Emotions in the Classical World: Methods, Approaches, and Directions 3515116192, 9783515116190

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Emotions in the Classical World Alte Geschichte Franz Steiner Verlag

Methods, Approaches, and Directions Edited by Douglas Cairns and Damien Nelis

HABES 59

Emotions in the Classical World Edited by Douglas Cairns and Damien Nelis

habes Heidelberger Althistorische Beiträge und Epigraphische Studien Gegründet von Géza Alföldy Herausgegeben von Angelos Chaniotis und Christian Witschel Beirat: François Berard, Anthony R. Birley, Kostas Buraselis, Lucas de Blois, Ségolène Demougin, Elio Lo Cascio, Mischa Meier, Elizabeth Meyer, Silvio Panciera, Michael Peachin, Henk Versnel und Martin Zimmermann

Band 59

Emotions in the Classical World Methods, Approaches, and Directions Edited by Douglas Cairns and Damien Nelis

Franz Steiner Verlag

Cover illustration: The grave stele of Demokleides from Athens (ca. 350 BCE), National Archaeological Museum, Athens (inv. no. 752) Photo: Eleutherios A. Galanopoulos © ΥΠΟΥΡΓΕΙΟ ΠΟΛΙΤΙΣΜΟΥ & ΑΘΛΗΤΙΣΜΟΥ/ΤΑΜΕΙΟ ΑΡΧΑΙΟΛΟΓΙΚΩΝ ΠΟΡΩΝ © Hellenic Ministry of Culture and Sports/Archaeological Receipts Fund

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 2017 Druck: Hubert & Co., Göttingen Gedruckt auf säurefreiem, alterungsbeständigem Papier. Printed in Germany. ISBN 978-3-515-11619-0 (Print) ISBN 978-3-515-11629-9 (E-Book)

TABLE OF CONTENTS Introduction..............................................................................................................7 DOUGLAS CAIRNS (Edinburgh) and DAMIEN NELIS (Geneva) The emotion of disgust, provoked and expressed in earlier Greek literature.........31 DONALD LATEINER (Ohio Wesleyan) Horror, pity, and the visual in ancient Greek aesthetics........................................53 DOUGLAS CAIRNS (Edinburgh) Grief: the power and shortcomings of Greek tragic consolation...........................79 DANA LACOURSE MUNTEANU (Ohio State) The poetics of emotional expression: some problems of ancient theory.............105 STEPHEN HALLIWELL (St Andrews) The Pseudo-Aristotelian Problems on sympathy.................................................125 WILLIAM FORTENBAUGH (Rutgers) The life of statues: emotion and agency...............................................................143 ANGELOS CHANIOTIS (Institute for Advanced Study, Princeton) Touching behaviour: proxemics in Roman art.....................................................159 GLENYS DAVIES (Edinburgh) Emotions as a historiographical dilemma............................................................177 CYNTHIA DAMON (Pennsylvania) The performance of grief: Cicero, Stoicism, and the public eye.........................195 MARGARET GRAVER (Dartmouth) The vagaries of hope in Vergil and Ovid.............................................................207 LAUREL FULKERSON (Florida State) Reason vs. emotion in Seneca..............................................................................231 DAVID KONSTAN (New York/Brown) Some thoughts on the anger of Seneca’s Medea..................................................245 CHIARA BATTISTELLA (Udine) AND DAMIEN NELIS (Geneva) Index locorum......................................................................................................257

INTRODUCTION Douglas Cairns and Damien Nelis The papers in this volume all derive from the conference, ‘Emotions in the Classical World: Methods, Approaches, and Directions’, held at the Fondation Hardt, Vandoeuvres, 2–4 May, 2013. The inclusion of Geneva’s Latinists in the Centre Interfacultaire en Sciences Affectives (part of the Swiss National Center of Competence in Research, Affective Sciences) and CISA’s generous funding for the conference and related research activities were the immediate catalysts;1 but the deeper reasons for planning the conference and this resulting volume lay in our sense that what had until fairly recently been sporadic and isolated contributions to the study of ancient emotions had begun to coalesce into a substantial and thriving sub-discipline in the fields of Classics and Ancient History, one in which Classicists and Ancient Historians now had significant contributions to make to the wider upsurge in interest in the emotions that has taken place across a range of disciplines in recent years. Given all that had been achieved in our fields, and how much remained to be done, we felt that it was time to take stock, consolidate, and look to the future. Emotion research is now an enormous field, too vast to survey.2 Major centres have been established for interdisciplinary research in emotion and affective science.3 The upsurge of interest in emotion in Humanities disciplines is one aspect of these developments, and central to that phenomenon has been the impetus given to the historical study of emotions by scholars such as William Reddy and Barbara Rosenwein.4 In this area, too, major research projects and centres for emotion history have been established, in Australia, France, Germany, and the United Kingdom,5 and the field continues to expand.6 In that connection, the landmark 1 2

3 4 5

See http://www.affective-sciences.org. The journal Emotion Review publishes regular ‘views from a discipline’ and is an excellent repository of current approaches. For recent, stimulating, and accessible contributions (albeit with a philosophical bias), see e.g. Goldie 2010, Deonna and Teroni 2012, and Colombetti 2014. For an encyclopaedic and interdisciplinary overview of research in emotion and affective science, see Sander and Scherer 2009. See n. 1 above, and cf. Languages of Emotion at the Free University of Berlin (http://www. loe.fu-berlin.de/en/). See Reddy 2001; Rosenwein 2006; among earlier works, note especially Stearns and Stearns 1986; Stearns 1989, 1994. See the websites for the Australian Research Council Centre of Excellence for the History of Emotion (http://www.historyofemotions.org.au), Les émotions au Moyen Âge (EMMA,

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development in Classics has been Angelos Chaniotis’ University of Oxford project, funded by the European Research Council, entitled ‘The Social and Cultural Construction of Emotions: The Greek Paradigm’. This has so far yielded two substantial volumes of essays (with more forthcoming) and has considerably broadened the evidence base and the focus of emotion research in Classics.7 A truth established by emotion research across the disciplines in which it is practised is the ubiquity, pervasiveness, and centrality of emotion in everything that human beings do and everything that they have ever done. This is one reason why it cannot by any means be said that Classics research had, before the recent upsurge in interest, ignored emotion. Inevitably, this was a topic that featured prominently wherever it was regarded as particularly important for our understanding of the works, contexts, and genres in which it occurred – in ancient philosophy, for example, where the views of ancient thinkers and schools on the role of emotion in the good life have always been central subjects of scholarship; in the study of ancient poetics, aesthetics, and rhetoric; in scholarship on epic and tragedy; and so on. At the same time, however, the development of a dialogue in which research in Classics and Ancient History slowly began to take account of contemporary research in other fields can be traced to the later years of the twentieth century. A pioneering work here is William Fortenbaugh’s 1975 book on Aristotle, which is fully informed by the cognitive-evaluative approach to emotion which achieved prominence in the 1950s and 1960s.8 A measure of the advance that this work represented over traditional approaches may be taken by means of a comparison with W. B. Stanford’s Greek Tragedy and the Emotions, published eight years later.9 Useful enough in many of its individual observations, Stanford’s work nonetheless falls short in its reliance on traditional philological connoisseurship and the absence of theoretical underpinning. The approach outlined in Fortenbaugh’s book was a crucial stimulus to Cairns’s 1993 volume on aidōs, which sought to synthesize the perspectives on

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http://emma.hypotheses.org), the Queen Mary University of London Centre for the History of Emotions (http://projects.history.qmul.ac.uk/emotions), and The History of Emotions project of the Max Planck Institute for Human Development, Berlin (https://www.mpib-berlin.mpg. de/en/research/history-of-emotions). For overviews of trends in the historical study of emotion, see Frevert 2009, 2011; Plamper 2010; Hitzer 2011; Matt 2011; Rosenwein 2011; Matt and Stearns 2014; Plamper 2015; Schnell 2015. Cf. Stearns and Stearns 1985; Konstan 2009; Corbin 2016. See http://emotions.classics.ox.ac.uk, with Chaniotis 2012d; Chaniotis and Ducrey 2013. Fortenbaugh 1975; a second edition appeared in 2002. Landmarks in the development of the cognitive-evaluative approach include (as well as the philosophical contributions cited by Fortenbaugh himself) the appraisal theories of Magda Arnold (Arnold 1960) and Richard Lazarus (summed up in e.g. Lazarus 1991) and the experiments of Schachter and Singer (Schachter and Singer 1962) which purported to demonstrate that it is was not arousal of the autonomic nervous system but situational appraisal that specified an episode as emotional and differentiated one emotion from another. Stanford 1983.

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honour and shame offered by Classical thinkers such as the Sophists, Plato, and Aristotle with the representation of aidōs and similar affective phenomena in imaginative literature, especially epic and tragedy.10 The cognitive-evaluative account of emotion was central also to the spate of monographs and edited collections on emotion and particular emotions that appeared in the 2000s,11 works whose central strength was their focus on the ancient emotional lexicon and the construction, conceptualisation, and valorisation of emotion in ancient authors, genres, philosophical schools, and societies.12 A central figure in galvanizing, supporting, and generating much of this scholarship has been David Konstan, who (in several accounts of particular emotions and affective phenomena and in his major study of The Emotions of the Ancient Greeks) has contributed in particular to our understanding of ancient theories of emotion (particularly those of Aristotle and the Stoics, which offer particularly fruitful opportunities for dialogue with modern cognitive-evaluative approaches),13 to the semantics and history of ancient emotional concepts,14 and to the sharpening of our appreciation of salient differences between ancient emotional lexica and our own. It is salutary to remember that not even the concept of emotion itself is a transcultural historical constant,15 even if it is true that few or no cultures have ever been able entirely to dispense with a category of a similar sort.16 One of the central emphases of Konstan’s work (and of many of the other studies on ancient emotion produced since the 1990s) has been the interaction between emotion and moral and social norms. This is an interaction that needs to be viewed from both angles, not only in terms of the embeddedness of ancient emotions, emotion concepts, and theories of emotion in social interaction and cultural normativity, but also in terms of the fundamentally affective character of 10 11

12 13

14 15 16

D. L. Cairns 1993. Monographs: e.g. Harris 2001; Konstan 2001; Graver 2002; Zaborowski 2002; Kaster 2005; Sternberg 2006; Konstan 2006; Graver 2007; Konstan 2010; Munteanu 2012. Edited collections: e.g. Braund and Gill 1997; Braund and Most 2003; Konstan and Rutter 2003; Sternberg 2005; Fitzgerald 2008; Munteanu 2011; Sanders et alii 2013. See also the monographs by the philosophers Bernard Williams (1993) and Martha Nussbaum (1994, 2001). For recent and valuable studies in the same vein, see e.g. Caston 2012; Fulkerson 2013; Sanders 2014. See Konstan 2006 on Aristotle and 2015 on Seneca; cf. pp. 231–242 in this volume. On the Stoics, see also (in primis) Graver 2007; on the Epicureans, see Annas 1989; Fowler 1997; Procopé 1998; Armstrong 2008. On emotion in Hellenistic ethics and psychology, see also Annas 1992, Nussbaum 1994; Sihvola and Engberg-Pedersen 1998; Gill 2010. Cf. Fitzgerald 2008. For contemporary cognitivist approaches, see e.g. Nussbaum 2001; Solomon 2003, 2006. See esp. Konstan 2001 on pity and 2010 on forgiveness. Salient differences between English ‘emotion’ and Greek pathos emerge particularly in Fortenbaugh’s discussion in this volume. On the historical contingency of the English-language concept of emotion, see Dixon 2003, 2012. Against the assumption that the English-language category of emotion (and its constituent taxonomies) are universal, but also in favour of the existence of at least broadly analogous categories in all languages, see Wierzbicka 1999.

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ancient moral, social, and legal values. These are features that are emphasized in some of the most important contributions within Classical Studies,17 but they also constitute major topics in other disciplines.18 Literature has loomed large in these discussions, especially because literary sources provide rich evidence for the complex dynamics of emotional episodes in multifaceted depictions of more or less realistic forms of social interaction. Genres such as epic and drama provide various perspectives on characters’ motivation and substantial information on the eliciting conditions of their emotions, all of which can guide our interpretation both of explicit ascriptions of emotion and of implicit representations of emotional behaviour. A wide range of other genres (from elegiac poetry and historiography to forensic oratory and biography) rely similarly on narrative constructions of characteristic affective scenarios as contexts for their representations of and appeals to emotion. In a very real sense, then, the manifold forms of dramatic enactment and narrative representation of emotion in literature reflect the paradigmatic scenarios of emotion in the wider culture or in particular ‘emotional communities’ within that culture.19 If literary representations of agency are successful, then we have good evidence of affectivity in action in the cultures we study – in the agents represented in literary artefacts, in their interaction with other agents and with internal audiences, and in the appeal to the emotions of external audiences. This is one reason why Classicists have been right to make such extensive use of literary evidence in their contributions to the historical study of emotion,20 and why literary sources still provide much of the evidence and subject matter in this volume.21 The emotional texture and affective character of literary works also figure prominently in contemporary emotion research.22 But a further feature of this strand of research is its focus on the emotional responses of readers and audiences, the subject of Cairns’s and Halliwell’s chapters in this volume and a topic in several of the others. Here, the concerns of modern emotional research and those of ancient poetics, aesthetics, and rhetoric coalesce in seeing emotion as a salient element in readers’ and audiences’ engagement with texts, performances, and narratives and in the techniques by which those texts, performances, and narratives 17

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19 20 21 22

See e.g. (on emotion, moral and social norms, and the emotional scripts of ordinary social interaction) Harris 2001; Kaster 2005; Sanders 2014. On the affective character of ancient Greek moral, social, and legal norms see also D. L. Cairns 1993, 2003a, 2003b, 2015. In this volume, see esp. Graver on the norms, scripts, and display rules that conditioned Cicero’s grief over the death of his daughter. On the intimate relationship between emotions and social norms, see esp. Elster 1999. On the emotional character of moral norms, see e.g. Prinz 2007; De Sousa 2008; Bagnoli 2011. On emotions, values, and legal norms, see Deigh 2008 and the January 2016 issue of Emotion Review (vol. 8.1, pp. 3–61). To use the term introduced by Rosenwein 2006; see also Chaniotis 2011. See nn. 11–12 above. See esp. the chapters by Battistella and Nelis, Cairns, Damon, Fulkerson, Halliwell, Lateiner, and Munteanu. See esp. Oatley 2011, 2012.

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succeed in fostering that engagement. Not only do works of literature embed and embody the emotion scripts of their society and culture, they also constitute emotion scripts in themselves, feeding back into, recalibrating, and extending the emotional repertoires and capacities of their audiences.23 The emotion-eliciting power of texts is not just a matter of the depiction of emotion in the text.24 The mechanisms by which texts exert this power, however, as well as the nature of the responses that these mechanisms elicit, are matters of controversy; this is an area where the centuries’ worth of implicit and explicit testimony that classical literature and classical literary theory have to offer on the emotional power of texts and performances can still make a contribution to contemporary debate, not only in applying modern theory to ancient sources or in bringing our literary-theoretical approaches into contact with the cognitive and affective sciences,25 but also in using the richness of ancient theory to interrogate modern assumptions.26 If literary texts draw on the paradigmatic emotion scenarios of the culture in which they are created, they also help create, disseminate, and extend those paradigms, not only in individual readers and audience members, for whom the emotional scripts embedded in a literary work may be exemplary or who may find their emotional repertoires stretched by engagement with literature, but also in the work of other artists and in whole genres. Other works of literature constitute a significant aspect of the contextual background against which the emotions portrayed in and elicited by particular texts must be read, as Battistella and Nelis remind us in this volume.27 Historiography perhaps constitutes a special case in this general connection. On the one hand, the role of emotion in the genre became a subject of debate already in antiquity: historiography is permeated by the theories of emotion that prevailed in ancient aesthetics, ethics, and rhetoric, just as it is thoroughly influenced by the practices of other literary genres (especially tragedy), yet the purpose and use of emotion-eliciting scenarios in the genre could be the subject of polemic and controversy.28 At the same time, historiography needs to confront emotion as a factor in historical causation. And, as Damon notes, ancient historians did precisely that: as she points out ‘Thucydides’ “truest cause” for the Peloponnesian 23 24 25

26 27 28

See D. L. Cairns 2014, esp. 103–109; cf. Cairns, this volume (pp. 53–78), with references in n. 69; Munteanu, this volume (pp. 79–103). See Halliwell, this volume (pp. 105–123), and cf. Damon, pp. 183f. on Thucydides 7.29–30. As indeed is happening, within Classics, in the work of scholars such as Felix Budelmann (see e.g. Budelmann and Easterling 2010; Budelmann and LeVen 2014; Budelmann, Maguire, and Teasdale 2016), Jonas Grethlein (e.g. Grethlein 2015a, 2015b), Elizabeth Minchin (e.g. Minchin 2001), Ruth Scodel (e.g. Scodel 2014), and Ineke Sluiter (e.g. Duijn, Sluiter, and Verhagen 2015), with much more in the pipeline. So far, however, few have concentrated specifically on emotion. See the chapters by Cairns and Halliwell in this volume, with further references (pp. 53–78 and 105–123). See also Nelis 2015; and cf. (e.g.) F. Cairns 2005. See Damon, this volume (pp. 178–194), with references to ancient sources and modern discussion.

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war – Sparta’s fear, φόβος, of Athens’ growing power (1.23.6) – is the tip of a very large iceberg.’29 The Greeks and Romans recognized the importance of emotions in history, if not of emotion history, in ways that are only now coming back into focus. At the same time, this is an enterprise that is fraught with difficulty. That we live in an infinite affective continuum is a point made not only by the likes of William James,30 but also (as emerges from a passage quoted in this volume by Stephen Halliwell) by the ancient author of On the Sublime (22.1): ‘there is an indefinite multiplicity of emotions (pathē) and no one can even say how many they are’.31 Every motive that every living human being has ever entertained has been affectively charged: affectivity is fundamental to consciousness, to cognition, and to the ways that we make sense of the natural and social environments.32 The experiences we pick out and label as emotions or emotional episodes are just the peaks and troughs in this continuous emotional landscape. But if this is true, the history of emotions will be a difficult thing to write. Certain emotions, in certain individuals, sectors of society, and communities, are inevitably privileged in terms of the causal force they are felt to have exerted. This tendency towards schematization can extend even to the point at which it becomes an aspect of periodization – the ‘age of anxiety’, and so on. It is, however, undeniable that emotions are powerful historical forces. It is also undeniable that there is a history not only of such forces but also of their categorization and conceptualization. We can historicize emotions in terms of their importance as causes of particular historical events, the norms and values that regulate their expression in different places at different times, their role in the history of ideas and belief systems, and the ways in which the language, labelling, and valorization of emotion shifts over time and varies from culture to culture.33 In attempting to pursue this project, Classics has to date – for the good reasons outlined above – concentrated extensively on language and texts. This marks a substantial difference of emphasis between Classics (and certain other historically focused Humanities disciplines) and much mainstream emotion research in other disciplines. Although there is no single agreed definition of emotion or accepted account of what counts as emotion across the range of disciplines that deal with the issues and phenomena in question, it would be fair to say that the most favoured approach in many branches of the behavioural sciences is some form of 29 30 31 32 33

Damon, this volume, pp. 178 and 181. See also the studies of Thucydidean historiography cited in her n. 19. James 1890, ii.485. πολλὰ γὰρ καὶ ἀναρίθµητα πάθη καὶ οὐδ᾽ ἂν εἰπεῖν τις ὁπόσα δύναιτο (quoted by Halliwell, below, p. 114). See now Colombetti 2014. Again, there is much to be learned here from the work of David Konstan, whether it concerns the shifts in meaning of Greek phthonos and nemesis (Konstan 2003), the changing valorization of pity, clemency, etc. (Konstan 2001), or the emergence of a modern concept of forgiveness in contradistinction to the scenarios envisaged by ancient Greek syngnōmē or Roman ignoscere (Konstan 2010).

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appraisal theory, as represented in the work of figures such as Magda Arnold, Richard Lazarus and Nico Frijda.34 In the case of the ‘component process model’ developed by the Geneva school under Klaus Scherer this is a multidimensional and multifactorial approach that encompasses a range of cognitive and physiological processes.35 Models of this type can be adapted in the attempt to take account of cross-cultural and historical variation,36 but in general they are not much concerned with labels, categories, and the various things that language can do to emotion.37 Many rival and complementary approaches pay even less attention to such things: for Paul Griffiths, only ‘basic emotions’ or ‘affect programme responses’, i.e. short-term, spontaneous, and physical experiences, can be studied scientifically; conceptual analysis can elucidate a society’s beliefs about emotion, but cannot get us any closer to what emotions really are.38 Jesse Prinz’s ‘embodied appraisal’ model recognizes that emotion episodes are multi-componential events, yet seeks to isolate the one single component that is the emotion,39 finding it (like William James and Kurt Lange before him) in the perception of bodily change. For a large number of other researchers, the primary focus of investigation is the physical experience of the individual, whether in terms of facial expressions or neurophysiological changes.40 But the fundamental problem with this is that, as features of language, thought, and culture, the phenomena that we categorize as emotions and that other cultures have categorized in other, at least partly comparable terms, encompass much more than these approaches attempt to address.41 The general approach to emotion that has become established in Classics, then, based on language and literary or philosophical texts, still has much to offer. But that approach has been and can be further transformed by the broadening of the field, its focus, and its source base. This is the particular merit of Angelos Chaniotis’ Oxford ERC-funded project, mentioned above. Its inaugural publication, Unveiling Emotions: Sources and Methods for the Study of Emotions in the Greek World, both outlines and fulfils a programme of expanding the source material for the study of ancient Greek emotion, from the traditional and virtually exclusive focus on literary and philosophical sources towards a wider range of non-literary and sub-literary documents and a much greater concentration on material culture.42 In one respect, this represents a move away from elite and culturally authoritative literary texts to other forms of textual evidence – e.g. letters, wills, and peti34 35 36 37 38 39 40 41 42

See Arnold 1960; Frijda 1986; Lazarus 1991. See the interview with Scherer in Lombardo and Mulligan 2008. See Parrott 2010, 2012; Frijda and Parrott 2011. For a good account of which see Colombetti 2009. Griffiths 1997. See Prinz 2004, 3. Facial expressions: see (most recently) Ekman and Cordaro 2011; brain studies: see Damasio 1994; LeDoux 1996; Rolls 1999, 2005; Fox 2008. Cf. Cairns and Fulkerson 2015b, 1-6. See Chaniotis 2012b, 24–27, with 2012d, 37–150, 177–355, 389–430.

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tions;43 inscriptions set up by private individuals;44 and inscriptions, both religious and secular, commissioned by communities of various kinds.45 But the broadening of the source base also encompasses a shift of focus on to non-textual forms of evidence – to visual and material culture. Visual culture, in particular, is an area in which great opportunities exist, but also considerable obstacles. In principle, sources such as vase-painting and sculpture might be thought to afford direct access to the physical expression of emotion in gesture and body language. But, as Glenys Davies points out, ‘although some aspects of body language are universal and found across cultures many behaviours are culture-specific, and it should not be assumed that an interpretation that seems natural or obvious to us would have been so for the Roman [or Greek] viewer’.46 Contemporary scientific accounts can help, especially if they can offer strong grounds, with robust cross-cultural evidence, that a given expression or gesture genuinely is found in a range of cultures; but even so it would be unsafe merely to assimilate representations of emotion in the visual arts of the ancient Greeks and Romans to our own understanding (even if scientifically informed) of what appears to be depicted. To link the depiction of non-verbal behaviour in ancient art to ancient concepts of emotion we typically require warrant from linguistic (and especially narrative) sources,47 together with as much contextual information (e.g. about the identity and status of the individuals depicted, the relation between their depiction and ancient norms of selfpresentation, proxemics, and emotional display, etc.) as can reasonably be obtained, as well as a thorough understanding of the iconography of the wider corpus to which the depiction belongs. Though progress is being made,48 works which in the past attempted to survey this field systematically are now outdated and inadequate,49 and coverage remains in many respects sporadic.50 A systematic and comprehensive study remains very much a desideratum.51 43 44 45 46 47 48 49

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Kotsifou 2012a, 2012b, 2012c. Chaniotis 2012a; Salvo 2012. Chaniotis 2012a, 2012c; Martzavou 2012a, 2012b; Chaniotis 2015. Davies, this volume, p. 159. See Chaniotis 2012b, 18, 27; Masséglia 2012a, 137–139, 2012c. See especially the recent contributions of Masséglia 2012c, 2013; Bobou 2013. Sittl 1890; Neumann 1965. On body language in general (chiefly in literary sources), see Maier-Eichhorn 1989; Bremmer and Roodenburg 1991; Lateiner 1995; Aldrete 1999; Boegehold 1999; Lobe 1999; Ricottili 2000; Fögen 2001; Llewellyn-Jones 2003; Corbeill 2004; D. L. Cairns 2005. Among works on emotion expression in particular, one might single out Halliwell 2008 (on Greek laughter), Beard 2014 (on Roman); on tears, see the chapters in Fögen 2009. As well as the works cited in n. 48, note also e.g. Davies 1985, 1994, 1997, 2002, 2005; McNiven 2000 (and his unpublished 1982 dissertation). For Roman art, Brilliant 1963 remains valuable. See also Kenner 1960 on laughter and tears in Greek art. There is a partial exception in the well-studied phenomenon of grief and mourning in ancient visual culture: see e.g. (on Greek art) Shapiro 1991; Huber 2001; Oakley 2004. This belongs with a long-standing tradition of studies of (especially Greek) lamentation (see Alexiou 1974/2002; Holst-Warhaft 1992; Schauer 2002; Dué 2002, 2006; Suter 2008) and funerary

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Angelos Chaniotis’ chapter in this volume indicates another fruitful approach in this connection, in so far as it represents a growing tendency to consider the products of the visual arts not just in their own right, as evidence for the depiction of emotion, but (as far as possible) in their wider original context, as functional objects in specific physical and cultural settings: statues not only represent emotional experience, but also express emotional commitment and elicit emotional responses. Chaniotis’ study, in this volume, of the multiple ways in which the dedication of a statue provides evidence for aspects of ancient affectivity complements earlier studies on the emotional dimensions of sanctuaries and other locations for ritual performance.52 Epigraphic texts, dedications, religious architecture, and the configuration of the site more generally all contribute to the creation of a shared space for emotional experience and emotional performance, a locus for the enactment of the emotions – awe, fear, wonder, respect, hope, gratitude, and so on – on which religious experience depends.53 Such an orientation reflects the turn towards materiality in archaeology and ancient history more broadly, a concern that is also manifest in studies that focus more generally on the affective implications of human beings’ interaction with objects and artefacts.54 This is not an approach, however, that needs to restrict itself to material evidence alone. The literary texts that have dominated the study of ancient emotions to date also have a great deal to offer those who wish to investigate the concrete physicality of ancient emotions as aspects of the ways in which embodied human beings interact with the world and the objects that it contains. This is partly a consequence of the fact that literary sources are rich in representations of the objects, artefacts, spaces, symptoms, movements, postures, and gestures through which emotions can be expressed, symbolized, constructed, and elicited.55 But it is also significant that there is a very real sense in which there is no absolute gulf between the material and the textual, the physical and the mental, in the study of emotion. To quote Cairns’s chapter in this volume: The importance of emotional symptoms in the construction of emotional concepts underlines the fundamental importance of physical embodiment in the concept of emotion itself. In the case of phrikē, the symptom is one that has its roots in basic somatic mechanisms of temperature regulation, that is manifested in a range of non-emotional contexts, and that is shared with other animals. From these materials, universal in humans and extending beyond the human species, is constructed an emotional concept in which physical symptoms are intimately related to cognitive appraisals and evaluations. The mechanism by which this occurs is the universal one of metonymy, by which the name of the symptom comes to function as a name of the emotion. The concept of phrikē is typical in locating the language and thought of emo-

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customs more generally (e.g. Vermeule 1979; Garland 1985; Loraux 1990/1998; Seaford 1994; Engels 1998; Derderian 2001). See Chaniotis 2011, 2012a. Cf. e.g. Masséglia 2012b. See e.g. Masséglia 2012a, 2012b; Bourbou 2013. For theoretical perspectives on materiality and cognition, see e.g. Appadurai 1986; Brown 2004; Bennett 2010; Malafouris 2013, Boscagli 2014. Cf. the works cited in n. 49 above on body language, and cf. (on objects) Mueller 2016.

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Douglas Cairns and Damien Nelis tion in embodied physical experience. There is nothing in any way surprising or unfamiliar about this – the point is precisely that ancient Greek emotional concepts are, to large extent, built up out of the same materials as our own, materials that draw on our experience as physically embodied beings interacting with our physical and social environments. What needs to be emphasized, however, is that this experiential, embodied nature of emotion is not just an aspect of a shared biological substratum; it is a feature also of language and of thought. It is not that embodiment is relevant only in terms of emotions’ physical changes, symptoms, and expressions and is left behind when emotional concepts take root in language, thought, and culture. There is no disjunction, but rather a fundamental continuity between emotions as physical experiences and emotional concepts as linguistic and cultural categories. In terms of the development of emotional concepts, there is no wedge to be driven between the body, on the one hand, and language and culture on the other.

Mechanisms of thought, such as metonymy and metaphor, regularly bring the body and its interactions with the material and social environments into the language and thought of emotion. A growing number of studies are beginning to explore what metaphor can tell us about the conceptualization of emotion in ancient Greek and Roman societies.56 To say ‘I shudder’ rather than merely ‘I am afraid’ is to give a more vivid and immediate sense of the emotion as a holistic, embodied experience; to present the onset of grief as the feeling of being suddenly enveloped in a cloud or a garment presents an individual’s emotion in terms of a shared cultural model of what that emotion feels like to a subject (and links it to the visible expression of the emotion in body language and dress).57 When Achilles wishes that anger (cholos) would disappear from the world, that anger that is sweeter than liquid honey and expands like smoke in a man’s chest (Iliad 18.107–110), he is, to be sure, telling us what anger has felt like to him, but he does so in a way that draws on his culture’s metaphorical models of emotional experience (e.g. as the movement of gases and fluids in a container), so that his description is meaningful also in terms of the conceptual schemas that the poem’s audiences use to articulate their own subjective experiences. The similarity between these schemas and those that are currently in use in modern societies will at least partly reflect the constraints that actual physiology, symptomatology, and other features of human embodiment place on metaphors and metonymies that depend on embodiment. As Angelos Chaniotis has pointed out, ‘the ancient historian cannot study what people really felt’;58 but the ancient experience of emotion is not completely inaccessible to us, at least in so far as we can study shared cultural models of emotion phenomenology via their representation in the intersubjective medium of 56

57 58

See D. L. Cairns 2013a, 2013b, 2014, 2016a, 2016b, forthcoming. See also Cánovas 2011 on the arrows of love and cf. Horn forthcoming on Homeric metaphors for death (which have some affinities with metaphors for grief and other emotions: D. L. Cairns 2016a). Latinists have focused less closely on emotion, but for the general approach, see Short 2012, 2013, 2014. See D. L. Cairns 2013a and in this volume on shudders (phrikē) and 2016a on clouds and garments. Chaniotis 2012, 94.

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language, and especially in the use of metaphor. Almost always, these metaphors will be conventional, or at least not unique to individuals; very often, they will reflect not subjective experience as such, but shared models of the forms that subjective experience was expected to take. In this way, however, metaphor gets us from what cannot be studied historically – the totality of living human beings’ actual subjective experience of affective events and states (that ‘indefinite multiplicity of pathē’ mentioned in On the Sublime 22.1) – to what can, the representation of subjective experience in language. There are complex issues to be explored here, in emotion research in general, about the links between physical experience, observing and thinking about physical experience, responding emotionally to others’ embodied experience, and the creation and reception of verbal and visual narratives of physical experience, especially in terms of possible connections between the representation of the subjective phenomenology of emotion in language, thought, and narrative and the emotional responses of the recipients and audiences of such language, mental representations, and narratives. 59 We have touched on these issues already above, with regard to the emotional responses of audiences and readers. ‘Longinus’ is one of many ancient authors who exhibits a pronounced interest in how the representation of embodied experience in literature appeals to the emotions of readers and audiences: Halliwell’s discussion in this volume brings out the author’s sense of a symmetry between vivid representation of physical experience in texts and the physicality of an audience’s emotional response (and similarly highlights the role of metaphor in mediating that symmetry).60 One of the sub-issues in this domain, concerning the relation between physical and mental or ‘social’ pain,61 and thus between the emotional pain that an observer feels at the physical pain of another,62 is raised in the pseudo-Aristotelian Problemata and discussed in Fortenbaugh’s chapter in this volume.63 The author of the Peripatetic treatise is puzzled by a question that remains an issue of contemporary scientific discussion. But these issues ultimately raise a more fundamental question concerning the utility of the antithesis between mind and body when it comes to thinking about emotion as one of the ways in which human beings (and other organisms) make sense of their environments. The phrikē that registers a difference in temperature between an organism and its surroundings is a primary way in which that organism makes sense of the world; the same embodied sense-making capacities remain implicated when phrikē responds (e.g.) to presumed signs of divine presence or to the convincing representation of human suffering in the theatre, though the latter 59

60 61 62 63

See e.g. Oatley 2011, 111–114; Wojciehowski and Gallese 2011 (with bibliography on the wider issues in terms of mirror neurons, embodied simulation, etc.). On the issue of whether metaphors which draw on embodied experience involve embodied simulation of that experience in the brain, see the studies cited in D. L. Cairns 2014, nn. 5–8. See Halliwell, p. 116 and n. 22 on On the Sublime 15.2, 20.3, and 29.2. See (for different views) Eisenberger 2012; Woo et alii 2014. See Singer et alii 2004. See Fortenbaugh, this volume, pp. 125-142.

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clearly involve much more in the way of affective and cognitive processing. At both ends of the scale, in non-human animals and in human beings, phrikē is an experience of a body that is simultaneously an experience of the world. The body’s sense-making capacities are involved at all levels; they remain involved when symptoms of this type, the primary sense-making capacities that they reflect, and other embodied forms of experience are used to construct the metonyms and metaphors that structure emotion concepts. At all levels, these phenomena reflect the fact that cognition is embodied and that cognition and affectivity are inextricably linked as aspects of the single complex system that is the living organism.64 If we as Classicists can insist on the extent to which our discipline, too, focuses on embodied, embedded, and enactive aspects of emotion, then we can engage in meaningful dialogue with emotion researchers in a variety of other disciplines, while also seeking to pursue a dialogue within our own discipline in synthesizing the material, visual, and textual data that the ancient evidence has to offer. In studying the emotions of the ancient Greeks and Romans we already engage in cross-cultural comparison: none of us is an ancient Greek or an ancient Roman. In bringing this comparative and historicizing impetus to bear Classicists are already in a position to supply perspectives that are too often overlooked in other branches of emotion research. We do this well when we interrogate to the best of our abilities the linguistic, social, and cultural habits that inform our own and our own societies’ views about emotion. But we can also do more. It is a virtue of the current volume that so many of our contributors (especially Battistella and Nelis, Halliwell, and Munteanu) treat both Greek and Roman evidence – an obvious cultural interface which is too often overlooked and which should much more regularly form the focus of our investigations.65 Other comparators readily suggest themselves: conferences and workshops have begun to examine similarities and differences between Greek and Arabic, Greek and Chinese classical traditions;66 and a new international research network has been set up to examine the interface between ancient Greek and Byzantine affectivity, taking into account also the influence of Christianity and Islam and Byzantium’s relations with the Mediaeval West.67

64 65

66

67

See Damasio 1994, 1999, 2003, 2010, and now Colombetti 2014, with its background in the enactivist approach of (e.g.) Varela, Thompson, and Rosch 1991, Thompson 2007. See now the essays collected in Cairns and Fulkerson 2015a. For recent studies that also engineer an explicit confrontation between the affective worlds of Greek and Roman societies, cf. Konstan 2010 and Fulkerson 2013. For the former project, see hhtp://nyuad.nyu.edu/en/news-events/abu-dhabi-events/2015/02/ emotions-across-cultures.html, with working papers at https://archive.nyu.edu/handle/2451/ 33966. For ancient Greek and Chinese emotions in an intellectual-historical context, involving also discussions of Mediaeval, Early-Modern, and Modern Europe, see hhtps://emma. hypotheses.org/histoire-intellectuelle-des-emotions, now published as Boquet and Nagy 2016. See http://emotions.shca.ed.ac.uk/.

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This volume cannot survey or represent the totality of what is becoming a substantial volume of work on ancient emotions. Nor can it anticipate all the directions that future research in the field might take. We are conscious of what we have omitted, not least because several colleagues who made valuable contributions to the 2013 Geneva conference were sadly unable, for various reasons, to contribute. At the conference, the focus of Chaniotis and Davies on visual and material culture was supplemented by papers by Ioannis Mylonopoulos and Emma Stafford. The absence of a chapter on ancient medicine, a subject treated at the conference in William Harris’s paper on Greek emotions and mental illness, will shortly (though sadly not here) be made good by contributions by George Kazantzidis.68 Cristóbal Pagán Cánovas’ paper on emotion metaphor complemented nicely the paper by Cairns, but rested substantially on published work.69 David Armstrong’s work on Philodemus’ On Anger is being published in fuller form in his edition of that work (in collaboration with M. McOsker); we particularly feel the lack of the Epicurean perspective. We shall naturally be less conscious of what we have overlooked; but we hope that what we have managed to include gives a reasonably accurate impression of an exciting and developing field. In his paper Donald Lateiner investigates what he describes as an unjustly neglected emotion, disgust. He does so by looking at three literary genres: epic, tragedy and comedy. Following an analysis of disgust as an emotion, concluding that is not an innate instinct but a response and signal system that depends on developed capacities and socialization, he goes on to look at Homeric narrative, concluding that for all the references to and brutal descriptions of fighting, wounding, and killing Homer rarely provides detailed descriptions of disgustarousing encounters. Turning to tragedy, Lateiner refers to the gruesome features of such monstrous creates as the Aeschylean Furies and such horrible events as the blinding of Oedipus in order to show just how grim this genre can be, remarking in conclusion that disgust can sometimes make room for the typically tragic emotion of pity. After a section about smell as it features in a range of Greek texts, he concludes by looking at comic drama and the staging and description of a remarkable array of disgusting acts, odours, and substances, before some concluding remarks about the aesthetics of disgust, in which he notes that one important aspect of the appearance of disgust in a literary text of any kind is that from a safe distance an audience can enjoy disgusting acts and the exposure to of others to them. Douglas Cairns takes as his starting point the reappearance on stage of the Sophoclean Oedipus, after he has blinded himself. He does so in order to focus on one specific aspect of the Chorus’ emotional response at Oedipus Tyrannus 1297– 1306, the phrikē that they experience on first setting eyes on the blinded king and in confronting his tragedy. Emphasizing the fact that it is both an emotion and a fundamentally physical experience common to a range of emotional and non68 69

See Kazantzidis forthcoming, a, b, and c. Cánovas 2011.

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emotional events, the experience of a body that shivers and shudders, Cairns goes on to study phrikē in relation to the tragic emotions and also to Greek ideas about literature and enargeia and phantasia. The phrikē of an internal audience in tragedy or in narrative offers a perspective on the text’s emotion-eliciting power. Looking at a wide range of sources beyond tragedy, from Homer and Gorgias to Josephus and Galen, Cairns demonstrates that though it is typically a symptom of fear, horror, or revulsion, phrikē can also be an expression of the link between these emotions and the shared sense of vulnerability that gives rise to pity. As such, it can be dissociated neither from pity and fear as the typical tragic emotions nor from broader questions about emotional empathy and sympathy in the analysis of literary texts. Dana Munteanu sets out to explore the relationship between stories depicting extraordinary suffering and the fact that they may be recounted with a clear practical purpose, namely to help a grieving person by restoring him or her to normal social interactions and activities. She is in addition interested in the frequent debates of Greco-Roman philosophers about the degree of usefulness of such cases. Following a discussion of the fundamental role of narrative in arousing emotion, using modern research into the ways in which narrative clues guide readers to one emotional state or another, clues that can be detected in all popular and longlasting genres, she goes on to focus on the ways in which tragic stories, both in epic and drama, can function as means of consolation. By the fifth century BCE, she proposes, tragedy may have been seen as a genre offering consolation to the spectators, by turning their attention from personal misfortunes to the unparalleled suffering of others and thus giving them pleasure and relief. But subsequently Plato opposes this notion, arguing instead that the relief and pleasure felt when people watch tragedies, instead of providing solace, stir the soul. Since lamentation for fictional others fosters lack of restraint in expressing grief when one is faced with personal loss, Plato proposes an alternative model of endurance through philosophy. Hellenistic philosophers continued to debate the utility of tragic examples, while advancing their own paradigms of consolation. Stephen Halliwell devotes his paper to looking at ancient theorizing about the poetics of emotional expression. He begins by asking three crucial, closely related questions about the triangular relationship involving author, text, and audience: when emotional expression is predicated of a literary text, is that emotion to be ascribed directly to the author? If so, must a distinction be made between the ‘biographical’ author and the ‘virtual’ author (i.e. the author created from the reading of the text) to make sense of such expression? Alternatively, is emotional expressiveness an effect that inheres in the linguistically constituted worlds of literary works themselves? Or is the essential test of what is at stake in emotional expression best approached by concentrating on the production of emotion in the reader or audience of a literary text? Halliwell goes on to offer close analyses of some ancient texts (for example, Aristotle’s Poetics, Horace’s Ars poetica, Longinus, On the Sublime) that have important things to say about such questions and have as a result been much cited and studied by those modern scholars who have investigated these matters, arriving at the conclusion that standard readings of key texts

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are frequently inaccurate and that modern scholars often work with over– confident generalisations about the approaches of ancient critics. William Fortenbaugh devotes his paper to the little-studied pseudoAristotelian work, the Physical Problems. He points out that throughout the Problems there are numerous references to emotional response, and that three of the thirty-three books that make up the work carry in their headings explicit reference to an emotion or to dispositions closely tied to emotional responses. Fortenbaugh is attracted especially to Book 7, devoted to ‘Problems arising from Sympathy’. It deals with such topics as shared pain, which is presented as a cognitive response to another person’s suffering; painful sounds and sights, some of which but not all involve thought; infectious yawning and urinating, which might be considered automatic reactions, but in the Problems are presented as responses involving thought. Overall, he sees pleasure and pain as constituting one unifying feature that renders intelligible the grouping together of the phenomena discussed in Book 7, but not the most important one. Rather, taking his cue from its title, he sees the presence of the word sympatheia as capturing the essence of this book, which brings together and discusses shared affections, a better translation of the Greek pathos than the more usual term emotion. In his contribution, Angelos Chaniotis studies the emotive power of Greek statues. Starting from their ubiquity in Greek culture, their variety in terms of form and function and the immediate materiality of their physical presence, he surveys the various ways in which they display and arouse emotions. He notes that the very existence of a statue may arise from an emotional response, offering as one example among several the fact that the Nike of Paionios was motivated by the pride of the Messenians and Naupaktians for their victory over Sparta in 425 BCE. Once they have been set up, the perception of statues as agents of divine power and epiphany explains in part why they can be associated with all the emotions that are connected with religious worship: fear, hope, gratitude, and affection. In turn, statues of human beings are seen as hosts of memory, which prompts the idea that one aspect of commemoration is the transmission of communal values. A series of examples next illustrates what Chaniotis describes as ‘the illusion of agency’: cases where a statue was believed to kill, heal, or punish or when statues seemed to present the physical symptoms of life, by moving, sweating, and shedding tears. When statues appear to be filled with life, the emotional responses to and the emotional interaction with them is largely determined by the same factors that also govern emotions in interpersonal human relations. Consistently aware of the methodological difficulties inherent in the kinds of reconstructions he is attempting, Chaniotis concludes that we must study the emotions if we want to understand ancient statues. Glenys Davies studies some examples of Roman art in the light of modern research into nonverbal communication, or body language. She has a special interest in what she describes as proxemics (how close people stand to one another and the extent to which they can be thought to invade another person’s space) and haptics (touch), taking as a basic premise that Roman artists observed the body language in use in Roman society and used their observations as a communicative device in

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their work in a culturally specific way. She treats first the central group on the Palazzo della Cancelleria relief B (her fig. 1), one of two reliefs found in Rome in 1939 and now on display in the Vatican Museo Gregoriano Profano. Davies follows those who argue that the figure on the left is Domitian, that on the right Vespasian, and that the occasion depicted is Vespasian’s arrival in Italy as emperor in 70 CE, and she goes on to analyse in detail the various interpretations of the close physical contact between the two men. This debate raises the wider matter of whether ancient Rome was a ‘contact’ or a ‘non-contact’ culture, with Davies favouring the latter. Past emotions are often the raw material of historians, but as Cynthia Damon points out the passions are also inextricable from one of the genre's most celebrated effects, its emotional impact on readers. She then goes on to look at the implications of Tacitus’ famous remark that the historian must write sine ira et studio, ‘without anger or favour’. Overall, her aim is to illustrate what a dilemma emotions were for the historians of antiquity. One of the merits of the historical genre is that it depicts great emotions, such as the terrible sufferings of the Peloponnesian War. Polybius goes on from this fact to make explicit the idea that the only method of learning how to bear bravely the vicissitudes of fortune is to recall the calamities of others, thus emphasizing the utility of the historian’s efforts. But Damon is more interested in the audience and the arousal of readers’ emotions, discussing a series of examples that show the complexities involved in the strong connections that exist between emotion and historical memory: while historians obviously seek to move their readers, Tacitus, for example, shows how the inflammatory books of Cremutius Cordus got him killed and the books themselves burned, suggesting that the emotions aroused by historiography can be dangerously efficacious. In giving the past its emotions the historians, working in a genre that is by its nature inherently suspicious of authorial emotion, could sometimes be ‘playing with fire’. Margaret Graver takes as her starting point Julius Caesar’s reaction to the death of his daughter Julia in 54 BCE. On campaign in Britain, Caesar receives the news with composure and allows himself only a brief mourning period before returning to action two days later. Such self-control illustrates a Roman cultural norm in the realm of emotional behaviour: in times of personal suffering, elite males were able to gain in stature by restricting their expression of grief in favour of concern for the interests of their community. Graver then goes on to focus on cases in which Cicero deliberately reverses the expectations created by Caesar’s exemplary behaviour, cases such as his reaction to the death of Tullia, in which a public figure projects an image of himself as one who is strongly moved by emotion, and in particular by feelings of grief and distress. She thus shows how firstcentury Roman culture also offered options for advancing one’s influence through the performance of grief, with the prevailing cultural tendency to emphasize selfcontrol making a move in the opposite direction rhetorically powerful. She argues that Cicero was fully aware of that rhetorical potential and that he used it for his own political and philosophical ends.

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Laurel Fulkerson devotes her paper to studying hope in Vergil’s Aeneid and Ovid’s Metamorphoses. Her starting point is that hope is indeed an emotion, but that the ancient view of hope is not exactly the same as that prevalent today. She sees hope in the Greco-Roman world as a more double-edged phenomenon. Turning to her two chosen texts, she emphasizes the strong relationship between hope and narrative in epic. As far as the Aeneid is concerned, the ways in which Vergil constructs Roman history as a future that the poem’s characters can only dimly foresee gives hope an important role throughout. The Aeneid’s misleading prophecies and signs get at the very nature of the function of hope, as so many of Aeneas’ hopes, as well as those of others in the poem, are either shown to be inappropriate or are fulfilled only in unexpected ways. Hope that becomes reality is a useful and encouraging thing, but deluded hopes can make a bad situation worse, and encourage the reader to imagine outcomes that will not come to pass. Fulkerson takes the Metamorphoses to be a fundamentally different kind of poem. In Ovid, she argues, hopes are mentioned mostly when they are about to be dashed. Hope thus fulfils no plot-advancing function; instead, it usually adds a layer of irony, revealing that events did not turn out in the way some of the characters expected, frequently with spes being immediately identified as fruitless. In the Metamorphoses, then, Ovid uses the emotion of hope to close down narrative possibilities. David Konstan sets out to explore Seneca’s thinking about the relationship between reason and emotion. That emotions and reason cohabit in the mind is the orthodox Stoic view. Emotions are, after all, judgements. But, Konstan asks, how can we account for their stubborn resistance to correction by reason, to the extent that when they are in full swing they can only be driven out by another emotion? What is the origin of the special impetus that emotions have that makes them analogous to running at top speed and being unable to stop in an instant? He goes on to argue that we cannot distinguish emotions from other judgements without studying carefully what Seneca has to say about pre-emotions or propatheiai. Konstan, after a reading of a selection of passages scattered across the corpus, advances the idea that for Seneca each of the individual emotions has a corresponding initial motion or impulse. Failure to understand the nature of these instinctive responses and taking them to represent a fully emotional reaction to an external stimulus makes it more likely that we will resist altering our judgements and hold firmly to our false beliefs. Expressions of anger dominate throughout Seneca’s Medea. In their paper, Chiara Battistella and Damien Nelis concentrate on the end of the play, with a special focus on the connections between literary representation of the emotions and intertextuality. Their main aim is to illustrate the extent of the direct influence on Seneca of the final scene of Vergil’s Aeneid. They argue that Medea’s climactic murder of her children is directly modelled on Aeneas’ killing of Turnus at the close of the Aeneid. They conclude that in addition to the relevance of philosophical, and particularly Stoic, analyses of passionate anger and his overall adherence to the Euripidean model, it was in the final scene of Aeneid 12 that Seneca encountered a powerful and climactic meditation on anger that profoundly influenced the ways in which he went about bringing his own play to a close.

