228c9–11: 167–168 moralia 611c: 396 n. 42 moralia 796 F: 304 n. 45

Pausanias 3.15.11: 142 n. 75 6.3.15–16: 332 Philostratos, Heroikos 8.2: 209 16.5–6: 209 Philostratos, Lives of the Sophists 512: 304 n. 43 582: 304 n. 44 605: 336 Phylarchos FgrH 81 F 29: 165 n. 52 Plato Lysis 204c2–d8: 157 n. 24 Lysis 207b4–6: 157 n. 24 Lysis 210e5–7: 157 n. 24 Symposion 213d2: 169 n. 71

Polybios 15.29.8–14: 254 n. 86 Strabo 14.1.22: 335 Sextus Empiricus Against the Mathematicians 9.54: 207 Theocritus Idyll 2.76–86: 155 n. 8 Idyll 17.70: 144 Theognis: 167

Pliny naturalis historia 30.89: 142 n. 73

Thucydides 1.70: 151 3.82.8: 163 n. 45 3.104.1–2: 144

Plutarch Life of Agis 5.2–3: 162, 164–165

Xenophon Memorbilia 2.6.21.2–23.7: 164 n. 48

Inscriptions See the list of abbreviations (pp. 469–472) BIWK 3: 224 n. 61 5: 93 n. 12; 220–221 98: 217 n. 45 GV 1819: 250 n. 66 I.Alexandreia/Troas 90: 104 n. 6; 249 n. 64 IAph2007 4.21.1: 93 n. 13 I.Assos 26: 107 n. 73; 122 n. 130 I.Délos 4: 142 n. 72 2531: 251 n. 74 2532 I: 237–245 2532 II: 244 I.Didyma 532: 109 n. 80

I.Ephesos 8: 20–21 27: 333–334 234: 343 n. 65 415: 343 n. 64 422: 345 n. 75 456: 99 n. 43 IG I3 101: 102–103 1204: 105 n. 65 IG II2 457: 97 n. 30 1368: 300 2035: 97 n. 31 12599: 111 n. 93 IG IV2.1 121: 144 n. 77; 224 n. 60 123: 210 n. 18 128: 206

485

Index IG V.1 1390: 425 n. 52

I.Pessinous 7: 92 n. 7

IG V.2 514: 425 n. 51

IPArk 24: 92 n. 9

IG VII 1883: 106 n. 69 2712: 106 n. 70

I.Thrac.Aeg 205: 211 n. 26; 226 n. 64; 271, 276, 278– 279, 284–286, 289–290

IG IX2.1 253: 207

LSAM 16: 214 n. 38 20: 213 n. 35

IG X.2.2 233: 216 n. 43 IG XI.4 1299: 226 n. 63 IG XII.5 764: 250 n. 68 IG XII.6 1213: 99 n. 42 IG XII.7 p. 1: 100–101; 257 n. 98 123: 104 n. 61 IG XII.9 236 + Suppl. 553 13–14 IG XIV 2566: 105 n. 63 IGUR 148: 182 n. 20 I.Kios 19: 425 n. 53 I.Knidos 148: 253 n. 82 150: 91 n. 3; 253 n. 83 303: 109 n. 79 I.Kyme 41: 276–277, 281, 286–289 I.Leukopetra 53: 215 n. 42 65: 215 n. 41 I.Lindos 2: 206 n. 4 I.Mylasa 861: 113 n. 100 I.Napoli 44: 112 n. 97 IOSPE I2 32: 22, 92 n. 5; 115–120 I.Perge 331 II: 306–308, 312

LSCG Suppl. 14: 211 n. 24 91: 213 n. 34 Merkelbach/Stauber, SGO I 01/17/01: 214 n. 37 I 01/18/05: 106 n. 67 I 02/12/01: 117 n. 113; 212 n. 28 I 02/12/03: 212 n. 29 I 03/02/01: 212 n. 30 I 03/05/04: 107 n. 75 Petzl, Beichtinschriften, see BIWK RC 61: 92 n. 7 RDGE 34: 211 n. 24 Reynolds, Aphrodisias and Rome 2: 107 n. 72 SB 1323: 258 n. 101 13946: 389 n. 1 SEG XVIII 570: 108 n. 77 XIX 427: 210 n. 22 XXI 469: 211 n. 24 XXIII 206: 93 XXVIII 953: 106 n. 71 XXVIII 1566: 113 n. 98 XXVIII 1568: 223 n. 58 XXXI 1283: 105 n. 66 XXXIV 1306: 306–308 XXXV 216: 116 n. 110 XXXVIII 1172: 295 XXXVIII 1476: 92 n. 6 XLIII 943: 211 n. 23 XLIV 1182: 91 n. 2 XLV 641: 112 XLVII 1745: 113 n. 99 L 276: 98 n. 39 L 1233: 243–244