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In conclusion, as editors, it is our hope for this volume that our readers will find in it both a representative survey of the state of current research in the field and indications of some of the new directions classicists working on the affective sciences will be taking in the years to come. And as we send it off, we should like to close by offering our most sincere thanks to a number of people, without whose help it would not have been possible to complete our task. At the Fondation Hardt, all the staff made sure that the conference went smoothly and enjoyably for all involved. At the Centre Interfacultaire en Sciences Affectives, Marion Gumy, David Sander, Daniela Sauge, Klaus Scherer, and Cristina Soriano provided essential guidance. At the University of Geneva, the Faculty of Arts and the Administrative Commission provided crucial financial support. In addition, for help and advice of various kinds we sould like to thank Chiara Battistella, Lavinia Galli Milić, and Aglae Pizzone. And finally, we should like to express our most sincere gratitude to Angelos Chaniotis and Yannick Zanetti, without whom we would never have got this far. BIBLIOGRAPHY Aldrete, G. (1999) Gestures and Acclamations in Ancient Rome, Baltimore. Alexiou, M. (1974) The Ritual Lament in Greek Tradition, Cambridge (second edition, Cambridge MA, 2002). Annas, J. (1989) Epicurean Emotions, Greek, Roman, and Byzantine Studies 30, 145–164. Annas, J. (1992) Hellenistic Philosophy of Mind, Berkeley and Los Angeles. Appadurai, A., ed. (1986) The Social Life of Things: Commodities in Cultural Perspective, Cambridge. Armstrong, D. (2008) ‘Be angry and sin not’: Philodemus versus the Stoics on Natural Bites and Natural Emotions, in J. T. Fitzgerald (ed.), 79–121. Arnold, M. (1960) Emotion and Personality, New York. Bagnoli, C., ed. (2011) Morality and the Emotions, Oxford. Beard, M. (2014) Laughter in Ancient Rome: On Joking, Tickling, and Cracking Up, Berkeley and Los Angeles. Bennett, J. (2010) Vibrant Matter: A Political Ecology of Things, Durham NC. Bobou, O. (2013) Emotionality in Greek Art, in A. Chaniotis and P. Ducrey (eds.), 273–311. Boegehold, A. L. (1999) When a Gesture was Expected, Princeton. Boquet, D. and P. Nagy, eds. (2016) Histoire intellectuelle des émotions de l’antiquité à nos jours, L’atelier du Centre de recherches historiques 16, Paris (https://acrh.revues.org/6720). Boscagli, M. (2014) Stuff Theory: Everyday Objects, Radical Materialism, New York. Bourbou, C. (2013) The Imprint of Emotions Surrounding the Death of Children in Antiquity, in A. Chaniotis and P. Ducrey (eds.), 331–350. Braund, S. M. and C. Gill, eds. (1997) The Passions in Roman Thought and Literature, Cambridge. Braund, S. M. and G. W. Most, eds. (2003) Ancient Anger: Perspectives from Homer to Galen, Cambridge. Bremmer, J. N. and H. Roodenberg, eds. (1991) A Cultural History of Gesture: From Antiquity to the Present Day, London. Brilliant, R. (1963) Gesture and Rank in Roman Art: The Use of Gestures to Denote Status in Roman Sculpture and Coinage, New Haven. Brown, B., ed. (2004) Things, Chicago.

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Budelmann, F. and P. E. Easterling (2010) Reading Minds in Greek Tragedy, Greece & Rome 57, 289–303. Budelmann, F. and P. LeVen (2014) Timotheus’ Poetics of Blending: A Cognitive Approach to the Language of the New Music, Classical Philology 109, 191–210. Budelmann, F., L. Maguire, and B. Teasdale (2016) Ambiguity and Audience Response, Arion 23, 89–114. Cairns, D. L. (1993) Aidōs: The Psychology and Ethics of Honour and Shame in Ancient Greek Literature, Oxford. ––– (2003a) Ethics, Ethology, Terminology: Iliadic Anger and the Cross-Cultural Study of Emotion, in S. M. Braund and G. W. Most (eds.), 11–49. ––– (2003b) The Politics of Envy: Envy and Equality in Ancient Greece, in D. Konstan and K. Rutter (eds.), 235–252. ––– ed. (2005) Body Language in the Greek and Roman Worlds, Swansea. ––– (2013a) A Short History of Shudders, in A. Chaniotis and P. Ducrey (eds.), 85–107. ––– (2013b) The Imagery of Erôs in Plato’s Phaedrus, in E. Sanders, C. Thumiger, C. Carey, and N. J. Lowe (eds.), 233–250. ––– (2014) Psyche, Thymos, and Metaphor in Homer and Plato, Les Études Platoniciennes 11, 1– 37. ––– (2015) Revenge, Punishment, and Justice in Athenian Homicide Law, Journal of Value Enquiry 49, 645–665. ––– (2016a) Clothed in Shamelessness, Shrouded in Grief: The Role of ‘Garment’ Metaphors in Ancient Greek Concepts of Emotion, in G. Fanfani, M. Harlow, and M.-L. Nosch (eds.), Spinning Fates and the Song of the Loom: The Use of Textiles, Clothing and Cloth Production as Metaphor, Symbol, and Narrative, Oxford, 25–41. ––– (2016b) Metaphors for Hope in Early Greek Literature, in R. R. Caston and R. A. Kaster (eds.), Hope, Joy, and Affection in the Classical World, New York, 13–44. ––– (forthcoming) Mind, Metaphor, and Emotion in Euripides (Hippolytus) and Seneca (Phaedra), Maia. Cairns, D. L. and L. Fulkerson, eds. (2015a) Emotions between Greece and Rome, London. ––– (2015b) Introduction, in D. L. Cairns and L. Fulkerson (eds.) London, 1–22. Cairns, F. (2005) Lavinia’s Blush (Virgil Aeneid 12. 64–70), in D. L. Cairns (ed.), 195–213. Cánovas, C.P. (2011) The Genesis of the Arrows of Love: Diachronic Conceptual Integration in Greek Mythology, American Journal of Philology 132, 553–579. Caston, R. R. (2012) The Elegiac Passion: Jealousy in Roman Love Elegy, New York. Chaniotis, A. (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) Constructing the Fear of Gods: Epigraphic Evidence from Sanctuaries of Greece and Asia Minor, in A. Chaniotis (ed.), 205–234. ––– (2012b) Introduction, in A. Chaniotis (ed.), 11–36. ––– (2012c) Moving Stones: The Study of Emotions in Greek Inscriptions, in A. Chaniotis (ed.), 91–130. ––– ed. (2012d) Unveiling Emotions: Sources and Methods for the Study of Emotions in the Greek World, Stuttgart. ––– (2015) Affective Diplomacy: Emotional Scripts between Greek Communities and Roman Authorities, in D. L. Cairns and L. Fulkerson (eds.), 87–103. Chaniotis, A. and P. Ducrey, eds. (2013) Unveiling Emotions II: Emotions in Greece and Rome: Texts, Images, Material Culture, Stuttgart. Colombetti, G. (2009) What Language Does to Feelings, Journal of Consciousness Studies 16.9: 4–26. ––– (2014) The Feeling Body: Affective Science Meets the Enactive Mind, Cambridge MA. Corbeill, A. (2004) Nature Embodied: Gesture in Ancient Rome, Princeton.

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Corbin, A. ed. (2016) Histoire des émotions, 2 vol., Paris. Damasio, A. R. (1994) Descartes’ Error: Emotion, Reason, and the Human Brain, New York. ––– (1999) The Feeling of What Happens: Body and Emotion in the Making of Consciousness, New York. ––– (2003) Looking for Spinoza: Joy, Sorrow, and the Feeling Brain, New York. ––– (2010) Self Comes to Mind: Constructing the Conscious Brain, New York. Davies, G. M. (1985) The Significance of the Handshake Motif in Classical Funerary Art, American Journal of Archaeology, 89, 627–40. ––– (1994) The Language of Gesture in Greek Art: Gender and Status on Grave Stelai, Apollo 140.389, 6–11. ––– (1997) Gender and Body Language in Roman Art, in T. Cornell and K. Lomas (eds.), Gender and Ethnicity in Ancient Italy, London, 97–107. ––– (2002) Clothes as Sign: The Case of the Large and Small Herculaneum Women, in L. Llewellyn-Jones (ed.), Women’s Dress in the Ancient Greek World, London and Swansea, 227–242. ––– (2005) On Being Seated: Gender and Body Language in Hellenistic and Roman Art, in D. L. Cairns (ed.), 215–238. De Sousa, R. (2008), Really, What Else is There? Emotions, Value, and Morality, Critical Quarterly 50.4, 12–23. Deigh, J. (2008) Emotions, Values, and the Law, New York. Deonna, J. and F. Teroni (2012) The Emotions: A Philosophical Introduction, London and New York. Dixon, T. (2003) From Passions to Emotions: The Creation of a Secular Psychological Category, Cambridge. ––– (2012) ‘Emotion’: The History of a Keyword in Crisis’, Emotion Review 4, 338–344. Dué, C. (2002) Homeric Variations on a Lament by Briseis, Lanham. ––– (2006) The Captive Woman’s Lament in Greek Tragedy, Austin. Duijn, M. J. van, I. Sluiter, and A. Verhagen (2015) When Narrative Takes Over: The Representation of Embedded Mindstates in Shakespeare’s Othello, Language and Literature 24, 148– 166. Eisenberger, N. I. (2012) The Neural Bases of Social Pain: Evidence for Shared Representations with Physical Pain, Psychosomatic Medicine 74.2, 126–135. Ekman, P. and D. Cordaro (2011) What is Meant by Calling Emotions Basic? Emotion Review 3, 364–370. Elster, J. (1999) Alchemies of the Mind: Rationality and the Emotions, Cambridge. Engels, J. (1998) Funerum sepulchrorumque magnificentia: Begräbnis- und Grabluxusgesetze in der griechisch-römischen Welt mit einigen Ausblicken auf Einschränkungen des funeralen und sepulkralen Luxus im Mittelalter und in der Neuzeit, Stuttgart. Fitzgerald, J. T., ed. (2008) Passions and Moral Progress in Graeco-Roman Thought, London. Fögen, T. (2001) Ancient Theorizing on Non-Verbal Communication, in R. M. Brend, A. Lommel, and A. Melby (eds.), Speaking and Comprehending: Papers of the 27th Forum of the Linguistic Association of Canada and the United States, Los Angeles, 203–216. ––– ed. (2009) Tears in the Graeco-Roman World, Berlin. Fortenbaugh, W. (1975) Aristotle on Emotion, London. Fowler, D. (1997) Epicurean Emotions, in S. M. Braund and C. Gill (eds.), Cambridge, 16–35. Fox, E. (2008) Emotion Science: Cognitive and Neuroscientific Approaches to Understanding Human Emotions. An Integration of Cognitive and Neuroscientific Approaches, London. Frevert, U. (2009) Was haben Gefühle in der Geschichte zu suchen? Geschichte und Gesellschaft 35, 183–209. ––– ed. (2011) Emotions in History – Lost and Found, Budapest. Frijda, N. H. (1986) The Emotions, Cambridge. Frijda, N. H. and W. G. Parrott (2011) Basic Emotions or Ur-emotions?, Emotion Review 3, 406– 415.

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Fulkerson, L. (2013) No Regrets: Remorse in Classical Antiquity, Oxford. Garland, R. (1985), The Greek Way of Death, London. Gill, C. (2010) Stoicism and Epicureanism, in P. Goldie (ed.) The Oxford Handbook of Philosophy of Emotion, Oxford, 143–165. Goldie, P., ed. (2010) The Oxford Handbook of Philosophy of Emotion, Oxford. Graver, M. (2007) Stoicism and Emotion, Chicago. ––– (2002) Cicero on the Emotions: Tusculan Disputations 3 and 4, Chicago. Grethlein, J. (2015a) Is Narrative ‘The description of fictional mental functioning’? Heliodorus against Palmer, Zunshine, & Co., Style 49.3, 259–283. ––– (2015b) Social Minds and Narrative Time: Collective Experience in Thucydides and Heliodorus, Narrative 23, 123–139. Griffiths, P. E. (1997) What Emotions Really Are: The Problem of Psychological Categories, Chicago. Halliwell, S. (2008) Greek Laughter: A Study of Cultural Psychology from Homer to Early Christianity, Cambridge. Harris, W. V. (2001) Restraining Rage: The Ideology of Anger Control in Classical Antiquity, Cambridge MA. Hitzer, B. (2011) Emotionsgeschichte – ein Anfang mit Folgen, H- Soz-Kult 23.11.2011, http:// hsozkult.geschichte.hu-berlin.de/forum/2011-11-001. Holst-Warhaft, G. (1992) Dangerous Voices: Women’s Laments and Greek Literature, London. Huber, I. (2001) Die Ikonographie der Trauer in der griechischen Kunst, Mannheim. James, W. (1890) The Principles of Psychology, New York. Kaster, R. A. (2005) Emotion, Restraint, and Community in Ancient Rome, Oxford. Kazantzidis, G. (forthcoming a) Cognition, Emotions, and the Feeling Body in the Hippocratic Corpus, in M. Anderson, D. L. Cairns, and M. Sprevak (eds.), The Edinburgh History of Distributed Cognition, vol. 1, Edinburgh. ––– (forthcoming b) Empathy and the Limits of Disgust in the Hippocratic Corpus, in D. Lateiner and D. Spatharas (eds.), Disgust: An Ancient Emotion, Oxford. ––– (forthcoming c) Medical and Scientific Understandings of Emotion, in D. L. Cairns (ed.), A Cultural History of Emotions, vol. 1, London. Kenner, H. (1960) Weinen und Lachen in der griechischen Kunst, Vienna. Konstan, D. (2001) Pity Transformed, London. ––– (2003) Nemesis and Phthonos, in G. Bakewell and J. Sickinger (eds.), Gestures: Studies in Greek Literature, History, and Philosophy in Honor of Alan Boegehold, Oakville, 74–87. ––– (2006) The Emotions of the Ancient Greeks, Toronto. ––– (2009) Y-a-t'il une histoire des émotions? in P. Borgeaud (ed.), Mythes, rites et émotions, Geneva, 15–28. ––– (2010) Before Forgiveness: The Origins of a Moral Idea, Cambridge. ––– (2015) Senecan Emotions, in S. Bartsch and A. Schiesaro (eds.), The Cambridge Companion to Seneca, Cambridge, 174–184. Konstan, D. and K. Rutter, eds. (2003) Envy, Spite, and Jealousy: The Rivalrous Emotions in Ancient Greece, Edinburgh. Kotsifou, C. (2012a) A Glimpse into the World of Petitions: The Case of Aurelia Artemis and her Orphaned Children, in A. Chaniotis (ed.), 317–327. ––– (2012b) ‘Being unable to come to you and lament and weep with you’: Grief and Condolence Letters on Papyrus, in A. Chaniotis (ed.), 389–412. ––– (2012c) Emotions and Papyri: Insights into the Theatre of Human Experience, in A. Chaniotis (ed.), 39–90. Lateiner, D. (1995) Sardonic Smile: Nonverbal Behavior in Homeric Epic, Ann Arbor. Lazarus, R. S. (1991) Emotion and Adaptation, New York. Le Doux, J. (1996) The Emotional Brain: The Mysterious Underpinnings of Emotional Life, New York.

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Llewellyn-Jones, L. (2003) Aphrodite’s Tortoise: The Veiled Woman of Ancient Greece, Swansea. Lobe, M. (1999) De Gebärden in Vergils Aeneis: zur Bedeutung und Funktion von Körpersprache im romischen Epik, Frankfurt. Lombardo, P. and K. Mulligan (2008) The Geneva School of Emotions: An Interview with Klaus Scherer, Critical Quarterly 50.4, 26–39. Loraux, N. (1998) Mothers in Mourning, Ithaca (French original 1990). Maier-Eichhorn, U. (1989) Die Gestikulation in Quintilians Rhetorik, Frankfurt. Malafouris, L. (2013) How Things Shape the Mind: A Theory of Material Engagement, Cambridge MA. Martzavou, P. (2012a) Dream, Narrative, and the Construction of Hope in the ‘Healing Miracles’ of Epidauros, in A. Chaniotis (ed.), 177–204. ––– (2012b) Isis Aretalogies, Initiations, and Emotions: The Isis Aretalogies as a Source for the Study of Emotions, in A. Chaniotis (ed.), 267–292. Masséglia, J. (2012a) Emotions and Archaeological Sources: A Methodological Introduction, in A. Chaniotis (ed.), 131–150. ––– (2012b) Make or Break Decisions: The Archaeology of Allegiance in Ephesos, in A. Chaniotis (ed.), 329–355. ––– (2012c) ‘Reasons to be Cheerful’: Conflicting Emotions in the Drunen Old Women of Munich and Rome, in A. Chaniotis (ed.), 413–430. ––– (2013) Feeling Low: Social Status and Emotional Display in Hellenistic Art, in A. Chaniotis and P. Ducrey (eds.), 313–330. Matt, S. J. (2011) Current Emotion Research in History: Or, Doing History from the Inside out’, Emotion Review 3, 117–124. Matt, S. J. and P. N. Stearns (2014) Doing Emotions History, Urbana, Chicago, and Springfield. McNiven, T. (1982) Gestures in Attic Vase-painting: Use and Meaning 550–450 BC, unpublished PhD dissertation, University of Michigan. ––– (2000) Behaving like an Other: Gender-specific Gestures in Athenian Vase Painting, in B. Cohen (ed.), Not the Classical Ideal: Athens and the Construction of the Other in Greek Art, Leiden, 71–97. Minchin, E. (2001) Homer and the Resources of Memory, Oxford. Mueller, M. (2016) Objects as Actors: Props and the Poetics of Performance in Greek Tragedy, Chicago. Munteanu, D. L., ed. (2011) Emotion, Genre, and Gender in Classical Antiquity, London. ––– (2012) Tragic Pathos: Pity and Fear in Greek Philosophy and Tragedy, Cambridge. Nelis, D. P. (2015) Juno, Sea-storm, and Emotion in Virgil, Aeneid 1.1–156: Homeric and Epicurean Contexts, in D. L. Cairns and L. Fulkerson (eds.), 149–162. Neumann, G. (1965) Gesten und Gebärden in der griechischen Kunst, Berlin. Nussbaum, M. C. (1994) The Therapy of Desire: Theory and Practice in Hellenistic Ethics, Princeton. ––– (2001) Upheavals of Thought: The Intelligence of Emotions, Cambridge. Oakley, J. H. (2004) Picturing Death in Classical Athens: The Evidence of the White Lekythoi, Cambridge. Oatley, K. (2011) Such Stuff as Dreams: The Psychology of Fiction, Oxford/Malden MA. ––– (2012) The Passionate Muse: Exploring Emotion in Stories, Oxford. Parrott, W. G. (2010) Ur-emotions and Your Emotions: Reconceptualizing Basic Emotion, Emotion Review 2, 14–21. ––– (2012) Ur-emotions: The Common Feature of Animal Emotions and Socially Constructed Emotions, Emotion Review 4, 247–248. Plamper, J. (2010) The History of Emotions: An Interview with William Reddy, Barabara Rosenwein, and Peter Stearns, History and Theory 49, 237–265. ––– (2015) The History of Emotions: An Introduction, Oxford. Prinz, J. (2004) Gut Reactions: A Perceptual Theory of Emotion, New York.

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––– (2007) The Emotional Construction of Morals, Oxford. Procopé, J. F. (1998) Epicureans on Anger, in J. Sihvola and T. Engberg-Pedersen (eds.) The Emotions in Hellenistic Philosophy, Frankfurt, 171–196. Reddy, W. M. (2001) The Navigation of Feeling: A Framework for the History of Emotions, Cambridge. Ricottilli, L. (2000) Gesto e parola nell’Eneide, Bologna. Rolls, E. T. (1999) The Brain and Emotion, Oxford. ––– (2005) Emotion Explained, Oxford. Rosenwein, B. H. (2006) Emotional Communities in the Early Middle Ages, Ithaca. ––– (2011) Problems and Methods in the History of Emotions, in Passions in Context 1 (http://www.passionsincontext.de/uploads/media/01_Rosenwein.pdf). Salvo, I. (2012) Sweet Revenge: Emotional Factors in ‘Prayers for Justice’, in A. Chaniotis (ed.), 235–266. Sander, D. and K. R. Scherer (2009) The Oxford Companion to Emotion and the Affective Sciences, Oxford. Sanders, E. (2014) Envy and Jealousy in Classical Athens: A Socio-Psychological Approach, Oxford. Sanders, E., C. Thumiger, C. Carey, and N. J. Lowe, eds. (2013) Erôs in Ancient Greece, Oxford. Schachter, S. and J. E. Singer (1962) Cognitive, Social, and Physiological Determinants of Emotional State, Psychological Review 69, 379–399. Schauer, M. (2002) Tragisches Klagen: Form und Funktion der Klagedarstellung bei Aischylus, Sophokles und Euripides, Munich. Schnell, R. (2015) Haben Gefühle eine Geschichte? Aporien einer History of Emotions, Göttingen. Scodel, R. (2014) Narrative Focus and Elusive Thought in Homer, in D. Cairns and R. Scodel (eds.), Defining Greek Narrative, Edinburgh, 55–74. Seaford, R. (1994) Reciprocity and Ritual: Homer and Tragedy in the Developing City-State, Oxford. Shapiro, H. A. (1991) The Iconography of Mourning in Athenian Art, American Journal of Archaeology 95, 629–656. Short, W. M. (2012) A Roman Folk Model of the Mind, Arethusa 45, 109–147. ––– (2013) Getting to the Truth, Arion 21, 140–168. ––– (2014) Metafora, in M. Bettini and W. M. Short (eds.), Con i Romani: Un’ antropologia della cultura antica, Bologna, 329–352. Sihvola, J. and T. Engberg-Pedersen, eds. (1998) The Emotions in Hellenistic Philosophy, Frankfurt. Singer, T., B. Seymour, J. O’Doherty, H. Kaube, R. J. Dolan, and C. D. Frith (2004) Empathy for Pain Involves the Affective but not the Sensory Components of Pain, Science 303, 1157– 1162. Sittl, C. (1890) Die Gebärden der Griechen und Römer, Leipzig. Solomon, R. C. (2003) Not Passion's Slave: Emotions and Choice, Oxford. ––– (2006) True to Our Feelings: What Our Emotions Are Really Telling Us, Oxford. Stanford, W. B. (1983), Greek Tragedy and the Emotions: An Introductory Study, London. 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. Stearns, P. N. and C. Z. Stearns (1985) Emotionology: Clarifying the History of Emotions and Emotional Standards, American Historical Review 90, 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. ––– (2006) Tragedy Offstage: Suffering and Sympathy in Ancient Athens, Austin. Suter, A., ed. (2008) Lament: Studies in the Ancient Mediterranean and Beyond, New York. Thompson, E. (2007) Mind in Life: Biology, Phenomenology, and the Sciences of Mind, Cambridge MA.

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THE EMOTION OF DISGUST, PROVOKED AND EXPRESSED IN EARLIER GREEK LITERATURE Donald Lateiner 1 INTRODUCTION The ancient Greeks and contemporaries in the West, at least, positively privilege love and admiration, joy and devotion, emotions evoking pride. Disgust,1 shame, and jealousy identify emotions then and now usually suppressed because social standards deem them unworthy of such pride. The negative or ‘rivalrous’ emotions originate from fears for our bodies and status.2 Since disgust obtains little respect, men try to suppress it and its visible and audible symptoms – often but not always. This paper directs attention to an inappropriately neglected emotion by detailing its important role in three ancient Greek literary genres.3 Instincts that display fear and its cousin terror reveal insecurities to others, a source of embarrassment and target of social policing. Justified fears, lizard-level brain impulses about impending death, lead creatures to visible ‘fight or flight’ behaviors. Disgust behaviors figure prominently among middling rejectionist impulses – displays less than punches, more than escape. Hellenes recognized that envy can lead to healthy and socially beneficial competition,4 but the Greek term 1

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English has richer resources than Greek (or Latin) for this ‘semantic field’ of words denoting hostile emotions, perhaps due to a millennium’s socio-cultural developments; cf. Elias 1939/ 1978. Loathing, contempt, scorn, disdain, sneering, and derision belong here. Some expressive attitudes, like contempt, are social and hierarchical (perceived social dominance) or gender-sensitive in permissible displays (think Akhilleus) rather than constituting distinct emotions. Konstan and Rutter 2003 passim. The Classicist philosopher Nussbaum 2004 considers these ‘shameful’ emotions, observing them from a distinctly contemporary, American point of view; so too Kekes 1992. Disgust plays a minor role in Classical visual arts, a few pots showing defecation and ugly individuals in sexual pursuits. Hellenistic and dependent Roman visual arts develop a kinky interest in bestial perversions and the pygmies at work and play with grotesque genitals engaged in grotesque activities (cf. Sutton 2000; Clarke 2007). The Aesopic tradition, literary and visual, portrays real or imagined disgust for and of the lower classes. As Hesiod and Herodotos suggest about some forms of eris. The volume on ‘rivalrous emotions’ edited by Konstan and Rutter (2003) would benefit from a chapter on Aristophanes’ envious and spiteful characters. Konstan 2006, 39 (following Aristotle, Rhetoric 1379a) excludes disgust from his list of eleven emotions (pathe). He argues that the absence of other subjectivities involved in this and other ‘modern’ emotions renders certain contemporary ex-

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sōphrosynē signifies a nexus of dispositions and strenuous efforts to control negative instincts and socially destructive emotions. That is, the Greeks channeled competitive and bluntly rejectionist impulses, such as Akhilleus’ intent to kill Agamemnon, into socially acceptable expressions, such as his verbal, animalizing insults and non-verbal disgust-displays responding to the commander’s strategic and personal faults.5 Disgust – and its neighbor, loathing, a more enduring disposition – are human ‘NO’ responses. They derive from instinctual fear, especially fear of deadly substances or creatures that may contaminate or destroy our vulnerable human bodies. Psychologists (e.g., Herz 2012, 103) thus speculate that disgust’s objective is bad food detection and rejection: ‘to keep the outside away from our inside’.6 Disgust, an emotion responding to cognitive capacities of perception and evaluation, actively and self-protectively responds to perceived threats. Researchers must recognize, however, the allure of disgust, its aesthetic pleasures in limited circumstances. Smelly cheeses, one’s own excrement, and many ancient literary monuments7 prove disgust’s queasy attractions attested for many millennia.8 To paraphrase Aristotle on laughter, only humans show disgust.9 Greek and Roman artists and thinkers, in genres with very different disgust protocols, exploit

5

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periences irrelevant to Greek thought. Aristotle’s social interaction assumptions for the emotions do not illuminate Hellenic disgust. North 1966, Konstan 2006, cf. Ngai 2002, 162. Robert Plutchik’s 1980 wheel of primary and secondary emotions provides a good contemporary list of emotions, but any list (or count!) of primary emotions remains contentious. Rozin and Fallon 1987, 24. The body’s borderlands (mouth, nose, genitals, and rectum) are the sites most liable to contamination. Herz’s 2012 study is the latest introduction to the socio-psychological study of disgust known to me. Hindu and Hebrew food regulations developed elaborate food taboos, further limiting the in-group’s food choice and sources of nourishment. Nourishment denials become moral decisions. The Hindu caste system regulates interpersonal contacts (and disgust) through an ideology of human contagion: touching (caste) ‘inferior’ individuals contaminates and pollutes (Rozin et alii 2008, 643). Many ideologies sniff at purported inferiors, insisting that they smell bad and should not be touched. E.g., Homer’s man-eating Kyklops, Aiskhylos’ Erinyes, Sophokles’ Philoktetes, and Aristophanes’ dung beetle, and the Latin misadventures of Horace’s smelly hag in the Epodes, Petronius’ catamites, and Martial’s pustuled acquaintances. Kaster 2001 summarizes some psychologists’ emotional ‘scripts’ approach that breaks down the ‘emotion’ that leads to displays, visible and audible expressions. Korsmeyer 2011 extends Menninghaus’ 2003 philosophical investigation of the aesthetics of disgust, how revulsion can bring pleasure in certain circumstances. Humanities scholars and social scientists (following Aristotle) have examined disgust less than, e.g., anger, surprise, or fear. The chief cause of inattention seems clear: reluctance to discuss publicly elicitors of and responses to disgusting materials. Ever since Herodotos, however, anthropologists have described and explained other cultures’ corpse-abuse, cannibalism, incest violations, maggot-eaters, gendered excretory habits, etc. Greenblatt 1982 offers many examples. Aristotle, De Partibus Animalium 3.10, 673a on laughter. Herz 2012, 151–155 notes that disgust is the most complex and least understood of the six basic emotions (the others catalo-

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our intermittent fascination. Disgust, however, resists abstraction and analysis. One can exhume the rhetoric of manipulating disgust but not much discourse analyzing it. Raw expletives express non-budging negativity, irreducible fetid materiality. The dialects of emotion in other cultures remain difficult to decode. Scholars of les sciences humaines only now are attempting to manage relevant phobias and disgust. Few psycho-biologists, evolutionary anthropologists, literary scholars, and philosophers, before and after Darwin,10 still presume that instincts and human emotions – and their modes of expression – remain universal or are largely constant. More of them argue that the passions (pathē) or at least their verbal and nonverbal expressions are social constructs that vary by cultural groups, by ethnicity, and/or by gender, race, age, class, etc.11 Disgust, then, is not an innate instinct but an evolved or developed response and signal system (cf. Kelly 2011, 43–59: the ‘entanglement thesis’). Parents train their youngsters as soon as they possibly can (ca. three years old) to find feces disgusting to see, touch, smell, and taste, even to hear the evacuation of the bowels. Small children, many have observed, consider excreta fascinating and pleasurable objects to play with. This negative socialization towards one’s own excreta then extends to other substances and creatures such as worms and dead kittens, and to snot, pus, and other secretions. Disgust is the emotion that children acquire last, around five to seven years of age, later than hard-wired automatic instincts and less complex emotions such as joy and hate (Herz 2012, 46, 80). The lower face, the site of incorporation for air, liquids, and solid foods through its many breachable orifices, employs its most expressive organs, the mouth and nose, to express disgust. These entrances allow outside contaminants to enter the body’s fortress. Disgust develops the original instinct to avoid ingesting unpleasant – rotted and toxic – substances.12

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gued as anger, sadness, happiness, fear, and surprise). Only disgust makes blood pressure drop (Herz 2012, 29). Darwin, The Expression of the Emotions in Man and Animals (1872; consulted in Ekman’s annotated 3rd edition of 1998) devotes chapter xi, part I, to ‘Disdain-Contempt-Disgust-GuiltPride, etc. Kelly 2011, 1–9 summarizes the history of explanations of core disgusts and ‘downstream effects’. Some expressions of emotions are universal (smiles of pleasure, squinched faces of disgust, for instance), while others are limited by particular groups’ parameters of condoned selfexpression (Sicilian arm gestures, American tongue-extrusions, Japanese or Palestinian proxemics). Therefore, queasy-making sights and stenches are culturally malleable, as connoisseurs of cheeses – like Limburger, Roquefort, or the outlawed Sardinian casu marzu (with or without the live maggots) – will realize. People suffering from severe OCD cases cannot recognize disgust expressed by others. (OCD here identifies ‘Obsessive Compulsive Disorder’, not the Oxford Classical Dictionary.) OCD sufferers are themselves hypersensitive, while psychopaths can rarely perceive disgust in themselves or in others (Herz 2012, 66–76). Humans, arguably, should feel disgust more frequently to protect healthy bodies against microbial and other infection. They should learn sooner to feel disgust towards, e.g., dirt and their fecal matter. Despite frequent hectoring in public washrooms, adults still do not wash

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Emotion psychologists divide elicitors of disgust (Greek: βδελύγµατα) into six groups:13 foods, hygiene, sexual acts, death and decay, damage to the body envelope (amputations, disfigurements, gore, open wounds,), and slimy, squirmy, and swarming animal life (e.g., maggots, snakes, cockroaches). Surviving ancient texts exhibit every variety. To divide14 an emotional event, one must identify its stimulus (1), the consequent perception (2), the individual’s appraisal of it (3), and thereafter his or her ‘emotional’ response (4). The inner process seems harder than the present task: to describe the last step for disgust, the repelling external expressions (5). Other papers in this volume examine the internal processes (stimulus and psychobiological mental responses), but this contribution explores that last step – the external responses, nonverbal, verbal or vocalic, and instrumental (bodies’ increased proximity, fight, or more usual flight). Responses to disgust start from the mouth: the jaw drops, the tongue extrudes, the nose wrinkles, and the upper lip is raised.15 This five-step micro-event breakdown16 helps to describe ‘the power of negative thinking’. Visible, audible, tangible, smellable, and tasteable nonverbal behaviors exhibit disgust. These sensible, hard to miss expressions differ from the invisible, psychological steps that cause them. One necessarily reconstructs and interprets squeamish feelings from individuals’ self-presentation, or interactants’ words, or artists’ and narrators’ omniscient, or deficient, perception of acquaintances’ nonverbal expressions of emotions. Observers, even spouses, often misperceive others’ feelings from insufficient understanding. Interactants may misre-

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their hands (and foods) enough. Ashenburg 2007 provides ‘an unsanitized history’ of sanitary views, practices, and devices. Unfortunately, disgusts developed from imperfect categories lead to maladaptive rejection of nutritive edibles, like grasshoppers (Rozin and Fallon 1987, 29). Rozin et alii 1999 recognize three more categories: body products, contamination by unsavory people, and a few moral offenses. The latter two are ‘opportunistic accretions’ (645, ‘entanglements’ [Kelly]) to the oral-rejection hypothesis. Contamination and concepts of infection can result from ingestion, contact, and even proximity. Herz 2012, 41 reports that disgust reactions decline in intensity and variety as human beings age. Smiling involves the entire face, not least the eyes, and frowning wrinkles the forehead. Other parts of the body involved in disgust displays have not received as much attention (Rozin et alii 2000, 639) – such as audibles including laughter, or shrinking back from a loathsome person, as Aiskhylos’ Kassandra does (Agamemnon 1307, cf. stugos 1308–1309, cf. 547, 558). The cannibalism of Thyestes’ celebratory feast ended when the disgusted diner-father vomited up his stewed children, ‘disgorged the butchery’ (1590–1599: ἀπὸ σφαγὴν ἐρῶν). Kaster (in Konstan and Rutter 2003 and in Kaster 2001, 2005) develops this step-by-step ‘script’ approach in his essays on invidia, Roman ‘jealousy’, and fastidium, Roman ‘disgust’, and in his book on Roman emotions. He usefully distinguishes verbal, somatic, affective, and pragmatic responses to abhorrent stimuli (2001, 148). Roman concepts require separate treatment, he notes, because one culture’s emotions and vocabulary do not map precisely on another’s. See my treatment of disgust (2017) in Petronius, Satyrica and Apuleius, Metamorphoses.

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present feelings, for reasons of self-promotion and status-competition. Fraud and hypocrisy, intentional deceptions, frequently infest facial expression and posture in life and literature. Feelings may not ‘lie’, but our expressions of them to others can and do.17 In order to distinguish verbal and nonverbal manifestations of disgust, we categorize them by channel of expression. One distinguishes explicit verbal comments (including mocking, joshing, and spoken insults) from other vocalic, paralinguistic indicators (such as ‘ugh’ or ‘phew’). Nonverbal responses constitute a second category, both relatively passive responses such as disattendance (gazeavoidance) and body orientation (turning away) and active gestures such as noseholding and sticking out one’s tongue, or symbolic arm and hand extension (motions ‘as if’ to reject). Thirdly, instrumental acts (pushing away, kicking aside) differ from vocalic and nonverbal maneuvers of repulsion, when reacting to feelings of disgust. Other acts of contact aggression (haptics) – such as whipping or striking with a stick, and throwing objects (ballistics) – extend this category to reject with things (object-adaptors). Paralinguistic tones of voice (sarcasm, contempt), vocalic ejaculations (such as shrieks of disgusted horror (‘euwgh’), nasal snorts, derisory laughter), and gagging noises constitute vocal, nonverbal displays. They often accompany gestures of the body, negatively responsive postures, and especially ‘yuck’ facial expressions. Many facial expressions of disgust subsist only briefly. ‘Affect displays’ of disgust remain easily comprehensible to all cultures. Other emotions and their manifestations – such as anger, remorse,18 and joy – have changed due to social and organized religious pressures. Judaism, Pauline Christianity,19 and other traditions, religious and secular, have altered Greek and Roman social codes. They have encouraged, ‘naturalized’, admired,20 or enforced different expressions for many other emotions. Core disgust remains less amenable, more primal, but groups have often channeled its secondary, moral energies for social and political harm. Affect responses to loathsome creatures and slimy substances activate muscles near the mouth. The face is averted from the item generating disgust, the nose becomes wrinkled or is held shut, the eyes blink, the lips purse, and in 17

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Ekman 1992, 123–161 examines (contemporary) ‘display rules’ for facial expression and deception management. Goffman 1967 brilliantly explores when and where (by frames) Americans are embarrassed. Harris 2001, 339–399; Fulkerson 2013, esp. 12–44, 213–219. The two divisions of the Greek Bible are full of disgust (bdelu-) vocabulary, especially in situations describing heathen and backsliding practices of those otherwise faithful. Shakespeare, interestingly, does not use the word ‘disgust’, but disgust pullulates in the witches’ brew (Macbeth), or Iago’s sex-talk (Othello), or the Duke Vincentio posing as a puritanical monk (Measure for Measure). Christian exercises in increasing sanctity, such as Saint Catherine’s of Siena (ca. 1370), practiced innovative forms of humility. She, for instance, deeply inhaled and even drank the stench-producing, pus-filled wounds of a cancer victim’s rotting skin (Miller 1997, 157–161).

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extremis the digestive apparatus vomits up the gorge’s contents. Indeed, wrinkled, apotropaic Greek female Gorgon faces may illustrate vomiting in disgust. Their active and aversive gaze locks onto victims to petrify them, while their tonguemouth actions indicate nausea and repel invasive substances or co-presences.21 Paul Rozin, ‘the father of disgust [studies] in psychology’ (Herz 2012, ix), found vomiting for self-preservation from toxins to be the Ur-expression, the physiological origin, of ‘good’ disgust. Oral incorporation of presumably edible matter followed by an intimation of its danger produces appropriately aversive and expulsive mouth-muscle expressions, predicting future reactions that will reject similar matter on sight. Thus, the lower face’s disgust behaviors ‘gate-keep’22 the oral apparatus, originally after but subsequently prior to victims’ reaction to noxious toxins. 2 EPIC Akhilleus’ superheated emotion, anger (mēnis), kick-starts European literature. ‘Homer’, still in the proem, arouses disgust, when he proleptically sings that feral dogs and carrion-birds mauled and feasted on thousands of warriors’ corpses. Battle situations forced many comrades to leave to rot soldiers’ decaying flesh – exposed on the field, neither cremated nor buried (Iliad 1.4f.). Characters evoke this very fear and disgust in others and feel it for themselves. They pray to avoid this unhallowed fate, one much worse than death. Homer’s gruesome battlefield woundings and gore suit his action: total war fought to total victory with infanticide and genocide explicitly intended for the defeated Trojans (6.57–60). The social construction of disgust from different substances and actions that elicit it and thresholds of its expression vary in different ages,23 but core elements of decay and death remain constant. Although one empathizes with pain and physical suffering, feelings of disgust well up at gross wounds to the body. Historicists cannot confidently distinguish situations where the oral Homerids meant to evoke warrior audiences’ disgust from those where only recent readers experience disgust. Disgust thresholds in polite company have fallen over the last two millennia, indeed, the last two centuries. Greek soldiers disemboweled enemies in battle face-to-face, men killed and butchered animals on home chopping blocks for their meat, and usually women cleaned and tended in-house the smelly 21

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The very name Gorgo (and perhaps the similarly sound-duplicated terrorizer Mormo) is etymologically related to English gorge, gurgle, gargle, gargoyle, Latin gurgulio and gurges, devoro, Greek βιβρώσκω (*gi-gwro-sko). The English word disgust and French dégout, originally ‘bad taste’, are derived from the neutral Latin degustare, ‘to taste of’, from the PIE root *geus. Indeed, psychologist Susan Miller’s disappointing 2004 book is entitled Disgust: The GateKeeper Emotion, Hillsdale. Elias 1939/1978 recounts the evolution of Western European table manners, spitting, sexual relations, etc.

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sick, dying, and dead. Everyone distances him/herself now from these unpleasant chores, when salaried soldiers, sometimes following protocols for captured and dead enemies, immigrants underpaid by corporate meat processors, hospital orderlies, and professional morticians take on these jobs. Epic poetry describes entrails (including intestines and the squishy liver) spilling out, while eyeballs drop from skulls. Oinomaοs and Hippothoos’ blood and guts ooze out their bellies, Polydoros grabs at his own, speared from the rear (13.506–508, 17.314, 14.517, 20.418–420: ἔντερα, not animal σπλάγχνα). Oileus’ and Damasos’ brains splatter out, evoking dreadful sights (11.97, 12.185, etc.).24 Spears penetrate Phereklos’ and Harpalion’s buttocks, bladder, and pubic arch, wounds that produce writhing death agonies. Ballistic weapons disable and wound every part of the permeable body and its delicate orifices (eyes, nose, ears, mouth). Worse, enraged warriors ponder the decapitation of their down and defeated – even dead – enemies. Some audiences find this trophy-taking pointless and dangerously distracting for combatants, and most disturbing when ascribed to Hektor. That icon of gentle family values and civilization plans to decapitate Patroklos, a measure of the degradation that this endless, bitter war has produced (17.125, 18.175; cf. 13.202–204, 17.38–40). Mutilation of corpses arouses moral or secondary disgust, e.g., Agamemnon beheads and then brutally ‘dis-arms’ his now mute victim Hippolokhos (11.145– 147). As a last measure of degradation, this berserker insults the helpless corpse, rolling him ‘like a log’.25 Recent, frank accounts of modern battlefield behaviors, describing both unintentional forms of horrific body damage and intentional mutilations, keep contemporary audiences from ‘holier than they’ condescension. Acts imprecisely and insultingly called ‘savage’ or ‘bestial’, however,26 berserker destruction of order, and rule-free rampaging increase brain arousal in readers as 24

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Friedrich 2003 (orig. 1956), 41–51 discusses gross-ish examples of battleground killings. Following the Scholiasts, he finds some gruesome examples indecent or undignified, because they mention lower parts of the body: Ilioneus 14.487–505, Peisandros 13.605–619, Kebriones 16.732–743, Polydoros 20.407–418, Phereklos 5.59–68, Harpalion 13.650–652. Scholiast A on 5.67 alleges the shame of this carpentering shipwright: αἰσχρὸν τὸ τραῦµα τοῦ τῆς πορνείας ναυπαγοῦ. Segal 1971 discusses Homeric examples, e.g. ch. 2: ‘mutilation and Homeric values’. He states (17) that ‘Homer does not glory in elaborate descriptions of grisly details of mutilation for their own sake’. Iris (as messenger for Here) reports to Akhilleus that Hektor intends to decapitate Patroklos and stick his head on a stake (18.175–177, 18.344–347; cf. 14.496–500). Her authority is dubious, but Homer attributes that intent to Hektor himself (17.126–127)! Shay 1995, 57, 116–117 discusses warriors’ development of sub-human beastliness, turning the enemy into vermin rather than honoring and respecting the enemy. Comparing men to wild animals is one of Homer’s favorite tropes. Michael Herr Dispatches (1971) also reports atrocity stories of scalping, severed penises stuffed in enemies’ mouths by Americans, Japanese, Germans, and others, corpses dug out of graves. The abbreviated descriptions of one systematic method of maiming corpses mentioned in Greek tragedy, maschalismos, have magical, apotropaic justifications as well as sadistic pleasures. The original audiences better knew the process and reasons for it.

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well as participants. That is, disgust generates pleasure in audiences (as does Akhilleus’ anger, because Homer keeps it safely distant). Besides intentional mutilation of the living and the dead,27 Homer refers to the havoc and disassembly of scores of minor warriors’ bodies, the necessarily messy consequence of sharp and blunt weapons wielded forcibly on and in vulnerable flesh.28 More rhetorical, but intentionally disgust-arousing nevertheless, are fervent wishes to eat raw an enemy’s liver or flesh.29 Homer rarely details disgust-arousing encounters, but he situates men clutching their organs in agony, victors hurling captive children from walls to death, and soldiers raping captured women as a matter of course and right.30 3 TRAGEDY The six elements of disgust-production and reaction (stugos) appear in Aiskhylos’ trilogy-ending Eumenides, named for Homer’s loathsome (9.454: στυγεραί) female Avengers of Foul Crimes, the Furies or Erinyes. Aeschylus presents the disgusting abominations on stage (βδελύκτροποι: 52).31 The rest of the cast successively describe their revolting appearance and behavior. These monsters disgust viewers by their physical and psychological nature and by the gross tortures that they regularly inflict on targets. The snaky-haired32 monsters, oozing blood and pus, cut off and otherwise mutilate limbs, ἀκρωνίαι; they gouge out eyes: ὀφθαλµωρύχοι; they destroy young men’s seed, perhaps by testicle crushing: σπέρµατος τ’ἀποφθορᾷ; they stone their victims: λευσµοί; and they impale victims on stakes inserted ‘below the spine’, ὑπὸ ῥάχιν παγέντες, a euphemistic

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Segal 1971 (cf. Mary Roach 2003, Stiff) dilates on superstitious and vengeful mutilations of corpses, but wounding and mutilation of the living generate more disgust. Thus, Hektor boasts that his spear will ‘feast’ [δάψει] on the tender flesh of enemies (13.830). Akhilleus’ supremely savage and cruel threats to dying Hektor, as well as his actions, arouse audiences’ secondary ‘moral’ disgust: Iliad 22.346; cf. Hektor, 13.830–832; Here, 4.30–36; leech-like Hekabe 24.212f. Agamemnon’s tenth-year intent, ignorant as he was of recent Geneva conventions and presently ‘at his nastiest’ (Kirk 1985 ad loc.), was to take no prisoners, but to kill every man, woman, and child, and to rip unborn fetuses from their pregnant mothers’ wombs (4.162, 6.58– 60). He implies that recompensive justice – not raiders’ profit – is now his chief concern. Odysseus had spoken of raping every Trojan woman, while Trojan Priam correctly expects the enemy will rape all wives and smash his children’s children’s brains (2.415f., 22.60–67). Alleged miscarriages of women and fainting of children (cf. Vita Aeschyli 9) in the original Attic audience suggest expulsive reactions usually associated with frightened disgust. Disgust with snakes, perhaps the mate-killing female viper (Herodotos 3.109), attaches to Klytaimestra (Choephori 249, 994, 1047; cf. amphisbaina in Agamemnon 1233; Stanford 1983, 161).

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way of indicating ‘up the anus’ and through the viscera.33 These ghastly punishments, designed to discourage rebellions against divine rule and the community or to enforce primitive prohibitions, activate any audience’s disgust perceptors. They threaten horrifically painful damage to easily damaged organs: the squishy visual, alimentary, and reproductive systems. Onstage, characters such as Orestes and Apollo run away, remove themselves from proximity, or otherwise maintain distance. Aiskhylos’ Delphic priestess, when reduced to crawling in flight and fright from the otherworld’s intruders, compares these unknown, creeping monsters’ moves and appearance to both Gorgons and Harpies (48–51). Those analogous female terrors also evoke disgust through oral, tongue-teeth-throat, gaping terror images and food pollution associations. The Pythian priestess, Apollo, Orestes, and Athena all describe the Erinyes’ animal behaviors, motions, threatened vengeance, and even their otherwordly domain with disgust. Orestes describes the Furies as Gorgons, serpents, hounds with blood-dripping eyes to evoke disgust. Aiskhylos describes other repulsive physical qualities such as eyes that drip loathsome discharges (54), putrid breath and noisome snoring (53), sounds of mugmos and ogmos (117, 124), shriveling effects on victims’ bodies, perhaps by sucking their blood, vomiting of blood-clots and frothing blood at the mouth (183f.), and repulsive rags (55f.). Aiskhylos invokes, then, three senses: sight, sound, and smell. Add toxic contagion by contaminating touch, since the poet refers to their absence of (sexual?) intercourse with gods or men (69f.: οὐ µείγνυται). Their threats of atrocious diseases activate further fears of epidemic decay and pestilential death.34 In a related disgust-generating denigration of females, Orestes loathes his father’s killer, his spouse-killing mother, and so he describes her as a slithering beast, an eel or snake (Choephori 994: muraina, ekhidna, 998).35 Sophokles repeatedly imagines damaged, isolated, and disgusting heroes. Visible damage includes birth-crippled and eventually self-blinded Oidipous at Thebes, decade-long crippled and pus-oozing snake-bit Philoktetes on Lemnos, Herakles paralyzed by spasms of flesh-eating pain on Oita, and limping, blinded,

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Official Near-Eastern images illustrate Mesopotamian and Iranian anal impalement of their enemies. The Erinyes belong only where victims wail, where carnivores rip flesh, where their filth pollutes whatever it touches (Eumenides 186–193, cf. 937–942). Apollo’s description of consequences for Orestes, if he fails to avenge his father’s death, beggars description (Choephori 1032). Klytaimestra, facing her matricidal son, describes him as a snake biting her breast (Choephori 928: ophin). Elektra’s moral disgust with her mother and her adulterous lover Aigisthos, imagined as dancing on his predecessor’s tomb, exemplify ‘secondary’ disgust, a sentiment as powerful in motivating her vengeful, frenzied words. The same, if less intense, moral revulsion produces others’ contempt for her foul body and filthy lodgings in Euripides’ remarkable tragedy (see next note).

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and age-debilitated Oidipous at Kolonos.36 Disgust evolved from survival mechanisms and remains soldered to animal desire for survival and awareness of fragility. Disgust motivates avoidance; Sophoklean protagonists (save Antigone) present contaminated and contaminating bodies, visibly repellent features that are analogous to their gnarly, contaminated souls. These elicitors of disgust perceptible to audiences vivify presentations of incurably flawed persons. They are not morally inferior but spiritually stronger, to compensate for their grievous, unanticipated suffering. The onstage messenger in Oedipus Tyrannus describes Oidipous’ off-stage drastic reaction to his realization that he is a parricide guilty of incest with his mother. His self-blinding was too disgusting for the audience to witness (1260– 1280), although the result is flourished on his mask (1287, 1410f.).37 After his wife/mother hangs herself, reacting to the news of their incestuous coupling, he breaks into her bedroom. He seizes her brooches with dagger-like pins and immediately gouges his eyeballs from their sockets (1265–1281): φοίνιαι δ’ὁµοῦ/ γλῆναι γένει’ ἔτεγγον, οὐδ’ ἀνίεσαν/ φόνου µυδώσας σταγόνας, ἀλλ᾿ ὁµοῦ µέλας/ ὄµβρος χαλάζης αἱµατοῦς ἐτέγγετο, κ.τ.λ. The messenger recalls blood and gore splashing down the hero’s face. Remnants of eyeballs and optical nerves and clots of eye-socket blood foul his beard. Sophokles has the devastated chorus and audience react. ‘I can’t bear to look, but ... I shudder at the sight (1302–1306: φεῦ, φεῦ ... / ἀλλ᾿ οὐδ᾿ ἐσιδεῖν δύναµαί σε, /... τοίαν φρίκην παρέχεις µοι).38 Fascination with disgusting scenes – faces covered with boils or mangled bodies at auto accidents – constitutes one disturbing hallmark of this emotion (Korsmeyer 2011, 113–135). Sophokles’ chorus of Attic elders in the Oedipus at Colonus (401 BCE) fears that contagion (miasma) will affect innocents. Their problem arose from the polluted outcast Oidipous’ contact with their sacred shrine’s soil. His eyeless appearance (still gory or not) and awful prior actions – parricide and incest – render him doubly repulsive, unfit for Attic asylum. The old men of the deme hunt him down for violation of their sanctuary – one that belongs to the still potent 36

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Elektra’s filthy hair and foul rags elicit audience disgust at such treatment of a princess (Euripides, Electra 184–185). Aias’ crazed and humiliating mental agonies on stage produced shuddering revulsion in himself and others’ desire to keep away from the mad man (Ajax 430–480, 577–582, 720–732, 1059–1091). Herakles’ physical disintegration and agony (Trachiniae 1007–1017, 1059–1090) portray the hero’s disgusting excarnation and evoke audience pity. Menninghaus 2003, 78–91 explores disgust-reactions in and to Sophokles’ Philoctetes, Ovid’s Marsyas, and Horace’s hag in Epode 8. Perhaps Aristotle did not discuss disgust – one prominent element in many tragedies – because it did not fit his concept of tragic excitation of emotions. Tragedy’s arousal of disgust through mythical proxies would fit his medical/plumbing/ritual metaphor of katharsis. Aristotle writes nearly nothing about this emotion elsewhere (no bdelu- terms), although it overlaps with the closely attended emotions of fear and hate (Herz 2012, 202). See Cairns, this volume. Sokrates’ friend Leontios was angry at his own eyeballs. On them he displaced his hungry desire for the ‘beautiful sight’ of the executioner’s corpses (Plato, Respublica 439e–440a). The anecdote remains foundational for the seductions of the repulsive.

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Furies (117–141). He has violated primitive taboos provoking ‘normal’ disgust, nomoi both sacred and secular, against killing one’s father and marrying and repeatedly impregnating one’s own mother – four times. The facts, regardless of intent, disgust ‘right-thinking’ people. Again he offends by visiting forbidden grounds, and again he faces community expulsion (167: ἀβάτων ἀποβάς). The old men grunt or moan exclamations in disgust: ἰώ, ὢ ὤ ... ὢ ὤ, before they pronounce expulsion (224, 226): ἔξω πόρσω βαίνετε χώρας. Cultural developments have extended instinctual aversions to immediate dangers to socially, and possibly evolutionary, advantageous disgust felt for parricide and incest.39 Core or primary disgust recognizes the vulnerability of mortals to death. Cultural disgust, however, goes further and acknowledges that the purity of any community exhibits vulnerability to an individual’s social and religious defilements.40 The expression of disgust, verbal and nonverbal, conveys trapped insiders and wary outsiders’ strong aversion from two levels of disgust. Tragic disgust, nevertheless, unlike comic disgust, eventually may make room for pity. We probe unforgivable smells in these two prestigious, publicly financed, stage genres before turning to comedy’s immersion in other pleasurable but unforgivable elicitors of disgust. 4 SMELL Smell (odmē) washes the atmosphere with non-avoidable sense experiences, unlike sight, touch, or taste – since we need to breathe. Smell ranks as the most rapid and powerful sense for eliciting emotions, thus its separate attention for a study of disgust.41 ‘Homer’ comments more often on sweet (ἡδὺ πνείουσα) and perfumed smells42 than on unpleasant odors, such as the overpowering smell of Zeus’s thunderbolt and Proteus’ stench. One sulphurous Olympian prodigy strikes and damages an oak, tree of Zeus, in a simile describing valiant Hektor’s crumpling from Aias’ hit in battle (Iliad 14.415: δεινὴ ... ὀδµή). Menelaos mentions the sour stink of seals that the younger Atreid hero endured in order to question the slippery, malleable Old Man of the Sea (Odyssey 4.406, 442). On the whole, however, Homer’s usual sensorium eschews descriptions of the plentiful foul odors of the pre-sanitized world, for instance, Iliadic reek of corpses’ decomposi39

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Freudian interpretations, based on the human race’s sexual instincts and the individual’s psychosexual development, seem more speculative. Miller 1997 is more sympathetic to Freud’s emphasis on stages of psycho-genital development. Miller 1997, 9 makes this important point. Herz 2012, 215; cf. her earlier study, Scent of Desire (2007). Mark Bradley’s recent (2015) collection of thirteen essays on smells in antiquity – medical, philosophical, literary, and archaeological – focuses attention on the neglected scents of antiquity. E.g., in the Odyssey, Helen’s (4.121) fragrant bedchamber, Eidothea’s ambrosia (4.446), Kirke’s sweet wine (10.468: presumably smell and taste), Kalypso’s cedar kindling and clothes (5.59, 264), Maron’s mixed wine (9.210), Penelope’s closet of clothes (21.62). Note the feminine associations of most attractive smells.

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tion on battlefields (cf. the exceptional Patroklos, Iliad 19.33), Priam’s rolling in excrement in his grief, and the Odyssey’s foul odors rising from the palace’s manure-pile.43 Odysseus encounters his aged hunt-dog Argos still gatekeeping his courtyard – but the noble beast is now lying atop the dung heap, covered with insect ticks (Odyssey 17.299f.). His limp posture, bug-covered body, and buzzing, liminal location communicate the guard animal’s family fidelity but now ineffective service, the suitors’ indifference to animal husbandry, and the rotten, smelly state of Ithaka’s command structure. The beggar-hero’s rare, pitying tears focalize and color his dog’s death. The sight suggests, ‘to the mind’s nose’, the smell, without Homer’s specifying offensive, affronting odors. After the suitors’ slaughter, in order to remove the sight and scent of their quickly putrefying corpses, stacked like (smelly) fish in his hot Hellenic courtyard, Odysseus summons the maids to cleanse the tables and chairs with water and sponges (22.435–494). To purge his entire house of the two levels of defilement and disgust, sensory and moral miasma, he calls for pungent, nose-wrinkling sulfur, Biblical brimstone and fire. The double purification removes both primary sources of disgust, olfactory awareness of corpses decomposing in the sun, and the secondary, moral pollution of the suitors’ adulterous intent and uninvited parasitism. This purification erases additional stains from the gang-hanged, fornicating maids and the grotesquely mutilated, multiply amputated, disloyal servant Melanthios.44 Turning from narrative epic to on-stage smells, tragedy and comedy performed live, Athenians encountered worse and uglier disgust. The stinking monster Erinyes advance like animals (or dung beetles; v. infra), on their hands and feet rather than erect. Spectators both engaged in, and remained removed from, the mythical present of every staged, theatrical performance. This vivification and presentness of dramatic actions and sensations supercharge disgust – not only the Aristotle-certified emotions of fear and pity. 43

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Odysseus’ unseemly pile of valuable manure at the manor gate (Odyssey 17.297–299) finds an analogue in Trojan basileus Priam rolling in palace dung to mourn his son’s killing. Smearing excrement on his body expresses his downfall in surviving Hektor, the bulwark of Troy, and his house and city’s upcoming miseries (Iliad 22.414, cf. 24.640; 24.163–165). Different cultures develop, discuss, and privilege different sensory perceptions, because their sensory ecologies differ. Eighteenth-century Londoners, Parisians, and Philadelphians drank water polluted by cesspits and industrial establishments (cf. Ashenburg 2007 and Corbin 1986, 11– 85). They frequently left human, horse, and pet excrement in the street (whether or not originally collected in chamber pots). Current Western urban societies try to prevent encounters with excrement, passing laws requiring removal of pets’ ‘dog-do’. First, the agents of heroic retributive justice cut off his nose and ears, then they chopped off his mēdea [= aidoia] for a rare and raw doggy-treat, and finally they lopped off his hands and feet (23.474–476; cf. threats to Iros, 18.86–87). After this torture, he presumably expired from loss of blood and the ghost of the disabled amputee could not return to haunt them. This humiliating set of punishments resembles maschalismos, the corpse-delimbing procedure that Aiskhylos and Sophokles mention.

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Thus, the odorously ‘graphic’ (‘osmic’) tragic poets re-present their principal figures’ stink, rousing fellow characters’ and audience disgust. Aiskhylos richly describes and stages the female Erinyes’ putrid smells, as noted above. The Furies have a foul breath of blood (137: αἱµατηρὸν πνεῦµα). They vomit and froth blood from their mouths (183f.: ἐµοῦσα), and their diseased bodies reek of human blood (253).45 Disgusting bodies personify their past deeds and disgusting intentions. Sophokles’ characters on Lemnos (409 BCE) repeatedly invoke Philoktetes’ stinking leg and foot, the open wound and pus-oozing lesion. The stench and disabling pain represent some divine punishment.46 The phenomenon most foul that militates against anyone ever again, even briefly, befriending the abandoned hero is his leg wound’s piercingly unpleasant odor and its putrescent, untouchable gunk, along with the sight of his bloody, ulcerous foot (7, 473, 825, 890f., 1032: δυσώδης). All characters stress the abandoned man’s disgusting stench, more offensive than his incoherent, inhuman shrieks (8–11, 481–483, 520, 693–695, 872–876, 889–891, 1031–1034). Neoptolemos’ critical handclasp with Philoktetes, the first man to touch the ulcerated cripple, makes him a friend. The haptic expression of comradeship restores the stinking sufferer’s fragile trust in any other person (813–820). Sophokles has deployed nearly every sense (except taste) to portray Philoktetes’ repulsive presence, smell as much as sight and sound. 5 COMEDY The aesthetics of disgust,47 the attractions of aversion from perversion and foul bodies behaving badly, shaped audience expectations watching and hearing Old Comedy. Beyond the Dionysiac fantasies of bawdiness, unlimited sexual stimulus,48 gluttony, and drunkenness, Aristophanes fascinates audiences by staging and describing disgusting acts, odors, and substances.49 Laughter frequently provides the easiest response to non-threatening disgust situations, an adjustment that allows our ambivalent reaction both to reject and ‘enjoy’ such 45 46 47 48

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Captive Kassandra is disgusted by the reek (Agamemnon 1309–1311: ἀτµός) emanating from the Atreid palace ‘as from a tomb’, that is, from decaying corpses. Aiskhylos and Euripides also devoted tragedies to this wounded man’s damaged body and its pain. These dramas’ relative and absolute dates remain contested. Ngai 2002, Menninghaus 2003, and Korsmeyer 2011, philosophically reflect on this paradoxical subject. The stage always presented the penis as the erect Dionysiac phallos, a sacral obscenity not disgusting to Attic audiences. Aristophanes somewhat muddies this phallic message when the wasps’ stingers emerge from their anuses (225, cf. 739–740). In Acharnenses 1168–1173, the chorus reports that Aristophanes’ rival poet Antimakhos looked for a rock in the street at night, picked up some freshly shat ordure (τῇ χειρὶ πέλεθον ἀρτίως κεχεσµένον) to defend himself against a drunk, but when he hurled it, he hit another Aristophanic rival, Kratinos. This older contemporary meets specific abuse in four extant Aristophanic comedies (see Rusten 2011, 173–220, especially Testimonia 9–14).

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situations. Disgust disesteems its targets, rendering the poet’s opponents despicable as well as derisory. Thus, Aristophanes’ public allegations deliver devastating insults of incest, sex with old hags, and handling smelly effluvia. Offensive allegations mix the disgust-elicitors of sex, excremental decay, and death with fragile body envelopes.50 Bad sex, perverts, and mismatched partners offer playwrights and audiences the pleasures of reproach and repudiation. Athenians safe in Dionysos’ precinct and Spartans at their syssitia51 communally observe, smirk, and wrinkle noses at old, foreign, sexually questionable, and vile servile bodies either misbehaving and/or repeatedly humiliated. Whether those events be voluntary or involuntary, smell and filth stamp victims as amusingly disgusting. Thus, the voluntary expulsion of bodily substances, polluting and contagious filthy smells and substances, provides frequent fantasies that express and evoke primary or core disgust. Comic lack of sōphrosynē can prominently transgress polis standards in Attic Old Comedy’s freedom to describe and present repulsive acts on stage.52 Involuntary53 loss of sphincter or other muscle control signals lack of spiritual self-control, weakness usually signaling fear. For example, pompous politicians, ponēros protagonists, and even gods exhibit involuntary, grotesque violations of ‘ordinary decency’. They ‘shit in their pants’ (minus the pants, of course) or nearly vomit (Aristophanes, Ranae 1–11). The opening episode of Pax provides a paradigm of scatological disgust sources and reactions (vv. 1–175, dated 421 BCE). Trygaios’ slaves are kneading cakes of putrid ass-dung for Mr. Comedy’s Aetnaean dung-beetle. The greedy and filthy kantharos’ bilge and filth fills a tub. As a result, Trygaios’ slave wants a nose without openings to fend off the disgusting stench (38, 132: kakosmon). Whereas pigs and dogs will eat their shit, the grand dung beetle haughtily picks at

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Herz 2012, 177 gets this point right, although she wrongly claims that Greek husbands typically had sex with their newly deceased wives, a generalization begat by one item of antityrannical propaganda (Herodotos 5.92.2–3). The helots regularly provided butts for humiliation and laughter at Spartan homoioi’s syssitia. Their degradation was part of the equals’ education (Plutarch, Lycurgus 28.8, David 1989, 1– 25 with further refs.). A comparison of humiliation ‘on stage’ in Sparta and Athens could be instructive. Tears do not insult but signal sadness or grief. Although liquid exits another’s body in weeping, tears are the only such substance not regarded as dangerous or polluting (Douglas 1966). Spurting blood, on the other hand, is certainly believed to be magical and polluting, but its unnatural elimination or loss likewise signals the bleeder’s weakness (wounding, insecure body envelope) and not strength. The defecator is shown as more embarrassed than disgusted when others are present. The incontinent one does not dwell on his unpreventable accident, but it causes disgust to rise among involuntary bystanders onstage and a benignly masochistic shudder of disgust in the safely distant theater audience. Defecation in public animalizes a human exhibiting shameless, dog-like behavior. To animalize, infantilize, feminize, and barbarize are key forms of Hellenic insult, to which we here add: association with disgusting substances.

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its food. The creature is a vile (miaros) gift of Zeus, described as ‘Lord of ShitDancing’ or ‘Thunder Crap’.54 Trygaios’ economical travel plan is to supply his own human food that will, when excreted, become the dung beetle’s rations. Once they lift off from Athens on their quixotic flight, the man’s rations will feed both. Trygaios’ rations becomes excrement, and, when recycled, becomes food for his shit-eating steed and, again excreted, lightens the team’s airborne load (138f.).55 Trygaios takes off for Olympos on his outsized dung beetle, a new Pegasos satiated with Athenian excrement. The hard-working beetle, naturally, is sweating and breathing out foul odors. Trygaios anxiously fears that humans farting and defecating along his flight-path will distract his steed from his skyward course. Indeed, breaking frame, he orders the present Athenian audience not to fart or crap for three days (152: µὴ βδεῖτε µηδὲ χέζεθ’ ἡµερῶν τρίων) while he heads off heavenwards. Should the alleyway smell reach his steed’s nostrils, it might seduce the high-flying dung beetle to turn back to earth (158). He directs the beetle’s nose upward, then he complains about a man shitting among the houses of the Peiraieus’ harbor whores.56 As his aery vehicle wobbles, in fear he worries that he will lose control of his own bowels (162–176). The fantastical and charming travel scene, powered by excrement, produces the pleasures of both on-stage, vicarious peril and of the sight of a filthy, smelly insect – a notably repulsive creatures.57 Aristophanes’ characters indulge in intentional and unintentional public defecation and urination. Many of these corporeal products have associated putrid odors. But others are relatively odorless, at least for a time, like urine. Old man Philokleon refers to rich men brought before the law-court who shit in fear (Vespae 626), and to the bogey-woman Lamia who reportedly once farted repeatedly to repel or suffocate her male pursuers (1177). Young Bdelukleon 54 55

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Pax 42: Σκαταιβάτης. another Aristophanic slave calls Zeus σκατόφαγος (Plutus 706). Dung Beetles fly and move shit-balls fifty times their weight. ‘Googling’ Dung Beetle brings up handsome creatures who even ‘dance’: https://www.ted.com/talks/markus_byrne_the_ dance_of_the_dung_beetle. Entomologists now argue that these earthy creatures employ star navigation (Dacke et al. 2013). Steiner 2008 and Tordoff 2011 examine repulsive creatures and smells in Aristophanes, especially in Pax. To taste audiences’ increased tolerance for disgust at a distance, look up ‘Fear Factor’ on the WWW, and watch people eating live leeches and other vermin, bathing among slithering reptiles, licking foul substances and head lice. Meanwhile, the comic’s bête noire Kleon still eats shit, recently dead but still active after arrival in Hades (Pax 47–48; cf. Ranae 145). Post-Christian scholars still struggle to distinguish Attic obscenities from universally disgust-producing speech and acts. ‘Dirty as a camel’s ass’ (Vespae 1035) seems both, but puns on χοιρίδιον, both piglet and a maiden’s vagina, seem to invoke obscene but not disgusting thoughts (573; cf. 1364). Philokleon, the newly refined but tipsy Dad, claims that the courtesan Dardanis’ vagina is actually a split piece of wood, thus a torch, and that her pubic hair is only tar (1371–1378). The verbal fantasy, ridiculous and far-fetched rather than obscene and disgusting, provides stage business with suitably visual obscene actions.

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presents his Dad with a private court piss-pot (807), a waste utensil for use during the solemn and public legal processes of the Athenian democracy. The old man’s prancing and farting are described as socially offensive, ‘most outrageous behavior’ (1305: hybristotatos). Farts (πορδαί)58 on stage – not the smell but the perceptible sound –provide an easily mimicked disgusting act, one that a rare individual can control,59 to express contempt or to evoke others’ disgust. The Wasps’ chorus vilifies the demagogue Kleon’s disgusting person:60 dirty buttocks, acrid odor, and unwashed balls, unless he has none at all.61 Kleon was vilified as acrid when alive throughout Wasps – stinking like a seal and sporting a camel’s anus. He is termed a shit-eater, both when recently dead in Peace of 421 BCE (48), and deader still in Frogs of 405 (145). More than fifteen years post mortem in that drama, he continues to devour Hell’s ever-flowing dung. Aristophanes repeatedly refers to passive homosexuals’ artificially wide anal orifices, an alleged result of habitual anal penetration. Thus, he contrasts his public enemies’ stretched anuses, the awkward walking euryprōktoi, ‘assholes’ suffering from such penetration, to his heroic chorus, the waspish Marathon fighters whose buttocks (and anal orifices) are presumably tight and firm.62 Ariphrades, possibly a competitor comic poet, allegedly favors cunnilingus and habitually exercises his tongue licking brothel whores’ genitals (1280–1283: γλωττοποιεῖν εἰς τὰ πορνεῖα), an act that certainly aroused viewers’ disgust.63 58 59

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Six compound verb forms of perdomai express comic flatulence; Pax 1077 relates the ‘fart most foul’ oracle. Joseph Pujol, the world’s renowned pétomane, had unique sphincter-control, ‘an elastic anus’, as he claimed. The achievements of the early twentieth-century theatrical farter from Marseille appeared in books and film. Kleon has filthy testicles, but he ranks as an abnormal animal, not an Athenian man, much less a hoplite (1035). Obscenity without disgust characterizes dirty old Philokleon’s fantasy of gazing on the ripe genitals of eighteen-year-old boys enrolled at their dokimasia (578), or when he asks young, little ‘Pussy-Piggy’ Dardanis to rub his decayed ‘rope’ and to fellate him (Vespae 1342–1350). The age discrepancy possibly produces disgust (in younger viewers, anyway). Vespae 1035. Father-loving Bdelukleon comments on his own father’s filthy ass (Vespae 604), and describes him in a heavy coat thus: you look like a foot-boil dressed in a garlic bandage (Vespae 1172). Whether the child-eating ogress Lamia has testicles was already a question for the scholiasts; MacDowell thinks s/he may have been a Hermaphrodite. 1070: euruprōktoi is a favored element among disgrace- and disgust-evoking insults (cf. 687); compare the rare descriptor ‘feather-rumped’ (?), τοὐρροπύγιον (1076; Nubes 158, 162). The loose parameters of Attic comedy avoided staging certain taboo bodily fluids: menstrual discharges, semen and sperm ejaculation, smegma removed from penile foreskin. Vaginal discharges appear, according to Sommerstein (Index 2002 s.v.). He cites Equites 1285 (Ariphrades who licks ‘the abominable dew’ [drosos] ‘will never share a cup with us’), Pax 716 (punning on meat soup, zōmos), Lysistrata 197, 1061–1064 (see also Sommerstein’s notes ad locc.), and Ecclesiazusae 845 (punning on young girls’ ‘pea-soup’). Mining with the pinkyfinger for earwax (cerumen) may be absent for reasons connected to masks. Tears uniquely (among bodily products) escape disgust reactions. See Henderson 1975/1991 for discussion of these obscene substances, disgusting and not.

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References to toilet slops emptied from chamber pots into the street may reflect ordinary unspoken practice, but, in the god Dionysos’ precinct, they break another boundary, violate another taboo and religious protocols, and thus trigger the innocent audience’s subversive, therefore pleasurable, disgust.64 Aristophanes mentions all the disgusting oral emissions: vomit, hot belches, and spit. Vomit (ἐµεῖν, λύγξ), the signature event (Rozin 1999, 430) of extreme disgust, is often preceded by the ugly sounds of retching and/or gagging. Homer’s Cyclops vomits (Odyssey 9.374), exemplifying his uncouth manners and his ignorance of the power of sweet Thracian wine. Involuntary spasms of the throat and stomach muscles are painful to experience and disgusting for even close acquaintances. Dionysos himself threatens to throw up, if his slave Xanthias makes the usual poor jokes about wanting to shit or cut farts (Ranae 8–11).65 Kleon vomited up some of his ill-gotten gains. Dikaiopolis wants a feather to help him vomit when he sees the disgusting display of general Lamakhos’ crest (Acharnians 6, 586f.).66 Belches (ἐρυγγάνω, ἐρύγη) can express the banqueteer’s pleasure, but the comic poets stage their sounds to express and evoke bystanders’ disgust.67 Philokleon objects to the rank belches of a nearby dog and a stinking cloak. Spit (πτύειν, and compounds), whether employed to expel an unwelcome substance in the oral cavity or mere saliva summoned to disparage recollection of another person, expresses contempt and puts distance between the expectorator and his interactant, or an absent, apostrophized third-party.68 Philokleon expresses spit’s original purpose (Vespae 787–792), to clear the mouth of something unhealthy and therefore nauseating. Lysistratos, an acquaintance, had treated him in a most disgusting manner (aiskhista). He had given the protagonist rotten mullet scales

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Acharnenses (425 BCE) 616, Vespae (early 422) 259–261, 806, 858, 935–940. Blepuros’ constipation (Ecclesiazusae 311–372) introduces an extended scene of scatological humor. He strains to ‘do his business’ outside in the ‘dark’, crouching near the front edge of the ‘stage’. Involuntary excretions such as suffering severe hiccoughs, the expulsion of phlegm or snot in sneezing, suppurating diseases, or any nearby presence of pus or blood cause disgust in onlookers but are not nonverbal expressions (‘leakage’) of it. Parker 1983, 100–103, and n. 113, discusses rituals designed to avert blood pollution, especially contamination from women giving birth and during menstruation, an aversion found also in Orthodox Jewish rituals. Examples of nearby putrid eructation: Aristophanes, Pax 528, Vespae 913, 1151: hot and foul; Kratinos 58; Eupolis 198/204; Euripides, Cyclops 523. The sole example in tragedy, if correctly restored by Hermann in Agamemnon 1388–1389, has victorious Klytaimestra coarsely describe Agamemnon’s dying as belching forth his life, spurting out blood, striking his spousal killer with a dark shower of gory dew. The disgusted chorus responds with φεῦ, the exclamation of loathing (Stanford 1983, 157). In revulsion, they compare her to a creeping insect, the spider. Examples, in tragedy: Antigone 1232, Hippolytus 614, Hecuba 1276, Helena 664, Hercules furens 560 (collected by Stanford 1983, 34). Haimon spits in his father’s face, an atrocious violation of father-respect.

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rather than several obols that he owed him. Philokleon smelled them, was nauseated, and spat them out (βδελυχθείς, ὀσφρόµενος, ἐξέπτυσα).69 6 CONCLUSIONS Tears are the one bodily product that people freely mention in polite company. Disgust taboos limit references to all others. On the interpersonal level, across cultures core disgust-elicitors arouse immediate aversive behaviors (Rozin 1999). Beyond instinctual, cross-cultural reactions to oral incorporation of bitter, slimy, and smelly substances and persons, the primary energy of disgust expresses itself strongly to mark repulsive persons, acts, and things.70 Long after humans evolved and instincts formed, the Greeks developed social and moral values and prejudices.71 Among these, one discerns secondary, also known as moral or ‘ranking’ disgust. This socializing response labels many targets as beyond redemption. Men and women so designated are deemed flawed in ways that neither persuasion nor education can cure. Epic locates men who provoke but do not express both kinds of disgust in both armed camps. Thersites and Paris, Polyphemos and Iros show relevant flaws in their persons and behaviors. Tragic tales label targeted persons as beyond human redemption – although clearly not beyond divine attention. Stigmatized divine children and tragic heroes cannot be fully reincorporated in this life. Comic men and women possess irremediable disgusting flaws that neither persuasion, nor castigation, nor education can ever cure, reintegrate, or accept in polis society. In similar ways, we can imagine that Bdelukleon regards his crude father as wrong-headed yet salvageable, but Aristophanes considers Athens’ sycophants and demagogues, the Kleons and Hyperboloi to be disgusting brutes, farting, stinking, shark-toothed monsters (Vespae 1031). The comic poet recruits disgust and fears to encourage ‘negative socialization’. Aversive emotional displays protect citizens from psycho-physical contamination, first the body, then the soul, and finally the (Attic) community (cf. Rozin 1999, 439f.). ‘Secondary disgust’ reacts to threats of psychological contamination. The term denotes emotional defenses developed from the physical anxiety that preserves persons from physical and social harm. Aristophanes animalizes Kleon to ostracize him from personal fellowship and polis power (Vespae 1035; Pax 758; cf. Acharnians, Equites). He asserts that the tanner stinks like a seal, exhibits a mythical female monster’s un-

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Aristophanes’ Euripides (Ranae 1179) expresses the metaphoric contemptuous use of kataptuson, telling his competitor character Aiskhylos, to ‘spit on me’, if Euripides does not emerge victorious. Kaster 2005 discusses Roman fastidium denoting our primary versus secondary disgust distinction as ‘per se disgust’ as opposed to ‘deliberative, ranked disgust’. Moral disgust is more divergent – in varieties, causes, displays, and its effects on others – than nearly instinctual physical ‘core’ disgust.

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washed balls, and has a camel’s asshole.72 The sight and smells elicit several core or primary disgust markers. Wannabe aristocrats like Bdelukleon attempt to develop their recalcitrant students’ secondary, moral disgusts from grosser forms of disgust. The fastidious Bdelukleon employs aversion training to distance his dense, resistant father from demagogues, but the old man’s fierce resistance finally renders his efforts counter-productive. Gross-out forms of entertainment remain popular today, especially with the young, male demographic. While funny and disgusting may, at first sniff, seem unrelated reactions, violations of civilized protocols that cause theatergoers no harm and degrade powerful (or powerless) villains, they reward audiences’ desire for emotional stimulation, providing brief relief from their putative, staged victims’ real status or actual agency.73 Displays of disgust help to preserve some dignity for persons trapped amidst foulness and degradation. Its expression allows an endangered co-present party to distance itself from potentially harmful aspects of another’s necessarily animal functions. Humans are subject to identical needs of alimentation and elimination, sexual frustration and satisfaction, etc. Nevertheless, expressing disgust allows us to dissociate ourselves from animal manifestations – from our neighbors’ and our own. In the Attic theater, Athenians experienced Aristophanes’ sociable inclusion of them watching the degraded exclusions of Kleon and others. At a safe distance, one may enjoy disgusting acts and others’ uneasy, closer exposure to them. Disgust may be the newest and most advanced of the omnivores’ helpful emotions, a reaction to our most potent threat, pathogens (as Herz claims, 2012, 82, following Rozin). The more germ-averse you are, the better your genome’s chances of survival and reproduction. The emotion of disgust has biological functions and cultural roots in animal nature. Enculturated repugnance has evolved from a European upper-class luxury, protecting the elite few from distasteful persons’ sights, sounds, and smells, to a democratic demand that removes the most obvious reminders of that nature to ‘behind the scenes’ (Elias 1939/1978, 120f.). So powerful are the effects of disgust that Rozin 1999, 434 in admiration calls disgust ‘the emotion of civilization, and of socialization’. The graphic theologian Martin Luther described74 himself and his corrupt world: ‘I am like ripe shit, and the world is a gigantic ass-hole. We probably will let go of each other soon’. This ‘excremental vision’ of existence, visible also in Rabelais’ fictions and Bosch’s painting of the ‘Last Judgement’, far surpasses the provocations and reactions to disgust found in Hellenic epic, tragedy, and 72

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Kleon recently died (near Thracian Amphipolis, summer 422; Thucydides 5.10) while disastrously commanding an Athenian army, but his cowardly demise still demands Aristophanes’ violent ‘moral’ disgust, publicly expressed in spring 421. De mortuis etiam malum. Herz 2012, 153 explains ‘excitation transfer’, by which psychological adjustment already funny events become even funnier since the arousal energy of disgust multiplies it. Situations building on human hunger and sex instincts further intensify amusement. M. Luther, Table Talk 5537; Greenblatt 1982, 11–12 cites this passage and praises the ‘quantity, intensity, and inventiveness’ of Luther’s sixteenth-century scatological imagery.

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comedy. The world since pre-Christian antiquity has become more disgusted and disgusting. Further, our culture has become more disgust-focused, disgusted by our own bodies and disgust-sensitive to reminders of mortality.75 BIBLIOGRAPHY Ashenburg, K. (2007) The Dirt on Clean, New York. Bradley, M., ed. (2015) Smell and the Ancient Senses, New York. Clarke, J. R. (2007) Looking at Laughter, Berkeley/Los Angeles. Corbin, A. (1986) The Foul and The Fragrant: Odor and the French Social Imagination. Trans. M. L. Kochan et alii, Cambridge MA. Dacke, M., E. Baird, M. Byrne, C. H. Scholtz, and E. J. Warrant (2013) ‘Dung Beetles Use the Milky Way for Orientation’, Current Biology 23.4. 298–300. Darwin, C. (1998) The Expression of the Emotions in Man and Animals, ed. P. Ekman, Oxford. Orig. 1872. David, E. (1989) Laughter in Spartan Society, in A. Powell (ed.), Classical Sparta, London, 1–25. Douglas, M. (1966) Purity and Danger, Harmondsworth. Ekman, P. (1992) Telling Lies, New York. Elias, N. (1978) The History of Manners: The Civilizing Process. Vol. 1, 1939. Trans. E. Jephcott, New York. Friedrich, W. H. (2003) Wounding and Death in the Iliad. Trans. G. Wright and P. Jones, London. Fulkerson, L. (2013) No Regrets: Remorse in Classical Antiquity, New York. Goffman, E. (1956/1967) Embarrassment and Social Organization, in Interaction Ritual, New York 1967, 97–113. Greenblatt, S. (1982) Filthy Rites, Daedalus 111.3, 1–16. Harris, W. V. (2001) Restraining Rage: The Ideology of Anger Control in Classical Antiquity. Cambridge MA. Henderson, J. (1975, rev. 1991) The Maculate Muse: Obscene Language in Attic Comedy, New Haven. Herz, R. (2012) That’s Disgusting: Unraveling the Mysteries of Repulsion, New York. Kaster, R. (2001) The Dynamics of fastidium and the Ideology of Disgust, Transactions of the American Philological Association 113, 143–189. ––– (2005) Emotion, Restraint, and Community in Ancient Rome, Oxford. Kekes, J. (1992) Disgust and Moral Taboos, Philosophy 67, 431–446. Kelly, D. (2011) Yuck. The Nature and Moral Significance of Disgust, Cambridge. Kirk, G. S. (1985), The Iliad: A Commentary I, Cambridge. Konstan, D. and N. K. Rutter, eds. (2003) Envy, Spite and Jealousy. The Rivalrous Emotions in Ancient Greece, Edinburgh. ––– (2006) The Emotions of the Ancient Greeks, Toronto. Korsmeyer, C. (2011) The Aesthetics of Disgust, Oxford. Lateiner, D. (1992) Heroic Proxemics: Social Space and Distance in the Odyssey, Transactions of the American Philological Association 122, 133–163. ––– (2009) Kissing, Amphora 8.1, 16f. ––– (2017) Disgust in the Latin Novels of Petronius and Apuleius, in D. Lateiner and D. Spatharas (eds.), The Ancient Emotion of Disgust, New York. Menninghaus, W. (2003) Disgust. Theory and History of a Strong Sensation, 2001. Translated by H. Eiland and J. Gelb, Albany. 75

Elias 1939/1978, volume II, chapters iv-ix, argues this thesis.

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Miller, W. I. (1997) The Anatomy of Disgust, Cambridge MA. Ngai, S. (2002) Raw Matter: A Poetics of Disgust, in M. Wallace and S. Marks (eds.), Telling it Slant, Tuscaloosa and London, 161–190. North, H. (1966) Sophrosyne. Self-Knowledge and Self-Restraint in Greek Literature, Ithaca NY. Nussbaum, M. (2004) Hiding from Humanity. Disgust, Shame, and the Law, Princeton. Parker, R. (1983) Miasma, Oxford. Rozin, P. (2008) Disgust, in M. Lewis and J. Haviland-Jones (eds.), Handbook of Emotions. 2nd ed. New York, Ch. 40, 637–653. Rozin, P. and A. Fallon (1987) A Perspective on Disgust, Psychological Review 94, 23–41. Rozin, P., J. Haidt, and C. McCauley (1999) Disgust: The Body and Soul Emotion, in T. Dalgleish and M. Power (eds.), Handbook of Cognition and Emotion, Chichester/New York, 429–445. Rusten, J., ed. (2011) The Birth of Comedy, Baltimore. Segal, C. (1971) The Theme of the Mutilation of the Corpse in the ‘Iliad’, Leiden. Shay, J. (1995) Achilles in Vietnam: Combat Trauma and the Undoing of Character, New York. Sommerstein, A. (2002) Index: The Comedies of Aristophanes, Vol. 12, Warminster. Stanford, W. B. (1983) Greek Tragedy and the Emotions, London. Steiner, D. (2008) Beetle Tracks: Entomology, Scatology, and the Discourse of Abuse, in I. Sluiter and R. Rosen (eds.), Kakos, Leiden/Boston, 83–118. Sutton, R. F. (2000) The Good, the Base, and the Ugly, in B. Cohen (ed.), Not the Classical Ideal, Leiden/Boston, 186–202. Tordoff, R. (2011) Excrement, Sacrifice, Commensality: The Ophresiology of Aristophanes’ Peace, Arethusa 44, 167–198.

HORROR, PITY, AND THE VISUAL IN ANCIENT GREEK AESTHETICS Douglas Cairns In Sophocles’ Oedipus Tyrannus, once the true horror of what Oedipus has (unwittingly) done has become known, the Chorus sing a song (the fourth stasimon) in which they reflect on their king’s status as a paradigm of the instability of human happiness – if even someone like Oedipus, the saviour of his city, can rise so high only to fall so low, which of us is not vulnerable (1186–1222)?1 Oedipus’ own reaction to this horror is to blind himself, and his reappearance on stage, once he has done so, occasions this further reaction from the Chorus (Oedipus Tyrannus 1297–1306): ὦ δεινὸν ἰδεῖν πάθος ἀνθρώποις, ὦ δεινότατον πάντων ὅσ’ ἐγὼ προσέκυρσ’ ἤδη. τίς σ’, ὦ τλῆµον, προσέβη µανία; τίς ὁ πηδήσας µείζονα δαίµων τῶν µηκίστων πρὸς σῇ δυσδαίµονι µοίρᾳ; φεῦ φεῦ δύστην’, ἀλλ’ οὐδ’ ἐσιδεῖν δύναµαί σ’, ἐθέλων πόλλ’ ἀνερέσθαι, πολλὰ πυθέσθαι, πολλὰ δ’ ἀθρῆσαι· τοίαν φρίκην παρέχεις µοι. What suffering, terrible for humans to see, most terrible of all that I have ever encountered! What madness came upon you, wretched one? What divine being was it that leapt further than the longest leap on top of your unhappy fate? Alas, poor man: I cannot even look at you, though there is much I want to ask, much to hear, and much to look at; such is the shiver (phrikē) you cause in me.

1

I should like to thank the Leverhulme Trust, the Alexander von Humboldt-Stiftung, the European Research Council (via the University of Oxford project, The Social and Cultural Construction of Emotions: The Greek Paradigm, directed by Professor A. Chaniotis), and the Arts and Humanities Research Council (via the University of Edinburgh project, A History of Distributed Cognition) for their support for the research from which this chapter developed, as well as Jan Bremmer, Elizabeth Craik, David Levenson, Oliver Overwien, and Richard Smith for advice and assistance with that research. I am also very grateful to audiences in Geneva, Nottingham, London, Freiburg, Caraça (Brazil), and Edinburgh for engaging with various oral versions, and to Pierre Destrée and Stephen Halliwell for their helpful comments on a written draft. A shorter, preliminary version of this chapter appeared in Pyschoanalytical Inquiry 35 (2015) 75–94.

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The Chorus are still, as in their previous song, horrified by what Oedipus’ suffering represents, and they remain, fundamentally, sympathetic to him. Yet Oedipus’ physical appearance makes a difference: the sight of the horrible mutilation that he has inflicted upon himself (represented in the new mask which the actor will have put on before re-emerging from the stage-building) elicits a new and more physical response, one that they call phrikē, shivering or shuddering.2 This response springs from a fascination with the spectacle that Oedipus now represents and yet also entails an instinctive revulsion towards that spectacle. Oedipus is, in a way, an object; but also an object of pity, a human being like the Chorus members themselves. The sight of Oedipus is important, but it is not merely this that excites the Chorus’ revulsion. They cannot bear to look at him (1303f.), but equally his entire pathos – not just the self-blinding, but the general catastrophe of which the self-blinding is the latest, most physical, and most visible expression – is ‘terrible for humans to see’ (1297). This scene is the point at which all the dense imagery of sight and blindness, light and darkness, insight and ignorance reaches its concrete, visual, and emotional climax, as the Oedipus who chose darkness over light as a way of avoiding sights too painful to contemplate (1371–1390) nonetheless insists on making himself an object of the citizens’ visual attention (1287–1289; see Cairns 1993, 217f.), and the Chorus express their fascination with the horror of a spectacle they cannot bring themselves to look upon, a fate they seek to understand but can barely begin to contemplate. Oedipus’ self-blinding encompasses a wish to be unseen as well as unseeing, yet he also insists on making his suffering visible; in a similar way, the Chorus are drawn to the spectacle that Oedipus presents, but find it so horrific that they cannot bear to look.3 My focus is on the specific nature of the Chorus’ emotional response, the phrikē that they experience on first setting eyes on the blinded king and in confronting his tragedy, the phrikē that also makes them reluctant to look. This, as we saw, is a response with a strong perceptual element; it is above all the sight of Oedipus in his present condition that triggers it. It is a spontaneous and instinctive reaction; but it is not merely a simple reflex, because its ideational content includes the Chorus’ attempt to encompass the sheer magnitude of Oedipus’ suffering, together with whatever superhuman or supernatural forces may have caused it. These sensory and cognitive aspects, however, essential though they may be for the specification of the emotion in these particular circumstances, do not suffice to make phrikē what it is – for phrikē is fundamentally a physical experience, the experience of a body that shivers and shudders. In this passage, then, phrikē is (a) a spontaneous response to a shocking visual stimulus; (b) an interpretation of a particular state of affairs in terms of specific evaluative norms; and (c) a corporeal 2 3

As background to this discussion, see the more comprehensive and synthetic overview of the concept of phrikē in Cairns 2013. For contrasting (psychoanalytical versus anti-psychoanalytical) readings of this theme in the play, see Devereux 1973 and Buxton 1980.

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experience. Eyes, mind, and body are all implicated: the Chorus look, reflect, and shudder. Simply calling their response phrikē goes a very long way towards specifying and recreating its phenomenological character, what it feels like to be moved as they are moved by Oedipus. Whether we ourselves see the play in the theatre or merely in our mind’s eye as we read, the response of this internal audience is, at least in this instance, a guide to our own. Phrikē can be the name of an emotion (see below), but its primary significance lies in its reference to a physical symptom that is common to a range of emotional and non-emotional events. It belongs, in its primary sense, to the basic somatic level of emotion. Sources such as the Hippocratic corpus, other medical writings, and the collections of Problemata attributed to Aristotle and Alexander of Aphrodisias all give ample evidence of its basic somatic aspect.4 In medical writers, phrikē is especially associated with fever and cold sweats.5 These sources are well-nigh unanimous in relating phrikē and its cognates to bodily temperature: we shudder when we are cold,6 and when we shudder or shiver in other circumstances (e.g. when we are afraid, when we are suffering from various physical ailments, when we sneeze, when we urinate, after eating, etc.) variations in bodily temperature are normally also implicated.7 For Galen, phrikē affects only the skin, whereas rhigos, ‘chill’, affects the whole body,8 illustrating a link between shuddering or shivering and piloerection (a vestigial phenomenon in humans) that is frequently noted elsewhere,9 and which can in turn provide a cue for comment on 4

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8

9

Cf. Burkert 2010, 48f. The Hippocratic corpus has 60 occurrences of the noun, phrikē, 36 of the verb, phrissein (cf. one instance of phrikazein), and 53 of the derivative adjective, phrikōdēs (plus one of the synonym, phrikaleos). In Galen, the figures are 110, 49, and 86 respectively. In the pseudo-Aristotelian Problemata, see esp. Book 8 (887b10–889b9) on chill (rhigos) and shivering (phrikē – 9 occurrences of the root; there are a further 25 occurrences elsewhere in the work). Cf. e.g. Hesiod, Works and Days 539f.; Plutarch, De primo frigido 947C for the fundamental association with bodily temperature. E.g. Hippocrates, Aphorisms 7.4, On Diseases 1.23–25; cf. Zink 1962, 19 n. 49; Berrettoni 1970, 262; Op de Hipt 1972, 210f. It is, however, rhigos and not phrikē that is etymologically related to Latin frigeo, frigus (Chantraine 1968–1980, 1249). Cf. Berrettoni 1970, 263. Galen, however, insists on the existence of other causes, e.g. the application of bitter drugs (De tremore vii.627.11–629.5 Kühn). He also distinguishes between phrikē and rhigos as symptoms of fear and as signs of physical cold (ibid., 628.2–4); contrast [Aristotle], Problemata 889a15–25, on the role of bodily temperature in the emotions of fear and anger. Galen, De tremore vii.612.9–12 Kühn; for Hippocrates, On Diseases 1.24 the distinction is simply one of degree, phrikē being the milder reaction. Galen, however, also notes that all other medical writers use the terms interchangeably (De tremore vii.611.18–612.4). Two late sources (Palladius, Synopsis de febribus 24 in Ideler 1841, 117f.; Theophilus and Stephanus of Athens, De febrium differentia in Sicurus 1862, 30–32) confirm Galen’s view of his fellow professionals; while ancient grammarians (Apollonius Sophista, Lexicon Homericum 138.32; Hesychius ῥ 299–301) regularly use the two groups of terms interchangeably. E.g. [Aristotle], Physiognomonica 812b30, Problemata 888a38, 889a26, [Alexander of Aphrodisias], Problemata 2.26; cf. [Theocritus] Idyllia 25.244f., Plutarch fr. 73 Sandbach. Cf. the

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the occurrence of phrikē also in non-human animals, in both emotional and nonemotional scenarios.10 Phrikē, therefore, is an involuntary bodily movement, one that is part of human beings’ pre-human inheritance and rooted in basic systems of bodily regulation that respond to changes in the temperature of the organism and of the environment. As a symptom of emotion, and especially of fear-like emotions, it is a member of a set of related symptoms that are also recognized in our own folk models (‘I shudder to think’, ‘it gives me the shivers’, ‘he was in a cold sweat’, ‘she’s got cold feet’, ‘it was a chilling/hair-raising experience’), and confirmed by empirical investigation.11 In Greek as in English, however, such terms are not restricted to the labelling of physical symptoms. In the language of emotion, it is typical for the physical symptom to be used as a metonym for the emotion with which it is associated. A large number of passages illustrate this with reference to phrikē in Greek, but the phenomenon is at its clearest when the verb phrissein, ‘to shudder’, governs a direct object in the same way as would a verb meaning ‘to fear’.12 Thus, in a famous passage, Helen contrasts the kindness of Hector with the horror that she occasions in the other Trojans (Iliad 24.774f.):13 οὐ γάρ τίς µοι ἔτ’ ἄλλος ἐνὶ Τροίῃ εὐρείῃ ἤπιος οὐδὲ φίλος, πάντες δέ µε πεφρίκασιν. For I no longer have anyone else in broad Troy who is gentle or kind – all the others shudder at me.

10

11

12 13

frequency of the association between goosebumps (UK English goosepimples) and physical cold (as also with fever and other biological functions such as sneezing) in the studies of Schurtz et alii 2012. S. fr. 875 Radt, [Aristotle], Physiognomonica 812b30 (again), Nicander Theriaca 721, 727, Plutarch Aristides 18.2 (developing the Homeric image by which weapons and the like bristle like the fur of an angry animal), Dio Chrysostom Oration 58.4, Achilles Tatius 1.12.3, x 14 in Aelian, On the Nature of Animals, [Alexander of Aphrodisias], Problemata 4.159. Specifically on symptoms of fear, see Darwin 1889, 70f., 346f. (trembling), 100f., 104f., 291f., 295–298 (piloerection), 291, 346f. (temperature changes), with Ekman’s comments (in the 1998 edition) and further reading where relevant; cf. Eibl-Eibesfeldt 1989, 371 (on piloerection), 479 (on changes in skin temperature); Balcombe 2010, 48 (on changes in body and skin temperature as symptoms of fear and other emotions in humans and animals); cf. also Burkert 2010, 46. For low body temperature as a metonym for fear in various cultures, see Kövecses 2000, 5, 23f.; for a survey of psychological applications of words meaning warm and cold in Greek, see Zink 1962, esp. 15–30 on ‘“Kälte” als Ausdruck einer unangenehmen Gefühlslage wie Schreck, Angst, Furcht, Entsetzen, Grauen’; cf. also Bouvier 2011. On the relation between actual physical temperature and the metaphorical concepts of emotional warmth and coldness, see Williams and Bargh 2008, Zhong and Leonardelli 2008, Wilkowski et alii, 2009. For this phenomenon, cf. Apollonius Dyscolus, De constructione 413.5–415.2. Cf. (among a large number of parallels) Aeschylus, Septem contra Thebas 720f., Euripides, Cyclops 320, Hippolytus 855, Sophocles, Antigone 997, Aristophanes, Nubes 1132f. The same phenomenon is observable when the noun, phrikē, governs an objective genitive, as at Euripides, Ion 898, Plutarch, Timoleon 22.6.

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That the verb phrissein in such locutions stands for a verb of fearing (vel sim.) is particularly clear in Euripides’ Hippolytus (415–418), where Phaedra expresses her incredulity that an adulteress should be able to conceal her guilty conscience from her husband: αἳ πῶς ποτ’, ὦ δέσποινα ποντία Κύπρι, βλέπουσιν ἐς πρόσωπα τῶν ξυνευνετῶν οὐδὲ σκότον φρίσσουσι τὸν ξυνεργάτην τέραµνά τ’ οἴκων µή ποτε φθογγὴν ἀφῇ; How, oh Cyprian, mistress of the deep, can they look their husbands in the face and not shudder at the darkness, their partner in crime, or at the timbers of the house, lest they at some stage speak?