486

Index

LI 1813: 308–312 LIII 1075: 91 n. 4 LIII 1344: 221 n. 55 LVI 1191: 95 n. 16 LVI 1233: 121 n. 130 LVI 1434: 208 LVII 1188: 407 n. 93

393: 117 n. 116 Syll.3 37–38: 210 n. 20 TAM II 174: 208 TAM V.1 160: 221 n. 54

Strubbe, Arai Epitymbioi 40: 117 n. 114 126: 117 n. 115

TAM V.3 1539: 103 n. 59; 213 n. 35; 249 n. 65

Papyri BGU III 846: 84 n. 242 XIII 2240: 71–72 O.Mon.Epiph. 194: 399 n. 54 P.Amh. II 141: 324 n. 33 P.Brem. 61: 67 P.Bur. 25: 399 n. 54 P.Cair.Masp. II 67153: 56 III 67353: 46 n. 45 P.Cair.Zen. I 59034: 51 P.Col. Zen. I 66: 384 P.Col. III 6: 77 n. 215 VIII 242: 82 P.Enteux. 26: 79 n. 225 79: 57, 383 82: 383–384 P.Grenf. II 77: 408 n. 97 P.Hamb. IV 254 P.Lond. III 951: 78 n. 219 VII 1976: 80 n. 226 P.Mich. III 214: 39–41 III 216: 39–41

III 217: 39–41 V 228: 72 VI 423: 83 VIII 476: 80 n. 229 XVIII 793: 82 inv. 2848 + 3000: 59 P.Mil. II 84: 78 n. 218 P.Münch. III 57: 77 n. 213 P.Oxy. I 41: 298–299 I 115: 398 n. 48 I 119: 77 n. 214 III 493: 74 IV 744: 77 n. 216 VI 903: 48, 82 VI 985: 74 VIII 1148: 49 XI 1382: 225 n. 62 XVIII 2162: 141 n. 66 XVIII 2190: 84 n. 243 XXII 2342: 74 XXXI 2603: 61 XXXIV 2713: 74 LIX 4004: 397 n. 46 P.Princ. II 102: 399 n. 54 P.Rainer Cent. 70: 402 n. 67 P.Sakaon 36: 318–325 48: 49 PSI III 177: 401 n. 64