The fact that phrissein is here followed not only by a direct object, but also by a noun clause of the sort that regularly specifies the propositional content of a verb of fearing indicates that ‘shudder’ here is a simple metonymy for ‘fear’;14 shudders as such need not imply propositional content in the thoughts of those who experience them. The importance of emotional symptoms in the construction of emotional concepts underlines the fundamental importance of physical embodiment in the concept of emotion itself. In the case of phrikē, the symptom is one that has its roots in basic somatic mechanisms of temperature regulation, that is manifested in a range of non-emotional contexts, and that is shared with other animals. From these materials, universal in humans and extending beyond the human species, is constructed an emotional concept in which physical symptoms are intimately related to cognitive appraisals and evaluations. The mechanism by which this occurs is the universal one of metonymy, by which the name of the symptom comes to function as a name of the emotion. The concept of phrikē is typical in locating the language and thought of emotion in embodied physical experience. There is nothing in any way surprising or unfamiliar about this – the point is precisely that ancient Greek emotional concepts are, to large extent, built up out of the same materials as our own, materials that draw on our experience as physically embodied beings interacting with our physical and social environments. What needs to be emphasized, however, is that this experiential, embodied nature of emotion is not just an aspect of a shared biological substratum; it is a feature also of language and of thought. It is not that embodiment is relevant only in terms of emotions’ physical changes, symptoms, and expressions and is left behind when emotional concepts take root in language, thought, and culture. There is no disjunction, but rather a fundamental continuity between emotions as physical experiences and emotional concepts as linguistic and cultural categories. In terms of the develop14

Cf. Odyssey 23.216, where the verb in question is rhigein. The response that Phaedra attributes to the hypothetical adulteress also involves a failure to experience the guilty fear of exposure that Phaedra herself would feel in such a situation; thus, though still a form of fear, phrikē is here implicated in a scenario that also encompasses prospective and retrospective shame. On this aspect of the wider context, see Cairns 1993, 321–340.

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ment of emotional concepts, there is no wedge to be driven between the body, on the one hand, and language and culture on the other. Attention to these wider aspects of emotion language (beyond the semantics of emotion-words themselves) not only accords due recognition to the role of embodied experience but can also provide better evidence of a culture’s phenomenology of emotion, getting us as close as we can get to a culture’s attempt to encapsulate subjective emotional experience in language.15 A fundamental aspect of that phenomenology in the case of phrikē is its regular association with immediate, automatic, and instinctive responses to direct and often sudden visual or aural stimuli. The Aristotelian Problemata discuss phrikē as a spontaneous reaction to various unpleasant sounds (886b9–11, 964b34–37), a reflex that is then explicitly explained in terms of fear, on the basis that such sounds are instinctively regarded as signs of impending trouble (887a 1–3).16 This particular association between phrikē and immediate visual or aural stimuli is widely confirmed,17 and is reflected in the way that the adjective phrikōdēs very often qualifies sights and sounds: though many of these passages include a reference to the ominous connotations or negative import of the sights or sounds in question, it is clear that in many cases the adjective also highlights the capacity of the stimulus to elicit an instinctive and automatic emotional response. Plutarch, for example, uses phrikōdēs of the deep and horrific roar, the low and terrible tone, a mixture of bestial roaring and the clap of thunder, produced by the Parthians’ percussion instruments as they face the Romans in battle, commenting that the Parthians have clearly understood the impact of such sounds on the emotions and morale of their opponents (Crassus 23.8f.).18 In the Oedipus passage with 15 16

17

18

Cf. Burkert 2010, 54. The relation of the startle reflex to the emotion of fear is similarly in question at 964b22–29, where the phrikē caused by being touched by another person is explained in terms of the fear aroused by what is sudden and unexpected. The link with vision is esp. frequent in Plutarch’s Lives: see Alexander 74.6, Aratus 32.3, Cicero 49. 2, Marius 44.9, Numa 10.6; cf. phrissein and cognates + participle of a verb of seeing, e.g. Aeschylus, Supplices 346, Prometheus Vinctus 695. For phrikē as a reaction to loud, sudden, uncanny, or unexpected noises, cf. Cassius Dio, Historia Romana 48.37.2 Boissevain (cf. 36.49.2); Philostratus, Heroicus 748.14–17. Again, parallels are very numerous. See for example Euripides, Hippolytus 1201f. (sounds of supernatural origin), 1215f. (ditto), Andromache 1147f. (ditto), Aristophanes, Ranae 1335f. (ditto), [Aristotle], Mirabilium auscultationes 843a15f. (the mere sight of waves in the Straits of Messina), Apollonius Rhodius 4.1339–1342 (sound as sign of danger), Plutarch, Marius 19.1–20.3 (the groans and lamentations of their defeated opponents echo through the hills at night and terrify the Romans), Sulla 14.3 (the sound of trumpets and horns; cf. Pollux 4.85: phrikōdēs a good epithet for the sound of the trumpet), Josephus, Jewish Wars 4.286f. (thunder), 6.2 (the sight of piles of corpses), 6.83f. (the sight of one centurion’s prodigious massacre of the enemy), Plutarch, Comparatio Lysandri et Sullae 2.4 (the sight of slaughter), Lucian, Philopseudes 22 (the Gorgon-like aspect of a female monster), Achilles Tatius 3.17.7 (the sight of Leucippe emerging, mutilated but alive, from her coffin). In these phrikē-causing sights and sounds the element of fear, or at least of the unnerving or uncanny, is prominent; Greek writers seem not to present phrikē as a response to stirring or awe-inspiring sights or

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which we began, the Chorus’ sudden shock at being confronted by the sight of their once-revered king, now horribly mutilated, is fully in keeping with these connotations of phrikē. Phrikē’s associations with unexpected and unsettling visual stimuli, however, also make it an especially appropriate response to epiphany, quasi-epiphany, or other presumed signs of divine presence – another relevant aspect of our tragic passage, in which the Chorus’ questions focus specifically on the daimonic origins of Oedipus’ sufferings. A heavenly light, for example, occasions phrikē before the divine in Xenophon’s Cyropaedia (4.2.15),19 and phrikē is the reaction of the audience to the illusion of divine presence or possession created by the Sicilian statesman, Nicias, in Plutarch’s Life of Marcellus 20.8.20 In the recently published ‘Getty Hexameters’ (fifth-century BCE incantations against witchcraft found on a lead tablet from Selinus in Sicily), phrikē’s association with unpleasant and unsettling auditory stimuli takes on an ominous, chthonic dimension in a reference to the ‘barbarian shriek’ that the underworld goddess, Hecate, emits ‘with phrikōdēs voice’ (φρικώδεϊ φωνῇ).21 The relevant terms are also used of reactions to the supernatural communications believed to occur in dreams,22 or to a variety of miracles, portents, and omens.23 In such contexts, phrikē often connotes awe and def-

19

20

21 22 23

sounds (such as works of art or pieces of music) as such; contrast the subjects investigated by Schurtz et alii 2012, and cf. Keltner and Haidt 2003, 300f., 303f., 306f. Cf. the shudders that respond to epiphany at Hesiod fr. 165.4f. M-W and to the divine sign from Zeus that marks Oedipus’ heroization at Oedipus Coloneus 1606f., though in both these places the verb employed is rhigein. For the ‘holy shudder’, cf. esp. Burkert 2010, 50–54; also Keltner and Haidt 2003, 298f., 308–310 on awe and religion. Only a very small number of respondents in the survey of Schurtz et alii 2012 refer their goosepimples to religious experiences (p. 209); but (as the authors note, p. 210) this may simply reflect the limited scope for profound religious experiences in the lives of typical US college students over the four-week period of the survey. For phrikē in the context of quasi-or assumed epiphany (i.e. when the appearance or behaviour of a mortal suggests or is assimilated to epiphany), see Josephus, Antiquitates Iudaicae 19.344f. (the quasi-epiphany of Agrippa in the theatre), Plutarch, De Alexandri magni fortuna aut virtute 343E (the appearance of Alexander as quasi-epiphany), Aratus 32.1f. (a captive girl in a warrior’s helmet taken for an apparition of a goddess). Lines 13f.: see Kotansky and Jordan 2011, 57, Faraone and Obbink 2013, 10–13; cf. Janko 2013, 40f. See also the comments of Bremmer 2013, 28, Janko 2013, 50, 59f. See Josephus, Bellum Iudaicum 3.353, Plutarch, De superstitione 165F, Philostratus, Heroicus 666.6–8, Achilles Tatius 5.25.4. Again, the basic phenomenon goes back to Homer (Iliad 12.208f., a physical shudder at the sight of an omen, though the verb there is rhigein), but Plutarch proves especially rich in instances: see Aemilius 17.8 (eclipse), Agesilaus 24.5 (daylight as quasi-divine sign, associated with Eleusis), Sulla 11.1 (an omen that takes place in the theatre), Timoleon 12.9 (the phrikē and wonder, thauma, of the people of Adranum when, at the beginning of Timoleon’s battle against Hicetas of Leontini, the gates of their temple spontaneously flew open to reveal the cult-statue’s spear-tip trembling, sweat running down the god’s face). For ‘wonder’ as a stock feature of epiphanies, often coupled with ‘fear’, see e.g. Homer, Iliad 3.398, Odyssey 1.322f., 3.372f., 16.178f., 19.36–40, Homeric Hymn to Apollo 134f., Homeric Hymn to Aphrodite 81– 90; cf. Richardson 1974, 208f.; Faulkner 2008, 164.

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erence as much as fear,24 and it is in this sense that sacred places, such as temples and shrines, are said to attract it.25 In connection with the divine, then, phrikē has as much to do with sebas, a type of awe or respect that responds to legitimate status and authority,26 as it does with simple fear of unpleasant consequences. It is in this respect that phrikē is associated with the institution of the oath, a ritual that publicly puts at stake the honour both of the human actors and its divine guarantors in an often elaborate and solemn ceremony involving prescribed roles and formulas. To be sure, in this context phrikē remains, at bottom, an instinctive and involuntary emotional response, but its association with the oath reminds us that such responses are regularly embedded in highly structured and specific cultural practices.27 A large number of passages from the Imperial Period and later make this link,28 but the association between the oath and the physical reaction that phrikē represents is as old as Greek literature itself, as we see in the case of Pri24 25

26

27

28

Cf. Cornutus, De natura deorum 11.3–18; Julian, Contra Heracleium 8.14–17, Epistulae 89b.169–175. See Demosthenes 23.74 (of the Delphinion, the court with jurisdiction over justifiable homicide, qua holy place); Josephus, Bellum Iudaicum 4.181f., 6.123; Plutarch, Tiberius and Gaius Gracchus 21.5; NB esp. Pollux 1.23, where phrikōdēs appears after ‘august’, ‘godfilled’, and ‘numinous’ in a list of appropriate epithets for temples. This basic, instinctive response to the awesomeness of the numinous as such is attested (albeit with the verb rhigein) as early as the shudder with which Ajax looks upon the works of the gods at Iliad 16.119f. See Cairns 1993, 137f., 157, 206–214. On occasion, phrikē can also express awe or deference towards human superiors (e.g. Euripides, Troades 1025–1028, Plutarch Demosthenes 20.3, De Alexandri magni fortuna aut virtute 331F). On English awe as a social emotion, and especially on its positive aspects, see Keltner and Haidt 2003, Schurtz et alii 2012, 210–216. For Keltner and Haidt 2003, 306f. awe towards social superiors is the emotion’s ‘primordial’ form, the application to elicitors in the natural world, art, or music a secondary development. Schurtz et alii’s investigation of the physical symptom of ‘goosebumps’ likewise concentrates on social factors (for which their respondents did indeed provide much evidence). But the rootedness of such symptoms in evolutionarily old capacities that humans share with other species might suggest a different evolutionary hypothesis, less specifically focused on human social hierarchies. Cf. the deliberate arousal of the initiand’s phrikē in mystic initiation, esp. at Plutarch fr. 178 Sandbach (from On the Soul), a scenario that lies behind Plato’s account of the lover’s vision of Beauty Itself at Phaedrus 251a. As a response to the sanctity, solemnity, and power of the ritual, the link between phrikē and the mysteries is attested throughout antiquity and beyond: cf. Demetrius, De elocutione 101, Josephus, Bellum Iudaicum 2.133, Lucian, Juppiter tragoedus 30, Aristides, Hieroi logoi 2, 297.20f. Jebb (cf. 256.24, 320.5). Phrikōdēs and the like are frequently used in Christian writers’ representations of Christian dogma and practice, esp. the sacrament, as mysteries. For a speculative account of the links between mystic phrikē, Platonic philosophy, and tragedy (in which phrikē becomes central to tragedy’s effect on its audiences), see Gould 1990, 44–47, 57–62, 121–133, 135f., 202. See e.g. Philo Judaeus, De decalogo 141. 3, Josephus, Vita 275, Bellum Iudaicum 2.139, [Clement of Rome], Homiliae 5.5.2, Plutarch, Alexander 30.11, Arrian fr. 94.2f. Jacoby (with stress on sanctions for perjury), Pollux 1.39, Cassius Dio, Historia Romana 8.36.29 Boissevain, Porphyry, De abstinentia 4.13, and so on into the writings of the Church Fathers and beyond (e.g. x 7 in John Chrysostom, x 4 in Palladius).

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am’s shudder (with the verb rhigein) in response to the request that he perform oath-sacrifice at Iliad 3.259.29 To be sure, the oath entails frightening consequences in the event of its breach,30 but is also an institution in which status and prestige (Greek timē) are deeply implicated – the timē of the god is invested in the solemnity of the ritual itself and that of the human participants is committed to its maintenance. Emotional phrikē, then, is not always fear or a symptom of fear; occasionally it can be associated with apparently quite different emotions,31 but even when it does belong with fear-like emotions its connotations can be more specific. Though it can be associated with institutions, rituals, and scenarios that are deeply embedded in specifically Greek cultural norms, it retains its basic rootedness in the body and its sensations, specifying an immediate, instinctive, and occurrent form of emotional experience. It is, one presumes, precisely in order to retain such connotations, to conjure up something of the experience of emotion rather than merely labelling it, that language makes use of metonyms of this sort in the first place. When Sophocles’ Chorus refer to the phrikē that Oedipus occasions in them, therefore, they are referring to an involuntary, physical response. This is a response such as one would feel if one were very cold, one that is allied to feelings of fear and revulsion occasioned, on the one hand, by the sudden and shocking sight of Oedipus’ physical mutilation, but also by their reflections upon actions which are at once the most heinous of transgressions and the most shocking indication of human vulnerability to suffering. That suffering is now compounded in a horrific act of self-mutilation which (the Chorus assume) must be divinely inspired, as were the parricide and incest that preceded it. Precisely because their description of their reaction conveys such a pronounced sense of its phenomenology, audiences ancient and modern attain a more vivid and immediate understanding of what it might be like to be in their shoes. This understanding may itself reinforce an analogous reaction on the audience’s part. Some of the issues raised by this passage are addressed in Aristotle’s Poetics. In a characteristic passage of the important Chapter 14 (on the best type of tragic plot), Aristotle reflects on the importance of plot construction vis-à-vis visual spectacle (Poetics 14, 1453b1–7): ἔστιν µὲν οὖν τὸ φοβερὸν καὶ ἐλεεινὸν ἐκ τῆς ὄψεως γίγνεσθαι, ἔστιν δὲ καὶ ἐξ αὐτῆς τῆς συστάσεως τῶν πραγµάτων, ὅπερ ἐστὶ πρότερον καὶ ποιητοῦ ἀµείνονος. δεῖ γὰρ καὶ ἄνευ τοῦ ὁρᾶν οὕτω συνεστάναι τὸν µῦθον ὥστε τὸν ἀκούοντα τὰ πράγµατα γινόµενα καὶ φρίττειν καὶ ἐλεεῖν ἐκ τῶν συµβαινόντων· ἅπερ ἂν πάθοι τις ἀκούων τὸν τοῦ Οἰδίπου µῦθον. Pity and fear can derive from the visual (opsis), but also from the arrangement of the incidents itself, which is preferable and the mark of a better poet. For the plot ought to be so 29 30 31

Cf. rhigistē of the oath sworn by the Styx at Apollonius Rhodius 2.291f.; more remotely, rhigistos of Zeus Hikesios, Apollonius Rhodius 2.215. Cf. curses at Plutarch, Crassus 16.7, Timoleon 5.3, Philostratus, Vitae Sophistarum 2, p. 599.9–11; magic spells: Lucian, Philopseudes 31. E.g. intense, quasi-erotic joy, at Sophocles, Ajax 693.

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This passage contains the only instance of phrikē in the Poetics. The evidence considered above would suggest that Aristotle choses the verb phrissein over, say, phobeisthai (as one would expect given his repeated use of phobos and phoberos elsewhere in Poetics) precisely because the topic is the relative power of spectacle: that spectacle can produce phrikē is, given the term’s connotations, uncontroversial, but Aristotle wants to insist that even this quintessentially instinctive response to immediate and unexpected visual stimuli is better produced by means of the plot, for which performance is unnecessary. Aristotle’s example is the Oedipus Tyrannus, in which spectacle does play an important role in the phrikē expressed by the Chorus in the scene discussed above.32 As a practitioner, Sophocles might have wanted to insist on the interaction of plot and spectacle to a greater extent than Aristotle does. But the Chorus’ (and by extension the audience’s) response in the Oedipus Tyrannus is clearly not simply a product of visual effects; it depends on a reflective evaluation of a structured series of actions that does indeed, in many respects, correspond to the pattern commended in this chapter of the Poetics. Aristotle was not the first to give phrikē a role in poetics. At some point in the fifty years or so before Aristotle’s birth (in 484 BCE), the Sicilian philosopher and rhetorician, Gorgias, expressed what are, in some respects, similar ideas, in his Encomium of Helen. Part of this case involves the argument that persuasive speech is irresistible (Helen 8–14), and the prime example of such persuasive speech is poetry (Helen 9):33 τὴν ποίησιν ἅπασαν καὶ νοµίζω καὶ ὀνοµάζω λόγον ἔχοντα µέτρον· ἧς τοὺς ἀκούοντας εἰσῆλθε καὶ φρίκη περίφοβος καὶ ἔλεος πολύδακρυς καὶ πόθος φιλοπενθής, ἐπ’ ἀλλοτρίων τε πραγµάτων καὶ σωµάτων εὐτυχίαις καὶ δυσπραγίαις ἴδιόν τι πάθηµα διὰ τῶν λόγων ἔπαθεν ἡ ψυχή. All poetry I regard and describe as speech with metre. Into those who listen to it comes a fearful shuddering [phrikē] and a tearful pity and a longing that loves to lament, and at the success and failure of others’ affairs and persons the soul undergoes, through words, a certain experience of its own.

Like Aristotle, Gorgias is concerned with an audience’s emotional engagement with the changing fortunes of others; his core emotional responses are Aristotle’s pity and fear; and he emphasizes the power of these emotions with reference to physical symptoms and expressions (tears and phrikē). But Gorgias differs from Aristotle in the degree of emphasis that he places on the compulsive emotional 32

33

Cf. Gould 1990, 50f. Aristotle returns to the point 1462a10–18, where it is clear that reading is sufficient for tragedy’s effects to be realized, but that these are enhanced by music and performance. On this passage, see Segal 1962, esp. 105–107, 121f., 124f., 127f., 131f.; Halliwell 2011, 274f., 280f.; cf. Heath 1987, 7; Munteanu 2012, 40–42.

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power of opsis (Helen 15–19) as well as that of logos. Both, it emerges, persuade in similar ways: as the speech of astronomers persuades by making ‘what is incredible and obscure apparent to the eyes of opinion’ (Helen 13), so opsis ‘engraves images of the objects of vision on the mind’ (Helen 17).34 But this difference of emphasis takes us back to Aristotle’s point: both seeing and hearing involve the formation of mental images, and thus poetic speech alone, without opsis, is capable of arousing in the hearer the kind of emotion that opsis might arouse in the spectator.35 Both Gorgias and Aristotle, in fact, draw on the implicit poetics of earlier, pre-dramatic Greek poetry. In the Homeric poems, song is presented as something that derives from (Iliad 2.484–487) or at least resembles (Odyssey 8.491) eyewitness knowledge: Homer’s Demodocus was not present at Troy, and neither witnessed the events he narrates nor heard about them from someone who did; but someone who was present, Odysseus, is able to offer a unique guarantee of the bard’s powers of representation.36 That both audiences and authors revelled in such capabilities is demonstrated by the pervasive tradition of ekphrasis, the vivid, quasi-pictorial representation of a scene, person, animal, or object (not just a work of art) that appears already as a deliberate tour de force in the Shield of Achilles in Iliad 18. The capacity that allows a reader or hearer to form mental images from a verbal narrative the Greeks called phantasia and we call imagination; its counterpart in the text, and in the repertoire of skills which create the text, is enargeia (sometimes also emphasis or saphēneia), ‘vividness’.37 Enargeia remained an aspiration of wordsmiths and a core term of the literary and rhetorical critic’s art throughout antiquity, but for Greeks of all periods its unsurpassed master was Homer. An ancient scholar’s note on the famous passage of Iliad 6 in which Hector reaches out towards his baby son, only for the child to shrink back in fear at his helmet, is a typical example: 38

34 35

36 37

38

Cf. Halliwell 2011, 280f.; Munteanu 2012, 45–47. See Munteanu 2012, 47 on this passage and 95–100 on the importance of phantasia (imagination) in Aristotle’s approach to emotion, in everyday scenarios as well as in response to drama and poetry; in that regard, cf. once more Poetics 1462a14–18 (n. 32 above) on the enargeia (vividness) of tragedy both in performance and as a text for reading. On the truth of Aristotle’s insight, that emotional responses to imagined scenarios are as fundamental in life as in literature, cf. Currie and Ravenscroft 2002, 197. See De Jong 2001, 214f.; Serra 2007, 34; Halliwell 2011, 85f. On ekphrasis, enargeia, and phantasia, see Webb 2009. On enargeia, see Zanker 1981; on phantasia, Rosenmeyer 1986; Watson 1988; Manieri 1998; Halliwell 2002, 308–312; Serra 2007; Sheppard 2014. Σ bT on Iliad 6.467. Cf. Richardson 1980, 277–280, with further examples; Snipes 1988 on similes; Bakker 2005; Slatkin 2007; Graziosi and Haubold 2010, 23f. Here, Greek aesthetic and rhetorical theory seems to have been on to something: ‘brain-imaging studies show that when we imagine a visual scene, we activate the same visual regions of our brain normally active when we actually perceive the same visual scene’, Wojciehowski and Gallese 2011, 17, with references.

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Douglas Cairns δυσαποσπάστως µὲν ἔχουσι τῶν τροφῶν. τοῦτον δὲ καὶ ἡ ὄψις φοβεῖ. ταῦτα δὲ τὰ ἔπη οὕτως ἐστὶν ἐναργείας µεστά, ὅτι οὐ µόνον ἀκούεται τὰ πράγµατα, ἀλλὰ καὶ ὁρᾶται. Children do cling to their nurses and are hard to wrench away from them. But in this case the sight frightens him too. These lines are so full of enargeia that you don’t just hear what’s happening, you see it as well.

Though Gorgias and Aristotle stand – for us – at the beginning of the tradition of Greek literary aesthetics as a formal discipline, the tradition in which they themselves exist is already one which makes no absolute distinction between the effects of visual (dramatic) versus verbal representation. Although ancient Greek authors regularly comment on the greater power and persuasiveness of what one sees with one’s own eyes by comparison with what one merely hears about,39 it seems to have been an implicit ideal of Greek narrative to efface the distinction as far as possible. In both cases one’s powers of phantasia are engaged. In both, one’s response is typically emotional. And in both, the emotional response in question may have a pronounced somatic aspect that underlines the phenomenological continuity between narrative representations, dramatic representations, and the emotion-eliciting scenarios of everyday life. In all these respects, ancient aesthetics – both explicit and implicit, and especially the aesthetics of epic and tragic poetry – can be regarded as early contributions to current debate on a range of related issues: the central position of imagination among the cognitive capacities to which verbal and visual narratives appeal;40 the continuity between the cognitive and affective capacities enlisted by narratives and those that serve us in our quotidian lives as social creatures;41 the similarity between verbal and visual narratives in the way that they exploit these capacities;42 and on the role of the body in the imaginative and affective responses of audiences.43 39

40

41

42

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See e.g. Heraclitus B 101a DK, Herodotus 1.8.1, Xenophon, Memorabilia 3.11.1. It is characteristic that the Herodotus and Xenophon passages make use of the trope of the superiority of autopsy over hearsay in order to elicit by means of a verbal narrative a visualization of the primary viewing experienced by a figure in the narrative. On the Xenophon passage, cf. Goldhill 1998. See Tooby and Cosmides 2001; Currie and Ravenscroft 2002, 187–204; Boyd 2009, 47f., 155–158, 188f., 197f., 202f., 382f.; Dutton 2009, 58f., 103–114, 173, 200; J. Carroll et alii 2010; Smith 2011, 109–111; Oatley 2011, 16–21 and passim; Wojciehowski and Gallese 2011. See e.g. Palmer 2004; Zunshine 2006; McConachie 2008; Boyd 2009, 141–149 and passim; Dutton 2009; Currie 2010, esp. 93–106, 109–122, 199–216; Leverage et alii 2011; Oatley 2011; 2012, 154–162; Smith 2011, 111–113; Wojciehowski and Gallese 2011, 17–18. See esp. Wojciehowski and Gallese 2011 on verbal narratives, and cf. e.g. Plantinga 1999; Coplan 2006; Dutton 2009, 127–134; Smith 2011; more generally, the cognitive-science approach to fiction reflected in the works cited in n. 41 regularly makes liberal use of both literary and cinematic narratives. Much of this research focuses on forms of emotional contagion, mimicry, and mirroring in response to facial expressions and other visible expressions of emotion: see e.g. Plantinga 1999; Smith 2003, 265f.; Coplan 2006; McConachie 2008, 92–98; Boyd 2009, 103f., 142, 163, 191f.; Smith 2011, 101f.; N. Carroll 2011, 178–180; Oatley 2011, 111–114. For Coplan

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The phantasia that is engaged by the enargeia of ancient Greek narratives takes a wide range of forms, both in theory and in practice; but its character, as emphasized by ‘Longinus’, the author of On the Sublime (15.1f.), is typically emotional: one feels something like what a participant or an eye-witness would feel. The example that Longinus himself gives is of Orestes’ vision of the Erinyes in Euripides’ Orestes (255–257) and Iphigenia among the Taurians (291): only Orestes sees them, but the poet himself has imagined what Orestes sees, and thus succeeds in making the audience feel as though they see the Erinyes too. In this case, the audience’s emotion (the ekplēxis, ‘stunned amazement’,44 that Longinus regards as the typical outcome of poetic phantasia) arises from the poet’s imaginative recreation of the experience of the protagonist and his successful communication of that recreation to the audience. The example chosen is from drama; but stage performance, if it is presupposed at all, is not mentioned; all stress is on the words. In Plato’s Ion, the eponymous rhapsode eagerly expresses his assent to Socrates’ suggestion (Ion 535b–c) that those, like Ion himself, who perform the Homeric poems (and thus ‘stun’ their audiences: ὅταν εὖ εἴπῃς ἔπη καὶ ἐκπλήξῃς µάλιστα τοὺς θεωµένους, 535b)45 are subject to a divinely inspired form of ecstasy, analogous to that of the inspired poet himself, that allows them to enter into the events that they narrate (Ion 535c): ἐγὼ γὰρ ὅταν ἐλεινόν τι λέγω, δακρύων ἐµπίµπλανταί µου οἱ ὀφθαλµοί· ὅταν τε φοβερὸν ἢ δεινόν, ὀρθαὶ αἱ τρίχες ἵστανται ὑπὸ φόβου καὶ ἡ καρδία πηδᾷ. For whenever I tell of a pitiable event, my eyes fill with tears; and whenever I narrate something frightening or terrible, my hair stands on end out of fear, and my heart leaps.

Though the term phrikē is not used, this is what Ion’s piloerection points to.46 Ion himself makes no distinction between narrative and direct speech, but to the extent that the experiences he describes are appropriate to the characters portrayed in the poems that he performs, the substantial portion of the Homeric texts that is character-speech is not an irrelevant consideration: in his delivery of both narrative and character-speech, Ion will be both narrator and performer; in both capaci-

44

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2006, 35, the unconscious mimicry of emotional contagion is possible only in response to direct sensory stimuli; but see Oatley 2011, 112 for evidence that blocking the reader’s facial expression inhibits understanding of emotion in written texts. Decety and Meltzoff 2011 (among others) argue for a link between these phenomena (and related ones, such as ‘empathy’) and ‘mirror neurons’ (on which see Rizzolatti and Sinigaglia 2008; Iacoboni 2008, 2011). Drawing on the same research, the ‘embodied simulation’ hypothesis of Wojciehowski and Gallese 2011 would suggest that the activation of visual and motor imagery in responding to all forms of verbal and visual narrative means that the body plays a central and essential role in the emotional responses of both audiences and readers. On ekplēxis, see Halliwell 2011, 229–231 (on Aristotle), 332 (on Longinus); see also Heath 1987, 15f.; like phrikē, this term is instructive on the phenomenology, and especially on the perceived intensity, of the emotions experienced by poetic audiences. On this passage, cf. Halliwell 2002, 213f. n. 19. On the link between this passage and Gorgias, Helen 9, cf. Halliwell 2002, 77 n. 14, 218.

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ties, his recitation involves an element of identification with the poem’s characters in their reactions to the events narrated. In a very real sense, his physical presence as performer helps to suggest the phenomenology and physicality of the characters’ emotions.47 Clearly, characters within a narrative can and do feel pity for others and fear for themselves; but these (especially pity) are also, already in Plato’s day, the characteristic emotional responses of audiences, as the passage from Gorgias’ Helen quoted above indicates.48 Accordingly, Ion’s emotional reaction is also that of the audience (535d–e): ΣΩΩ. οἶσθα οὖν ὅτι καὶ τῶν θεατῶν τοὺς πολλοὺς ταὐτὰ ταῦτα ὑµεῖς ἐργάζεσθε; ΙΩΩΝ. καὶ µάλα καλῶς οἶδα· καθορῶ γὰρ ἑκάστοτε αὐτοὺς ἄνωθεν ἀπὸ τοῦ βήµατος κλάοντάς τε καὶ δεινὸν ἐµβλέποντας καὶ συνθαµβοῦντας τοῖς λεγοµένοις. SOC. So do you realize that you rhapsodes produce these same effects on most of the spectators too? ION. Yes, I am very well aware of that: every time it happens I look down on them from the platform above and see them weeping, with fear in their eyes, sharing my amazement at what’s said.

The passage is thus subject to several tensions: Ion is a narrator of the actions of others, but also (especially, one might think, when performing direct characterspeech) something like an actor, engaging in direct representation of the story’s characters. At the same time, Ion himself embodies aspects of an audience’s reaction to the doings and sufferings of the characters. The audience’s reaction mirrors his, but it is not clear whether the response of either Ion or his audience is (to borrow terms from Keith Oatley) an empathetic one (feeling with), in which the audience identifies emotionally with the characters and recreates, at least to some extent, their first-person perspective, or a sympathetic, third-person response (feeling for) in which the audience experiences distinct emotions of its own, elicited by but not identical to the emotions of the characters.49 The issues which might interest us in this regard remain largely unexplored, because the dialogue’s explicit emphasis is elsewhere: on the status of poetry as a third-hand derivative of reality (535a); on its negative effects on audiences (535d); on its status as a form of inspiration rather than a skill (536a–d); and on the mismatch between the skills of the rhapsode and those that inform the poetic narrative’s subject-matter (536e– 542a). A striking incident in Josephus’ narrative of Rome’s Jewish wars raises similar issues. During the siege of Jerusalem, a starving woman cooks and eats her own son in a desperate attempt to avenge herself upon the Jewish guards whose depredations have reduced her to this level; the guards who see what she has done are transfixed with horror, phrikē, at the sight (τοὺς δ’ εὐθέως φρίκη καὶ παρέκ47 48 49

Cf. Halliwell 2002, 80. Cf. Heath 1987, 11–16; Halliwell 2002 passim, esp. 100, 208–213, 218f.; Munteanu 2012. For the terms, see Oatley 2011, 115–120; on empathy versus sympathy cf. various authors in Coplan and Goldie 2011.

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στασις ᾕρει καὶ παρὰ τὴν ὄψιν ἐπεπήγεσαν, Bellum Iudaicum 6.210),50 but as the news spreads through the city, all those who hear it visualize and shudder at the event as if they had committed it themselves (καὶ πρὸ ὀµµάτων ἕκαστος τὸ πάθος λαµβάνων ὥσπερ αὐτῷ τολµηθὲν ἔφριττε, 6.213). The internal auditors recreate the act in their mind’s eye; their powers of phantasia lend the event a vividness that elicits the same kind of spontaneous, involuntary, and physical response as was experienced by those who actually did witness it. The reaction of the eye-witnesses is one of horror and revulsion; but the secondary audience, in some sense, imagines something of what it would be like to perpetrate such a thing. There is still revulsion, but the suggestion of putting oneself in the place of Mary, the perpetrator, facilitates another response, of sympathy. Accordingly, when the news reaches the Romans, though some are incredulous and many filled with even greater loathing for the Jews than they had hitherto felt, others feel pity (6.214). Josephus’ wider narrative of the episode concentrates on the extremes of suffering to which human beings can be reduced (6.201–205, 213) and presents Mary herself a victim of others’ greed and cruelty (6.202), her cannibal feast a desperate protest against their inhumanity (6.207, 211). Thus the imaginative identification with Mary that is attributed to those who first hear the report of her deed and the pity that is the response of at least some of the Romans act as cues for the responses that Josephus’ vivid and artfully constructed narrative is intended to arouse in its readers. The emotions of the latter, then, are guided first of all by the vividness of the narrative itself, then by the responses of internal eyewitnesses, and then by two distinct sets of internal auditors. In this case, though (at 6.213) the internal audience’s picturing of themselves in the agent’s shoes has a strong emotional component, this does not entail feeling what the agent felt, but rather recreating the agent’s point of view as part of a third-person response to the act – all the emotional responses adumbrated in the text (whether horror, revulsion, hatred, or pity) are third-person, onlookers’ responses, and so is the hypothetical sympathy of the reading audience.51 It is common (and correct) to emphasize the influence of the theatre, and specifically of tragedy, on such passages (see Chapman 2007), but as we have seen the vivid presentation of action and emotion as if before the eyes of a listening or reading public is a staple of Greek poetics and rhetoric from their very beginnings. The centrality of pity to an audience’s responses to serious poetry, too, is implicit in the poetics of the Iliad and explicit in the earliest formulations of Greek philosophical poetics. The ability to feel this pity, according to Aristotle in the Rhetoric, depends on a sense of the vulnerability that we share with those who are suffering (Rhetoric 2.8, 1385b13–33, 1386a25–29). Similarly self-referential is the fear that in both Poetics and Rhetoric is said to derive from the sense that such 50 51

παρέκστασις (found in one MS and printed by Niese) occurs only here; all other MSS (and testimonia) have φρενῶν ἔκστασις. On pity as characteristic of an observer’s perspective, see Halliwell 2002, 215f.; cf. also Konstan 2001 (with Cairns 2004) on classical pity and emotional distance.

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things might also happen to us (Poetics 13, 1453a4–6; cf. Rhetoric 1386b27–29, where the things we pity in others are said to be the kind of things that we fear may happen to ourselves).52 Shared vulnerability to vicissitude is a condition for pity both in traditional Greek ethics and in the implicit aesthetics of poetic texts. The locus classicus is the encounter between Achilles and Priam in Iliad 24.485– 551, in which Priam appeals to Achilles to release his son’s body for burial. Priam first seeks to elicit Achilles’ sympathy by comparing himself with Achilles’ own father, but Achilles realizes that the parallel is in fact closer than Priam suggests. As a result, he goes on to deliver an elaborate speech of consolation in which he presents suffering as the lot of all mankind, using both Priam and his own father as examples of great felicity undercut by extreme suffering in old age.53 Among several salient and authoritative statements of the same principle in (especially Sophoclean) tragedy,54 Odysseus’ reflections on the madness and degradation of his enemy, Ajax, are perhaps the most memorable. The goddess Athena, who has deflected on to the army’s flocks Ajax’s murderous attack on the Greek leaders, toys with her humiliated victim and invites his rival, Odysseus, to gloat. But Odysseus takes an entirely different view (Ajax 121–126): ἐποικτίρω δέ νιν δύστηνον ἔµπας, καίπερ ὄντα δυσµενῆ, ὁθούνεκ’ ἄτῃ συγκατέζευκται κακῇ, οὐδὲν τὸ τούτου µᾶλλον ἢ τοὐµὸν σκοπῶν. ὁρῶ γὰρ ἡµᾶς οὐδὲν ὄντας ἄλλο πλὴν εἴδωλ’ ὅσοιπερ ζῶµεν ἢ κούφην σκιάν. [What you say is true,] but nonetheless I pity him in his misfortune, even though he is my enemy, because he is yoked to dire ruin. In this I look out for my own situation no less than his, for I see that all of us who are alive are nothing more than apparitions or fleeting shadow.

Similarly, in the Oedipus Tyrannus, the pity that the Chorus and others feel, despite their revulsion, for Oedipus, complements the Chorus’s authoritative presentation (in the fourth stasimon) of his career as a paradigm of the shared human vulnerability on which pity rests, and is thus crucial in guiding and conditioning the response of an external audience.55 The same seems to me to be true of their phrikē in the passage with which we began – their horror at Oedipus’ suffering is 52

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On the role of fear for oneself in Aristotle’s conception of pity see Konstan 2001, 130–136 with Cairns 2004, 66f.; on the relation of pity to fear in Aristotle’s conception of tragic emotion, see Halliwell 1986, 168–202; 2002, 216–218. On the importance of this passage and its ethos in the Greek narrative tradition, see Cairns 2014. Cf. Philoctetes 501–506, Oedipus Coloneus 566–568; Euripides, Hecuba 282–287. Beyond tragedy see Bacchylides 5.155–162 (esp. 160–162 and cf. 89–92); Herodotus 1.86.6, 7.46.2; cf. Pelling 2005, 289, 291f. on Plutarch. Pity: 1194, 1211, 1216–1221, 1286, 1296, 1299, 1303, 1347; revulsion: esp. the Chorus at 1217f., 1297–1299, 1303–1306, 1348, all, significantly, associated in context with their pity; cf. Creon at 1424–1431. On the ‘hermeneutic’ function of the choral voice in the fourth stasimon, see e.g. Calame 1999, 139; for the same general phenomenon (internal audience response guiding external) in Plutarch, see Pelling 2005, 282f.

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a prerequisite for the recognition that his suffering differs in degree but not in kind from that which might befall any of us. The use of phrikē of a response that is both sympathetic and fearful is apparent in other passages. In Sophocles’ Trachiniae, for example, the leader of the female Chorus deploys the term in her response to Heracles’ sufferings in the poisoned shirt of Nessus (1044f.): κλύουσ’ ἔφριξα τάσδε συµφοράς, φίλαι, ἄνακτος, οἵαις οἷος ὢν ἐλαύνεται. I shudder when I hear our king suffering like this, friends; what terrible afflictions for a man like him.

So too do the female Chorus in expressing their sympathy for the persecuted cowmaiden, Io, at Prometheus Vinctus 687–695: ἔα ἔα, ἄπεχε, φεῦ· οὔποθ’ οὔποτ’ ηὔχουν ξένους µολεῖσθαι λόγους ἐς ἀκοὰν ἐµάν, οὐδ’ ὧδε δυσθέατα καὶ δύσοιστα †πήµατα λύµατα δείµατ’ 56 ἀµφήκει κέντρῳ ψύχειν ψυχὰν ἐµάν†. ἰὼ [ἰὼ] µοῖρα µοῖρα, πέφρικ’ εἰσιδοῦσα πρᾶξιν Ἰοῦς. Ah, keep away, oh! I never, ever thought that words so strange would come to my hearing, or that sufferings, outrages, terrors so hard to look at and to bear would chill my soul with double-pronged goad. Ah, fate, fate, I shudder as I behold Io’s plight.

The movements and gestures that accompanied Io’s opening words at 561–588 will have made her physical torment visible to both the internal and external audiences. In the ensuing scene, and especially in the narrative of her persecution at 640–686, she emphasizes her sufferings and presents herself as an appropriate recipient of pity; indeed, pity is a response that she herself expects (684f.). The leader of the Chorus of Oceanids has specifically requested the ‘pleasure’ of a full report of Io’s sufferings (631–634), and the Chorus’s pity is cued when Prometheus then encourages her to comply, on the grounds that ‘to weep away and lament away one’s misfortunes is worth the effort, when one is likely to win a tear from listeners’ (638f.). The audience is thus primed to see the Chorus’s response as sympathetic, and they are not deceived – the Chorus do recognize the extremity of Io’s situation.57 But the sympathy that is implicit in that recognition is also mixed with personal distress. Like the Chorus of Sophocles’ Oedipus, with whom we began, the sufferings of another person both compel their attention and overwhelm them, so that they can hardly bear to contemplate the other’s pain.58 In this passage, understanding of another’s emotional distress produces self-focused anx56 57 58

The transmitted text is unsatisfactory for metrical and syntactic reasons, but the sense is not seriously in doubt. Cf. Griffith 1983, 211: the lyrics ‘give voice to the horror and sympathy which the audience must by now feel’. For this reaction, cf. Decety and Meltzoff 2011, 76; Hoffman 2011, 250f.

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iety more obviously than other-concern – there is pity, but also fear.59 The Chorus’s move from anticipated pleasure in a report of another’s troubles to phrikē at sufferings that now, both in Io’s presence on stage and in the vividness of her narrative, seem to be visible before their eyes (εἰσιδοῦσα, the same verb as was used in the Oedipus Tyrannus passage with which we began, 1303) serve to prime, steer, and comment on the anticipated reactions of the theatrical audience, and thus bear upon the tragic paradox of finding pleasure in painful reactions to others’ pain (Gorgias’ πόθος φιλοπενθής). Both Heracles and Io are onstage; the Choruses in question respond to sufferings presented before their eyes and compounded by the lamentations of their patients. But similar responses can also be attributed to characters within a verbal narrative, as in the case of two passages in Plutarch’s Life of Aemilius Paullus. The Homeric theme of the mutability of fortune is central both to this Life and to the pair that it forms with the Life of Timoleon;60 the specific debt to Homer in the Life of Aemilius in particular is advertised at the emotional climax of the work (34.8), where Plutarch narrates the reversal that struck Aemilius at the very pinnacle of his success. Aemilius is the conqueror of Perseus, the last of Alexander’s successors as king of Macedonia, but the triumph in which this crucial stage in Rome’s rise to dominance is celebrated is undercut by the death of two of the general’s sons, aged 14 and 12, one five days before the triumph and the other three days after it. For the narrator, this is the work of that daemonic force, whatever it may be, whose business it is to ensure ‘that no one’s life should be unsullied or without admixture of trouble, but that, as Homer says, those may be regarded as best off whose fortunes shift in the balance, now this way, now that’. For the Roman people, however, the vulnerability of all human beings to vicissitude is occasion for phrikē: they all shudder at the cruelty of Fortune, that she did not scruple to introduce so much sorrow into a household so admired, so full of joy and sacrifices, or to mix laments and tears together with victory paeans and triumphs (φρῖξαι τὴν ὠµότητα τῆς τύχης ἅπαντας, ὡς οὐκ ᾐδέσατο πένθος τοσοῦτον εἰς οἰκίαν ζήλου καὶ χαρᾶς καὶ θυσιῶν γέµουσαν εἰσάγουσα, καὶ 61 καταµειγνύουσα θρήνους καὶ δάκρυα παιᾶσιν ἐπινικίοις καὶ θριάµβοις).

This vulnerability is explicitly a phenomenon that unites the victors and the vanquished: Aemilius’ defeated opponent, Perseus, is as much a paradigm of the mutability of fortune as is Aemilius himself (26.4–12, 27.4f., 33.6–8, 37.2). The vul59

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Griffith 1983, 212, and Podlecki 2005, 182, both note that the rhythms of the choral lyric in 687–695 are similar to those of Io’s entrance-song at 566–608 – a formalized representation of emotional mirroring? See Swain 1989; Tatum 2010; Cairns 2014. On this passage, see. Pelling 2005, 209, and cf. 280–283 on quasi-tragic narrative patterns in Plutarch’s Lives. Among pre-Christian (non-medical) authors Plutarch is by far the most prolific user of phrikē-words (143 instances of the noun; 43 uses of cognate terms). The qualities of phrikē, as I have outlined them above, chime very well with his predilection for vivid narrative, dramatic changes of fortune, and moralizing on the ways in which his subjects’ lives exemplify recurrent human types and patterns.

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nerability that is demonstrated by military defeat is similarly the focus of phrikē at Aemilius 29.5: booty from the sack of the cities of Epirus produces no more than eleven drachmas per solider, so that ‘everyone shuddered at the outcome of the war, that the division of an entire nation’s wealth should yield so little profit and gain for each individual’ (φρῖξαι δὲ πάντας ἀνθρώπους τὸ τοῦ πολέµου τέλος, εἰς µικρὸν οὕτω τὸ καθ’ ἕκαστον λῆµµα καὶ κέρδος ἔθνους ὅλου κατακερµατισθέντος). In each of these four cases, the dramatic and the narrative, phrikē responds to the misfortunes of others, uniting both the fearful sense that we ourselves are as vulnerable as they are and a sympathy that is born of that very recognition. This union of fear for oneself and sympathy for others, together with the central focus of these emotions on the mutability of fortune, echoes some of the central tenets of Aristotle’s theory in the Poetics, demonstrating how widespread these assumptions are in Greek literary culture. In each of these cases, too, an internal audience experiences an emotional reaction with all the phenomenological connotations of phrikē that we have explored above, a reaction that is clearly meant to stand in some relation to the potential responses of the external audience. Internal and external audiences in some sense feel the same emotion. But it would be too simple to suggest that the phrikē of the external audience is caused by that of the internal one. The conditions that evoke the phrikē of the internal audience are clearly sufficient to evoke the same feeling in the external audience, and the emotional response of the internal audience is in no way the focus on which the emotion of the external audience rests. The external audience is not feeling with the internal, imaginatively simulating or reconstructing their first-person response; nor is it simply ‘catching’ that response in the purely unconscious manner that is supposedly typical of emotional contagion. These are third-person, onlookers’ responses in each case; the external audience replicates the response of the internal, but each remains the response of an audience to the emotional plight of a third party. In so far as the emotions of internal and external audiences are the same, this is a matter of their converging on the same object, though it is entirely possible that the emotion of the internal audience may serve to prime, focus, or reinforce the response of the external audience.62 In this respect, the reaction of a character or a Chorus in tragedy or the point of view of a character in a narrative operate, in a sense, like the point-of-view or reaction shot in cinema – the eliciting conditions for the relevant emotional response are contextually and situationally established, but the facial expressions of onlookers prime and steer the audience’s reactions to those elicitors.63 The phrikē of an internal audience in tragedy or in narrative constitutes 62 63

On the general issues here, see N. Carroll 2011. On the cinematic technique and its implications, see Plantinga 1999; Coplan 2006; Smith 2011; N. Carroll 2011, 179. On point of view more generally as a form of priming or framing, see Currie 2010, 87–107, 123–166. A substantial difference between classical tragedy and modern cinema in this respect is that the latter, given large screen projection and pervasive use of close-ups of facial expressions, offers much more scope for such priming. Tragedy is masked, gesture was probably stylized, and the size of the theatre also makes a substantial

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a reflection, in the text itself, of the relation of the text and its performance to an audience; it offers a perspective on the text’s emotion-eliciting power. Empathy is a slippery and multivalent term.64 But if, as some claim,65 it requires the adoption of another person’s first-person perspective and/or experiencing, from that first-person perspective, the emotions that another person feels, then the external audiences of the ancient Greek dramas and narratives that we are considering do not empathize with these internal figures whose point of view helps to steer their responses: the internal viewer feels phrikē, and the external audience may feel phrikē, but the latter’s phrikē is not a matter of their identifying with or being affected by the emotional reaction of an internal focalizer. Nor is the ideal response of an external audience typically represented as empathy with the focal characters whose suffering elicits the phrikē of both internal and external audiences. Though there is regularly, as we have seen, an element of generalization that extrapolates from the suffering of the character to the kind of thing that might happen to anyone, and though one might adopt a view of the sufferer as a human being like oneself, still the characters’ experience is not that of their audiences, internal or external. They are suffering; Choruses, focalizing characters, and external audiences do not feel what they are feeling, but feel, as Gorgias so aptly put it, ‘a certain experience of their own’, not (for example) anguish, grief, remorse, or shame, but (for example) fear, pity, or phrikē.66 To be sure, characters in a drama or a narrative can be afraid, shiver, or shudder, and an audience may do so along with them – this is perhaps an element in the passage from Plato’s Ion considered above. But this is not the type of response that is considered characteristic of poetic audiences: when phrikē appears as an aesthetic emotion, it is typically an observer’s response, not a vicarious first-person one. It is not, in Sophocles, Oedipus’ phrikē that elicits that of the Chorus or the audience, and even those who, in Josephus’ narrative, imaginatively recreate Mary’s cannibal feast before their eyes, as if they themselves were its perpetrators, nonetheless react to the event in a

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difference. But as we saw above (n. 43) the assumption that ‘emotional contagion’ (unconscious mimicry and feedback) requires ‘direct sensory input’ (Coplan 2006, 35) is open to question: similar phenomena can be observed in readers, and if this is so, they can be assumed in audiences of masked performance too. But if something like emotional contagion does play a role in the reactions of cinematic and tragic audiences, or in those of readers of narrative fiction, it does not do so in isolation from those audiences’ experience of the emotions consciously elicited by narrative or performance. In the case in question, if the phrikē of an internal audience or focalizing character primes or prompts that of an external audiencemember or reader, the latter is not simply a case of unconscious mimicry, but rather a shared, in-awareness response to the representation of the experiences of a third party. A complaint of several contributors to Coplan and Goldie 2011 (see pp. xxxi, 4, 31f., 103, 162f., 211, 319); cf. Stueber 2012, 55. Hoffman 2011, 231; Engelen and Röttger-Rössler 2012, 4; Walter 2012, 10; Preston and Hofelich 2012, 26; Bischof-Köhler 2012, 40f. Cf. Giovanelli 2008 and 2009 on empathetic identification as an element in sympathy, with criticism by N. Carroll 2011, 180–184. On the echo of Gorgias’ formulation (ἴδιόν τι πάθηµα, Helen 9) in Plato’s Republic (606b), see Halliwell 2002, 77; 2011, 267 n. 9.

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way that Mary herself did not. As Halliwell puts it (2002, 216): ‘When we feel pity, we do not share the sufferer’s subjectivity: however much we may draw emotionally near to it, or move vicariously with its psychological expression, we remain, qua feelers of pity, outside the immediate, “first-person” reality of the pain, whether physical or mental.’ This is a significant fact about ancient Greek aesthetic and poetic theory. Though contemporary approaches also have much to say about sympathetic responses of this sort, it is also typical for them to emphasize the potential for identificatory or empathetic responses of various sorts, to a much greater extent than do ancient Greek texts, which make no grand claims about feeling what other people feel.67 Phrikē is by no means ubiquitous as a tragic emotion, but nonetheless, when it occurs in that connection, it is informative about the nature of tragic emotions. Though typically a symptom of fear, horror, or revulsion, it can be an expression of that link between these emotions and the shared sense of vulnerability that gives rise to pity. Its nature as an involuntary, instinctive response especially to immediate visual and aural stimuli, together with its fundamentally somatic character, help us to put some phenomenological flesh upon the bare bones of ‘pity and fear’ as the typical tragic emotions. Its immediacy, in turn, and especially its association with the visual, can serve to illustrate the premium placed on vividness and visuality by authors, consumers, and theorists of ancient Greek narratives, and thus also illustrates the continuity between narrative and dramatic genres as objects of ancient literary theory. Though actors as well as observers can experience phrikē as a response to the terrifying or horrific, what we might call ‘tragic’ phrikē tracks the tragic emotions of pity and fear as characteristically third-person, observers’ responses to suffering, and thus corroborates the general emphasis of ancient Greek aesthetics on sympathy over empathy, on feeling for rather than feeling with. But although in this way (and in many others) the concept of phrikē is deeply enmeshed in the cultural specifics of ancient Greek societies, it nonetheless possesses a core that cannot be relativized, a rootedness in the physicality of human emotion and an origin in our pre-human biological inheritance; when the Chorus express their phrikē at Oedipus’ self-blinding, we know what they mean. This is the difference that phrikē’s phenomenological richness makes: even if (and this is debatable) such a full-blooded, somatic response is less frequent in our own emotional repertoire as readers, theatrical audience-members, or cinema-goers (or if our cultures have taught us to find our frissons in somewhat different aspects of the relevant art-forms), still we all know what it is like to shudder or shiver; and thus we can approach, at least to some degree, something of the characteristic emotional tone at which ancient authors were aiming. 67

For scepticism about ‘empathy’, in so far as it is said to involve emotional matching, feeling the emotions of others, simulating others’ mental states, and so on, cf. N. Carroll 2011; Goldie 2011, 302f. and passim; McFee 2011, 193, 197, 201; Morton 2011, 319, 325. For a recent review, starting from the premise that ‘The inconsistent definition of empathy has had a negative impact on both research and practice’, see Cuff et alii 2016.

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Whatever he meant by the enigmatic term catharsis,68 Aristotle clearly thought that the experience of such intense emotion in the audiences of Attic tragedy or Homeric epic was both pleasurable and somehow beneficial for the individual audience member. Gorgias agreed at least on the paradoxical pleasure to be had from the encounter with others’ suffering. Modern accounts of the pull exerted by fictional representations in a variety of media are beginning to emphasize their capacity-building qualities, their power to flex our imaginative muscles, to develop the cognitive capacities on which social interaction depends, and to extend and deepen our emotional repertoires. Such effects, notoriously, are not automatic; but they do at least seem to be possible.69 The inclusion of phrikē in the emotional repertoire of ancient audiences does not in itself resolve any of the issues regarding the effects of emotional engagement with drama and narrative, but what it tells us about the character of that engagement itself suggests at least the possibility that emotional experiences of such immediacy and intensity played an important role in developing audiences’ capacity to feel for others, and so to understand themselves. BIBLIOGRAPHY Bakker, E. J. (2005) Pointing at the Past: From Formula to Performance in Homeric Poetics, Cambridge MA. Balcombe, J. (2010) Second Nature: The Inner Lives of Animals, New York. Berrettoni, P. (1970) Il lessico tecnico del I e III libro delle epidemie ippocratiche, Annali della Scuola Normale Superiore di Pisa, Lettere, storia e Filosofia, ser. 2.39, 27–106, 217–311. Bischof-Köhler, D. (2012) Empathy and Self-Recognition in Phylogenetic and Ontogenetic Perspective, Emotion Review 4, 40–48. Bouvier, D. (2011) Du frisson (phrikê) d’horreur au frisson poétique: interprétation de quelques émotions entre larmes chaudes et sueurs froides chez Platon et Homère, Mètis n.s. 9, 15–35. Boyd, B. (2009) On the Origin of Stories: Evolution, Cognition, and Fiction, Cambridge MA. –––, J. Carroll, and J. Gottschall, eds. (2010) Evolution, Literature, and Film: A Reader, New York. Bremmer, J. N. (2013) The Getty Hexameters: Date, Author, and Place of Composition, in C. A. Faraone and D. Obbink (eds.), 21–29. Burkert, W. (2010) Horror Stories: Zur Begegnung von Biologie, Philologie, und Religion, in A. Bierl and W. Braungart (eds.), Gewalt und Opfer: Im Dialog mit Walter Burkert, Berlin, 45– 56. Buxton, R. G. A. (1980) Blindness and Limits: Sophokles and the Logic of Myth, Journal of Hellenic Studies 100, 22–37.

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An unanswerable question, and so I do not pursue it here. For a recent (and inconclusive) review of the main avenues of interpretation, see Munteanu 2012, 238–250. For empirical evidence in support of the notion that fiction builds capacity in otherunderstanding and emotional intelligence, see Oatley 2011, 156–175; cf. Oatley 2012, esp. 121–126, 159–162, 184–198. For the general position, cf. Tooby and Cosmides 2001; J. Carroll 2006; Zunshine 2006; Boyd 2009, esp. 188–208; Dutton 2009, 109–126; Smith 2011, esp. 109–111.

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Cairns, D. L. (1993) Aidōs: The Psychology and Ethics of Honour and Shame in Ancient Greek Literature, Oxford. ––– (2004) Pity in the Classical World, Hermathena 176, 59–74. ––– (2013) A Short History of Shudders, in A. Chaniotis and P. Ducrey (eds.), Unveiling Emotions II: Emotions in Greece and Rome: Texts, Images, Material Culture, Stuttgart, 85–107. ––– (2014) Exemplarity and Narrative in the Greek Tradition, in D. L. Cairns and R. Scodel (eds.), Defining Greek Narrative, Edinburgh, 103–136. Calame, C. (1999) Performative Aspects of the Choral Voice in Greek Tragedy: Civic Identity in Performance, in S. Goldhill and R. Osborne (eds.), Performance Culture and Athenian Democracy, Cambridge, 125–153. Carroll, J. (2006) The Human Revolution and the Adaptive Function of Literature, Philosophy and Literature 30, 33–49. –––, J. Gottschall, J. Johnson, and D. Kruger (2010) Imagining human nature, in B. Boyd, J. Carroll, and J. Gottschall (eds.), 211–218. Carroll. N. (2011) On Some Affective Relations between Audiences and the Characters in Popular Fictions, in Coplan and Goldie (eds.), 162–184. Chantraine, P. (1968–80) Dictionnaire étymologique de la langue grecque: histoire des mots, Paris. Chapman, H. H. (2007) Josephus and the Cannibalism of Mary (BJ 6. 199–219), in J. Marincola (ed.), A Companion to Greek and Roman Historiography, Malden MA, 419–426. Coplan, A. (2006) Catching Characters’ Emotions: Emotional Contagion Responses to Narrative Fiction Film, Film Studies 8, 26–38. ––– and P. Goldie, eds. (2011) Empathy: Philosophical and Psychological Perspectives, Oxford. Cuff, B. M. P, S. J. Brown, L. Taylor, and D. J. Howatt (2016) Empathy: A Review of the Concept, Emotion Review 8, 144–153. Currie, G. (2010) Narratives and Narrators: A Philosophy of Stories, Oxford. ––– and I. Ravenscroft (2002) Recreative Minds: Imagination in Philosophy and Psychology, Oxford. Darwin, C. (1889) The Expression of the Emotions in Man and Animals, 3rd edn., ed. P. Ekman, Oxford, 1998. Decety, J. and A. N. Meltzoff (2011) Empathy, Imitation, and the Social Brain, in A. Coplan and P. Goldie (eds.), 58–81. De Jong, I. J. F. (2001) A Narratological Commentary on the Odyssey, Cambridge. Devereux, G. (1973) The Self-Blinding of Oidipous in Sophokles’ Oidipous Tyrannos, Journal of Hellenic Studies 93, 36–49. Dutton, D. (2009) The Art Instinct: Beauty, Pleasure, and Human Evolution, Oxford. Eibl-Eibesfeldt, I. (1989) Human Ethology, New York. Engelen, E.-M. and B. Röttger-Rössler (2012) Current Disciplinary and Interdisciplinary Debates on Empathy, Emotion Review 4, 3–8. Faraone, C. A. and D. Obbink (2013) The Getty Hexameters: Poetry, Magic, and Mystery in Ancient Selinus, Oxford. Faulkner, A., ed. (2008) The Homeric Hymn to Aphrodite, Oxford. Giovanelli, A. (2008) In and Out: the Dynamics of Imagination in the Engagement with Narratives, The Journal of Aesthetics and Art Criticism 66, 11–24. ––– (2009) In Sympathy with Narrative Characters, The Journal of Aesthetics and Art Criticism 67, 83–95. Goldhill, S. D. (1998) The Seductions of the Gaze: Socrates and his Girlfriends, in P. Cartledge, P. Millett and S. von Reden (eds.), Kosmos: Essays in Order, Conflict, and Community in Classical Athens, Cambridge, 105–124. Goldie, P. (2011) Anti-Empathy, in A. Coplan and P. Goldie (eds.), 302–317. Gould, T. (1990) The Ancient Quarrel between Poetry and Philosophy, Princeton. Graziosi, B. and J. Haubold, eds. (2010) Homer: Iliad VI, Cambridge.

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Griffith, M., ed. (1983) Aeschylus: Prometheus Bound, Cambridge. Halliwell, F. S. (1986) Aristotle’s Poetics, London. ––– (2002) The Aesthetics of Mimesis: Ancient Texts and Modern Problems, Princeton. ––– (2011) Between Ecstasy and Truth: Interpretations of Greek Poetics from Homer to Longinus, Oxford. Heath, M. F. (1987) The Poetics of Greek Tragedy, London. Hoffman, M. L. (2011) Empathy, Justice, and the Law, in A. Coplan and P. Goldie (eds.), 230– 254. Iacoboni, M. (2008) Mirroring People: The New Science of How We Connect with Others, New York. ––– (2011) Within Each Other: Neural Mechanisms for Empathy in the Primate Brain, in A. Coplan and P. Goldie (eds.), 45–57. Ideler, J. L. (1841) Physici et medici Graeci minores vol. i, Berlin. Janko, R. (2013) The Hexametric Incantations against Witchcraft in the Getty Museum: From Archetype to Exemplar, in C. A. Faraone and D. Obbink (eds.), 31–56. Keltner, D. and J. Haidt (2003) Approaching Awe, a Moral, Spiritual, and Aesthetic Emotion, Cognition and Emotion 17.2, 297–314. Konstan, D. (2001) Pity Transformed, London. Kotansky, R. and D. R. Jordan (2011) Ritual Hexameters in the Getty Museum: Preliminary Edition, Zeitschrift für Papyrologie und Epigraphik 178, 54–62. Kövecses, Z. (2000) Metaphor and Emotion: Language, Culture, and Body in Human Feeling, Cambridge. Leverage, P., H. Mancing, R. Schweickert, and J. M. William, eds. (2011), Theory of Mind and Literature, West Lafayette IN. Manieri, A. (1998) L’immagine poetica nella teoria degli antichi: phantasia ed enargeia, Pisa. McConachie, B. (2008) Engaging Audiences: A Cognitive Approach to Spectating in the Theatre, New York. McFee, G. (2011) Empathy: Interpersonal vs Artistic? in A. Coplan and P. Goldie (eds.), 185–210. Morton, A. (2011) Empathy for the Devil, in A. Coplan and P. Goldie (eds.), 318–330. Munteanu, D. L. (2012) Tragic Pathos: Pity and Fear in Greek Philosophy and Tragedy, Cambridge. Oatley, K. (2011) Such Stuff as Dreams: The Psychology of Fiction, Oxford/Malden MA. ––– (2012) The Passionate Muse: Exploring Emotion in Stories, Oxford. Op de Hipt, D. (1972) Adjektive auf –ωδης im Corpus Hippocraticum, Hamburg. Palmer, A. (2004) Fictional Minds, Lincoln NE. Pelling, C. B. R. (2005) Pity in Plutarch, in R. H. Sternberg (ed.), Pity and Power in Ancient Athens, Cambridge, 277–312. Plantinga, C. (1999) The Scene of Empathy and the Human Face on Film, in C. Plantinga and G. M. Smith (eds.), Passionate Views: Film, Cognition, and Emotion, Baltimore MD, 239–255. Podlecki, A. J., ed. (2005) Aeschylus: Prometheus Bound, Warminster. Preston, S. D. and A. J. Hofelich (2012) The Many Faces of Empathy: Parsing Empathic Phenomena through a Proximate, Dynamic-Systems View of Representing the Other in the Self, Emotion Review 4, 24–33. Richardson, N. J., ed. (1974) The Homeric Hymn to Demeter, Oxford. ––– (1980) Literary Criticism in the Exegetical Scholia to the Iliad, Classical Quarterly 30, 265– 287. Rizzolatti, G. and C. Sinigaglia (2008) Mirrors in the Brain: How Our Minds Share Actions and Emotions, Oxford. Rosenmeyer, T. G. (1986) Phantasia und Einbildungskraft: zur Vorgeschichte eines Leitbegriffes der europäische Ästhetik, Poetica 18, 197–248.

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Schurtz, D. R., S. Blincoe, R. H. Smith, C. A. J. Powell, D. J. Y. Combs, and S. H. Kim (2012) Exploring the Social Aspects of Goose Bumps and their Role in Awe and Envy, Motivation and Emotion 36.2, 205–212. Segal, C. P. (1962) Gorgias and the Psychology of the Logos, Harvard Studies in Classical Philology 66, 99–155. Serra, M. (2007) La phantasia del sublime: genealogia di una categoria letteraria, Testi e linguaggi 1, 29–41. Sheppard, A. (2014) The Poetics of Phantasia: Imagination in Ancient Aesthetics, London. Sicurus, D. (1862) Theophili et Stephani Atheniensis de febrium differentia ex Hippocrate et Galeno, Florence. Slatkin, L. M. (2007) Notes on Tragic Visualizing in the Iliad, in C. Kraus, S. Goldhill, H. P. Foley, and J. Elsner (eds.), Visualizing the Tragic: Drama, Myth, and Ritual in Greek Art and Literature, Oxford, 19–34. Smith, M. (2003) Darwin and the Directors: Film, Emotion, and the Face in the Age of Evolution, in B. Boyd, J. Carroll, and J. Gottschall (eds.), 258–269. ––– (2011) Empathy, Expansionism, and the Extended Mind, in A. Coplan and P. Goldie (eds.), 99–117. Snipes, K. (1988) Literary Interpretation in the Homeric Scholia: The Similes of the Iliad, American Journal of Philology 109, 196–222. Stueber, K. R. (2012) Varieties of Empathy, Neuroscience and the Narrativist Challenge to the Contemporary Theory of Mind Debate, Emotion Review 4, 55–63. Swain, S. C. R. (1989) Plutarch’s Aemilius and Timoleon, Historia 38, 314–334. Tatum, W. J. (2010) Another Look at Tychē in Plutarch’s Aemilius Paullus-Timoleon, Historia 59, 448–461. Tooby, J. and L. Cosmides (2001) Does Beauty Build Adapted Minds? Towards an Evolutionary Theory of Aesthetics, Fiction, and the Arts, in B. Boyd, J. Carroll, and J. Gottschall (eds.), 174–183. Walter, H. (2012) Social Cognitive Neuroscience of Empathy: Concepts, Circuits, and Genes, Emotion Review 4, 9–17. Watson, G. (1988) Phantasia in Classical Thought, Galway. Webb, R. (2009) Ekphrasis, Imagination, and Persuasion in Ancient Rhetorical Theory and Practice, Farnham/Burlington VT. Williams, L. E. and J. A. Bargh (2008) Experiencing Physical Warmth Promotes Interpersonal Warmth, Science 322.5901, 606–607. Wilkowski, B. M., B. P. Meier, M. D. Robinson, M. S. Carter, M. S., and R. Feltman (2009) ‘Hotheaded’ is More than an Expression: The Embodied Representation of Anger in Terms of Heat, Emotion 9, 464–477. Wojciehowski, H. C. and V. Gallese (2011), How Stories Make Us Feel: Toward an Embodied Narratology, California Italian Studies 2.1 (http://escholarship.org/uc/item/3jg726c2). Zanker, G. (1981) Enargeia in the Ancient Criticism of Poetry, Rheinisches Museum für Philologie 124, 297–311. Zhong, C.-B. and G. J. Leonardelli (2008) Cold and Lonely: Does Social Exclusion Literally Feel Cold? Psychological Science 19.9, 838–842. Zink, N. (1962) Griechische Ausdrucksweisen für warm und kalt im seelischen Bereich, Diss. Mainz/Heidelberg. Zunshine, L. (2006) Why We Read Fiction: Theory of Mind and the Novel, Columbus OH.

GRIEF: THE POWER AND SHORTCOMINGS OF GREEK TRAGIC CONSOLATION Dana LaCourse Munteanu 1 TRAGEDY, THE PHILOSOPHY AND BIOLOGY OF CONSOLATION Could tragic exempla and then, by extension, tragedy as genre, originally have been used to bring solace to mourners? Characters within Greek tragedies often refuse consolatory tropes,1 but, in more specific situations, consolatory narratives can be successful. In this essay I intend to explore how tragic stories depicting the extraordinary suffering of others are offered in epic and tragedy with a clear practical purpose, namely to help a bereaved person in the initial stage of grief by restoring him or her to normal activities and social interactions. Yet, the degree of the usefulness of such exempla remains a subject of constant interest and debate for Greco-Roman philosophers. With surprising consistency and despite various nuances and disagreements, Greek philosophers describe pity and some form of ancillary fear as the main emotions felt by the audiences of the Homeric epic and tragedy.2 Thanks to their power to arouse emotions, these genres were also generally thought to bring pleasure and alleviate the personal sorrows of the spectators. Why is this so? A simple assumption is that the emphasis on tragic pity represents a cultural peculiarity of classical Greece, perhaps prompted by the developments of various dramatic genres at the end of the sixth century BCE. However, can the association belong to a more universal realm? Fascinating recent studies in the philosophy of emotions have shown deep connections between narratives and specific emotions. Those connections are twofold in nature. First, the formation of emotions themselves requires narrative structures3 and, second, (literary) narratives are paradigmatically structured to arouse emotions.4

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Chong-Gossard 2009 and 2013, for example, has convincingly argued this point. For a convenient introduction to this topic, with a list of major ancient testimonies, see, for example, Konstan 2014, 976f. Snaevarr 2010, 321–331. Hogan 2003 and Snaevarr 2010, 332–335 offer details on how various narratives surround the formation of specific emotions.

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1.1 Narratives in the formation of emotions The idea that emotions are linked to narrative structures was initially proposed by Goldie 2000 and later developed by Snaevarr 2010. Synthesizing narratives unify our feelings, beliefs, and actions into a coherent emotional trait.5 For example, the formation of anger presupposes several steps that cannot do without internal narrative ingredients: the essential element in the cause of anger starts from a simple narrative paradigm: ‘someone has willingly offended me’, followed by understanding facial expressions (of another, mine), recognizing motives, and acting as a result of the emotion. In all these phases, narratives structures are used to justify and understand sensations, to recognize the causes for emotion, and to define the emotion as such.6 1.2 Emotions in literary narratives Hogan 2003 has drawn attention to the fact that narratives contain paradigm scenarios that are prototypical in nature and able to elicit emotions accordingly.7 Micro-narratives govern our emotive terms. Some emotions are stirred by socalled thin temporal events (quick, intense conditions) in Hogan’s theory: fear, anger, disgust. Others are caused by thick temporal events: sorrow or happiness. Prototypical narratives tend to mimic the thick temporal events. Thus, narratives describing romantic unions and achievements of social power form prototypes for literary happiness, while narratives dealing with deaths of the beloved and loss of social power (imprisonment, exile) lead to sorrow.8 Furthermore, these are not isolated literary preferences, but we can observe a cross-cultural existence of such prototypes. For instance, in romantic and heroic tragic-comedy, we can find recognizable narrative patterns: first, the union of the lovers; second, the separation; third, the reunion of the couple. The middle complications of the plot are designed to anticipate the final joy.9 Overall, Goldie, Hogan, and Snaevarr do not propose that complex literary works should be reduced to thematic models, but argue that narrative clues guide the readers to one emotional state or another, and those clues can be detected in all

5 6

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For a broader analysis of the link between emotions and various arts, not only literature, see also Sousa 2011, 153–218. Goldie 2011, 8–22 expands his ideas about narrative thinking, proposing that we all have ‘fictionalizing tendencies’ that become manifest in several areas, such as perceiving our lives as a plot, ascribing agency to a world where there is no agency, looking for narrative threads and closure (where there is none). The earlier study of Wierzbicka 1994 has also examined some linguistic and cultural patterns of emotions. Hogan 2003, 94. Hogan 2003, 98; Snaevarr 2010, 335.

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popular and long-lasting genres.10 If we accept this type of analysis, then we could see tragedy in general as a genre that arouses sorrow for fictional others, because it weaves themes of loss. Indeed, Greek tragedians present carefully chosen paradigmatic stories, which could be interpreted as clearly directed at arousing sadness, in light of these modern narrative-emotional theories. More specifically, ancient Greek thinkers say that tragedy should elicit the spectators’ pity because of depicting suffering as undeserved or beyond expectation.11 Could this focus on the suffering of others diminish the spectators’ personal sorrow? Some ancient sources suggest exactly this, but the extent to which it is so remains debatable. First I examine how tragic stories depicting the extraordinary suffering of others are offered in epic and tragedy with the precise aim of rescuing a mourner from self-imposed isolation, silence, or interminable fasting. Next I consider how Greco-Roman philosophers question and reassess the usefulness of tragic exempla in consolation. 1.3 The biology of consolation From a biological perspective, research indicates that the need to provide comfort to others in pain may precede language. Until recently, scientists have believed that empathy was exclusively to be found in humans. New evidence suggests, however, that primates may express concern for the wellbeing of other group members. One of the most striking experiments observes the behavior of a group of chimpanzees,12 who appear much more likely to try to comfort by grooming an ‘innocent bystander’ than a member who has caused his own suffering. In these instances of proto-consolation there is no prospect of reward for behavior, so chimpanzees seem to understand complex motivations related to the idea of deserved versus undeserved suffering. It is important to underscore that de Waal has proposed a ‘bottom-up view’ of empathy, different from the common definition of the dictionaries, which usually place a strong cognitive demand on empathy (seen as the ability to share and mentally understand someone’s feelings and situations). Instead, he notes that the beginnings of empathy are much simpler and that, overall, the notion can be understood more broadly as an immediate

10

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In the introduction of his book Herman 2013, 1–19 conveniently summarizes the main directions in which sciences of the mind have most recently explored stories and story telling, not only with respect to emotions but also with respect to other cognitive aspects. For culturally specific conditions of arousing pity in Greek culture, see especially Konstan 2001. De Waal 2009, 33–34: in a first stage, a young male chimpanzee provokes the alpha male of the group to a fight; the alpha male beats and defeats the challenger; in a second stage of the experiment, the alpha male is in a bad mood and starts beating a younger male without provocation.

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shared feeling with another in distress.13 Animals partake in basic forms of empathy, such as intensifying their own response to pain when they perceive members of their species in pain (mice). But primates appear to display a more advanced type of cognitive empathy.14 Attempts to alleviate the suffering of others who have endured unjustly may thus have basic biological roots. Surely, linguistic sophistication and cultural variations give human types of consolation both complexity and uniqueness, but a basic inclination toward helping another can point to a universal biological base. 2 GRIEF AND PARADIGMS OF SUFFERING IN HOMER AND TRAGEDY A link between Greek epic, tragedy, and an old form of Indo-European consolation might account for similarities in scenes in which characters offer solace to others who endure horrific fates.15 In the Old Norse epic poem Gudrunarkvida, Gudrun was consoled when she refused to move away from the body of slain Sigrud, by other women who have endured various misfortunes. The scenario is as follows. When people were stricken by unbearable calamity, usually by the death of a beloved, they became unable or unwilling to function in society, and may have refused to eat, move, or speak. In modern medical studies of bereavement four major stages have been observed: numbness, yearning, searching, and anger.16 Descriptions of characters abstaining from food or shut in silence can be linked to the first phase of numb withdrawal. Then, in order to help such 13

14

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De Waal 2012, 135–138 takes consolation in a very broad way: reassurance of a distressed individual, which is common in apes but absent in monkeys. He discusses the ‘Russian doll model of empathy’: having at the bottom motor mimicry and emotional contagion, at a second level coordination, shared goals – sympathetic concern, and, at a third, the highest level: true imitation – perspective taking; the most cognitively developed empathic responses occur when there is an increased distinction between the self and the other. Singer and Hein 2012, after reviewing previous scholarship in developmental psychology and neuroscience, analyze more nuances of human empathy: it is an affective state coming from the apprehension of another’s condition, and it can turn to sympathy or personal distress or both; it should be distinguished from sympathy, empathic concern, and compassion. Empathy translates into sharing the other person’s feeling, while the other forms do not have to have this sharing but can mean only mental understanding of another’s condition. One can mentally understand another person’s state, but be unable to share the feeling (some types of psychopaths appear to be very good at the first without having empathy, as Singer and Heim 2012, 168 show). Someone else’s pain can produce two immediate reactions (best studied in children): empathic concern, which tends to lead to a desire to help the other, or personal distress, which is not conducive to helping another. De Waal 2012, 127 has concluded this, noting that the scientific community has not yet agreed whether other species besides apes, such as canines and corvids, are capable of consolation; he lists at 129–135 other forms of empathy among animals, including reciprocal altruism. I have briefly discussed this topic in Munteanu 2012, 132f. Bowlby 1980 and 1988; Small 2001 examines additional theories of grief.

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persons return to life, a group (or a single individual) would approach with a consolatory narrative, showing that others have suffered more acutely before, and yet survived the terrible situation. I will first look at several scenes from Greek epic and tragedy in which characters offer someone in deep mourning, unresponsive, or fasting, tragic paradigmatic narratives in order to bring the sufferer back to life. In the Iliad, after agreeing to return the corpse of Hector to his father, Achilles wants Priam to postpone leaving his camp immediately and asks him to eat together first. In several unsuccessful attempts, Achilles suggests that Priam should stop lamenting and take a seat (24.521–526), using consolatory examples: Zeus gives to all both good and bad fortune (24.527–533); his own father, Peleus, is growing old at home, without help (24.534–541), matching the reference to his own father that Priam himself brought up earlier in his appeal to pity (24.504); finally saying that weeping will not bring Hector back (24.549–551).17 To all these, Priam responds that he cannot stop mourning until he sees the corpse of his son and the deal is sealed (24.552–558), to which Achilles responds with increasing irritation (24.560–564). A cynical psychological reading may credit Priam’s final obedience to Achilles’ earlier irritated outburst rather than to his plea, and there is, perhaps, some truth in that. However, Achilles does not lose his patience with the king – not entirely at any rate – and does not force him to eat, but spends time developing a long story of Niobe to console him. This narrative will eventually work better than his prior consolatory attempts. In order to persuade the distraught king of Troy, Achilles reminds him of the fate of Niobe (24.600–613): υἱὸς µὲν δή τοι λέλυται γέρον ὡς ἐκέλευες, κεῖται δ᾽ ἐν λεχέεσσ᾽· ἅµα δ᾽ ἠοῖ φαινοµένηφιν ὄψεαι αὐτὸς ἄγων· νῦν δὲ µνησώµεθα δόρπου. Καὶ γάρ τ᾽ ἠΰκοµος Νιόβη ἐµνήσατο σίτου, τῇ περ δώδεκα παῖδες ἐνὶ µεγάροισιν ὄλοντο ἓξ µὲν θυγατέρες, ἓξ δ᾽ υἱέες ἡβώοντες. τοὺς µὲν ᾽Απόλλων πέφνεν ἀπ᾽ ἀργυρέοιο βιοῖο χωόµενος Νιόβῃ, τὰς δ᾽ Ἄρτεµις ἰοχέαιρα, οὕνεκ᾽ ἄρα Λητοῖ ἰσάσκετο καλλιπαρηίῳ· φῆ δοιὼ τεκέειν, ἣ δ᾽ αὐτὴ γείνατο πολλούς· τὼ δ᾽ ἄρα καὶ δοιώ περ ἐόντ᾽ ἀπὸ πάντας ὄλεσσαν. οἵ µὲν ἄρ᾽ ἐννῆµαρ κέατ᾽ ἐν φόνῳ, οὐδέ τις ἦεν κατθάψαι, λαοὺς δὲ λίθους ποίησε Κρονίων· τοὺς δ᾽ ἄρα τῇ δεκάτῃ θάψαν θεοὶ Οὐρανίωνες. ἣ δ᾽ ἄρα σίτου µνήσατ᾽, ἐπεὶ κάµε δάκρυ χέουσα. ‘Your son is given back to you, aged sir, as you asked it. He lies on a bier. When dawn shows you yourself shall see him 17

Homeric characters do not seem to have difficulties weeping as soon as they lose someone. As Föllinger 2009, 24–26 notes, shedding tears frequently marks a reaction to personal loss (other occasions for crying being anger, despair, fear, and joyful events). Homeric heroes, nevertheless, appear to abstain from food when they find themselves in extreme sorrow.

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Dana LaCourse Munteanu as you take him away. Now you and I must remember our supper. For even Niobe, she of the lovely tresses, remembered To eat, whose twelve children were destroyed in her palace, Six daughters, and six sons in the pride of their youth, whom Apollo killed with arrows from his silver bow, being angered with Niobe, and shaft-showering Artemis killed the daughters; because Niobe likened herself to Leto of the fair colouring and said Leto had borne only two, she herself had borne many; but the two, though they were only two, destroyed all those others. Nine days long they lay in their blood, nor was there anyone To bury them, for the son of Cronus made stones out of the people; but on the tenth day the Uranian gods buried them. But she remembered to eat when she was worn out with weeping.’

After eating, she turned to stone and continued to mourn her children (24.617– 620): ἔνθα λίθος περ ἐοῦσα θεῶν ἐκ κήδεα πέσσει. ἄλλ᾽ ἄγε δὴ καὶ νῶϊ µεδώµεθα δῖε γεραιὲ σίτου· ἔπειτά κὲν αὖτε φίλον παῖδα κλαίοισθα Ἴλιον εἰγαγαγών· πολυδάκρυτος δέ τοι ἔσται. ‘There, stone still, she broods on the sorrows that the gods gave her. Come then, we also, aged magnificent sir, must remember to eat, and afterwards you may take your beloved son back 18 to Ilion, and mourn for him; and he will be much lamented.’

Without any specific invocation of emotions, the story of Niobe serves a practical purpose here, in a manner similar to the consolation moment from the Norse poem: it should help Priam to temporarily leave aside mourning and to return to life-sustaining activities. The consolation comes from a simple narrative formula: others have endured even worse calamities and managed to gather strength: even Niobe (who had twelve unburied children, not one)19 temporarily stopped her lamenting to feed herself (if only to be able to cry more later). Like a veritable dramatist, Achilles imagines and describes the moments after the death of the Niobids, giving a series of details that may be innovations, or free improvisations on the skeletal structure of the myth.20 It is noteworthy that this speech using Niobe as a paradigm does work as consolation (24.624): Priam indeed eats and requests a place to sleep, so he abandons his unbreakable mourning state (24.635– 642), even though Achilles’ earlier words of solace failed (24.517–564). What 18 19

20

Translations from the Iliad are Lattimore’s (1951) or slightly adapted. As Keuls 1978, 58, footnote 57, writes, however, Priam has also lost many children, not only Hector in the Iliad (24.601f.). It seems remarkable to me that Achilles not only dramatizes the story of Niobe in a manner convenient to his purpose, but also chooses to ignore certain details that could close the gap between the mythological sufferer and Priam. Willcock 1964, 141–143 interestingly underscores the idea that certain details in the Homeric version of the myth, including Niobe’s eating, seem to be a ‘made-up’ addition to the basic petrification of the devastated mother. These inventions stretching the myth to fit the purpose (to convince Priam) are nowhere else attested unless Homer is cited. On this, see also Alden 2000, 27–29, who sees in the story of Niobe a ‘positive’ paradigm.

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guarantees the success of the new paradigm? Two features differ from Achilles’ previous attempts: the story of Niobe matches much closer Priam’s situation and state of mind (already lost children, did not want to eat, but had to) than the prior examples and, second, it is much more developed than the previous suggestions, turning into a mini-drama sui generis. Even though the story of Niobe succeeds in its immediate purpose, I would like to point out certain strange details in the use of it, and, more generally, in the use of comforting speeches destined to alleviate mourning in the Homeric epic. There is something odd in the example offered by Achilles. An essential function of the tragic stories used in consolation is to bring the mourner back to life: to snatch the person from self-destruction, marked by starvation, isolation, and perhaps a desire to join the dead. So seems to be the case in the Indo-European example of women rescuing Gudrun with their storytelling. However, the myth of Niobe remains for us, and probably already for the Homeric audiences, an example of inconsolable mourner, who vanishes into stone, unable to rejoin the world of the living.21 Achilles’ use of her myth does not aim to save Priam permanently from his deep mourning, but only to give him enough strength to return to his lamentation, if he so wishes, as the final lines of the speech (24.617–620) indicate. Indirectly, then, the tragic example may strengthen the ability to mourn rather than diminish it in the long run. Elsewhere in the Iliad, Achilles, himself a mourner, also fasts, marking thus his deep grieving. On hearing about the death of Patroclus, he chooses not to eat, and even tries to impose abstaining from food to his fellow-warriors, until his beloved companion is fully avenged in Book 19.22 Twice Odysseus intervenes (19.156–169) and (19.216–234) insisting that the Achaeans ought to eat before going to battle, with which Achilles agrees in the end (19.275). But he alone does not yield to any exhortation, continuing to subject himself to starvation. Individual (Briseis) and group lamentations (other captive women), accompanied by exhortations (of Greek men) follow.23 Many important studies have rightly pointed out the significance of Briseis’ lament over the loss of Patroclus, showing how it connects various narrative threads in the poem, as it anticipates the suffering of 21

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Gantz 1993, 537 also remarks on the strangeness of this version of the story of Niobe and on additional surprises of the Homeric version of the story: so, for example, the unburied corpses of the children, which must intensify the pain of the mother. In my view, this narrative detail has to be understood in opposition to Priam’s advantage (ability to bury his son immediately). Ochs 1993, 39 comments on the oddity of this behavior, wondering ‘whether or not fasting was an expected behavior in the bereavement ritual for Homeric Greeks or whether the selfimposed “penance” can better be read as a plot mechanism to highlight the intensity of the heroes eagerness for revenge’. Clearly, to everyone else Achilles’ idea of fasting seems extreme. Pucci 1998, 97–112 in the chapter entitled ‘Antiphonal Lament Between Achilles and Briseis’ continues to develop the earlier observations of Lohmann (1993) to examine the parallelism between Briseis’ lament and Achilles’ (19.282–339). As Briseis’ lament is followed by other women’s laments, so Achilles’ is followed by other men’s.

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Andromache and commemorates war loss.24 But could we interpret Briseis’ intervention as an attempt to alleviate Achilles’ pain? Though never addressing Achilles directly, Briseis (19.282–300) offers a moving variation of the theme of a woman’s suffering even more than the mourner: she lost her husband and three brothers all in one day (19.291–294). We can easily link her personal story to those laments sung by the women of the Gudrunarkvida who try to console the widow.25 Most of the women in the Norse poem were captives who have lost their male relatives, just like Briseis, who in a way is twice taken prisoner, once by Achilles and secondly by Agamemnon. But here is the twist: she has lost even her consoler, Patroclus, so she will weep endlessly for him (19.300). The implication may well be that she feels even more unfortunate than Achilles, but she does not dare say so.26 Other women join in lamentation (19.301–303), each for herself, though openly grieving for Patroclus. Then Greek men approach Achilles with a clear message – that he should nourish his body, ‘begging him to eat’ (λισσόµενοι δειπνῆσαι, 19.304). This could have resembled the scene of the Norse poem, in which the mourner is slowly brought back to senses by tragic stories of others. But it does not. All is in vain, for consolation (if that was the intention of Briseis and the other women) fails, and so does also the men’s exhortation. Achilles persists in his self-mortification, justifying his refusal to eat: his longing for Patroclus exceeds his desire for food and drink (19.319–321), but most of all because he could not imagine suffering ‘anything worse’, κακώτερον ἄλλο (19.321), not even if his father had died. Afterwards he imagines how losing Peleus would have been a less terrible scenario (19.321–336).27 What rescues Gudrun in the Norse poem is thinking of the other women suffering even more than she does; what prevents Achilles from letting his grief loosen is his failure to see that anyone could suffer more than he does. He remains disconnected from Briseis’ lamenting interlude and unable to relate to other men’s pleas.28 But, 24

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Dué 2002, 6–9, with earlier bibliography, connects Briseis especially to the plight of Andromache and, more generally, to the suffering of all Trojan women; further on the theme, see also Dué 2006, 54f. and Perkell 2008, 98–104. Most of the women in the Norse poem were captives who have lost their male relatives, just like Briseis, who in a way is twice taken prisoner, once by Achilles and secondly by Agamemnon. As Karanika 2014, 24 notes, the very first image of a mortal woman in the Iliad is that of the silenced Briseis (1.347f.) walking reluctantly away from the tent of Achilles, after Patroclus hands her to the men who will bring her to the new master. As Dué 2002, 67f. suggests, we could imagine Briseis as a widow three times in the Iliad: first, she is bereaved of the Trojan husband, secondly, she weeps for Patroclus, a substitute for her new husband, and, thirdly, she anticipates the death of Achilles who implicitly views her as wife-like (9.340–343). On the complicated relationship between hero-sons and their fathers in Homer, see, for example, Holway 2011, 79–104. Murnaghan 1999 notices that, in general, laments bring the female perspective into the male oriented narratives of the Greek epic; despite gender differences, however, at 207, she points out that laments stem from regretful fantasies, from imagined scenarios that can no longer take place: Briseis’ and Achilles’ laments for Patroclus resemble each other in this respect.

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perhaps, he in fact responds to the earlier lament of Briseis, which she may have intended as consolatory. She has lost her male protectors (including her father, husband, and brothers), but his loss has surpassed hers, because losing Patroclus is worse than losing his father. In this instance, the female song does not bring solace but is amplified by the lament of the grieving male instead.29 And, instead of Achilles’ return to a normal way of living, we witness an extraordinary prolongation of the mourning process in Book 19 of the Iliad, in which both the dead and the living are allowed not to separate through magic intervention. As, at the beginning of the book, the gods permit Patroclus’ body not to decompose, through feeding it ambrosia and nectar post-mortem (19.36–39), so they keep the fasting Achilles alive and strong through feeding him artificially with ambrosia and nectar (19.351–356).30 Thus, one’s longing for the deceased hero has an extraordinary extension through artificial nourishment in the Iliad until the funeral procession,31 although consolation through tragic myth can provide temporary solace. Contemplating the misfortune of another in an exemplary story can snatch a sufferer from the paralysis of deep grief. A curious example, similar to the Niobe parable in the Iliad, occurs when Clytemnestra first addresses Cassandra in Aeschylus’ Agamemnon (1035–1041): εἴσω κοµίζου καὶ σύ, Κασσάνδραν λέγω, ἐπεί σ᾽ ἔθηκε Ζεὺς ἀµηνίτως δόµοις κοινωνὸν εἶναι χερνίβων, πολλῶν µέτα δούλων σταθεῖσαν κτησίου βωµοῦ πέλας· ἔκβαιν᾽ ἀπήνης τῆσδε, µηδ᾽ ὑπερφρόνει. καὶ παῖδα γάρ τοί φασιν Ἀλκµήνης ποτὲ πραθέντα τλῆναι δουλίας µάζης τυχεῖν. Cassandra you may go within the house as well, Since Zeus in no unkindness has ordained that you Must share our lustral water, stand with the great throng Of slaves that flock to the altar of our household god. Step from this chariot, then, and do not be so proud. And think – they say that long ago Alcmena’s son Was sold in bondage and endured the bread of slaves.32

Leaving aside the queen’s ultimate intentions, it is worth taking a brief look at her words, which make use of the consolatory tragic exemplum. Perhaps few com29

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Crotty 1994, 49 well points out the gendered parallels in lamentation: the women hearing Briseis mourn not only for Patroclus, but also for themselves (19.301f.); similarly, the old men join Achilles, grieving also for their own losses (19.338f.). To Achilles’ worries that Patroclus’ body will rot, Thetis assures him that the corpse will remain intact even for a year; then she drops ambrosia and nectar through the dead man’s nostrils (Iliad 19.21–39). In response to Zeus’ worry that Achilles’ body will grow weaker if it is not fed, Athena pours nectar and ambrosia inside Achilles’ chest (Iliad 19.340–356). Roberts 1993, 574f. observes that while the burial enhances the possibility of closure in both Greek epic and tragedy, the exclusion of relatives from the burial often occurs as a theme in these genres, increasing the anxiety around the dead. The translation is Lattimore’s (1967).

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mentators would take the allusion to Heracles being a slave to be a prototypical consolation, but I think it is.33 It is certainly surprising to attempt to console one’s future victim, but the scene on the whole is surprising.34 It does not seem implausible that Clytemnestra wants to be able to convince the Cassandra to move, even though she has no concern for her overall good. At any rate, Clytemnestra briefly describes the misfortune of someone of higher status than the Trojan captive; someone who has steadfastly endured a similar calamity, namely slavery. She does so in order to convince Cassandra to abandon her motionless state and step down from her chariot. As in the case of Priam in the Iliad, Cassandra here is in extreme pain after seeing her city destroyed and herself taken captive, and that most likely causes her silence,35 though her unresponsiveness may also be a sign of defiance.36 Concentration on personal misfortune causes a kind of indifference to the world, a senseless and motionless state, in which the sufferer forsakes the fundamental activities of life: eating, moving, and speaking to other fellow-humans. 33

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Not many pay attention to Clytemnestra’s use of the example of Heracles. Raeburn and Thomas 2011, 180, for instance, simply summarize (lines 1035–1071): ‘First, Clytemnestra reenters from the house and attempts to lure Cassandra inside’. Earlier, Denniston and Page 1957, 159, ad loc. correctly note ‘There is something ironical, almost contemptuous, in the futile consolation of 1040f., “Don’t think yourself too good for your position: cheer yourself up with the example of Heracles in bondage to Omphale.”’– they point out that Cassandra will not live long enough to need strength. This is certainly true but, in my opinion, Clytemnestra still intends her words to function as a consolation with a practical purpose, namely to help Cassandra temporarily to overcome her petrified state, albeit she intends to murder her later. As Mossman 2005, 354f. notes, Cassandra is the only character who resists Clytemnestra’s persuasive speech in the play. Rehm 2002, 79 observes that at this point the audience expects Agamemnon to be killed offstage, a moment anticipated by the song of the chorus (975–1034), but, instead, Clytemnestra appears unexpectedly and tries to lure the silent character inside. Cassandra’s entrance constitutes then a surprising climax. Surprising is also another detail in this scene, as Scodel 2010, 99f. observes: when Cassandra did not respond to Clytemnestra, ancient spectators would have assumed that she was played not by an actor but by an extra, so they would have been shocked when she started singing at 1072. Stanford 1983, 61 associates silence with various emotional attitudes in Greek tragedy: ‘the pathetic silence of Cassandra in Agamemnon (783–1071), the “tense” silence of Prometheus in the Prometheus Bound for the first eighty lines, the silence of Phaedra linked to shame in the Hippolytus (297), and the silence linked to desolation and grief in Euripides’ Heracles, after the hero realizes that he has killed his children (1178–1230). On silent veiling, as a sign of grief, see, for example, Cairns 2009, 46f. Clytemnestra first seems to interpret Cassandra’s silence as a sign of grief, hence her brief attempt to console her – and, no doubt, Cassandra starts lamenting as soon as she lets sounds come out of her. But interpreters most commonly underscore the fact that Clytemnestra believes that the Trojan captive does not know Greek (1050–1052) – so for example Montiglio 2000, 214, who analyzes with subtlety the effects of this silence on the confident queen. This latter assumption, it seems to me, comes from the queen’s reconsidering the reason of the silence after her consolatory example failed: so if Cassandra cannot be consoled, it may be because she does not understand the words.

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Paradigmatic tragic stories serve to remind the sufferer of vital routines. Certain features of the tragic story are worth underlining here. (1) There is no specific appeal to the emotions (e.g. pity) in the address. Nor is there any implication that the sufferer could take action and help someone. The exemplum invites only to abstract thinking, even when it is not mythological: others have survived similar but more horrible situations. However, the speaker clearly presents the paradigmatic narrative as a way of diverting the attention of the grieving person from feeling sorrow for the self to thinking of another’s pain and as a way of sympathizing with another. (2) An implied comparison is drawn: the sufferer in the mythical example has endured even more terrible things (Niobe) or belongs to a higher rank than does the person currently in pain (Heracles). (3) The misfortune of the paradigmatic mini-tragedy resembles that of the sufferer (e.g. the loss of children in the Iliad, or slavery in the example from the Agamemnon).37 (4) Finally, the mythical example hides a message of optimism (even though sometimes we can detect only a very slight optimistic nuance – such as in the case of Niobe who overcame her mourning state only to gather strength to continue to lament); the overall (implied) moral of the mythical story lies in the fact that others have managed to survive in most unfortunate circumstances. How extensive is the practice of offering consolation through tragic exempla within tragedies themselves? And how successful is it? Overall, as ChongGossard has shown, characters in Greek tragedy often refuse to be consoled by an invocation of persons who have endured similar misfortunes.38 He notes that consolatory examples fail to work within tragedies, even though philosophers sometimes cite them later as standard texts for consolation.39 The parodos of Sophocles’ Electra offers a memorable example (137–157):40 when the chorus of Argive women attempt to soothe the heroine’s grief with numerous common tropes (invariability of mortality, sorrow has not befallen her alone, etc), she refuses to accept those. Furthermore, she responds with her own counter-examples, including tragic stories, including a reference to Niobe who cries endlessly in her rocky grave (147–152). Interestingly, the story of Niobe gives here justification for relentless weeping – a quite different spin from the passage in the Iliad examined above. Surely Electra’s situation differs considerably from those of the other mourners in that she continues to hold her deep grief for the death of her

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Note that Achilles’ consolatory attempts prior to the story of Niobe did not satisfy this condition (agreement between the type of suffering in the myth and of the sufferer). Chong-Gossard 2013 and, for an earlier, narrower essay, dealing with failure of consolation in a situation of erotic disappointment, see Chong-Gossard 2009. His excellent analyses have a different scope than mine, looking more generally at broad consolatory themes and not at the examples I have discussed, which regard profound grief, felt immediately after a calamity, when consolation could bring someone back from numbness. Examples come from Alcestis and Hypsipyle. Chong-Gossard 2013, 46–49 offers a detailed discussion of this failed consolation.