487

Index P.Wisc. II 84: 396

Sel.Pap. I 121: 78 n. 223

P.Sarap. 101: 66

UPZ I 70: 50–51

CONTRIBUTORS ANGELOS CHANIOTIS is Professor of Ancient History and Classics at the Institute for Advanced Study in Princeton (2010–). He is the Principal Investigator of the project ‘The Social and Cultural Construction of Emotions: the Greek Paradigm’ in Oxford (Advanced Investigator Grant of the European Research Council, 2009–2013). His most recent books are War in the Hellenistic World: A Social and Cultural History (Oxford 2005) and Theatricality and Public Life in the Hellenistic World (in Greek, Iraklion 2009). CHRYSI KOTSIFOU is a Polonsky Postdoctoral fellow at the Van Leer Jerusalem Institute. She studied Late Antique and Byzantine History at Goldsmith’s College, University of London and at King’s College, London, acquiring her PhD from the latter institution. The development of the ascetic and monastic movement in Egypt as well as the social and economic interactions of monasteries with their surrounding communities have been of special interest to her and have also been the underlining theme of her publications. In the project ‘The Social and Cultural Construction of Emotions’, she was the Research Associate in Papyrology (2009–2011). She is currently editing a volume entitled Emotional Display, Persuasion and Rhetoric in Papyri. CHRISTINA T. KUHN is Fellow and University Lecturer in Ancient History at the University of Oxford. In 2009, she was Research Associate in Greek Epigraphy for the project ‘The Social and Cultural Construction of Emotions: the Greek Paradigm’ in Oxford. Her major research interests are the political, social and cultural history of Rome, the Graeco-Roman East, and Greek and Latin epigraphy. Her current projects deal with various aspects of political communication in the Graeco-Roman world. She is the editor of Politische Kommunikation und öffentliche Meinung in der antiken Welt (Stuttgart 2012) and has co-edited with A. Chaniotis and A. Kuhn Applied Classics: Comparisons, Constructs, Controversies (Stuttgart 2009). PARASKEVI MARTZAVOU is Research Associate in Greek Epigraphy in the project ‘The Social and Cultural Construction of Emotions: the Greek Paradigm’ in Oxford. She studied History and Archaeology at the Aristotle University of Thessaloniki and worked as an archaeologist in the Greek Archaeological Service on several sites including Olynthos, Poteidaia, and the cemetery of ancient Akanthos. She holds a DEA (Greek Epigraphy and Institutions) and a PhD (Ancient History) from the École Pratique des Hautes Études, IVth Section, (Paris). Her interests revolve around the Isis cult, festival communities in Roman Greece, the relationship between religion and economy, and generally the sociology and modalities of religious change. JANE MASSÉGLIA is Lecturer in Classical Archaeology at St John’s College, Oxford. Until 2010, she was Research Associate in Archaeology for the project ‘The Social and Cultural Construction of Emotions: the Greek Paradigm in Oxford’. Foremost among her interests are body language and the archaeology of social differentiation in classical antiquity. Supported by a scholarship from the Emotions Project, she is currently preparing a monograph, Body Language in Hellenistic Art and Society (Oxford: OUP). IRENE SALVO received her PhD in Ancient History from the Scuola Normale Superiore (Pisa) in 2011, with a thesis on blood pollution and civic rites of purification in the Greek world from Homer to the Hellenistic period. As a research assistant in the project ‘The Social and Cultural Construction of Emotions: the Greek Paradigm in Oxford’ until 2011, she was especially interested in the connection between the social and the religious dimensions of inscriptions.

490

Contributors

ED SANDERS is a Leverhulme Early Career Fellow at Royal Holloway, University of London. Until 2010, he was Research Associate in Literature in the project ‘The Social and Cultural Construction of Emotions: the Greek Paradigm’ in Oxford. His research focuses on emotions in ancient Greece, especially in the literature of the Classical period, and his current project funded by The Leverhulme Trust is on ‘Arousal of audience emotions in Classical Greek oratory’. He is principal editor of the forthcoming collection Erôs in Ancient Greece (Oxford: OUP), and his forthcoming monograph is entitled Envy and Jealousy in Classical Athens (New York: OUP).

HEIDELBERGER ALT HISTORISCHE BEITRÄGE UND EPIG RAPHISCHE STUDIEN

Herausgegeben von Angelos Chaniotis und Christian Witschel. Beirat: François Berard (Lyon), Anthony R. Birley (Vindolanda/Friedberg), Kostas Buraselis (Athen), Lucas de Blois (Nijmegen), Ségolène Demougin (Paris), Elio Lo Cascio (Rom), Mischa Meier (Tübingen), Elizabeth Meyer (Charlottsville), Silvio Panciera (Rom), Michael Peachin (New York), Henk Versnel (Leiden) und Martin Zimmermann (München)

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This volume presents the first results of research conducted on ‘The Social and Cultural Construction of Emotions: The Greek Paradigm’ by a research group in Oxford funded by the European Research Council. The project aims at contributing to a better understanding of the social and cultural factors that determine the manifestation of emotions in texts (papyri, inscriptions, literary sources) and in the material evidence from the Greek and Greek-speaking world (c. 800 BCE –

c. 600 CE). The four introductory chapters address problems in the study of emotions in antiquity. They are followed by ten case-studies in which the manifestation and arousal of emotions (fear, anger, envy, grief, hope) are studied in various contexts (religion, litigation, political life, art, private life) and in connection with a variety of media (narratives of miracles, dedications, curses, acclamations, petitions, condolence letters, forensic oratory, architecture, images).

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