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father in order to punish her mother,41 but normally that stage of lamentation should have passed. In conclusion, however, protagonists often reject consolation through common tropes and mythical exempla in Greek tragedy. In a way, nevertheless, by declaring themselves inconsolable, these characters could become in themselves useful paradigms for the external Athenian audience, who could not possibly have had to endure such incredible sorrows.42 My analysis has concentrated on more specific situations, narrower in scope than those analyzed by Chong-Gossard, namely on instances when consolation is delivered immediately after a calamity (usually bereavement) occurs. The purpose of the consolatory speech in this particular context can be rather precisely defined: to restore the sufferer to normality, and thus end his or her silence, fasting, and isolation. Practical results can thus measure the success of the consolatory speech. In the epic instances examined here and the Aeschylean scene, the narrated example of another’s misfortune occurs in precise circumstances, immediately after a calamity. A story used may be exemplary, myth-based (Niobe, Heracles), but it might be personal as well, if we consider Briseis’ lament to be in this consolatory category. The speaker brings it up to convince Priam to eat, as earlier in the Iliad Achilles ought to eat, and in the Agamemnon Cassandra has to speak. We know of more scenes of similar sort in the lost tragedies of Aeschylus, in which the protagonists remained silent on stage for a long time, especially his Niobe in the homonymous play and Achilles, probably in the Phrygians, while others tried to convince them to return to the normal activities.43 Although we do not have all the details, those scenes were memorable enough to be mocked by Aristophanes in the Frogs (911–913). The scenes in which consolation is offered in an exemplary narrative display metatheatrical features: self-referential when they occur in tragedies, and inviting the mourner to be a spectator to the misfortunes of others.44 But does consolation by tragic exempla – mythical or personal – 41

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The first stage of grief produced by bereavement is usually more acute and potentially paralyzing than the following phases. For example, in a standard book, Kübler-Ross 1969, lists denial and isolation as first manifestations of bereavement; those, in their turn, may come with silence and refusal to eat, followed by anger, negotiation, sadness, and finally acceptance. As Chong-Gossard 2013, 39 observes, invocations of tragic exempla within tragedies are in themselves meta-theatrical, and these scenes where consolation occurs can be used as paradigms in future drama. Sommerstein 2010, 242 reviews the evidence for Aeschylus’ tetralogy based on the Iliad: it contained The Myrmidons, The Nereids, The Phrygians, and a satyr play. Aristophanes mocks the silent Aeschylean characters, such as Niobe and Achilles, but the commentators are unsure whether it is the angry silent Achilles in the Myrmidons (coinciding with the known beginning of the Iliad) or the mourning Achilles in the Phrygians, after losing Patroclus. Most incline toward the latter, but, as Sommerstein 2010, 242f. rightly points out, Aeschylus could have represented Achilles twice stubbornly silent, in both tragedies. As I have suggested earlier, there is no request, and most often no possibility, for the sufferer to act on account of his pity for another in these instances, so he or she only contemplates another’s misfortune in the same way in which a spectator would.

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function well in one respect, namely to restore the mourner to behavior that is conducive to living, by ending the unresponsive state, or social isolation? Later on in the fourth-century, Aristotle notes that people who are utterly destroyed do not feel pity for others, having no greater evil to fear in their own life.45 In the scenes explored above, the bereft persons may think that the worst has already happened to them, but they often still hope to accomplish something, so it is worth overcoming their grief on that account.46 In the Iliad, certainly Achilles persuades Priam to eat with him after using the example of Niobe. Briseis is not successful in consoling Achilles, but she never dares to use her personal misfortune directly as a means of persuasion. It may be due to gender and status that she cannot offer herself as a consolatory model openly, and Achilles does not connect with her but laments separately and is followed antiphonally by a group of men. He is, however, restored to nourishment through magic, as he also has to avenge the death of his friend. In Aeschylus’ Agamemnon, Cassandra does not respond to Clytemnestra’s strange encouragement immediately. However, she does regain her voice later on. In the lost Aeschylean tragedies, Niobe and Achilles do not speak for a long time, but again they do eventually after being consoled by the choruses.47 In the examples discussed above there was a clear correspondence: the more similar the mourner perceives his or her plight to be to the narrated tragic example, the more successful the consolation and vice versa, the more dissimilar, the less likely successful the consolation.48 From a broader perspective, Niobe as a mythical paradigm can strangely offer solace, even though she herself appears to have been inconsolable, and may be used to excuse eternal mourning (e.g. Sophocles’ Electra). Her story is not only used in an inventive way in the Iliad already, as we have seen, but also continues to remain a model for consolation, as fourth-century Apulian vase iconography indicates.49 In the Italiote funerary art, the image of the Niobe in deep mourning

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Rhetoric 3.8, 1385b20–22: these people cannot relate to another’s suffering because they have already endured everything. Priam still hopes to bury Hector and Achilles still wants to avenge his beloved companion. Cassandra may be the exception, but she still seems to think that her prophetic skills may warn the chorus about the murder about to happen, and keeps some vague hope until she enters the palace to meet her death in the Agamemnon (1330). According to the testimony of Aristophanes in the Frogs (924f.), Niobe spoke in the end twelve ox-like monstrous words. The mourner has to accept the similarity and concede to an extent that the narrated suffering was worse than his. Thus Priam accepts the parallel: parents horribly losing children who are unburied in the Iliad. Achilles does not take in Briseis’ lament (that she has suffered similarly but worse: not only their gender but also their losses are weighed differently). Later he clearly states that his loss is worse than that of a male protector. Cassandra does not respond to Clytemnestra’s comparison, so we do not know what she believes, but she may well think that she is going to suffer more than Heracles. Schmidt 1976, 41–43 connects the figure of Niobe on the Apulian funerary vases with Achilles’ use of the myth in the Iliad as a consolatory example for Priam. For skepticism regarding

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by the grave of her children was probably seen as consolatory in connection with the Aeschylus’ lost play: as her death through petrification symbolizes both a relief from unbearable pain and perhaps a promise to be reunited with her lost children.50 So, in Greek epic and tragedy, consolation through a narrative of another’s suffering functions well, at times, in a limited sense, that of briefly restoring the bereaved to normality, although, more broadly, tragic characters may refuse to forget their pain or to accept common tropes. Disturbing in most of the cases I have explored, however, is the sense that the consolation through exemplary story can only function as a sort of palliative: good enough for ending the ongoing crisis, so the mourner does not die from grief, but not sufficient to alleviate the sorrow long-term. 3 FROM TRAGIC EXEMPLA TO CONSOLTORY GENRE AND PLEASURE 3.1 Timocles From using tragic exempla for practical reasons, tragedies might offer spectators who are less traumatized by recent calamities a more abstract type of relief. A fragment from Middle Comedy, Timocles’ Dionysiazusae (Kassel-Austin, fr. 6. Vol 7=Athenaeus 6.223b–d) gives a humorous account of the benefits of tragedy that fits the earlier idea of consolation.51 The mind (νοῦς, 5) of the listener, leaving aside personal sorrows (τῶν ἰδίων λήθην λαβών, 5) is mesmerized by another’s experience (ἀλλοτρίῳ τε ψυχαγαγηθεὶς πάθει, 6).52 This process comes with both pleasure (µεθ ̓ ἡδονῆς, 7) and instruction (7),53 for tragic stories

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this view, see Keuls 1978, 60, with footnote 65, who suggests that Aeschylus’ tragedy could have served as a model for the artists instead. Keuls 1978 convincingly reconstructs the symbolism of the figure of Niobe on the Apulian vases in relationship with literary evidence (particularly the Aeschylean tragedy). She starts with a surprising observation: while the preferred themes on funerary vases belong to the ‘happy ending’ Euripidean tragedies, Niobe appears to be an exception; even on the Apulian vases she is depicted mourning by the grave, sometimes guarded by consolatory figures (e.g. a woman, or Zethus and Amphion) often with parallel scenes depicting Andromeda, and Keuls suggests several plausible explanations for the optimistic take on the myth of the mourning mother. For a recent reexamination of the Aeschylean fragments, see Pennesi 2008, who carefully reviews previous scholarship. Generally, on Greek comedy writers’ preoccupation with tragedy, see Wright 2012, 162–164, listing the following: Alcaeus’ Comitragedy, Callias’ Tragedy of Letters, Phrynichus’ Tragedians; comedies that presented themselves as tragedies: Strattis’ Orestes the Man and Phoenician Women (based on Euripides), Cratinus’ Eumenides, etc. McCoy 2013, 200 interestingly notes that while the audience’s engagement with the suffering of another certainly refers in this fragment from Timocles to the tragic character, it may also be expanded to the real misfortunes of others beyond the examples, of people in the community. Rosen 2012, 183 plausibly suggests that the speaker of Timocles’ fragment targets especially contemporary theories proclaiming the didactic usefulness of tragedy. I (2012, 133–136) have

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place the audience’s troubles into the right perspective. And several cases follow as illustrations from tragedies,54 among which I am going to select the example of Niobe because, on the one hand, it relates to our earlier discussion, and on the other, it moves us to the next stage, the philosophical views. Someone’s child has died, Niobe has eased (κεκούφικεν, 14) his/her pain. As we have already seen, in the Iliad already Achilles reminded Priam of Niobe in order to divert him from mourning and help him return to resume eating. Furthermore, in different philosophical contexts, the same idea resurfaces: contemplating the enormous misfortunes of others (and responding emotionally to them) can ease personal concerns, and can thus produce pleasure.55 3.2 Plato Within epic and tragedy, consolation through tragic exempla appears to be successful only in a limited sense, namely to alleviate grief in its first acute phase, so that the mourner can return to routine activities. But tragedy as genre may have been seen as offering solace to spectators, with its parade of utterly devastated characters, who, though inconsolable themselves become paradigms of suffering, as Timocles’ fragment from Dionysiazusae parodically suggests. However, this notion probably already circulated in Greek culture, and not only in dramatic contexts, but also among philosophers and rhetoricians.56 A fragment of Democritus (B 191 DK) already recommends that by contemplating (θεωρέειν) the lives of those who are more unfortunate than they, people can realize that they live better than others.57 A sharp and formidable opponent of this idea of tragic

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more broadly seen it as a response to various philosophical views about tragedy and a parody of philosophical diction, including that of Aristotle. Rosen 2012, 185, footnote 15, observes that Timocles’ list of tragic examples in this fragment comes close to the one which Dicaeopolis gives in Aristophanes’ Acharnians (410–434), asking Euripides for his most piteous creations: Oeneus (419), Phoenix (421), Philoctetes (424), Bellerophon (427), and Telephus (429). This may imply a long interaction of comedy with a series of (particularly) Euripidean characters who may have been seen as prototypes of endurance. The description of musical catharsis from Aristotle’s Politics 8 (1342a4–15) contains the idea that people who feel pity and fear (though not necessarily in a theatrical context here, these are the quintessential emotions of tragedy in the Poetics) experience catharsis, which is placed on the same level as relief and pleasure. The same verb, to ease (κουφίζειν) was used in the fragment from Timocles, in connection with the tragic Niobe easing the pain of a person who loses a child. I am not including a full discussion of Aristotle here because he does not deal with the subject directly and because of the problems surrounding catharsis. For more on the possible links between his oikeia hēdonē and consolation, see my suggestions 2012, 117– 131. On this see Kassel 1958, 8f. It seems interesting to me that the dominating terms in the fragment relate to contemplation and thinking (about others) and not to feeling, although, of course, the two should not be seen in contrast.

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consolation is Plato. His critique of tragic pleasure in the tenth book of the Republic comes precisely as an argument against finding solace for grief in epic and dramatic performances. Here Socrates sets his theoretical point on a particular narrative frame, a hypothetical case: imagine that a worthy man has lost his son (10.603e). While he will feel a certain amount of grief in a moderate measure, for experiencing no emotion would be impossible, this bereft man would refrain expressing this grief in public, because of a sense of shame, though he would be less composed in privacy (10.604a). As the interlocutor readily agrees with this premise, Socrates continues to show that tragic pleasure slackens the soul’s capacity for restraint (10.606a3–b8).58 Some cultural commonalities can be easily observed in this account. Thus, the spectator of epic and tragic performances relaxes the guard of his lamentation and feels pleasure (ἡδονή), both relief and enjoyment being features also present in the Timoclean fragment. The main concern here also matches the theme of consolation through tragic exempla. Thus Plato examines the effect of feeling pain for a fictional other (of another man, ἄλλος ἀνήρ), by observing the suffering of others (ἀλλότρια πάθη) when one tries to bear his own misfortunes. What Plato brilliantly reverses is the starting point in the tradition. As we have seen in the early examples from tragedy and epic, the silence and isolation of the mourners were symptoms of the first, acute stage of grief, – a phase of bereavement well documented by modern medicine and biology. Those succumbing to such grief were unable to interact with others in a normal manner, so the tragic stories of others helped them rejoin the world. Plato presents a different situation: the mourner keeps the grief to himself not because he is unable but because he is unwilling to lament publicly, held back by a sense of shame. From this viewpoint the ease and pleasure at letting the sorrow for fictional others flow does not come with a benefit (even if it is commonly thought so), but with a loss, an inability to control the expression of sorrow. This conclusion, therefore, opposes the view of tragedy as solace, in which the spectator gains control over his own pain by contemplating the suffering of others on the tragic stage. Certainly historical cultural changes can account for some differences in the attitudes toward mourning between the archaic and classical Greece, and literary representations of lament do not simply corresponded to social realities.59 The idea that one should feel ashamed for lamenting publicly in Plato’s Republic does not appear in the Homeric examples.60 Most importantly for our purpose here, 58

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I do not intend to offer any close analysis of this passage, which I have discussed elsewhere (2009) 119–122 and (2012) 62–65, but I shall only highlight relevant points for the present discussion. On this topic see especially Foley 2001, 21–55 and Dué 2006, 46–50 with a careful review or earlier scholarship. When Achilles offers the example of Niobe, he suggests that there would be nothing shameful in Priam’s interrupting his lamenting, not that Priam should altogether stop weeping for his son. However, the idea that unbridled mourning ought to be confined only to certain appropriate social contexts has been seen as early as a fragment of Archilochus (13 West): en-

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however, the famous discussion of tragic pleasure in last book of the Republic is deeply connected with a rejection of the notion of tragic consolation. Although originally story-telling appears to have brought solace to a mourner isolated socially because of his grief, Plato envisions a later stage, and is concerned with the mourner’s proper social behavior. In this context, a man ought to bear his bereavement with dignity and moderation, but tragic performances rather stir the personal pain than alleviate it. As an alternative to the tragedian’s work, the philosopher proposes his own complex myth with consolatory power, that of Er, the Pamphylian soldier who died but came back to life later.61 Plato’s successors seemed to have continued to develop ways to promote philosophy as consolation, perhaps in contrast with tragedy. A disciple, Crantor, wrote a treatise entitled On Grief (Περὶ πένθους), probably expanding Platonic ideas: it apparently argued that emotions, and excessive grief in particular, were natural but had to be moderated by reason.62 3.3 Later Philosophers on Τragic Consolation The debate over accepting or rejecting tragedy as a form of consolation in philosophy did not end with Plato, but resurfaced in later philosophical debates. For example, it preoccupies the Stoics and Skeptics, who meditate on the relationship between feeling sorrow for fictional others and for the self. I would like to devote the last section to a brief review of these later philosophical approaches, as presented in Cicero’s Tusculan Disputations. The analysis of consolatory techniques in Cicero’s third book of Tusculan Disputations63 reviews the opinions of various philosophical schools about distress caused by bereavement. Again without going into intricate detail,64 I will select for discussion a section that seems to have direct relevance to my topic: the relationship between the observation of the fictional other in tragic exempla and the alleviation of personal pain (3.24.59–60): Quodcirca Carneades, ut video nostrum scribere Antiochum, reprehendere Chrysippum solebat laudantem Euripideum carmen illud:

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durance has to replace otherwise endless weeping, which appears womanish. For a recent reappraisal of the fragment, with a review of scholarship, see Steiner 2012. Halliwell 2007 offers a nuanced examination of this myth and its function within the Republic. A brief description of Crantor’s work is given by Cicero, Academica Priora 2.135; for a good scholarly discussion of Peri Penthous, its central idea, metriopatheia, and its influence, see Dillon 2003, 224–228. General topics in Cicero’s Tusculan Disputations regard the shock of misfortune and duration of mourning. Is grief natural or not? Responses of various philosophical schools are listed and discussed. For a detailed commentary, see Graver 2002, 78–112.

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Dana LaCourse Munteanu Mortalis nemo est quem non attingat dolor Morbusque; multis sunt humandi liberi, Rursum creandi, morsque est finita omnibus Quae generi humano angorem nequiquam adferunt… Negabat genus hoc orationis quidquam omnino ad levandam aegritudinem pertinere; id enim ipsum dolendum esse dicebat, quod in tam crudelem necessitatem incidissemus; nam illam quidem orationem ex commemoratione aliernorum malorum ad malevolos consolandos esse accomodatam. Therefore, Carneades, as I see our Antiochus writes, used to reproach Chrysippus who was praising that famous Euripidean passage:65 There is no mortal whom pain does not touch And illness; many have to bury their children, And to conceive again, death is definite for all Things bring distress to the human race in vain…[from Euripides’ Hypsipyle, fr. 757 Kannicht] He would deny that this type of speech pertains at all to the alleviation of sorrow; that very thing has to be painful, he would say. For, we have fallen into such cruel necessity; for, surely, that famous [Euripidean] speech about the commemoration of other peoples’ misfortunes must be fit to bring solace to the ill-disposed people.

It remains unspecified here why exactly Chrysippus, the Stoic philosopher (279– 206 BCE), praised this passage from Euripides’ Hypsipyle. Possibly he saw in it a confirmation that all people suffer and die, so that it would be futile to grieve this inescapable human fate. This would support the Stoic viewpoint that we should eliminate grief.66 Certainly, however, Chrysippus interpreted the Euripidean lines along the lines of the traditional consolation, as we can guess from the response of the opponent. Conversely, Carneades, the Skeptic philosopher (214–129 BCE), raises a fascinating question. Why should such tragic examples bring any relief at all? Why would the idea that others have suffered, and that ultimately we all do, should be useful for easing pain (ad levandam aegritudinem)? On the contrary, the thought of universal suffering and inescapable doom ought to depress us, not to sooth our soul. The verb levare, ‘to ease’, reiterates the idea of relief of some sort that appears in all the Greek texts we have examined, and was often connected in some way to pleasure. If Plato speaks against tragic pleasure because it fosters our own desire to lament personal sorrows, Carneades seems to consider finding solace in tragic examples as a kind of Schadenfreude. 65

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It is perhaps not random that Cicero, following Hellenistic philosophers, cites Euripides in this context. As Lloyd 2013 has observed (with a review and reinterpretation of earlier scholarship on the topic), Euripides more than any other Greek tragedian (as far as our evidence permits to say) deals with the topic of the mutability of fortune, but at the same time, he, more than any other, invests his characters with incredible resilience when faced with vicissitudes. However, within these tragedies themselves, sometimes such speeches of consolation were unsuccessful, as Chong-Gossard 2009 and 2013 has pointed out. Gill 2008, 155 plausibly suggests this interpretation, comparing Cicero’s translation of the Euripidean fragment into Latin to the Greek. Cicero changes certain details in his translation that may emphasize the Stoic view; for example, he adds nequiquam, ‘in vain’ and mors est finita omnibus, ‘death is ordained for all’.

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In conclusion, Cicero defends the power of tragic consolation, assuming that awareness of universal necessity aids us in enduring hardships (Tusculan Disputations 3.24.60): Mihi vero longe videtur secus nam et necessitas ferendae condicionis humanae quasi cum deo pugnare prohibet admonetque esse hominem, quae cogitatio magno opere luctum levat, et enumeratio exemplorum, non ut animum malevorum oblectet, adfertur, sed ut ille qui maeret, ferendum sibi id censeat, quod videat multos moderate et tranquille tulisse. It seems to me that the matter is quite different, for the necessity of bearing the human condition prevents us from fighting as if with a god, and reminds us that we are human, and this thought alleviates our sorrow with great power, and the counting of examples are not for delighting the mind of the spiteful, but rather for the person who grieves, so that he might think that it (his own sorrow) can be endured, because he sees that many have endured it patiently and quietly.

Cicero’s reasoning surely sounds convincing: people do not naively enjoy watching the suffering of others, even when presented in mimetic form, but may find solace in finding models of people who have endured the most extraordinary hardships and prevailed. However, several objections can be raised to this argument, and some have been. (1) In the tragedies themselves, heroes often declare themselves inconsolable. Therefore, they could not be taken as models strength, as Plato points out. If the spectator watching these most unfortunate cases becomes rather content with his own life, which, by comparison, seems to be fortunate, then such a spectator may seem a little selfish if not spiteful, as Carneades words it. An escape from this label would be to note that staged calamities are only mimetically represented, not real. But the question still remains hypothetically: why find those enjoyable? No final answer has yet been given.67 (2) Although some tragic exempla seem absolutely inappropriate for consolation, they were used nevertheless in this manner. In Cicero’s Tusculan Disputations, Niobe and Hecuba figure as prototypes of persons who have failed to bear their bereavement and took it to two extremes: utter grief (represented by Niobe as stone), and, respectively, utter fierceness, (represented by Hecuba as a bitch).68 Yet, even those extreme cases could be given for solace to others, through crafty manipulation of the narrative details, as in Homer, or thanks to eschatological symbolism, as on Apulian vases. Interpretation of tragic mythical stories remains thus relative not absolute. (3) Understanding theoretically that everyone suffers, and some (tragic exempla) more than the average person, does 67

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For an attempt to explain why tragedy gives us pleasure, from Plato to Shakespeare, see, for example, Nuttall 2001; more specifically on Aristotle’s proper pleasure of tragedy, and its possible connection with the pleasure of mourning, see Munteanu 2012, 103–131 and Destrée 2014. Tusculan Disputations 3.63.26: in both examples the women do not let their pain go; so the listed causes are propter aeternum … in luctu silentium, ‘because of endless silence in her mourning’ and propter acerbitatem quoandam et rabiem, ‘because of a certain fierceness and insane anger’. According to modern psychological diagnosis each heroine appears to be stuck in a different phase of mourning: withdrawal and, respectively, anger.

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not guarantee that one will use this knowledge practically at the time of need. An interesting dramatic example is adduced by Cicero (Tusculan Disputations 3.29.71). In Sophocles’ lost tragedy, the Teucer,69 Oileus found words to console Telamon for the death of Ajax, but he could not apply the same to himself, and collapsed into sorrow (literally ‘was broken’, fractus est) when he heard that his own son died. But should we ascribe these problems to the tragic exempla used in consolation or to the genre of consolation in general, including philosophical percepts? Most philosophical schools that developed their own methods of consolation appear to have included examples from tragedies for illustrating various arguments (e.g. the Stoics), or, at least, needed to explicitly reject them (Carneades), and Cicero incorporates analyses of tragic exempla, along with reallife illustrations from Roman history in his Tusculan 3. But difficulties persist beyond the use of tragedy, and philosophers do not posses the key to eliminating grief. After losing his daughter, Tullia, in 45 BCE shortly after she gave birth to her second son, Cicero attempted to find solace in all the previous writings, but found out that ‘pain overcomes all consolation’, omnem consolationem vincit dolor, in a letter to his friend Atticus (12.14.3). By the time of the late Roman Republic, Cicero had at his disposal philosophical and rhetorical writings on consolation that go beyond tragic exempla. Different Hellenistic schools seem to have been preoccupied with healing the mental anguish caused by the death of a loved one, and especially by the loss of a child. For example, the Cyrenaics proposed pre-rehearsal of sorrow, whereas the Epicureans advocated concentration on past blessings, and Cicero inclines toward the former approach.70 And there was more at his disposal. Most likely all major philosophical currents after Plato proposed consolatory techniques. In his unique Consolatio ad se, Cicero acknowledges trying to follow Crantor and his notion of metriopatheia (later embraced by Peripatetics), even though he admits ignoring the advice of the Stoic Chrysippus to let the first wave of grief pass before dealing with bereavement. He describes himself resembling a doctor who knows exactly what treatments he ought to administer to his patient, but is unable to do so efficiently.71 Cicero’s position here does not seem to be much different from Oileus in Sophocles’ play: theoretical knowledge about how one should act in response to personal loss does not translate into practical solutions. In conclusion, initially, perhaps, originating in an Indo-European tradition, narratives describing the extraordinary sufferings of others, whether those were 69

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Most scholars agree that these lines should be attributed to Teucer, although Stobaeus (4.49.7) places them at the beginning of Sophocles’ Oedipus, which was later emended to Oileus; for further discussion on this see Gill 2008, 156, with footnote 10. Graver 2001 offers a nuanced analysis of this topic, emphasizing that two philosophical schools, whose opinions Cicero documents very carefully, are particularly interested in assuaging the pain of losing children. See also her essay in this volume on the political implications of Cicero’s display of grief. Baltussen 2013, 71–75.

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real or mythological, appear to have been used to provide temporary solace at a very critical moment: in the first stage of grief, when the mourner isolates himself or herself from the rest of the community and from the normal daily activities. We can observe traces of this type of consolatory narrative within Greek epic and tragedy.72 However, tragic exempla do not offer universal solace: often characters within Greek tragedies metatheatrically reject consolatory attempts of this sort. By the fifth century BCE, nevertheless, some may have regarded tragedy as a genre offering consolation to the spectators, in a kind of abstract manner, by turning their attention from personal misfortunes to the unparalleled suffering of others and giving them pleasure and relief (thus in Timocles’ playful fragment from Dionysiazusae). Plato opposes this notion in the tenth book of the Republic, noting that the relief, accompanied by pleasure when people watch tragedies, seems innocent, but instead of providing solace, it stirs the soul. Lamentation for fictional others fosters lack of restraint in expressing grief when one is faced with personal loss. Plato proposes an alternative model of endurance through philosophy and, more practically, through the figure of Socrates facing death in the Phaedo. Hellenistic philosophers appear to have continued to debate whether or not tragic examples should be useful in consolation, while advancing their own paradigms of consolation. Cicero’s Tusculan Disputations and Self-Consolation provide us with a review of some of these philosophical approaches and revive questions regarding the power consolation altogether, regardless of its sources – literary or philosophical. Most intriguingly, the same consolatory relief that tragedy may provide to the spectator has been linked to pleasure. Ancient writers do not agree on the causes of this connection, suggesting forgetfulness of personal sorrows (Timocles), false belief in such forgetfulness which leads to arousal of personal sorrow (Plato), encouragement by observing the fortitude of others (Cicero), or Schadenfreude (Carneades). And neither do modern philosophers.73 Perhaps we want to remember and understand traumatic experiences in life, not only ours but also those of other people, sometimes only in a hypothetical manner – the kind that could happen to us all. Perhaps, we simply want to acknowledge such experiences with sadness when we are reminded of them in arts, and so we find value in tragic narratives that describe suffering. Simply documenting one’s experiences may be a source of comfort, as memorialization offers us the solace (illusory as it may be) that suffering has not been endured in vain. As Rilke wonderfully puts it in Titelblatt, a poem in which a number of tragic characters, vaguely reminiscent of the Timoclean Dionysiazusae fragment, parade: 72

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Note that initially consolation through tragic narrative seems intended for the first stage of grief. Even the Stoics believe that this first wave of the emotion should pass before one can deal with sadness rationally. Ring 2011 argues that ‘sad’ songs especially have no narrative to go with them (so no cognitive pleasure) – ‘anticathartic’ – and are sought out for their ability to make us sad, which we value for some reason; on this, see also Smuts 2007.

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Dana LaCourse Munteanu Die Reichen und Glücklichen haben gut schweigen, Niemand will wissen, was sie sind. Aber die Dürftigen müssen sich zeigen, müssen sagen: ich bin blind, oder: ich bin im Begriff es zu werden oder: es geht mir nicht gut auf Erden, oder: ich habe ein krankes Kind ... Und vielleicht, dass das gar nicht genügt. Und weil alle sonst, wie an Dingen, An ihnen vorbeigehn, müssen sie singen. Und da hört man noch guten Gesang. It’s OK for the rich and the lucky to keep still; No one wants to know about them anyway. But those in need have to step forward, Have to say: I’m blind, Or: I’m about to go blind, Or: nothing is going well with me, Or: I have a child who is sick, … And probably that doesn’t do anything either. They have to sing; if they didn’t sing, everyone Would walk past, as if they were fences or trees. And that’s where you can hear good singing.74

The short-sighted spectator will probably not be significantly relieved to discover that the sons of Phineus go blind, as parodically suggested in Timocles’ fragment,75 but he may be soothed to hear this type of suffering recorded in a poem. We may not necessarily find solace in the tragic examples per se, but we may be comforted knowing that art represents human sorrow in a memorable way and in a mesmerizing form.

BIBLIOGRAPHY Alden, M. (2000) Homer Beside Himself: Para-Narratives in the Iliad, Oxford. Baltussen, H. (2013) Cicero’s Consolatio ad se: Character, Purpose, and Impact of a Curious Treatise, in H. Baltussen (ed.), Greek and Roman Consolations. Eight Studies of a Tradition and Its Afterlife, Swansea, 67–92. Bly, R., trans. (1981) Selected Poems of Rainer Maria Rilke. A Translation From German and Commentary by Robert Bly, New York. 74 75

I am using the translation of Robert Bly 1981. Fr. 6 K-A=Athenaeus 6.223, line 13: ‘Someone suffers from an eye-infection, Phineus’ sons are blind’ which makes the spectator of tragedy feel better. The prophet Phineus, tormented by the Harpies, had blind sons (Phineidae), thanks to the scheming of Idaea, their stepmother; in his commentary, Olson 2007, 171f. notes that this particular mythological detail did not appear to be popular among tragedians but probably occurred in a Sophoclean play.

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Bowlby, J. (1980) Loss: Sadness and Depression, New York. ––– (1988) A Secure Base: Parent-Child Attachment and Healthy Human Development, London. Cairns, D. (2009) Grief, Display and Concealment in Ancient Greek Culture, in T. Fögen (ed.), Tears in the Graeco-Roman World, Berlin, 37–58. Chong-Gossard, J. H. (2009) Consolation in Euripides’ Hypsipyle, in J. R. C. Cousland and J. R. Hume (eds.), The Play of Texts and Fragments: Essays in Honour of Martin Cropp, Leiden, 11–22. ––– (2013) Mourning and Consolation in Greek Tragedy: The Rejection of Comfort, in H. Baltussen (ed.), Greek and Roman Consolations. Eight Studies of a Tradition and Its Afterlife, Swansea, 36–66. Crotty, K. (1994) The Poetics of Supplication: Homer’s Iliad and Odyssey, Ithaca. Denniston, J. D. and D. L. Page (1957) Aeschylus Agamemnon. Edited with Introduction and Commentary, Oxford. Destrée, P. (2014) Aristotle on the Paradox of Tragic Pleasure, in J. Levinson (ed.), Suffering Art Gladly: The Paradox of Negative Emotions in Art, New York, 3–27. Dillon, J. (2003) The Study of Plato. A Study of the Old Academy (347–274 BCE), Oxford. Dué, C. (2002) Homeric Variations on a Lament by Briseis, Lanham. ––– (2006) The Captive Woman’s Lament in Greek Tragedy, Austin. Foley, H. (2001) Female Acts in Greek Tragedy, Princeton. Föllinger, S. (2009) Tears and Crying in Archaic Greek Poetry (Especially Homer), in T. Fögen (ed.), Tears in the Graeco-Roman World, Berlin, 17–36. Gallie, W. (1968) Philosophy and the Historical Understanding, New York. Gantz, T. (1993) Early Greek Myth. A Guide to Literary and Artistic Sources, vol. 2, Baltimore. Gill, C. (2008) Tragic Fragments, Ancient Philosophers and the Fragmented Self, in F. McHardy, J. Robson, and D. Harvey (eds.), Lost Dramas of Classical Athens, Exeter, 151–172. Goldie, P. (2000) The Emotions. A Philosophical Exploration, Oxford. ––– (2011) Life, Fiction, and Narrative, in N. Carroll and J. Gibson (eds.), Narrative, Emotion and Insight, University Park, 8–22. Graver, M. (2001) Managing Mental Pain. Epicurus vs. Aristippus on the Pre-Rehearsal of Future Evils, in J. Cleary and M. Gurtler (eds.), Proceedings of the Boston Area Colloquium in Ancient Philosophy 17, Leiden, 155–177. ––– (2002) Cicero on the Emotions. Tusculan Disputations 3 and 4. Translated with Commentary, Chicago. Halliwell, S. (2007) The Life-and-Death Journey of the Soul: Interpreting the Myth of Er, in G. R. F. Ferrari (ed.), The Cambridge Companion to Plato’s Republic, Cambridge, 445–472. Herman, D. (2013) Storytelling and the Sciences of Mind, Cambridge. Hogan, P. C. (2003) The Mind and Its Stories: Narrative Universals and Human Emotion, Cambridge. Holway, R. K. (2011) Becoming Achilles: Child-Sacrifice, War, and Misrule in the Iliad and Beyond, Lanham. Karanika, A. (2014) Voices at Work: Women, Performance, and Labor in Ancient Greece, Baltimore. Kassel, R. (1958) Untersuchungen zur griechischen und römischen Konsolationsliteratur, Munich. Keuls, E. (1978) Aeschylus’ Niobe and Apulian Funerary Symbolism, Zeitschrift für Papyrologie und Epigraphik 30, 41–68. Konstan, D. (2001) Pity Transformed, London. ––– (2014) Pity, in H. M. Roisman (ed.), The Encyclopedia of Greek Tragedy, vol. 2, Malden. Kübler-Ross, E. (1969) On Death and Dying, New York. Lattimore, R. (1951) Homer. Iliad. Translated with an Introduction, Chicago. ––– (1967) Aeschylus I (Oresteia: Agamemnon; The Libation Bearers; The Eumenides), Chicago. Lohmann, D. (1993) Antiphonal Lament Between Achilles and Briseis, Classical Quarterly 29, 253–272.

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Lamm, C., C. D. Batson, and J. Decety (2007) The Neural Substrate of Human Empathy: Effects of Perspective-taking and Cognitive Appraisal, Journal of Cognitive Neuroscience 19, 42–58. Lloyd, M. (2013) The Mutability of Fortune in Euripides, in D. Cairns (ed.), Tragedy and Archaic Greek Thought, Swansea, 205–226. McCoy, M. (2013) Wounded Heroes: Vulnerability as a Virtue in Ancient Greek Literature and Philosophy, Oxford. Montiglio, S. (2000) Silence in the Land of Logos, Princeton. Mossman, J. (2005) Women’s Voices, in J. Gregory (ed.), A Companion to Greek Tragedy, Malden, 352–365. Munteanu, D. (2009) Qualis Tandem Misericordia in Rebus Fictis? Aesthetic and Ordinary Emotion, Helios 36, 117–147. ––– (2012) Tragic Pathos. Pity and Fear in Greek Philosophy and Tragedy, Cambridge. Murnaghan, S. (1999) The Poetics of Loss in Greek Epic, in M. Beissinger, J. Tylus, and S. Wofford (eds.), Epic Traditions in the Contemporary World, Berkeley, 203–220. Nuttall, A. D. (2001) Why Does Tragedy Give Pleasure?, Oxford. Ochs, J. D. (1993) Consolatory Rhetoric: Grief, Symbol, and Ritual in the Greco-Roman Era, Columbia. Olson, D. (2007) Broken Laughter: Select Fragments of Greek Comedy, Oxford. Pennesi, A. (2008) I framenti della Niobe di Eschilo, Amsterdam. Perkell, C. (2008) Reading the Laments of Iliad 24, in A. Suter (ed.), Lament. Studies in the Ancient Mediterranean and Beyond, Oxford, 93–117. Pucci, P. (1998) The Song of the Sirens and Other Essays, Lanham. Raeburn, D. and O. Thomas (2011) The Agamemnon of Aeschylus: A Commentary for Students, Oxford. Rehm, R. (2002) The Play of Space: Spatial Transformation in Greek Tragedy, Princeton. Ring, R. (2011) Why Do We Listen to Sad Songs?, in N. Carroll and J. Gibson (eds.), Narrative, Emotion, and Insight, University Park, 131–153. Roberts, D. (1993) The Frustrated Mourner: Strategies of Closure in Greek Tragedy, in R. M. Rosen and J. Farrell (eds.), Nomodeiktes: Greek Studies in Honor of Martin Oswald, Ann Arbor, 573–589. Rosen, R. M. (2012) Timocles fr. 6 K-A and a Parody of Greek Literary Theory, in C. W. Marshall and G. Kovacs (eds.), No Laughing Matter: Studies in Athenian Comedy, London, 177–186. Schmidt, M., D. A. Trendall, and A. Cambitoglou (1976) Eine Gruppe apulischer Grabvasen in Basel: Studien zu Gehalt und Form der unteritalischen Sepulkralkunst, Basel. Scodel, R. (2010) An Introduction to Greek Tragedy, Cambridge. Singer, T. (2006) The Neuronal Basis and Ontogeny of Empathy and Mind Reading: Review of Literature and Implications for Future Research, Neuroscience and Behavioral Reviews 30, 855–863. ––– and G. Hein (2012) Human Empathy through the Lens of Psychology and Neuro-Science, in F. B. M. de Waal and P. F. Ferrari (eds.), The Primate Mind: Built to Connect with Other Minds, Cambridge MA, 158–174. Small, N. (2001) Theories of Grief: A Critical View, in J. Hockey, J. Katz, and N. Small (eds.), Grief, Mourning and Death Ritual, Buckingham, 19–48. Smuts, A. (2007) Paradox of Painful Art, Journal of Aesthetic Education 41, 59–77. Snaevarr, S. (2010) Metaphors, Narratives, Emotions: Their Interplay and Impact, Amsterdam. Sommerstein, A. H. (2010) Aeschylean Tragedy, London. Sousa, R. de (2011) Emotional Truth, Oxford. Stanford, W. B. (1983) Greek Tragedy and the Emotions, London. Steiner, D. (2012) Drowning Sorrows: Archilochus fr. 13 W. in Its Performance Context, Greek, Roman and Byzantine Studies 52, 21–56. Waal, F. de (2009) Primates and Philosophers: How Morality Evolved, Princeton.

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––– (2012) A Bottom-Up View of Empathy, in F. B. M. de Waal and P. F. Ferrari (eds.), The Primate Mind: Built to Connect with Other Minds, Cambridge MA, 121–138. Wierzbicka, A. (1994) Emotion, Language, and Cultural Scripts, in S. Kitayama and H. R. Markus (eds.), Emotion and Culture: Empirical Studies of Mutual Influence. Washington DC, 133– 196. Willcock, M. M. (1964) Mythological Paradeigma in the Iliad, Classical Quarterly 14, 141–154. Wright, M. (2012) The Comedian as Critic. Greek Old Comedy and Poetics, London.

THE POETICS OF EMOTIONAL EXPRESSION: SOME PROBLEMS OF ANCIENT THEORY Stephen Halliwell Conceptions of emotional expression have played a persistent if contested role in Western attitudes to literature. I use ‘emotional expression’ here as a collective label for the subject of numerous critical and theoretical propositions in which emotion-related predicates are applied (or denied) to literature and the varieties of experience it is taken to involve. Such propositions extend along a spectrum of views which can be characterised as stretching from Romantic, but not only Romantic, belief in ‘the spontaneous overflow of powerful feelings’ on the part of poets and other creative writers to New Criticism’s austere assertion of ‘the affective fallacy’. My intention here, needless to say, is certainly not to attempt a systematic analysis of this large and important topic. But I hope that by taking a fresh, close look at some pertinent ancient texts, I may be able at least to clarify several issues that have proved fundamental to the history of literary criticism and theory. There has, of course, been a great deal of enlightening work already carried out in this area. My own approach will nonetheless challenge some prevailing orthodoxies and advance a number of new readings of particular passages. If I have an overriding aim it is to give substance to the thesis that the meanings that might be attached to the idea of emotional expression in literature (and by ‘literature’ here I shall be referring to both poetry and art-prose)1 are more complex and unstable than is often appreciated. One way of constructing a general schema of the problems which concern me is to start by asking where, so to speak, emotion is to be located when emotional expression is predicated of literature. There are three basic possibilities, which significantly cannot always be kept easily apart. Is emotion in such cases to be ascribed directly to the author (as a sort of causal or originary hypothesis), and, if so, do we need to distinguish between the ‘biographical’ author (outside the text) and the ‘virtual’ author (inside the text) to make sense of this kind of expression? Is emotional expressiveness, alternatively, an effect that inheres in the linguistically constituted worlds, whatever precisely might be meant by that, of literary works themselves? Or, finally, is the essential test of what is at stake here the production of emotion in the reader or audience of the literary work?

1

For some thoughts on the relationship between ancient categories of discourse and the modern concept of ‘literature’, see Halliwell 2016.

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I shall be relying on reference to this trio of basic possibilities throughout my argument. But it will prove necessary, as the argument develops, to think of them not only as separate possibilities in their own right but also as the points of a sort of triangular configuration of relationships: relationships between author and work (in what sense can an author ‘put’ emotions ‘into’ a work? a seemingly clumsy formulation but relevant to some ancient texts), between work and audience (should we think of the former triggering emotions in the latter and/or of the latter as projecting them onto the former?), and between author and audience (do authors manipulate their audience’s emotions or transmit their own emotions to them?). Two further, overlapping sets of questions are worth adding to these brief prolegomena; they will be touched on again at various stages of the enquiry. The first is this: does emotional expression in literature necessarily/always entail actual or ‘first-order’ emotion, i.e. some sort of consciously affective state (in which case, whose?), or is it sometimes/always rather a matter of depicted, symbolised, or (on the reader’s part) ‘make-believe’ emotion?2 The second is this: does literary emotion, however predicated or located, belong to the same continuum as normal or real-life emotions, or does it deserve to be categorised as in some special sense ‘aesthetic’?3 Might there even be literary emotions that cannot exist outside literature? I start, appropriately enough, in medias res, with a passage from Horace’s Ars Poetica which is valuable for my purposes because it contends that poetry is incomplete without some kind of emotional expressiveness. But how exactly does it conceive of emotion in this context? The passage is very well known though more intricate in its implications than standard readings admit. non satis est pulchra esse poemata; dulcia sunto et quocumque uolent animum auditoris agunto. ut ridentibus adrident, ita flentibus adflent humani uultus. si uis me flere, dolendum est primum ipsi tibi; tum tua me infortunia laedent, Telephe uel Peleu; male si mandata loqueris aut dormitabo aut ridebo. tristia maestum uultum uerba decent, iratum plena minarum, ludentem lasciua, seuerum seria dictu. format enim natura prius nos intus ad omnem fortunarum habitum; iuuat aut impellit ad iram aut ad humum maerore graui deducit et angit; post effert animi motus interprete lingua. (Horace, AP 99–111)

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One influential but widely debated modern view of aesthetic emotion in general as makebelieve or quasi-emotion is that of Walton 1990, esp. 240–259. For one critique of Walton, see Carroll 1991. Munteanu 2009 explores the relationship between ‘aesthetic’ and ‘ordinary’ emotion in a number of ancient texts.

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It is not sufficient that poems be beautiful; they should charm us And should move the hearer’s mind wherever they wish. Just as human faces respond to smiles with smiles, so weeping Elicits sympathetic tears. If you wish me to weep, you must grieve Yourself in the first place; then I too will be hurt by your misfortunes, Telephus or Peleus; but if you speak inappropriate words I’ll either fall asleep or laugh. Sad words befit A sorrowful face, threatening words an angry face, Frivolous words a playful one, serious words a harsh one. The reason: nature shapes us inwardly in advance For every state of fortune – it gladdens or angers us Or makes us collapse and anguishes us with grievous sorrow – Then expresses the mind’s emotions in the medium of language.4

According to the usual exegesis, Horace (or the didactic voice of his poem, at least) urges and requires poets to induce in themselves the emotions they wish their works to induce in their audience. On this account, we are dealing in the first place with authorial emotion which is then quasi-rhetorically conveyed to the audience: that is the view, for instance, of Charles Brink, who thinks the origin of the critical ideas in question lies within the traditions of rhetoric as such.5 But the train of thought in this passage is less simple than that. I suggest that we can find in it a sequence of five main thoughts – a sequence in which there is a sense of partially elliptical connections and some slippage between different frames of reference. (1) Poems (poemata, 99), i.e. the works themselves, should ‘move the minds’ of their hearers (animum auditoris agunto, 100, obviously equivalent to the Greek ψυχαγωγεῖν). It is the poems rather than their authors which are made the grammatical subjects of acts of ‘willing’ or intentionality (quocumque volent, 100). Note also that Horace’s principle is coupled with the need for poems to be affectively charming (dulcia): the assumption is apparently of a distinctively aesthetic experience in which the arousal of emotion is made to serve a special kind of gratification, in contrast to some of the real-life contexts (e.g. of grief) envisaged in the generalisations of lines 108–110.6 (2) Human beings’ faces show how they are capable of responding instinctively to each other’s expressions of emotion. This is something like a general theory of emotional sympathy as outwardly manifested in facial signals: the point 4 5

6

All translations in this paper are my own unless otherwise indicated. Brink 1971, 174, 182–190 (with much helpful detail). In his references to Aristotle, Brink privileges rhetoric over poetics, though he recognises the overlap between them; this leads him to foreground an author-audience model over the more complex author-characteraudience nexus: note esp. 185 for his conviction that what is at issue is ‘H[orace]’s belief in poetic sincerity’. For the idea of emotional expression in the rhetorical tradition in its own right, cf. n. 39 below. Compare Aristotle’s conception of pity and fear as modified by aesthetic pleasure at Poetics 14.1453b12, ‘the pleasure arising from pity and fear through mimesis’, τὴν ἀπὸ ἐλέου καὶ φόβου διὰ µιµήσεως ... ἡδονήν, with Halliwell 2002, 178–187.

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applies in the first instance to literally ‘face-to-face’ encounters. Yet it is (also) a premise in an argument about poetry, where the audience is confronted with imaginary characters, whether physically represented in staged performances of drama, vocally represented in recitation, or only fictively present in a text consumed by individual readers. (3) If ‘you’ wish ‘me’ to respond instinctively to your emotions, you must really feel those emotions (102f.). But who is the ‘you’ in this injunction? Contrary to a common misconception, nothing tells us that it is the poet;7 the continuation of Horace’s sentence explicitly invokes those imaginary characters, such as Telephus and Peleus, who inhabit the world of the poem. So there are immediate complications. What might have sounded, in the light of the preceding point, like a principle of authorial sincerity turns out to be something rather different. But how can characters in poems ‘really’ feel emotions? Horace (or, again, his didactic voice, itself a kind of ‘imaginary character’) underlines the paradox by addressing examples of poetic characters as though he were in face-to-face dialogue with them: the voice of a figure in one poem momentarily merges his world with that of figures in other poems. Nor can the paradox be resolved simply by saying that Horace means the poet’s emotions but employs a trope to add vividness to his point: we would still be left with the problem of how the audience is supposed to gain access to the poet’s own emotions via the words of fictive characters in his works. (4) The tacit transition from ‘ordinary’ to poetic emotional expression which takes place between the second and third points above is now reinforced by the idea that poetic characters need to speak words that are appropriate for them (literally ‘assigned’ to them, mandata, 104). The formulation clearly entails a principle of literary-stylistic fit, not general psychological sincerity: after all, in life words are not normally ‘assigned’ to us, and in any case it is possible to feel, and even exhibit, genuine emotion without finding appropriate words for it at all. (We shall meet an example later in which ‘disordered’ language is itself taken to be emotionally powerful.) The list of examples in lines 105–107 emphasises the notion of stylistic-cum-expressive ‘decorum’ (cf. the verb decent, 106) with reference to different positions on the spectrum of emotional (and, by implication, genre-relative) possibilities, even though it borrows from the principle stated in lines 101–102 the idea of the face as the prime locus of bodily expressiveness. (5) Human beings have a natural propensity to react emotionally ‘inside’ or inwardly (intus, 108) and then to externalise their feelings in language. The train of thought here moves back to the terms of a psychological and anthropological universalism – so much so, indeed, as to reactivate the paradox noted under point (3) above. The imaginary characters of poetry do not have an ‘interior’ and their expressiveness consequently cannot be a matter of an inside/outside or feelings/language fit but must be something different in kind: it must, in fact, be a 7

Rudd 1989, 167f. thinks Horace’s injunctions apply equally to actor and playwright; each ‘induces in himself’ the emotions of the character.

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property of the workings of poetic language itself, as lines 104–107 suggest. Yet Horace’s ostensibly sequential reasoning, with the connective enim at 108, leaves the impression that poetry is being tested by the standards precisely of ‘life’. But how can that be? A provisional answer is that Horace imagines literary language as operating on the same signifiying and expressive principles as in life but with a kind of reversed causal flow. In the paradigm of linguistic expression – where the ‘tongue’ (lingua) functions as interpres (expounder, interpreter, translator, all rolled into one) – the movement is from the ‘interior’ experience of speakers to the public realm in which their speech is received. But in the case of literature, words invite the audience to project a kind of ‘interior’, a mental-cum-emotional life, behind those words, even though the psychology of that life is a pure fiction, not an actual agency of expression. This famous section of the Ars Poetica, then, discloses far more complexity than standard interpretations of it as enunciating a single principle of ‘rhetorical’ expressiveness (the transmission of emotion from author to audience) would lead us to believe.8 Its train of thought moves subtly backwards and forwards between the linguistic conditions of life and literature, nature and art. In doing so it posits processes of expression which blur the distinctions between the text/poem itself, the speaking characters of the poem, and the poet (the agent of mandare, 104; cf. point (4) above). Horace – himself, to reiterate, a ‘virtual’ author inside the text – is insistent on the importance of emotion for poetry but leaves it uncertain just how and why emotion is generated in the workings of literature. Against the background of those various points, consider now the following (condensed) extracts from the discussion of periodic sentences in Demetrius, De elocutione. οὔτε γὰρ δεινῶς λέγοντι ἐπιτήδεια [sc. τοιαῦτα κῶλα] ·... ἡ γὰρ ὁµοιότης ἡ περὶ τὰ κῶλα καὶ ἀντίθεσις ἐκλύει τὴν δεινότητα διὰ τὴν κακοτεχνίαν. θυµὸς γὰρ τέχνης οὐ δεῖται, ἀλλὰ δεῖ τρόπον τινὰ αὐτοφυᾶ εἶναι... καὶ ἁπλᾶ τὰ λεγόµενα. oὔτε δῆτα ἐν δεινότητι χρήσιµα τὰ τοιαῦτα... οὔτε ἐν πάθεσι καὶ ἤθεσιν· ἁπλοῦν γὰρ εἶναι βούλεται καὶ 9 ἀποίητον τὸ πάθος... (Demetrius, De Elocutione 27–28) [Such clauses] are not appropriate for a forceful speaker... , since the balance and contrast between the clauses dissipate forcefulness by their contrived artificiality. Anger needs no artifice; what is said should be, in a way, spontaneous... and simple... Such clauses, then, are of no use for forcefulness... nor for the expression of emotion and character. Emotion is typically simple and uncontrived...

The nub of Demetrius’ argument is seemingly unequivocal: strong emotion is simple, uncontrived, natural, and therefore incompatible with stylistic artifice. But 8

9

Cf. Abrams 1953, 71f. for brief but telling remarks on how the Horatian passage, and especially the ‘si vis me flere’ tag, lent itself to a shift of emphasis from ‘artfulness’ to ‘spontaneity’ in the historical shift of sensibility from Neoclassicism to Romanticism. In the course of this passage Demetrius cites a scathing sexual description of the companions of Philip of Macedon from the historian Theopompus (FGrHist 115 F225(c)). For present purposes I leave aside the details of the quotation and Demetrius’ judgement on it.

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as so often in ancient critical texts, the nature-art dichotomy is not only an indispensable reference-point but also a kind of faultline running beneath the surface of critical standards. Unlike Horace, who in the passage already quoted tries to smoothe out the nature-art contrast into a harmonious relationship (nature herself produces both the experience of emotion and the tongue’s articulation of that experience), Demetrius sees an inherent tension between nature and art. While, therefore, like Horace, he recognises a necessary principle of expressive ‘match’ between emotion and language, Demetrius puts himself in a quandary. It is not hard to see why he takes conspicuously formal balance/contrast between clauses to be unsuitable for expression of anger, but this draws him into formulating a strangely sweeping opposition between emotion and literary art. He is, after all, analysing resources of linguistic style which are for him by definition a matter of poetic and literary artfulness. If anger ‘needs no artifice’ for its expression, it falls outside the ambit of critical stylistics altogether. Yet Demetrius is precisely concerned with how the emotion can be stylistically conveyed. How, then, could δεινότης, forcefulness, ever be – (supposedly) like emotion itself – entirely ἀποίητος, translated above as ‘uncontrived’ (one could equally say ‘unformed’, ‘uncrafted’) and implying a complete absence of anything other than raw nature? A necessary part of the answer to that question is that in the above quotation Demetrius is schematically simplifying his stylistic principles. The simplification is hinted at in the statement that the literary expression of anger should be ‘in a way’ spontaneous (τρόπον τινὰ αὐτοφυᾶ):10 we sense that what is desired here is not after all raw, uncrafted nature, but the creation of artful impressions of the natural (an idea which we shall meet again shortly). Although the point is not developed in this context itself, we can find elsewhere in the treatise a convenient confirmation of how Demetrius makes room for the discreetly artful expression of emotion. In his discussion of the ‘grand’ (µεγαλοπρεπής) style, he writes as follows. λαµβάνεται δὲ κἀν παθητικοῖς πολλάκις ὁ σύνδεσµος οὗτος, ὥσπερ ἐπὶ τῆς Καλυψοῦς πρὸς τὸν Ὀδυσσέα Δ∆ιογενὲς Λαερτιάδη πολυµήχαν᾽ Ὀδυσσεῦ, οὕτω δὴ οἶκόνδε φίλην ἐς πατρίδα γαῖαν... εἰ γοῦν τὸν σύνδεσµον ἐξέλοις, συνεξαιρήσεις καὶ τὸ πάθος. (Demetrius, De Elocutione 57) This particle [δή: ‘indeed’] is also frequently used at moments of emotion, as in the case of Calypso’s address to Odysseus, ‘Zeus-born son of Laertes, Odysseus of many wiles, [Is it indeed your wish] to go home to your own dear land?’ If you remove the particle, you will remove the emotion with it.

Several things are striking about this passage. In the first place, since it belongs to Demetrius’ analysis of the grand style, there can be no question here of emotion as entirely simple, raw or unformed: it must carry with it an element of imposing 10

The words are omitted from the translation of Grube 1961, 68.

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elevation. Furthermore, Demetrius clearly conceives of the emotional quality of the lines he quotes from Odyssey 5.203f. as something specifically verbal and poetic, not psychological in a straightforwardly naturalistic sense: ‘if you remove the particle, you will remove the emotion with it’ is intelligible as a comment on a text, but it would make no sense of a ‘real’ Calypso (or of anyone else in a comparable situation) to suppose that removing a particle from her words would remove her emotion at the prospect of Odysseus’s departure. Demetrius’ rather clipped comments make it hard to be sure just what nuance of feeling he attributes to the particle in Homer’s line,11 though he goes on to reveal that he is following the intriguing view of the early Peripatetic Praxiphanes that particles like δή were literary equivalents to, or surrogates for, groans, sighs and the like.12 There is no doubt, however, that Demetrius locates the emotion in question (which he does not identify by name) firmly in the words and imagined attitude of the character; he offers no hypothesis about the poet’s own creative state of mind. It is clear, in short, that within the terms of his larger stylistic theory he treats emotional expression as a powerful effect but a literary effect nonetheless: a controlled use of language that will elicit an appreciative response of recognition from the sensitive reader/hearer. There is no reason to conclude that this same model does not also underlie his remarks (above) at 27–28. He is preoccupied there with the need to avoid misapplied artifice, but his qualification, ‘in a way spontaneous’, betrays his awareness that in literary language the ‘natural’ is always filtered through the operations of compositional construction. I propose now, in what will be the central section of my argument, to explore further some of the issues and problems so far raised by looking at a selection of passages from Longinus, On the Sublime. (I retain Longinus as the author’s name for mere convenience.) As with Horace’s Ars Poetica, we are dealing here with a highly familiar, not to say ‘canonical’, text that can nonetheless yield new insights when scrutinised afresh and without idées reçues. The first extract I want to examine is from Longinus’ famous reading of Sappho fr. 31 PLF. He chooses the song as an example of how a writer can achieve sublimity by carefully selecting the component factors of certain experiences and by configuring them into an organically integrated whole. οἷον ἡ Σαπφὼ τὰ συµβαίνοντα ταῖς ἐρωτικαῖς µανίαις παθήµατα ἐκ τῶν παρεποµένων καὶ ἐκ τῆς ἀληθείας αὐτῆς ἑκάστοτε λαµβάνει. ποῦ δὲ τὴν ἀρετὴν ἀποδείκνυται; ὅτι τὰ ἄκρα αὐτῶν καὶ ὑπερτεταµένα δεινὴ καὶ ἐκλέξαι καὶ εἰς ἄλληλα συνδῆσαι. [quotation of Sappho fr. 31 follows] οὐ θαυµάζεις ὡς ὑπὸ τὸ αὐτὸ τὴν ψυχὴν, τὸ σῶµα, τὰς ἀκοὰς, τὴν γλῶσσαν, τὰς ὄψεις, τὴν χρόαν, πάνθ᾽ ὡς ἀλλότρια διοιχόµενα ἐπιζητεῖ,... ἵνα µὴ ἕν τι περὶ αὐτὴν πάθος φαίνηται, παθῶν δὲ σύνοδος; πάντα µὲν τοιαῦτα γίνεται περὶ τοὺς ἐρῶντας, ἡ λῆψις δ᾽ ὡς ἔφην τῶν ἄκρων καὶ ἡ εἰς ταὐτὸ συναίρεσις ἀπειργάσατο τὴν ἐξοχήν. (On the Sublime 10.1–3) 11

12

Demetrius is presumably committed to finding an equivalent emotional inflection when the same Homeric line as Odyssey 5.204 occurs in a different context at Iliad 2.158, 174, or when οὕτω δή introduces other questions at Iliad 14.88, 15.553. Praxiphanes fr. 24 Matelli, fr. 13 Wehrli.

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Stephen Halliwell Sappho, for instance, always chooses the emotional elements that go with episodes of erotic madness from the things that actually accompany it and from the truth itself. Where does she display this excellence? In her ability to select and bind together extreme and intense symptoms. [quotation of Sappho fr. 31 follows] Do you not marvel at how she fuses together soul, body, hearing, tongue, vision, skin – tracking them all as if they were alienated and splitting apart,... so that she seems to be the subject not of some one emotion but of a whole cluster of them? All such things actually happen to people in love, but it is, as I said, the choice and weaving together of the extremes which renders her work outstanding.

Despite his reference to psychological ‘truth’, we need to be clear that Longinus does not take Sappho to be transcribing or recording her own emotions in the moment of their experience. His whole case depends on the idea of artistic selection and composition; the last sentence of the extract draws attention directly to the difference between the phenomenological immediacy of erotic passion (which anyone can be in the grip of) and the special capacity of great writers to create a powerful impression of the kind of experience in question. But Longinus does something more with this distinction. He converts it into an acute paradox. The experience of passion is taken to be portrayed by Sappho as psychologically centrifugal, a sort of fragmentation of consciousness: the symptoms seem ἀλλότρια (‘alienated’ or somehow not properly part of the experiencing subject) and ‘splitting apart’ (διοιχόµενα) from the person. Yet the poem which conveys such experience is, for Longinus, precisely a specimen of artistically crafted unity: it illustrates what he has called, just before the quotation above, the way in which poetic composition can combine the various facets of an experience into, as it were, ‘a single body’ (καθάπερ ἕν τι σῶµα ποιεῖν, 10.1). The idea of a poetic or artistic work as a quasi-organic ‘body’ is, of course, a critical commonplace as old as Plato, Phaedrus 264c. Longinus revivifies it by making it central to the paradox of his account of Sappho’s poem: the unified ‘body’ of the poem reconstitutes, even recomposes, the fragmented body-consciousness of the lover.13 At the same time he shows that the emotion which interests him is not ‘beyond’ the poem but embodied in its very features. But where exactly does this leave the idea of emotional expression in Longinus’ reading? I have stressed that he does not purport to make a claim about the autobiographical experience of Sappho the woman, though his remarks are compatible, even so, with something like a model of the creative act as ‘emotion recollected in tranquillity’. Equally, he does not claim that the reader of the poem in any sense experiences erotic madness: we do not have here the application of a principle equivalent to Horace’s ‘si vis me flere ...’. Instead, Longinus supposes the reader of Sappho to experience ‘sublimity’, which is not an emotion or πάθος in itself (even if expression of certain strong emotions is highly conducive to it)14 but a quality of writing which transports the reader into an intensely heightened 13 14

Compare Prins 1996, 49–51 (though it is, I think, a little misleading to say that Longinus ‘conflate[s] poem and poet’, 49), Hertz 1983, 582–585 (also cited by Prins). See On the Sublime 8 for Longinus’ careful attempt to position sublimity in relation to emotion. For one discussion of this aspect of the treatise, see Bompaire 1973.

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consciousness (even ‘ecstasy’, ἔκστασις, 1.3). It is true that more generally Longinus employs a conception of sublime writing which entails a transmission of experience (both thought and emotion) from the mind of the writer to the mind of the reader – a sort of ‘echo’ of the former in the latter (via the echo of the writer’s mind in the text itself).15 But in the present case that does not mean that either author or reader has an experience that matches real-life erotic passion: to reiterate, Longinus is at pains to distinguish the two things. The emotion of Sappho’s song is perceived by the critic as an imagined state of mind on the part of the speaking subject and thereby in turn as giving rise to a sense of sublimity on the part of the reader. The reader’s experience resonates with the poem but is nonetheless separate from the emotion depicted in the poem. It is an important extension of that point that what Longinus takes the poem to offer is something available only through ‘art’, not life.16 It is worth adding a final observation on this passage. Longinus believes that part of the effect of Sappho’s poem is to create an impression (cf. the verb φαίνεσθαι, 10.3) not of any one emotion but of a cluster or convergence of several (παθῶν σύνοδος). This is all the more significant given that he is not in any doubt that the essential state of mind represented in the song is that of ‘erotic madness’. What this means, therefore, is that the notion of pathos, ‘emotion’, here expands from that of a set of discretely identifiable affective states (fear, anger, pity, love, etc.) to encompass a more fluid realm of psychosomatic feelings. In the case of Sappho’s poem, these feelings are linked to the array of bodily symptoms she describes and must be the same as ‘the emotional elements’ (pathēmata, 10.1: see above) which, while not strictly defining erotic passion, may accompany it and characterise the texture of its phenomenology. This is corroborated later in the treatise, at 22.1, when Longinus starts a list of conventionally recognised and labelled emotions (anger, fear, indignation, jealousy) before adding, ‘or some other feeling, for there is an indefinite multiplicity of emotions (pathē) and no one can even say how many they are’ (see below for the Greek). If emotions, or at any rate pathē, cannot be counted, then they cannot all have names. And if they cannot all be named, that makes it even more remarkable that great writers can nonetheless capture (or create) a sense of what it might be like to experience them in particular settings. Whatever else emotional expression amounts to in Longinus, it must embrace what he regards as the capacity of sublime writers to do artistically with words what nature itself cannot do for us.17

15 16

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For sublimity as an ‘echo’ of the author’s greatness of mind, see On the Sublime 9.2, with Halliwell 2011, 327–367 for various reflections on this idea. That is not to deny that some forms of sublimity are, for Longinus, provided directly by aspects of external nature: see the implications of the reference to rivers and celestial bodies at On the Sublime 35.4. But nature itself cannot provide an experience of the sublimely intense depiction of erotic passion; only something like a poem can do that. In a fuller analysis, one qualification that would be needed here is that for Longinus the workings of the sublime in the human mind are themselves part of ‘nature’ in the largest and

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That formulation might, however, suggest a more clear-cut contrast between ‘art’ (technē) and nature than Longinus consistently maintains. We have already seen that his praise of Sappho includes the perception that she selects emotionally expressive details ‘from the things that actually accompany erotic madness and from the truth itself’. Artistic creation, then, works with the stuff of nature, yet it is also thought of as different from it. Like both Horace and Demetrius, Longinus needs a critical conception of the nature-art axis but inevitably faces some difficulty in keeping it entirely stable. In this connection it is profitable to focus more closely on 22.1 (quoted in part in the previous paragraph). ὡς γὰρ οἱ τῷ ὄντι ὀργιζόµενοι ἢ φοβούµενοι ἢ ἀγανακτοῦντες ἢ ὑπὸ ζηλοτυπίας ἢ ὑπὸ ἄλλου τινὸς (πολλὰ γὰρ καὶ ἀναρίθµητα πάθη καὶ οὐδ᾽ ἂν εἰπεῖν τις ὁπόσα δύναιτο) ἑκάστοτε παραπίπτοντες ἄλλα προθέµενοι πολλάκις ἐπ᾽ ἄλλα µεταπηδῶσι, ... τῇδε κἀκεῖσε ἀγχιστρόφως ἀντισπώµενοι τὰς λέξεις, τὰς νοήσεις τὴν ἐκ τοῦ κατὰ φύσιν εἱρµοῦ παντοίως πρὸς µυρίας τροπὰς ἐναλλάττουσι τάξιν, οὕτως παρὰ τοῖς ἀρίστοις συγγραφεῦσι διὰ τῶν ὑπερβατῶν ἡ µίµησις ἐπὶ τὰ τῆς φύσεως ἔργα φέρεται. τότε γὰρ ἡ τέχνη τέλειος ἡνίκ᾽ ἂν φύσις εἶναι δοκῇ, ἡ δ᾽ αὖ φύσις ἐπιτυχὴς ὅταν λανθάνουσαν περιέχῃ τὴν τέχνην. (On the Sublime 22.1) Just as those who are actually in the grip of anger, fear, indignation, jealousy, or some other feeling (for there is an indefinite multiplicity of emotions and no one can even say how many they are) keep switching and jumping between points, ... and by constantly wrenching words and thoughts in different directions they twist into innumerable variations the order to be expected from natural sequence, so likewise in the case of the best writers the use of hyperbaton is a means by which mimetic representation can approximate to the workings of nature. For art is perfect when it seems to be nature, while nature in turn is successful when it contains art concealed within it.

Longinus’ concern at this juncture is specifically with hyperbaton, dislocated word-order. He takes this to be the chief means by which a sublime writer can mimetically represent or simulate the excited discontinuities and distortions of speech caused by intense emotion.18 The emphasis here is ostensibly different from the perspective adopted on Sappho’s poem in chapter 10, where the poet was said to create something which did not simply mirror the real-life phenomenon, indeed transfigured that phenomenon in certain respects (converting psychological fragmentation into poetic unity). If we ponder Longinus’ position a little further, however, the gap between the two passages narrows. The clue is in the fact that Longinus takes it as a mark of the best writers to be able to harness hyperbaton to this end. But why should that be so if what is involved is only the replication of a kind of dislocated speech that many people produce in the real world when under the pressure of strong emotion? Why can’t anyone make sublime use of hyperbaton? The answer must surely be of a similar kind to the reason we can all experience erotic passion but cannot all create poems like Sappho’s. There is no reason

18

most significant sense. But on another level it is perfectly possible to work with an art-nature contrast, as Longinus himself does at e.g. 8.1. For Longinus’ idea of mimesis as representation or simulation of emotion, cf. On the Sublime 18.2: a rhetorical question-and-answer technique ‘provides mimesis of spontaneous emotion’ (µιµεῖται τοῦ πάθους τὸ ἐπίκαιρον).

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after all to suppose that we are dealing with radically different conceptions of creative expression in chapters 10 and 22: in both cases, emotion is not a raw product of nature but a powerful and special artistic impression. The intricacies of this aspect of Longinus’ poetics of emotional expression can be pursued further in relation to the following passage, which is part of an illustration, taken from Demosthenes’ speech Against Meidias (21), of how a concentration or cluster of figures of speech can add special qualities to a work. εἶθ᾽ ἵνα µὴ ἐπὶ τῶν αὐτῶν ὁ λόγος ἰὼν στῇ (ἐν στάσει γὰρ τὸ ἠρεµοῦν, ἐν ἀταξίᾳ δὲ τὸ πάθος, ἐπεὶ φορὰ ψυχῆς καὶ συγκίνησίς ἐστιν), εὐθὺς ἐπ᾽ ἄλλα µεθήλατο ἀσύνδετα καὶ ἐπαναφοράς· ‘τῷ σχήµατι, τῷ βλέµµατι, τῇ φωνῇ, ὅταν ὡς ὑβρίζων, ὅταν ὡς ἐχθρός, ὅταν κονδύλοις, ὅταν ἐπὶ κόρρης.’ οὐδὲν ἄλλο διὰ τούτων ὁ ῥήτωρ ἢ ὅπερ ὁ τύπτων ἐργάζεται· τὴν διάνοιαν τῶν δικαστῶν τῇ ἐπαλλήλῳ πλήττει φορᾷ. (On the Sublime 20.2) Then, in order to save the sentence from monotony and a static effect – for this goes with inertia, whereas disorder goes with emotion, which is a disturbance and agitation of the mind – he leaps immediately to fresh instances of asyndeton and epanaphora: ‘With gesture, with look, with voice, when he insults, when he acts as an enemy, when he slaps the fellow, when he slaps him on the ears ...’ The orator is doing here exactly what the bully does – hitting the jurors’ minds with blow after blow.19

At first sight, Longinus seems to be tracing in Demosthenes’ words the ‘disorder’ (ataxia) which, just like the dislocation involved in hyperbaton, he believes to be a natural hallmark of emotion. But once again we have to see beyond that prima facie level: how could actual disorder be compatible with the overwhelming sublimity that Longinus consistently finds in Demosthenes, or with the rhetorical selfawareness predicated of the orator by that clause ‘in order to save the sentence ...’? As we read on, we get confirmation of Longinus’ own self-consciousness about the delicacy of his critical stance. After giving a further quotation from Demosthenes’ speech to illustrate how it exploits constant variations of figural repetition to maintain a (seeming) ‘naturalness’ (physis), he concludes with a pointed paradox: ‘in this way his order becomes disordered and in turn his disorderliness takes on a certain order’.20 Longinus is wrestling with the slippery entanglement of art and nature within his terms of reference. The consequences affect not least his interpretation of emotional expression: a visible tension remains between the sense of emotion in general as messily disruptive and, on the other hand, the great writer’s transformation of such upheaval into an expressively compelling effect of language. But unlike Demetrius, who, as we saw, thinks of emotion as ‘simple’ and unaffected, and therefore incompatible with any kind of conspicuous artifice, Longinus’ notion of emotion as intrinsically turbulent and agitated allows him to find points of contact between real-life psychology and the exceptional resources of sublime writing. That last consideration is reinforced by the fact that Longinus employs some of the same metaphorical vocabulary for the dynamic aspects of both the psychol19 20

Trans. Russell 1972, 483 (adapted). οὕτως αὐτῷ καὶ ἡ τάξις ἄτακτον καὶ ἔµπαλιν ἡ ἀταξία ποιὰν περιλαµβάνει τάξιν (On the Sublime 20.3).

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ogy of emotion and its expression in language. He calls emotion in general a ‘disturbance and agitation of the mind/soul’ (φορὰ ψυχῆς καὶ συγκίνησις, 20.2), using two Greek nouns which in their literal sense both imply types of movement. (Compare Horace’s animi motus, AP 111, quoted earlier, with the corresponding Latin etymology of ‘emotion’.) He repeats the first of those nouns shortly afterwards, at 20.3, when describing the impact of Demosthenes’ own oratory on the minds of the jurors: ‘The orator is doing here exactly what the bully does – hitting the jurors’ minds with blow after blow’ (a doubly ironic formulation, given Demosthenes’ own insistence at 21.72–73 that it is not the blows as such but the resulting psychological trauma which is the worst thing for the victim of violent hubris). The noun phora, ‘disturbance’ of mind at 20.2, is here applied to the force of physical blows, but blows as a metaphor for the force of language.21 Elsewhere in the treatise Longinus also uses cognates of sunkinēsis (‘agitation’ above) in connection with the animated power of emotional writing: words themselves can be emotionally excited or energised, creating a symmetry between psychological impulses and their linguistic expression.22 Where emotion, though not emotion alone, is concerned, language is treated by Longinus as quasi-vitalistic – capable, that is, of embodying (in a strong sense of that term) something of the dynamic qualities of lived experience. We need once again, however, to remind ourselves that, just as in his discussion of Sappho, Longinus is claiming for Demosthenes something more than the simple aim of transmitting his own emotions directly to the audience. Admittedly, it is a general conviction of Longinus’ that the sublime can potently communicate emotion from author to audience, so that the latter ‘participates’ in the experience of the former.23 Furthermore, we can assume that Longinus takes Demosthenes in the present passage to be striving to elicit a sort of sympathetic indignation on the part of the jury by giving them a vicarious sense of what it felt like to be the victim of Meidias’ insulting aggression. But Longinus’ interest in the emotional qualities of the text reaches beyond the jurors’ need to judge the cogency of the litigant’s account: in one of the treatise’s defining tenets, sublimity is more than ‘persuasion’ (1.4). That interest is such as to be able to discern ‘beauty’ in the orator’s words,24 which can scarcely be part of a purely vicarious response to the 21 22

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Cf. also On the Sublime 21.2, where the free flow of emotion is compared to the movement (phora again) of a runner’s legs. See On the Sublime 15.2 (in vivid use of imagination poets and orators seek ‘what is emotional and animated’, τό τε ... καὶ τὸ συγκεκινηµένον), 29.2 (figures make language ‘more emotional and dynamically animated’, παθητικωτέρους καὶ συγκεκινηµένους). See esp. On the Sublime 39.3, where the noun metousia (‘participation’) stresses the effect of sublime composition which ‘carries the speaker’s emotion into the souls of the audience and at every point induces the hearers’ participation (... τὸ παρεστὼς τῷ λέγοντι πάθος εἰς τὰς ψυχὰς τῶν πέλας παρεισάγουσαν καὶ εἰς µετουσίαν αὐτοῦ τοὺς ἀκούοντας ἀεὶ καθιστᾶσαν ...). Cf. Halliwell 2011, 339, 363f. On the Sublime 20.1 cites the passage as an example of how accumulated figures can contribute ‘strength, persuasion, beauty’ (τὴν ἰσχύν, τὴν πειθώ, τὸ κάλλος).

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incidents described. Moreover, it requires only a little reflection to grasp that the sheer fact that Longinus attributes sublimity to a description of (allegedly) traumatic humiliation, the very opposite of the sublime, shows that he sees a process of emotional transformation at work here. Sublimity engenders an emotional expressiveness which is not identical to the speaker’s (or author’s) implied affective state but exists on a further plane of experience opened up by language itself. To underline the complexity of what counts for Longinus as emotional expressiveness, I adduce one final passage from On the Sublime. This comes from a later section on hyperbole or overstatement, where Longinus cautions against excessive use of the device and suggests that the best instances may be those ‘which disguise the very fact that they are hyperbole’. He then proceeds to cite a supporting example from Thucydides’ unforgettable description of the calamitous conclusion in 413 BCE of the Athenian expedition to Sicily. The passage runs as follows. µήποτ᾽ οὖν ἄρισται τῶν ὑπερβολῶν, ὡς καὶ ἐπὶ τῶν σχηµάτων προείποµεν, αἱ αὐτὸ τοῦτο διαλανθάνουσαι ὅτι εἰσὶν ὑπερβολαί. γίνεται δὲ τὸ τοιόνδε ἐπειδὰν ὑπὸ ἐκπαθείας µεγέθει τινὶ συνεκφωνῶνται περιστάσεως, ὅπερ ὁ Θουκυδίδης ἐπὶ τῶν ἐν Σικελίᾳ φθειροµένων ποιεῖ. ‘οἵ τε γὰρ Συρακούσιοι’ φησίν ‘ἐπικαταβάντες τοὺς ἐν τῷ ποταµῷ µάλιστα ἔσφαζον. καὶ τὸ ὕδωρ εὐθὺς διέφθαρτο, ἀλλ᾽ οὐδὲν ἧσσον ἐπίνετο ὁµοῦ τῷ πηλῷ ᾑµατωµένον καὶ τοῖς πολλοῖς ἔτι ἦν περιµάχητον.’ αἷµα καὶ πηλὸν πινόµενα ὅµως εἶναι περιµάχητα ἔτι ποιεῖ πιστὸν ἡ τοῦ πάθους ὑπεροχὴ καὶ περίστασις. (On the Sublime 25 38.3). Perhaps, therefore, the best instances of hyperbole, as we said also in the case of figures, are those which disguise the very fact that they are hyperbole. This happens when, under the pressure of strong emotion, they are formulated in a way which resonates with the magnitude of a crisis, as Thucydides does in the case of those who perished in Sicily. ‘The Syracusans’, he says, ‘came down and slaughtered especially those who were in the river; and the water was immediately contaminated, but they drank it nonetheless, despite all the mud and blood mixed together in it, and the majority were still prepared to fight over it’. The high pitch of emotion and the nature of the crisis make credible even the idea of drinking and fighting over a mixture of blood and mud.

If we leave aside the puzzle of Longinus’ judgement of ‘hyperbole’ in Thucydides’ description (a puzzle rendered all the more curious by the fact that the power of the historian’s writing supposedly makes the description ‘credible’), the most important point about this passage for my purposes is that it finds intense emotion in a piece of writing where there can be no question of any straightforward correlation between author, text, and readers. The noun I have translated as ‘strong emotion’ (ἐκπάθεια) is unique in the whole of surviving Greek but there is no doubt about its sense. Whose emotion, however, is Longinus identifying here or in the later phrase, ‘the high pitch of emotion’?26 Thucydides himself – the authorial voice in the text – is clinically non-emotional throughout his account of the scene. 25 26

Longinus quotes from Thucydides 7.84.5 (making a small slip, easy enough in context, by writing ‘Syracusans’ for ‘Peloponnesians’). In this last phrase, ἡ τοῦ πάθους ὑπεροχή, it is arguable that pathos means ‘catastrophic event’ rather than ‘emotion’.

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This does not, of course, preclude emotion on the part of readers. But if readers do respond with emotions of their own, they do so without any explicit authorial direction. Thucydides’ fastidiously ‘objective’ manner depicts men who are themselves in hopeless panic, though seemingly more desperate to drink than to defend themselves or escape (which may underlie Longinus’ diagnosis of ‘hyperbole’).27 But precisely how individual readers might respond to the narrative of the Athenians’ plight (and the ruthlessness of their enemy) depends on a number of variables, not least their degree of sympathetic predisposition towards the Athenians, a factor which could not be taken for granted on the part of all Thucydides’ original readers. A more universalising response of tragic pity or the like might be an option for some; it certainly has great appeal for many modern readers. But such a response is neither cued by Thucydides nor clearly identified by Longinus’ own reading (which we might in any case not expect to be wholly hospitable to ‘the tragic’).28 I suggest that for Longinus the extreme ‘emotion’ (ἐκπάθεια, πάθος) of this moment in Thucydides is not specifically that of the author, the human actors in the scene, or the reader. It is, rather, a complex property of the writing itself, one that mediates expressively between the imagined event and the receptive mind of an implied reader, conjuring up the event in a manner which is highly charged without spelling out just what the reader’s reaction should be. The complexity of such expressiveness is what Longinus strains to capture by his characteristically inventive wording, ‘when, under the pressure of strong emotion, [hyperboles] are formulated in a way which resonates with the magnitude of a crisis’, where ‘resonates’ attempts to translate a rare verb (συνεκφωνεῖσθαι) meaning literally ‘to be uttered/voiced at the same time as’ (i.e. of simultaneous and/or harmonious sounds). Sublime language itself resonates with the full significance of what it expresses: as Longinus eloquently puts it elsewhere, ‘thought and diction are for the most part intertwined with one another’.29 Equally, what becomes sublime expression in such an instance – an instance, after all, which graphically describes the slaughter of human beings in the most degrading of circumstances – does so only through the transformative power of language. I have tried to show, then, that we cannot make complete sense of emotional expression in On the Sublime by appeal to what is often treated as the standard ancient model of such expression, namely the direct transmission of specifiable emotions from author to audience. As an epilogue to my argument, I would like now to move back in time and consider a passage of Aristotle which is often believed to contain evidence for this idea of expression but which turns out on closer inspection not to be so simple. 27 28 29

Thucydides 7.84.2 couples the desire for escape and for water in the retreating Athenians’ state of mind; 7.85.1 and 4 indicate that a few did manage to escape, at least temporarily. For the less than full compatibility between Longinian sublimity and tragedy, see Halliwell 2011, 353 with n. 55. ἡ τοῦ λόγου νόησις ἥ τε φράσις τὰ πλείω δι᾽ ἑκατέρου διέπτυκται (On the Sublime 30.1).

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The passage in question comes from chapter 17 of the Poetics and relates to the psychology of poetic composition. δεῖ δὲ τοὺς µύθους συνιστάναι καὶ τῇ λέξει συναπεργάζεσθαι ὅτι µάλιστα πρὸ ὀµµάτων τιθέµενον· οὕτω γὰρ ἂν ἐναργέστατα ὁρῶν ὥσπερ παρ᾽ αὐτοῖς γιγνόµενος τοῖς πραττοµένοις εὑρίσκοι τὸ πρέπον καὶ ἥκιστα ἂν λανθάνοι τὰ ὑπεναντία ... ὅσα δὲ δυνατὸν καὶ τοῖς σχήµασιν συναπεργαζόµενον· πιθανώτατοι γὰρ ἀπὸ τῆς αὐτῆς φύσεως οἱ ἐν τοῖς πάθεσίν εἰσιν, καὶ χειµαίνει ὁ χειµαζόµενος καὶ χαλεπαίνει ὁ ὀργιζόµενος ἀληθινώτατα. διὸ εὐφυοῦς ἡ ποιητική ἐστιν µᾶλλον ἢ µανικοῦ· τούτων γὰρ οἱ µὲν 30 εὔπλαστοι οἱ δὲ ἐκστατικοί εἰσιν. (Aristotle, Poetics 17.1455a22–34). The poet should construct his plots and complete their composition in language while placing things as much as possible before the mind’s eye: in this way, by visualising as vividly as possible, like someone present at the events themselves, he is likely to discover what is appropriate and not to overlook things which clash with that ... As far as possible, the playwright should complement the process of composition with physical gestures; for it is in virtue of the same natural means that those in an emotional state are most convincing – the most real display of distress or anger is conveyed by those who are actually feeling these things. Hence poetry is the work of a naturally gifted person rather than someone manic: the former are those with supple imaginations, whereas the latter get carried away.

It has often been observed that this passage shares with the lines of Horace’s Ars Poetica from which I started an interest in how emotional expression can be convincingly embedded in the characters of dramatic poetry. But just as in Horace’s case, so too in Aristotle’s we need to tease out the sense from a rather compressed formulation; and in both cases my own reading diverges in some crucial respects from long-established orthodoxy. On the surface, Aristotle’s injunctions look clear enough. First, vividness (enargeia) of visualisation will ensure that the playwright ‘plots’ the situations of his drama in an appropriate and coherent manner (avoiding inconsistencies that would show up in theatrical staging, as spelt out at 1455a26–29, omitted above). Secondly, the composing poet should stimulate his imagination with a degree of physical enactment for the roles being created (as though he were somewhat like an actor in rehearsal), since this will help him induce in himself the emotions he wishes his characters to display.31 That, at any rate, is the standard interpretation of the passage; I have followed it myself in the past. But there are acute problems with it. Fundamental is the difficulty of seeing how Aristotle could suggest that by gesturally ‘inhabiting’ the roles he is creating the dramatist can induce full-blown emotions in himself. It is hard to square this with Aristotle’s psychology of emotion, all the more so when one bears in mind that the principle would need to em30

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In printing µᾶλλον ἢ µανικοῦ rather than ἢ µανικοῦ at 1455a33, I accept the case made by Tarán and Gutas 2012, 274f., 399–401 that this was the reading of the Greek manuscript from which the Syriac translation (subsequently retranslated into the fragmentarily surviving Arabic version) was made. The textual question is far too briskly dismissed by Schmitt 2008, 552. Gill 1984, 152f. distorts the passage by playing down the poet’s imagining of the characters’ emotions (as expressed by actors) and instead making the poet imagine ‘standing before the audience himself’ like an orator.

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brace emotional extremes (of grief, anger, fear, etc.) of the kind called for by many scenes in tragedy: how could a playwright induce extreme grief or anger in himself by making physical gestures/movements appropriate to a role?32 If that objection holds, then Aristotle’s explanatory mention of ‘those in an emotional state’ must refer not to the experience of composing playwrights themselves, but to the phenomena of the social world in general. That inference is strengthened by the fact that ‘those in an emotional state’ are said to be ‘most convincing’ in their displays of emotion. But that would make little sense if applied to composing playwrights, since their task is not to display emotion themselves but to find words which actors will convert into fully embodied theatrical performances.33 What needs to be ‘convincing’ in the dramatist’s case is not his state of mind per se but the material expression he creates for his characters’ emotions. But what, then, is the best alternative to the standard reading of this passage? It is to take Aristotle to be talking not about real emotions on the part of the composing playwright but something more like emotional authenticity of effect (and expression) in the roles he envisages and creates for his characters. The poet is being urged not to work himself into a quasi-hallucinatory state of feeling but to use his imagination in a strong yet controlled manner, and to do so in part by rehearsing a plausible physical enactment for how characters in a genuine emotional state would behave according to ‘the same natural means’, i.e. in their expressive bodily deportment.34 Here the parallel with the first of Aristotle’s two injunctions in the passage is helpful: just as the poet’s vivid visualisations are to help him plot situations appropriately, imagining them as if they were real but not thereby making them real, so his emotional imagination, with additional stimulation from physical movements of the kind an actor would employ, will enable him to give his characters theatrically convincing expressions of emotion but will not entail first-hand emotions on the poet’s own part. This alternative interpretation fits well with Aristotle’s further statement that poetry is the work of a naturally gifted person or of ‘those with supple imaginations’ (εὔπλαστοι), since being ‘naturally gifted’ 32

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Aristotle himself certainly allows that emotions can sometimes be induced by imagination or thought alone (cf. De motu animalium 7, 701b19–22), though this will normally involve belief-based imagination, most obviously in the case of fear (Rhetoric 2.5, 1382a21–25). De anima 1.1, 403a21–24 states that a condition of the body alone can sometimes induce emotion even in the absence of any external justification for it, but this special case hardly covers the circumstances of the composing poet: for one reading of this passage of De anima, see Fortenbaugh 2002, 113. Meijering 1987, 15 shows the tangles into which the standard interpretation gets itself: she ends up making the composing poet ‘the person in distress’ and ‘a person in a temper’! This may be psychologically picturesque but cannot be Aristotle’s meaning. My translation of ἀπὸ τῆς αὐτῆς φύσεως (lit. ‘from the same nature’) as ‘in virtue of the same natural means’ is certainly open to debate, but so are all other interpretations of what is (in this context) a highly problematic phrase. I cannot here pursue all the ramifications of this point; for the history of translations of the phrase cf. Sanborn 1938, 325–332 (though note that this article contains many errors and confusions).

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(εὐφυής) does not suggest a capacity actually to work up an emotional state in oneself but rather a psychological adeptness at finding the right form of expression for the states of mind of various characters.35 But that is only what, on more general grounds, one would expect, since the art of poetry is for Aristotle nothing if not a form of mimesis. The reading outlined above can be fully aligned with a passage in Aristotle’s Rhetoric with which, as frequently noticed, it has some features in common. ἐπεὶ δ᾽ ἐγγὺς φαινόµενα τὰ πάθη ἐλεεινά ἐστι, ... ἀνάγκη τοὺς συναπεργαζοµένους σχήµασι καὶ φωναῖς καὶ ἐσθῆτι καὶ ὅλως ἐν ὑποκρίσει ἐλεεινοτέρους εἶναι· ἐγγὺς γὰρ ποιοῦσι φαίνεσθαι τὸ κακὸν πρὸ ὀµµάτων ποιοῦντες ... (Aristotle, Rhetoric 2.8, 1386a28– 36 34). Since sufferings which seem near at hand are conducive to pity, ... it follows that those speakers who complement what they say with gestures, inflections of voice, clothing, and in general with dramatic delivery will have a more pitiful effect (since they make the suffering seem near at hand by placing it before the mind’s eye ...)

These remarks specifically concern oratory. But since the passage belongs to Aristotle’s analysis of pity, one of the defining tragic emotions, and since he evidently thinks of orators here as physical and vocal performers (using the term hupokrisis, ‘dramatic delivery’, which encompasses the performative techniques of both actors and orators), there is a clear point of contact with the advice in Poetics 17 for the poet to compose with the aid of some of the actor’s corporeal methods. What matters most for my interpretation of the latter are two things about this passage from the Rhetoric. First, Aristotle does not assert anything about the speaker’s actual emotional state (which might vary according to the precise rhetorical occasion);37 instead, he stresses how certain details of visual and vocal demeanour can add emotive force to the speaker’s arguments. Secondly, Aristotle shows us here the other side, as it were, of the imaginative process hypothesised in the Poetics: there, the poet himself is enjoined to place things as much as possible ‘before the mind’s eye’; here, the effect of good oratorical presentation is to bring things vividly before the mind’s eye of the audience. This confirms what we can anyway infer from the train of thought in the context of the Poetics itself, namely that the poet’s reason for ‘rehearsing’ and partly ‘acting out’ the roles he creates is to an-

35

36

37

This is an independent argument in favour of reading µᾶλλον ἢ µανικοῦ at 1455a33; see n. 30 above. Among editors who retain the reading ἢ µανικοῦ, Rostagni 1945, 99 allows for simulation of emotion by the εὐφυεῖς yet still takes Aristotle to say that the most persuasive poets are those who actually feel the emotions expressed, i.e. the µανικοί. I prefer the reading of ms. F, ἐσθῆτι (there is no need to emend to the plural ἐσθῆσι), to that of A, αἰσθήσει, which is retained by Kassel 1976, 97; Meijering 1987, 16 prints the second reading but translates the first. For some further observations on the passage, see Rapp 2002, II 656f. Cf. the supposedly Peripatetic view at Cicero, Tusculanae disputationes 4.43, according to which the orator should if necessary feign (simulare) emotion in order to arouse genuine emotion in the audience; on this passage see Graver 2002, 163–165, Brink 1971, 186.

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ticipate how his play might be performed in the theatre and how it could there have an appropriate impact on the imagination and emotions of the audience. A significant asymmetry, however, now needs to be highlighted. I have argued that, contrary to the communis opinio, Aristotle does not claim in Poetics 17 that the poet will actually experience (as opposed to imagining and ‘rehearsing’ with vivid intensity) the emotions he depicts on the part of his characters. But there is no question that the Poetics as a whole takes the (properly aroused) emotions of theatrical spectators, just like those of the engaged audiences of oratory, to be real emotions. It is true, in fact, not only of Aristotle but of the entire ancient critical tradition that emotions felt towards literary characters are assumed to be at their core the same emotions (with the same causes and psychosomatic dynamics) as those felt in life, though with the necessary rider that in the framework of literary experience they can become attached to fictional objects and associated with special kinds of aesthetic pleasure even where the same emotions would in life have a painful dimension.38 This means, on my reading, that for Aristotle (and Horace) dramatic poets need not feel genuine, full-blown emotions themselves, even though they may strive to induce real emotions in their hearers or readers. If that is a paradox, it is one that admits of psychologically unproblematic resolution. Poet and hearer/reader stand in quite different positions: the poet (qua maker, perhaps ‘creator’) is preoccupied – as all the passages considered in this paper illustrate – with achieving expressive adequacy in the linguistic fabric of their works, whereas the hearer/reader responds (with however much scope for interpretation and judgement) to the resulting aesthetic object, a text/performance that already incorporates marks of expression in its constitutive structure. That asymmetry between author and audience is one of several reasons which I hope have emerged in this paper for drawing back from positing a standard ancient critical model of emotional expression in literature. My close-focus concentration on a series of specific passages has deliberately been the reverse of systematic; it has been intended to expose some of the complexity inherent in the subject and to counteract over-confident generalisations about how ancient critics construed the various relationships at play in the ‘triangle’ of author, work and audience. In particular, I have tried to provide some evidence against the conventional conviction that ancient criticism broadly relied on a ‘rhetorical’ model (though the model needs qualifying even for rhetoric itself)39 in which the essential component in emotional expression is a state of mind transmitted from author to audience. Generalisations need replacing by refreshed attention to the subtleties

38 39

Cf. n. 6 above. On the justifiability of identifying various conceptions of ‘fiction’ in ancient criticism, see Halliwell 2015. The ‘rhetorical model’ is itself afflicted by tensions, even confusions, which I lack space to investigate here: as a token example, note how Quintilian, Institutio oratoria 6.2.26–28 oscillates unstably between the idea of the orator as actually feeling emotion (ut moveamur ipsi, ut ... adficiamur) and, by contrast, as producing a realistic impression of emotion (veri similia).

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of intuition with which individual critics attempted to do justice to what they saw as one of the most important aspects of literature and its value. BIBLIOGRAPHY Abrams, M. H. (1953) The Mirror and the Lamp: Romantic Theory and the Critical Tradition, Oxford. Bompaire, J. (1973) Le pathos dans le Traité du Sublime, Revue des Etudes Grecques 86, 323– 343. Brink, C. O. (1971) Horace on Poetry: the ‘Ars Poetica’, Cambridge. Carroll, N. (1991) On Kendall Walton’s Mimesis as Make-Believe, Philosophy and Phenomenological Research 51, 383–387. Fortenbaugh, W. W. (2002) Aristotle on Emotion, 2nd edn., London. Gill, C. (1984) The Ēthos/Pathos Distinction in Rhetorical and Literary Criticism, Classical Quarterly 34, 149–166. Graver, M. R. (2002) Cicero on the Emotions: Tusculan Disputations 3 and 4, Chicago. Grube, G. M. A. (1961) A Greek Critic: Demetrius on Style, Toronto. Halliwell, S. (2002) The Aesthetics of Mimesis: Ancient Texts and Modern Problems, Princeton. ––– (2011) Between Ecstasy and Truth: Interpretations of Greek Poetics from Homer to Longinus, Oxford. ––– (2015) Fiction, in P. Destrée and P. Murray (eds.), A Companion to Ancient Aesthetics, Malden Ma., 341–353. ––– (2016) Ancient Beginnings, in N. Carroll and J. Gibson (eds.), The Routledge Encyclopedia of the Philosophy of Literature, New York, 3–12. Hertz, D. (1983) A Reading of Longinus, Critical Inquiry 9, 579–596. Kassel, R. (1976) Aristotelis Ars Rhetorica, Berlin. Matelli, E. (2012) Praxiphanes of Mytilene (called ‘of Rhodes’): The Sources, Text and Translation, in A. Martano, E. Matelli, and D. Mirhady (eds.), Praxiphanes of Mytilene and Chamaeleon of Heraclea, New Brunswick, 1–156. Meijering, R. (1987) Literary and Rhetorical Theories in Greek Scholia, Groningen. Munteanu, D. L. (2009) Qualis tandem misericordia in rebus fictis? Aesthetic and Ordinary Emotion, Helios 36, 117–147. Prins, Y. (1996) Sappho’s Afterlife in Translation, in E. Greene (ed.), Re-Reading Sappho: Reception and Transmission, Berkeley, 36–67. Rapp, C. (2002) Aristoteles Rhetorik, 2 vols, Berlin. Rostagni, A. (1945) Aristotele Poetica, 2nd edn., Turin. Rudd, N. (1989) Horace Epistles Book II and Epistle to the Pisones (‘Ars Poetica’), Cambridge. Russell, D. A. (1972), Longinus, On Sublimity, in D. A. Russell and M. Winterbottom (eds.), Ancient Literary Criticism, Oxford, 460–503. Sanborn, H. (1938) A Side-Light on the Katharsis, The Classical Journal 33, 322–335. Schmitt, A. (2008) Aristoteles Poetik, Berlin. Tarán, L., and D. Gutas (2012) Aristotle Poetics: editio maior, Leiden. Walton, Kendall L. (1990) Mimesis as Make-Believe, Cambridge MA. Wehrli, F. (1969) Die Schule des Aristoteles: Phainias, Chamaileon, Praxiphanes, 2nd edn., Basle.

THE PSEUDO-ARISTOTELIAN PROBLEMS ON SYMPATHY William Fortenbaugh Well over forty years ago, work being done by modern philosophers on emotional response caught my attention. I think especially of articles by Errol Bedford, who argued for the essential involvement of thought in emotional response, and by George Pitcher, who viewed thought as characteristic of emotion but not essential.1 Those articles and others like them led me to reconsider Aristotle’s analysis of emotion as set forth in his Rhetoric and to argue that Aristotle had come to understand thought as the efficient cause of emotional response.2 From there the path led to the Nicomachean Ethics, in which moral virtue is tied to emotional response qua cognitive behavior involving not only factual judgement but also moral assessment. Subsequently Aristotle’s successor Theophrastus came under the microscope as did his contemporaries within the Peripatos.3 Other scholars have contributed mightily and taken the investigation into other schools and other periods. Hence, when I received a letter from Douglas Cairns and Damien Nelis inviting me to a conference on the future of research on emotions in Classical Antiquity, I hesitated and might have declined, saying that I had nothing new to contribute concerning the Peripatos and was too old to learn a new field. Happily, however, I had recently been given a copy of the new Loeb Library edition of pseudoAristotle’s Rhetoric to Alexander. To that edition is joined another pseudoAristotelian work, the Physical Problems,4 which has been largely ignored by scholars, and for good reason. The work is a collection of questions and answers awkwardly put together from various sources, which are often difficult if not impossible to identify. Heavy-handed abridgment makes understanding difficult, and the physiology that underlies much of the work is woefully antiquated. Nevertheless, it occurred to me that the Problems has much to say on emotional response and is largely untapped by persons interested in the topic. Hopefully this paper will encourage other scholars to tap in. Throughout the Problems, there are numerous references to emotional response, and three of the thirty-eight books that make up the Problems carry in 1 2 3 4

Bedford 1956–1957, 281–304 and Pitcher 1965, 326–346. Fortenbaugh 1968, 1969, and 1970. The order of publication does not reflect the order of composition. See, e.g., Fortenbaugh 1985. Mayhew 2011. The Problems is the third longest work in the corpus Aristotelicum, running to 110 pages in Bekker’s edition of 1831 (pp. 859–967).

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their headings explicit reference to an emotion or to dispositions closely tied to emotional response: ‘Problems arising from Sympathy’ (Book 7), ‘Problems connected with Fear and Courage’ (Bk. 27),5 and ‘Problems Connected with Moderation and Licentiousness’ (Bk. 28). I was attracted by the first of the three titles, because it contains the word συµπάθεια, which does not occur elsewhere in the corpus Aristotelicum.6 I had expected to find a discussion of an emotion like pity, but to my surprise I found much more. There is, indeed, a discussion of shared pain which might be referred to as pity (Ch. 7), but painful sounds and sights (Ch. 5), contagious diseases (Ch. 4, 8), infectious yawning and urination (Ch. 1, 2, 3, 6) and cures for bleeding gums (Ch. 9) also receive treatment, albeit of varying length. In what follows, I shall ignore the last mentioned topic as a largely irrelevant addition to Book 7. It comes at the end and most likely was added by a late editor/compiler, who wanted to include a stray piece of text within the Problems and could do no better than attach it to the end of the book.7 The other topics will all be discussed, beginning in Section 1 with shared pain, which is presented as a cognitive response to another person’s suffering. Section 2 focuses on painful sounds and sights, some of which but not all involve thought. In Section 3, the subject is contagious disease, which has no essential tie to cognition. In Section 4, attention turns to infectious yawning and urinating, which might be considered automatic reactions, but in the Problems are presented as responses involving thought. Section 5 takes up urination prompted by running water, while Section 6 concludes the discussion, suggesting inter alia that the phenomena discussed in Book 7 make it difficult to mark off a clearly defined class of emotional responses, unless one does so within a particular context such as ethical and rhetorical theory. And even then arbitrary decisions may creep in.

5 6

7

On Book 27, see Fortenbaugh 2014. The Stoics, perhaps beginning with Chrysippus, use συµπάθεια in regard to the unity/coherence of the cosmos (see Meijer 2007, 85–88, citing Sextus Empiricus, Against the Physicists 1.78–85 and Cicero, On the Nature of the Gods 2.19). Epicurus, in the Letter to Herodotus, uses the word of the interconnection and mutual sensibility of body and soul in sense-perception (ap. Diogenes Laertius, Lives 10.64). Chapter 9 is concerned with curing an unpleasant condition of the gums and not with a sympathetic response to another person’s suffering. I have written ‘largely irrelevant,’ because 7.9 does relate to 7.5 in that both chapters take note of the condition often referred to as ‘teeth set on edge’ (see below, n. 16). In 7.9 the noun αἱµωδία occurs in the opening line (887a1), and in 7.5 the cognate verb αἱµωδιᾶν is found (886b12). That may have caught the eye of an editor/compiler, but it is not a good reason for tacking on Chapter 9 at the end of the Book 7. Moreover, if the editor were alert and interested in economy, he might have omitted 7.9 as a near duplicate of 1.38.

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1 SHARED PAIN All chapters in the Problems begin with a question, and the answer or answers that follow take the form of a question, which is to be understood as a tentative assertion.8 Chapter 7 of Book 7 is no exception. The question and the first of two answers run as follows: διὰ τί, ἐπειδὰν τεµνοµενόν τινα ἴδωµεν ἢ καιόµενον ἢ στρεβλούµενον ἢ ἄλλο τι τῶν δεινῶν πάσχοντα, συναλγοῦµεν τῇ διανοίᾳ; ἢ ὅτι ἡ φύσις ἡµῖν κοινὴ ἅπασιν; συνήλγησεν οὖν, ἐπειδάν τι τοιοῦτον ἴδῃ, τῷ πάσχοντι διὰ τὴν οἰκειότητα. Why when we see someone being cut or burned or tortured or suffering something else that is terrible, do we share his pain in our thought? Is it that all of us have a common nature? So when one sees something of this sort, one shares the pain of the person who is suffering on account of kinship (887a15–18).

The verb πάσχειν occurs twice: once in the opening question and again in the first answer (887a16, 18). Both times it is used of someone suffering bodily affliction. We can imagine his mental anguish and think of it as an emotion, but in the text under consideration πάσχειν refers to bodily suffering. I emphasize that, because the noun πάθος, which is cognate with πάσχειν, is the word that Aristotle uses in the Rhetoric and elsewhere for emotional response.9 As often, context determines how a word is being used.10 The description of the man who shares someone else’s pain is different. His pain is explicitly attributed to thought, διάνοια (887a17), which Aristotle treats as the efficient cause of emotion. If we ask what thought is in play, our text provides an answer: it is the thought of kinship, οἰκειότης (887a17), which in the case of human beings is a natural relationship based on body and soul.11 The person who sees another person suffering, sees that person as akin and feels pain. That is an intelligent response. It involves understanding that the person suffering is closely related in an important way. Much as a person is moved when he sees a parent, spouse or child in affliction, so he is moved when he sees another human being suffering, for he understands that they share the bond of humanity. To be sure, the degree to which he is moved will be different. A person is more deeply moved when he sees a family member suffering, but being moved in lesser degree is still being moved and this movement may be both mental and physical. We might say both that he is deeply troubled in mind and seriously concerned, and that his men-

8 9 10

11

On the question and answer format, see Flashar 1962, 341–346. Rhetoric 2.1 1378a19; cf. Nicomachean Ethics 2.5 1105b21–23. It is well known that both πάθος and πάσχειν are used widely for a variety of phenomena, bodily and mental alike See Bonitz, Index Aristotelicum s.v. and Fortenbaugh 2011, 146, n. 71. For Aristotle’s use of the noun and verb in reference to a mental image, φάντασµα, see below, Section 2. Cf. Theophrastus, fr. 531.21 FHS&G. For discussion see. Fortenbaugh 2011, 557–561.

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tal state affects his body, so that he feels bodily pain, perhaps diffuse discomfort or an unpleasant feeling located in a particular part of the body.12 What has just been said goes beyond what our text says, but it is in line with what Aristotle says in the Rhetoric concerning pity, ἔλεος. He defines the emotion as a certain pain based upon/caused by the appearance of some evil, destructive or painful, which is afflicting someone who does not deserve it, and which a person might expect to suffer himself or one of his own, and soon (2.8, 1385b13–16). Here pity is said to be grounded or based upon the appearance of an evil, ἐπὶ φαινοµένῳ κακῷ (1385b13). That is to be understood in terms of cognition: the emotion has a basis in thought.13 The same is true of expecting, προσδοκήσειεν (1385b14). Expecting is holding a belief, δόξα, concerning the future. This involvement of cognition together with the initial reference to pain, ἔστω δὴ ἔλεος λύπη τις (1385b13), invites speaking of pity as sharing someone else’s pain, συναλγεῖν. Only the pain need not be identical in kind: when we see a person being burned, we may feel pain, both mental and bodily, without experiencing the pain of burning flesh. If there is any detail that causes pause, it is the idea that feeling pity is self-reflexive: the same might happen to oneself (1385b14–15). But the worry is unfounded, for an adult human being with life experience understands full well that kinship among humans extends to misfortune. And that understanding underlies shared pain qua human emotion.14 The second answer to the question with which Chapter 7 begins is: ἢ ὅτι ὥσπερ αἱ ῥῖνες καὶ αἱ ἀκοαὶ λαµβάνουσί τινας ἀπορροίας κατὰ τὰς οἰκείας δυνάµεις, οὕτω καὶ ἡ ὄψις ταὐτὸ καὶ ἀπὸ τῶν ἡδέων καὶ λυπηρῶν. Or is it that just as noses and ears receive certain emanations according to their peculiar capacities, so also sight (does) the same both from what is pleasant and what is painful (887a19– 21).

The answer seems quite unrelated to the first answer. There is no reference to thought, and smell and hearing are mentioned as well as seeing. In addition, an emanation theory of sense perception is introduced. That suggests to Flashar that the source of the second answer is a later Peripatetic.15 And with good reason, for 12

13

14

15

A well-known case of shared pain is that of Phaedra’s nurse in Euripides Hippolytus. Biologically the nurse is not a member of Phaedra’s family, but being her nurse she is, as it were, within the family and closely involved with Phaedra. Hence, the nurse is deeply affected by Phaedra’s distress (253–260), which is initially characterized as illness (176, 205, 293) and only later as a shameful, painful form of eros (331, 347f.). The preposition ἐπί with the dative is used frequently in reference to the underlying belief that is at the heart of emotional response, i.e., is the efficient cause. In addition to Rhetoric 2.8 1385b13, see 2.9 1386b9, 1387a9, 2.10 1387b23, 2.11 1388a32. On the use of φαίνεσθαι in reference to what is thought to be the case, i.e., a belief that can be correct or false, see Fortenbaugh 2002, 97–100. I have added ‘qua human emotion,’ because I do not want to deny that certain animals exhibit shared pain, even though they lack cognition and therefore cannot understand kinship in the way that human beings do. At least, that is what an Aristotelian would say. Flashar 1962, 491.

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Aristotle does not explain smell, hearing and sight in terms of emanations. Rather, he posits a medium that differs in respect to each of the three senses. In regard to sight, Aristotle posits a transparent medium that is actualized by fire or the like and is continuous between a colored object and the eye. In regard to sound, he speaks of a single mass of air that is continuous from a body that is struck to the ear. And in regard to smell, he refers not only to air but also to water as the medium through which smelling takes place, for water animals are able to smell (On Soul 2.7, 418a26–2.9 422a7). My guess is that Flashar is correct in suggesting a post-Aristotelian source and that the answer has suffered extreme abbreviation and/or been assigned its place by an unthinking editor. 2 PAINFUL SOUNDS AND SIGHTS Chapter 5 is related to Chapter 7, in that it is concerned with shared pain. The opening question runs as follows: διὰ τί τῶν µὲν διὰ τῆς ἀκοῆς λυπηρῶν ἔνια φρίττειν ἡµᾶς ποιεῖ, οἷον πρίων ἀκονώµενος καὶ κίσηρις τεµνοµένη καὶ λίθος ἀλούµενος, τὰ δὲ διὰ τῆς ὄψεως σηµεῖα τῶν παθῶν αὐτὰ ἡµῖν τὰ πάθη ἐµποιεῖ; αἱµωδιῶµέν τε γὰρ τοὺς ὀξὺ ὁρῶντες ἐσθίοντας καὶ τοὺς ἀπαγχοµένους ἔνιοι ὁρῶντες ἐκψύχουσιν. Why do some things that are painful to hear make us shudder, like a saw being sharpened and pumice being cut and stone being ground, but the visual signs of these effects (on others) produce those very effects in us? For our teeth are set on edge when we see people eating something bitter and some faint when they see people strangled (886b9–14).

In the answer that follows, we are told that hearing is duller than sight and that it involves breath, which enters the body and produces movement. When the breath is large in quantity and smooth, it causes pleasure, but when it is large in quantity and rough, it causes the hair to stand on end and the body to shudder (886b14– 34). Concerning sight we are told that effects actually occurring in others are reproduced in those who are observing them: ταῦτα µὲν τὰ ἀπὸ τῆς ἀληθείας πάθη συµβαίνει γίνεσθαι ἀπ’ αὐτῆς (sc. ὄψεως) (886b35–37). The idea expressed here is the same as that found in the opening question (886b11–12). The visual signs of other people suffering cause others to suffer in kind. Picking up the examples that accompany the initial question, we can say that the sight of people eating something bitter causes the observer to experience the sensation of teeth set on edge.16 And seeing a person being strangled causes the observer to faint. He experiences the painful effects of being choked, but slighter than in reality,

16

The phrase ‘teeth set on edge’ is used to describe the sensation caused by acidic tastes like that of rhubarb. It is, therefore, an apt translation of the verb αἱµωδιᾶν at 886b12, where the verb is used to describe the sympathetic responses experienced by people who observe others eating something bitter. Understood literally, the Greek verb refers to bleeding gums. Cf. the cognate noun at 1.38 863b11 and 7.9 887b1.

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ἐλαφρότερα δὲ τῆς ἀληθείας (886b37–887a1). Death does not follow, but we can say that the response is in kind. The final sentence of Chapter 5 is not to be ignored: ἀπὸ δὲ τῆς ἀκοῆς αὐτὰ µὲν οὔ, τὴν δ’ ἀπ’ αὐτῶν προσδοκίαν φρίττοµεν· ἀλγεινοῦ γὰρ κακοῦ προσδοκία ἐστίν. It is not on account of hearing that there occur these (effects that are actually being felt by another person); rather, we shudder at the expectation that comes from them, for it is an expectation of painful evil (887a1–3)

If I understand correctly, we have here an acknowledgment that thought (expectation, προσδοκία) plays a role in fright brought on by sound. Throughout most of Chapter 5, sound and its effect are discussed in material terms. Sound is said to be breath, which can vary in quantity and quality. If nothing more were said, we might say that Chapter 5 presents hearing as a bodily reaction to physical stimuli. In certain contexts, there is nothing wrong with such a description: there are sounds that are pleasant and others that are unpleasant in themselves, e.g., the sound of a saw being sharpened (886b10). But now reference is made to an expectation of evil, which takes us to the level of emotional response. In particular, the reference takes us to the level of fright, which Aristotle connects with expectation: µετὰ προσδοκίας τινὸς τοῦ πείσεσθαί τι φθαρτικὸν πάθος (Rhetoric 2.5, 1382b29).17 We may think of the sound of the salpinx, the war-trumpet, which an ordinary citizen would understand as a threat to his wellbeing. If he has not been trained in proper values, he might flee straightway, but if he has received a sound education, he will respond like Aristotle’s more courageous individual, who responds correctly to sudden alarms (Nicomachean Ethics 3, 1117a17–22).18 Since sight is contrasted with hearing in Chapter 5, we might conclude that cognition plays a role in cases of hearing and not in cases of seeing. But the idea is to be resisted. It is nowhere stated in either Chapter 5 or 7, and what we do read in Chapter 7 indicates that thought is in play when a man beholds undeserved cutting or burning and shares the victim’s pain: συναλγοῦµεν τῇ διανοίᾳ (887a16– 17). In regard to Chapter 5, we can say that the man, who sees another person being strangled, understands that the victim is in great pain and that he too could experience such pain. He might faint (886b13–14), but that does not mean that his response is mindless. Far from it; his response is intelligent and similar to emotions like pity and fear.

17

18

The move from a painful sound (a saw being sharpened) to an expectation of grievous ill comes awkwardly at the end of the chapter and gives the impression of being an afterthought. That is hardly unique in the Problems. We might guess that something has been omitted by an editor or fallen out in transmission. On the more courageous man and the speed with which the human mind can make connections, see Fortenbaugh 2002, 71 and 100–103.

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3 CONTAGIOUS DISEASE Very different is the treatment of infectious disease in Chapters 4 and 8. In the earlier chapter, the topic is treated briefly and without reference to specific diseases. The text runs as follows: διὰ τί ἀπὸ νόσων ἐνίων νοσοῦσιν οἱ πλησιάζοντες; ἀπὸ δὲ ὑγιείας οὐδεὶς ὑγιάζεται; ἢ ὅτι ἡ µὲν νόσος κίνησις, ἡ δὲ ὑγίεια ἠρεµία; ἡ µὲν οὖν κινεῖ, ἡ δ’ οὐθέν. ἢ διότι τὸ µὲν ἄκοντι, τὸ δ’ ἑκόντι γίνεται; καὶ ἄρα τὰ ἀκούσια τῶν ἑκουσίων καὶ τῶν ἐκ προνοίας διαφέρει. Why do certain diseases cause those who come close to become sick, but health causes no one to become healthy? Is it that disease is motion and health is rest? Therefore the one moves and the other does not. Or is it because the one occurs involuntarily and the other voluntarily. And so what is involuntary is different from what is voluntary and what is due to forethought (886b3-8).

The question makes reference to persons getting close, πλησιάζοντες (886b4). That suggests that a physical explanation will be offered, and that is what the first answer provides. Sickness being a form of motion infects the person who gets close either through direct contact or mediated through, e.g., breath. The second answer shifts the focus from the nature of disease and its physical cause to unintended consequences. In general, people do not want to become sick; they do so involuntarily when they get close to someone who has a contagious disease. In contrast, people who keep their distance from those who are contagious act voluntarily and with forethought, πρόνοια (886b8). Their evasive action involves cognition, but only as it plays a role in staying healthy. The cause of disease remains physical. Chapter 8 is longer and shifts the attention from disease in general to specific kinds of disease: consumption, eye-disease and scurvy, each of which is treated as a physical condition, whose transmission occurs in a particular way. In the case of scurvy, transmission is by contact with a sticky discharge that remains on the surface of an infected individual (887a33–37). In the case of consumption, the transmission occurs by corrupted breath, which is inhaled by another person who becomes ill (887a27–33). And in the case of eye-disease transmission depends upon the ease with which an eye is moved by and assimilates itself to whatever it sees. Hence, when a person sees another person whose eyes are disturbed, his own eyes readily become disturbed (887a24–27).19 We might want to speak of a shared πάθος, and if the disturbed condition is painful we might want to speak of shared pain, a pain that is the same in kind. But if we choose to speak in that way, we should keep in mind that Chapter 8 is like Chapter 4 in that diseases and their transmission are described in physical terms. Cognition plays no role, which is not 19

Whereas Chapter 7 introduces an emanation theory of sight, it is not clear that such a theory is to be understood in Chapter 8. What is said there seems compatible with Aristotle’s notion of a transparent medium (see above, Section 1), but with so little text (just over three lines), it seems prudent to leave matter undecided.

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the case in pity and shared pain as presented in Chapter 7. Apparently we have two distinct classes of πάθη: those whose efficient cause is cognitive and those in which it is not. 4 INFECTIOUS YAWNING AND URINATING Three different chapters take up the subject of responding to a yawn by yawning.20 The first is Chapter 1, which runs as follows: διὰ τί τοῖς χασµωµένοις ἀντιχασµῶνται ὡς ἐπὶ τὸ πολύ; ἢ διότι ἐὰν ἀναµνησθῶσιν ὀργῶντες, ἐνεργοῦσιν, µάλιστα δὲ τὰ εὐκίνητα, οἷον οὐροῦσιν; ἡ δὲ χάσµη πνεῦµα καὶ ὑγροῦ κίνησίς ἐστιν. πρόχειρον οὖν, ἐὰν µόνον νοήσῃ· ἔστι γὰρ πλησίον. Why do people usually yawn in response to (other) people who yawn? Is it because, if people are reminded (of something) when their condition is urgent, then they act, especially in regard to what is easily moved, e.g., they urinate? Yawning is breath and a movement of moisture. It is therefore ready at hand, if only one thinks (of it). For it is nearby. (886a24–28)

The occurrence of yawning in response to someone else’s yawn is accepted without argument. Apparently the phenomenon is regarded as familiar, which indeed it is. Nevertheless, we may wonder whether the phenomenon is so common, that it can be said to occur ‘usually’ or ‘for the most part,’ ὡς ἐπὶ τὸ πολύ. A better choice might be ἐνιότε, ‘sometimes,’ since it is vague enough to cover a phenomenon that is common but falls short of ‘for the most part.’ Be that as it may, the insertion of a qualifier like ‘usually’ is not surprising, for infectious yawning belongs to human physiology, which is an empirical science. It deals with regularities that admit exceptions, which in principle are open to explanation. The answer that follows on the question begins with the phrase ἐὰν ἀναµνησθῶσιν ὀργῶντες (866a25). To take the participle first, the verb ὀργᾶν is familiar to readers of Aristotle’s History of Animals, where a man is said to feel the urge for intercourse, ὀργᾷ πρὸς τὴν ὁµιλίαν, more in winter and a women more in summer (5.8, 542a32–b1).21 Hence, in Mayhew’s recent translation of the Problems, we find the participle translated with ‘when they feel an urge.’ For our purposes, the important point is that when a person yawns in response to someone else’s yawn, he does so in part because his body is predisposed. We might say that

20

21

Repetitive chapters are frequent in the Problems and almost certainly reflect the fact that the Problems is a collection of texts that were assembled over a period time from various sources without final editing by a single person who aimed at coherence and economy. Cf. History of Animals 8.8, 613b28–29 where ὀργᾶν is used of the female partridge, which is eager or excited to lay eggs. In Theophrastus’ Plant Explanations 3.2.6, the verb is used of the earth, which is said to be ready for seed much as in animals the womb may be desirous of sperm.

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it is ripe for yawning. When that is not the case, then infectious yawning does not occur.22 Regarding the main verb of the if-clause, ἀναµνησθῶσιν (866a25), we can say that yawning in response to another person’s yawn is not presented as an automatic reflex, a simple physical/bodily reaction and nothing more. On the contrary, it also involves remembering, which in the case before us is to be understood in terms of thinking. That is made clear at the end of our text, where we are told that yawning as a response occurs, ἐὰν µόνον νοήσῃ, ‘if only (the person responding) thinks,’ (866a28). We have here a second factor that explains exceptions to sympathetic yawning. The first is physiological: the failure to be urgently disposed. The second is psychological: one fails to think, νοεῖν, of yawning. I return to remembering qua thinking below. A reference to urinating completes the first sentence of the answer. After being told that the person whose condition is urgent acts in regard to what is easily moved, εὐκίνητα (886a26), urination is mentioned as an example, οἷον (866a26). The sentence that follows returns the focus to yawning, which is said to be breath and a movement of moisture. We understand that breath, like urine, can accumulate to the point where it needs to be released. A person in this condition is predisposed to yawn – breath is ready at hand, πρόχειρον (886a27) – and he is likely to yawn, should he see someone else yawn. If that is correct, then we can say that the comparison with urination is apt. Only we may wonder whether the phenomenon under discussion should be called yawning, for in my experience and according to medical handbooks,23 yawning is deep inspiration, i.e., breathing in, frequently on account of drowsiness or fatigue. To be sure, when a person inhales deeply, he subsequently exhales, but in regard to yawning that seems to be a secondary phenomenon. Perhaps I have misunderstood Problems 7.1, but my reading is consistent not only with 7.2 and 7.6 but also with 11.29, where diminished hearing due to yawning is explained as a consequence of exhalation: τοῦ ἐξιόντος πνεύµατος (902b9–10).24 Chapter 2 is the second chapter to discuss infectious yawning. It runs: διὰ τί, ἐὰν µέν τινα ἴδωµεν τὴν χεῖρα ἐκτείνοντα ἢ τὸν πόδα ἢ ἄλλο τι τῶν τοιούτων, οὐκ ἀντιποιοῦµεν τὸ αὐτό, ἐὰν δὲ χασµώµενον ἀντιχασµώµεθα; ἢ οὐδὲ τοῦτο ἀεί, ἀλλ’ ἐὰν ὀργῶν τύχῃ τὸ σῶµα καὶ οὕτω διακείµενον ὥστε τὸ ὑγρὸν ἀναθερµαίνεσθαι; τότε γὰρ ἡ µνήµη τὴν κίνησιν ποιεῖ, ὥσπερ καὶ πρὸς ἀφροδίσια καὶ ἐδωδήν· τὸ γὰρ ποιῆσαν µνήµην εἶναι τὸ ἔχον ὁρµὴν πρὸς τὸ φαντασθὲν πάθος.

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For ὀργᾶν used of a body predisposed to emotion, cf. Aristotle, On Soul 1.1 403a21–22, where we are told that a person may be moved to anger by trivial experiences, when the body is in an aroused state: ὅταν ὀργᾷ τὸ σῶµα. E.g., Taber’s Encyclopedic Medical Dictionary 1989, 2031. See also Problems 11.44, 904a16–22 and 32.13, 961a38–b1; in addition, ps. Aristotle, Supplementary Problems 2.17, p. 128 K&S and Aristotle, On the Generation of Animals 5.2, 781a30–31, where yawning and exhaling, χασµώµενοι καὶ ἐκπνέοντες, are marked off from inhaling, εἰσπνέοντες.

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William Fortenbaugh Why if we see someone extending his hand or his foot or any other such thing, do we not respond in the same way, but if (we see) a person yawning, we yawn in response? Or not always (do we do) this, but only if the body happens to be urgently disposed and in such a condition that its moisture is heated? For then memory produces movement, just as it does in regard to sex and food, for that which causes a memory to exist is that which possesses an impulse toward the imagined condition (886a29–35).

The opening question differs from that of Chapter 1, but the answer focuses on yawning and is in close agreement with Chapter 1. Exceptions are acknowledged: οὐδὲ τοῦτο ἀεί (886a31), after which we are told that a person responds in kind, if his body happens to be in an urgent condition, ἐὰν ὀργῶν τύχῃ τὸ σῶµα (886a32), and so disposed that the moisture within is hot.25 In what follows, memory is said to produce motion, after which sex and eating are mentioned by way of comparison (886a33–34). They replace urination in Chapter 1. Much as an urge to urinate may be intensified and lead to actual urination when one sees another relieving himself, so too in regard to sex and food, a present/latent urge may be activated when one sees another satisfying his need.26 The last sentence of Chapter 2: τὸ γὰρ ποιῆσαν µνήµην εἶναι τὸ ἔχον ὁρµὴν πρὸς τὸ φαντασθὲν πάθος (886a34–35), has been described as hardly intelligible,27 but it can be understood if one keeps in mind the preceding reference to the body in an urgent condition, ὀργὼν … τὸ σῶµα (886a32). When a person’s body is full of breath that has become increasingly hot and moist, should that person see someone else yawning, his body not only jogs his memory, prompting him to remember the relief that yawning effects, but also provides the impulse to yawn, i.e., the latent impulse, now activated, to exhale. Hence, Mayhew’s translation: ‘that which causes a memory to exist is that which provides an impulse toward the imagined condition.’ On first reading, the concluding words, τὸ φαντασθὲν πάθος, ‘the imagined condition,’ (886a35), are puzzling, but they are intelligible in terms of Aristotelian psychology. I cite the work On Memory and Remembering, in which Aristotle repeatedly refers to memory as a πάθος (e.g., 1, 449b5, 25, 450b18), while focusing on the faculty of imagination, φαντασία. He makes clear that memory and thinking in general do not occur without an image, φάντασµα, which is a πάθος of the common sense (449b30–450a14, 451a14–17). Applied to Chapter 2, we can say that when a man is urgently disposed, sees another person yawn and is re25

26

27

A reference to heat is missing in Chapter 1, but that does not mean that the explanations of yawning in Chapters 1 and 2 are fundamentally different. Rather, the explanation offered in Chapter 2 is more complete: it includes a factor omitted in Chapter 1. My words are chosen in order to suggest a response in kind. The opening question speaks of responding in the same way, ἀντιποιοῦµεν τὸ αὐτό, and of yawning in response to yawning, ἀντιχασµώµεθα. Hence, it seems natural to understand the reference to sex and food in terms of response in kind. But in fact a person whose body is properly disposed may be moved to engage in sex without observing an actual sex act, and similarly a hungry person may be moved to eat when he sees a plate of food. For further remarks on responses that are in kind, see below, Sections 5 and 6. Flashar 1962, 489.

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minded of the relief that comes with yawning, his imagination is in play. What he remembers is a φαντασθὲν πάθος, toward which an impulse is directed. Unless an impediment intervenes, exhalation occurs. It may be helpful to take a cue from the mention of sex, which is introduced along with eating as comparable to yawning (886a34). I am thinking especially of nocturnal emission, which is discussed on several occasions in the Problems. Its occurrence is attributed not only to heat, moisture, and breath28 but also to imagination: µετὰ φαντασίας γίνεται (10.16, 892b18). When a person is asleep, heat descends to the region around the groin, resulting in a quantity of warm moisture. Should dreaming occur, imagination is in play and the body is primed for emission. In the case of infectious yawning, moisture, heat, and breath are also important along with imagination. To be sure, there are obvious differences between nocturnal emission and infectious yawning. Whereas the former involves heat and moisture in the lower torso and the emission is of seed, the latter involves heating and moisture in the upper body and the release of breath. Moreover, the imagination involved in the former differs in content from that of the latter, but in both cases imagination plays a role in triggering a physiological response. And this imagination is to be understood as calculative or deliberative imagination, λογιστική or βουλευτικὴ φαντασία, which is peculiar to human beings (animals have only αἰσθητικὴ φαντασία, sensory imagination29) and which plays a role whenever humans engage in cognitive activity. I do not want to deny that dreams may be visual, but they are not limited to sensory images. A dreamer may imagine himself deliberating, e.g., how best to seduce a woman. He may proceed methodically through steps that have an intelligible cause-and-effect relationship, and ultimately he may reach an explosive conclusion. Upon awaking he may be able to report his dream or portions thereof, including the steps through which his deliberation proceeded. For an Aristotelian such dreams and such reports involve reasoning and deliberative imagination. Something similar is true of the person whose body needs relief from an accumulation of warm moist breath. Upon seeing a person yawn, his memory is moved so that he thinks of his own condition and the beneficial effects of 28 29

Problems 3.33, 876a5–10, 4.5, 877a5–9, 5.31, 884a6–15, 33.15, 963a10–12. It is well known that the Aristotelian scala natura places animals below human beings. Their psychic capacities rise no higher than sensation and sensory imagination (see, e.g. Aristotle, On Soul 3.10, 433b29–30). Unless that is kept in mind, mistranslation is all too easy. I cite a fragment of Clearchus, a pupil of Aristotle and colleague of Theophrastus, who is reported to have said that male sparrows, partridges, roosters and quail ejaculate not only when they see females but also when they hear their call. And the cause of this reaction is the image of mating that occurs in the soul: ἡ τῇ ψυχῇ γινοµένη φαντασία (fr. 36 W = Athenaeus, Sophists at Dinner 9, 389F). Gulick 1930, 262 overtranslates with ‘imaginative thought’ (my emphasis). It is, of course, possible that Clearchus departed from the teaching of Aristotle and attributed some kind of thought to the birds in question, but no text tells us that he did. Presumably the imagination that moved the birds to ejaculate is to be understood as sensory imagination.

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yawning. Here the thought process does not involve complex deliberations; as a result, it proceeds rapidly. If I understand what Aristotle says in On Memory, we have here a case of recollection without seeking: ἀναµιµνήσκεσθαι without ζητεῖν (451b22–23). Recollection is a kind of inference, a συλλογισµός (453a10), which begins with thought (451b18) and proceeds by seeking out connections, which may be numerous. But when they are few and when the process is quick and effortless, Aristotle describes the process as recollecting without seeking. That applies to the case of the distressed individual who sees someone else yawn. The relationship between yawning and relief is so familiar that he immediately makes the connection and exhales.30 Chapter 6 is the third chapter to discuss infectious yawning. It runs as follows: διὰ τί τοῖς χασµησαµένοις ἀντιχασµῶνται, καὶ ὅταν οὐροῦντα ἴδωσιν, οὐροῦσι, καὶ µάλιστα τὰ ὑποζύγια; ἢ διὰ τὴν µνήµην; ὅταν γὰρ µνησθῇ, κινεῖται τοῦτο τὸ µέρος. τοῖς µὲν οὖν ἀνθρώποις, διὰ τὸ εὐαισθητοτέροις εἶναι, ἰδοῦσιν εὐθὺς συµβαίνει καὶ κινεῖσθαι καὶ ἀναµιµνήσκεσθαι· τοῖς δὲ ὑποζυγίοις οὐκ αὔταρκες τὸ ἰδεῖν, ἀλλὰ προσδέονται καὶ ἄλλης αἰσθήσεως· διὸ καὶ ὀσφρανθέντα, ὅτι εὐκινητότερα αὕτη ἡ αἴσθησις τοῖς ἄνευ λόγου. καὶ διὰ τοῦτο εἰς τὸν αὐτὸν τόπον ἅπαντα οὐρεῖ, οὗ ἂν ἂν τὸ πρῶτον οὐρήσῃ. τότε γὰρ µάλιστα κινοῦνται, ὅταν ὀσφρανθῶσιν· ὀσφραίνονται δ’ ὅταν πλησιάσωσιν. Why in response to yawning do they yawn, and when they see urinating they urinate, and especially yoke animals? Is it on account of memory, for when one remembers, the relevant part is moved. Therefore in the case of human beings, on account of having better senses, it happens that when they see something they are straightway moved and recollect. But in the case of yoke animals, their sight is not sufficient, but they need in addition another sense. This is why (they respond) having smelled, because this sense is more easily moved in (animals) lacking reason. And on account of this they all urinate in the same place, where the first one urinated. For they are especially moved at that time when they smell (urine); and they smell (it) when they are nearby (887a4–14).

The question with which the chapter begins is the same as that with which Chapter 1 begins: ‘Why do people yawn in response to people who yawn?’ (887a4) There are, of course, certain differences. Omitted is a reference to frequency; in Chapter 1 ‘for the most part’ occurs (886a24–25). Included is a mention of urination and yoke animals (887a5); in Chapter 1 only urination is mentioned, and there it is part of the answer (886a26). The answer given in Chapter 6 is longer than the answer given in Chapter1 as well as that given in Chapter 2. The answer begins by attributing the responses to memory and then adds by way of explanation that remembering moves the relevant part. The statement is quite general and can be applied to both yawning and urination (887a4–6). In what follows, human beings are singled out. They are characterized as having better sight: when they see, straightway they are moved and recollect (887a6–8). Next come yolk animals, which have poor sight and are in need of another sense. 30

Cf. On Memory 2, 452a28–30: ἃ πολλάκις ἐννοοῦµεν, ταχὺ ἀναµιµνησκόµεθα … τὸ δὲ πολλάκις φύσιν ποιεῖ, ‘What we think of frequently, we quickly recollect ... frequency creates nature.’

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Smell is introduced and used to explain how it is that yoke animals sniff out and urinate in the same place (887a8–14). There is a striking imbalance here. Yoke animals are discussed at greater length and the focus is entirely on urination. My guess is that a compiler or editor has intervened, perhaps combining material from two separate accounts of sympathetic response.31 Yoke animals are said to lack reason, ἄνευ λόγου (887a11). Although not emphasized, the implied contrast is with human beings, who have λόγος. They are able to recollect and to respond straightway. That takes us back to Chapter 1, in which we read, ‘It is therefore ready at hand, if only one thinks, ἐὰν µόνον νοήσῃ. For it is nearby’ (886a24–28). The words ‘ready at hand’ and ‘nearby’ refer to an accumulation of warm moist breath (7.1, 886a26–27, 7.2 886a33). In the person whose condition is urgent, the material and motive force are at hand, so that the person who sees someone else yawning is prompted to think of yawning and the relief it provides. Usually he relieves himself straightway by yawning. The occurrence of the verb ἀναµιµνήσκεσθαι, ‘to recollect,’ is important, for it is used in connection with men (887a7–8). In On Memory, Aristotle tells us that human beings alone have the faculty of recollection. And as noted above,32 recollection is said to be a kind of inference, συλλογισµός, and to belong only to those who have the capacity to deliberate, βουλεύεσθαι (2, 453a4–14). In regard to Chapter 6 of the Problems, we can say that ἀναµιµνήσκεσθαι is used as it is in On Memory. We understand that the individual, who is predisposed to yawn and responds in kind to the yawn of another person, is thinking. He makes a connection between that person and himself. He sees the other person’s yawn as a way to relieve his own condition and yawns straightway. The fact that he responds straightway, εὐθύς (887a7), does not rule out inference. In On Memory, Aristotle makes clear that recollection can occur quickly, ταχύ (2, 452a14, 28); the author of Chapter 6 agrees.

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32

The phenomenon of animals sniffing out a place to urinate is familiar to modern man from the behavior of dogs. It will not have been otherwise with the ancient Greeks; they had ample opportunity to observe dogs sniffing their way to a common urinarium. In addition, they will have had opportunity to observe animals yawning, but yawning on the part of animals is ignored not only in Chapter 6 but also throughout Book 7. (I am assuming that the opening words of Chapter 6, διὰ τί τοῖς χασµησαµένοις ἀντιχασµῶνται [887a4], refer to human beings. Cf. the translation of Flashar, ‘Warum gähnt man, wenn jemand gegähnt hat.’) Perhaps the ancient Greeks did observe dogs and horses and other animals yawning but never made a connection with contagious yawning, which is the subject of Chapter 6. Or should we recognize that the Problems is selective and suffers from abridgment? Indeed, there is no commitment to exhaustive treatment. This section, p. 136.

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5 URINATING AND RUNNING WATER In Chapters 1 and 6, urination is mentioned along side yawning. In Chapter 2 it is not mentioned. I now want to focus on Chapter 3 in which urination is discussed apart from yawning. The chapter runs as follows: διὰ τί ἐπειδὰν πρὸς τὸ πῦρ στῶµεν, οὐρητιῶµεν, καὶ ἐὰν πρὸς ὕδωρ, οἷον ἐὰν πρὸς ποταµόν, οὐροῦσιν; ἢ ὅτι τὸ πᾶν ὕδωρ ὑπόµνησιν δίδωσιν τῆς ἐν τῷ σώµατι ὑγρότητος, καὶ ἐκκαλεῖται τὸ προσιόν; αὐτὸ δὲ τὸ πῦρ διαχαλᾷ τὸ πεπηθὸς ἐν τῷ σώµατι, ὥσπερ ὁ ἥλιος τὴν χιόνα. Why when we stand near fire, do we feel the need to urinate, and if near water, e.g. near a river, do they (does one) urinate? Is it because all water provides a reminder of the moisture in the body and calls forth the (moisture) that is advancing? And the fire itself dissolves what is solidified in the body, just as the sun (melts) the snow (886a37–b2).

The question with which the chapter begins is bipartite. First it is asked, ‘Why when standing near a fire, do we desire/feel the need to urinate?’ Second comes, ‘And if near water, e.g., if near a river, do they urinate?’ The shift from first person plural to third person plural is awkward and may be a sign of corruption or careless abbreviation. Also odd is the reversal of the order in which the questions are answered. For the first question seems to concern a time prior to the second, and answering it might facilitate answering the second. Nevertheless, the answer to the first question is postponed to the end of the chapter, where we are told that fire melts what is solidified within the body. We understand that melting creates fluids and the desire to urinate (886b2–3). The answer to the second question precedes and divides in two. First, we are told that all water provides a reminder of the fluid within the body (886a37–b1). Second, we read καὶ ἐκκαλεῖται τὸ προσιόν (886b1–2). The meaning is not immediately clear, and translators have rendered the words in different ways. Hett translates ‘and calls out what is near to it.’ He takes τὸ προσιόν as the object of ἐκκαλεῖται (middle voice) and understands the preceding reference to ‘all water’ as the subject. Louis agrees; he translates ‘et attire ce qui est proche’ and understands the subject to be ‘toute eau.’ Forster translates ‘and the neighborhood of water incites our internal moisture to come out.’ And Mayhew offers ‘and nearby (water) calls out for it.’ Both Forster and Mayhew take τὸ προσιόν as the subject of ἐκκαλεῖται (middle voice). If I understand correctly, all four translators confuse προσιόν (the participle of προσιέναι) with προσόν (the participle of προσεῖναι). In combination with the definite article, the former refers to something going toward or advancing, the latter refers to something that is nearby. The transmitted text has the former. To be sure, a careless scribe might have misread πρόσον and inserted an iota. Were that the case, emending the text to read προσόν would be in order, but there is no good reason to think that a scribe has erred. Indeed, the text as transmitted is intelligible. I cite Flashar, who translates: ‘und (weil jedes Wasser) die schon andrängende (Feuchtigkeit) herauslockt’, or in English, ‘and (because all water) entices out the (fluid within the body) which is already creating pressure.’ Flashar is clear that προσιόν refers to motion and not place nearby. He takes the phrase τὸ προσιόν as the object of ἐκκαλεῖται (middle

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voice), and like Hett he seems to understand ‘all water’ as the subject. A difficulty is that the immediately preceding reference to moisture in the body involves the word ὑγρότης (886b1), which is feminine. In what follows, τὸ προσιόν occurs, which is neuter. The change in gender is real, but the difficulty may be more apparent than real. Either the preceding mention of ὕδωρ has influenced the change in gender, or we can understand ὑγρόν with τὸ προσιόν. The shift would be a simple variation, which might be viewed as an improvement. The abstract/general noun ὑγρότης is replaced by a neuter participial phrase that is appropriate to a particular stuff, i.e., to the bodily fluid that is increasing and pressing to be released. A different way to read the text should not be overlooked. Instead of taking τὸ προσιόν as the object of ἐκκαλεῖται, it might be construed as the subject of the verb. I.e., instead of taking ἐκκαλεῖται as the middle voice, we might take it as passive and understand τὸ προσιόν as the subject: the fluid within, which is advancing and creating pressure, is called forth. I see no grammatical impediment to this way of reading the text and leave it to others to decide whether ἐκκαλεῖται is middle or passive.33 What I do want to insist upon is that we take seriously the reference to a river, ποταµός, which occurs in the second half of the question with which the chapter begins (886a37). The reference seems important, because it is foolish to claim that all water not only provides a reminder of the moisture within the body but also excites actual urination. For the latter to be plausible, water needs to be qualified in some way, and that way is suggested by the reference to a stream. Except during prolonged drought, a stream is running water, and running water may be thought to excite the flow of urine. At least modern men who are having trouble urinating are known to turn on/open the water-faucet, in order that running water may encourage the flow of urine. Perhaps a reference to running water once stood before the verb ἐκκαλεῖται (middle voice). It could have been lost through abbreviation. Or is a reference to running water conveyed by the participle προσιόν. After all, a river does flow toward something down stream, so that one might be tempted to understand ὕδωρ with τὸ προσιόν and regard the resulting phrase as the subject of ἐκκαλεῖται (middle voice). That would give us a qualified reference to water and allow the reader to understand moisture within the body as the object of ἐκκαλεῖται. I leave the issue undecided; a brighter mind can pick the winner. Finally, I call attention to the fact that Chapter 3 speaks of reminding: we are told that water provides a reminder, ὑπόµνησιν δίδωσιν, of the moisture within the body. That invites comparison with Chapter 1 in which people who respond to yawning by yawning are said to be reminded, ἀναµνησθῶσιν (886a25), and Chapter 2 where we read that motion is caused by memory, µνήµη (886a3). In these earlier chapters we have response in kind, so that one is tempted to interpret 33

While there may be no grammatical impediment to understanding τὸ προσιόν as the subject of ἐκκαλεῖται, word order may be thought to favor taking τὸ προσιόν as the object of the verb. At least that is the judgement of Stefan Schorn, with whom I agree.

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the response as mindless, i.e, an infectious response rather like catching a disease from someone who is already infected.34 The temptation is to be resisted. Chapter 1 makes explicit mention of thinking, ‘if only one thinks,’ νοήσῃ (886a27), and Chapter 2 uses the phrase τὸ φαντασθὲν πάθος, ‘the imagined condition,’ which can be interpreted plausibly in terms of deliberative imagination. Now in Chapter 3 we have memory introduced to explain a response that is not in kind. Proximity to running water prompts one to think of urinating as a way to relieve an urgent condition. Animals may do something similar, but the picture presented in Chapter 3 makes clear that they are exercising their sense of smell. Their behavior gives new meaning to the injunction ‘follow your nose.’ In contrast, the person who responds to a stream is making connections between two quite different things. And in doing so he uses his mind. To be sure, he may respond to his circumstances straightway (cf. 6, 887a7): he might wet his pants. But responding straightway need not exclude thinking, and wetting one’s pants is exceptional. Normally a person can restrain himself and take evasive action. 6 A FINAL WORD In the preceding sections, I have discussed Book 7 of the Problems, whose heading contains the word συµπάθεια, ‘sympathy’. We have seen that the book is quite diverse: shared pain, painful sounds and sights, contagious diseases, infectious yawning, and urination are all discussed.35 Such a potpourri may be faulted by the pedantic scholar, who is accustomed to arrange his material in a tight, cohesive manner, but for persons interested in emotional response, Book 7 can be instructive. Its diversity challenges the reader to ask whether the several phenomena discussed within the book are sufficiently similar to be grouped together as emotional responses. If we follow Errol Bedford in holding that thought is essential to emotional response and if we follow Aristotle and say that the efficient cause of emotion is thought, then a negative answer would be correct. For Book 7 includes two discussions of contagious disease, which is said to be involuntary and contracted through motion: either by direct contact with an infected person or over a distance through breath (Ch. 4, 8). Persons suffering from contagious diseases may have thoughts of various kinds (Where did I contract this condition? How can I be cured?), but none are essential to the condition (one may simply accept one’s condition and its consequences). Much the same can be said of painful sounds caused by sharpening a saw or cutting pumice stone. The person who hears these noises shudders. His response is a physical reaction that is not to be confused with hearing the sound of a salpinx. The latter arouses fear based on an expectation of grievous ill (Ch. 5).

34 35

Cf. Chapters 4 and 8, discussed above in Section 1. As stated at the outset, I am ignoring the final chapter on curing bleeding gums.

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Pleasure and pain might be better candidates for unifying the various phenomena discussed in Book 7. They are mentioned together in the discussion of shared pain (Ch. 7). In the discussion of sound and sight, there is explicit mention of pleasure, while references to shuddering and teeth set on edge clearly suggest feelings of pain (Ch. 5). Although the account of diseases lacks an explicit reference to either pleasure or pain, the account suggests afflictions that are readily associated with both bodily discomfort and mental anguish (Ch. 4, 8). Similarly in the case of yawning and urination, there is no explicit mention of either pleasure or pain, but mention of urgency suggests physical discomfort and the relief that comes with yawning and urinating is known to be not only welcome but also pleasant, at least to some degree (Ch. 1–3, 6). Perhaps, then, we should say that pleasure and pain taken together constitute the unifying feature that renders intelligible grouping together the phenomena discussed in Book 7. For my part, I would prefer to say that pleasure and pain constitute a unifying feature, but not the most important one. Rather, we should take our cue from the heading to Book 7. To be sure, the heading involves the word συµπάθεια, which is not Aristotelian and not attested for any Peripatetic of the Hellenistic period, but we need not conclude that the heading is inappropriate. On the contrary, it captures succinctly the essence of Book 7, which brings together and discusses shared affections. I have written ‘affections’ because the Greek word πάθος is more inclusive than the English word ‘emotion’ and is so used by Aristotle. I cite the opening chapter of Aristotle’s On Soul, in which pathos is used not only of emotion but also inclusively of affections peculiar to the soul (1.1 403a16 and 402a9, respectively).36 Moreover, in the Categories, Aristotle contrasts ποιότητες with πάθη. The former are well-established dispositions, which may be quite resistant to change. The latter are typically conditions of limited duration (9b33–10a10), which fits not only an emotional response like pity but also an illness that runs its course, shuddering in response to certain noises or sights and an episode of yawning or urination. The adjective ‘shared’ renders the prefix συµ- and in itself could be misleading. It might suggest that Book 7 is restricted to responses/reactions that mirror each other in kind. But in fact Book 7 is concerned with responses that are both in kind and not in kind: e.g., responsive yawning is in kind and sharing the pain felt by someone who is being burned or tortured is not in kind. And on occasion we may want to recognize a response that admits both descriptions. I am thinking of the man who is standing by a stream. We are told that all water provides a reminder of the fluid/urine in his body and being beside a stream calls forth the urine. If we focus on the difference between water and urine, we have a response that is not in kind. But if we focus on the stream, which is flowing, then we may want to

36

That pathos is used repeatedly by Aristotle for emotional response is well known; see, e.g., Nicomachean Ethics 2.5, 1105b21–23 and Rhetoric 2.1, 1378a19–22. For pathos used of memory and mental images, see above, Section 4, p. 133 on Problems 7.2.

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say that the response is in kind in that flowing water has prompted the flow of urine. I stop here and take a deep breath, reminding myself that the English word ‘yawning’ is used primarily of inhalation and therefore is an odd translation of the Greek word χάσµη and its cognates as found in the Problems. BIBLIOGRAPHY Bedford, E. (1956–1957) Emotions, Proceedings of the Aristotelian Society 57, 281–304. Flashar, H. (1962) Aristoteles, Problemata Physica, Berlin. Fortenbaugh, W. (1968) Aristotle and the Questionable Mean-Dispositions, Transactions of the American Philological Association 99, 203–231. ––– (1969) Aristotle: Emotion and Moral Virtue, Arethusa 2, 163–185. –– (1970) Aristotle’s Rhetoric on Emotions, Archiv für die Geschichte der Philosophie 52, 40– 70. ––– (1985) Theophrastus on Emotion, in Theophrastus of Eresus: On His Life and Work, ed. W. Fortenbaugh, P. Huby and A. Long = RUSCH II, New Brunswick NJ, 209–229. ––– (2002) Aristotle on Emotion, London/New York. Reprinted with epilogue. First edition 1975. ––– (2011) Theophrastus of Eresus, Commentary Volume 6.1. Leiden. ––– (2014) Problems Connected with Fear and Courage, in R. Mayhew (ed.), The Aristotelian Problemata Physica, Leiden, 311–320. Gulick, Ch. (1930) Athenaeus, The Deipnosophists, London. Hett, W. (1936) Aristotle, Problems, Cambridge MA, rev.1953. Louis, P. (1991–1994) Aristote: Problèmes, 3 vols, Paris. Mayhew, R. (2011) Aristotle, Problems, Cambridge MA. Meijer, P. (2007) Stoic Theology, Delft. Pitcher, G. (1965) Emotion, Mind 74, 326–346.

THE LIFE OF STATUES: EMOTION AND AGENCY Angelos Chaniotis For Tonio Hölscher

1 INTRODUCTION1 George Seferis is an iconic figure in modern Greek literature, as the first Greek Nobel laureate, because of his opposition to the junta in 1967, and because his poems became the lyrics of some of Mikis Theodorakis’ best known songs. One of the poems in his collection Mythistorema (1935) begins with these verses (in the translation of Edmund Keeley and Philip Sherrard): I woke with this marble head in my hands; it exhausts my elbow and I don’t know where to put it down.

Seferis alludes to the almost unbearable weight of ancient tradition on modern Hellenism, representing this tradition with a marble head. Years later, in his Essays (Dokimes), Seferis returned to the seductive power of ancient statues in modern Greek culture, quoting from the memoirs of Makriyannis, one of the leaders of the Greek revolution of 1821 against the Ottoman Empire: I had two marvellous statues, a woman and a prince, intact – you could see their veins, so perfect they were. When they destroyed Poros, some soldiers took them and were planning to sell them to some Europeans in Argos; they were asking for one thousand talers. It happened that I was also passing by. I took the soldiers aside; I talked to them. ‘Even if they give you ten thousand talers, don’t accept that these statues go out of our fatherland. It is for them that we fought’ ...

Thanks to Seferis, Makriyannis has also become an iconic figure of Greek literature. And it is the fate of iconic figures to be more often quoted than read. But this isolated passage had a successful career; it is part of the selections to be read in secondary schools; in 1987 it was the subject of the essay exam for entry to Greek universities; and as a Google search can convince you, it is one of the most quoted passages of Makriyannis on the web, with more than 14,000 hits. The symbolic function of statues differs from culture to culture and from time to time; it is a cultural construct. In Makriyannis’ times the symbolic function of 1

I am very grateful to Elizabeth Potter (Oxford) for correcting my English. For epigraphic publications I use the abbreviations of Supplementum Epigraphicum Graecum.

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ancient statues was resurrected after centuries of oblivion together with a resurrected nation. Makriyannis’ didactic phrase ‘it is for them that we fought’ reveals the effort to give a material expression and a face to the abstract, vague, and heterogeneous motives of the Greek revolutionaries. The emotive power of statues is intrinsically connected with their materiality, with their physical presence, with the clarity of their subject – a woman and a young prince (µιὰ γυναῖκα κι ἕνα βασιλόπουλο) –, with aesthetic aspects (Makriyannis’ statues were περίφηµα; they had ἐντέλεια). One of the memorable scenes in Theo Angelopoulos’ film Ulysses’ Gaze is that of a fragmented statue of Lenin being loaded onto a barge and transported downriver; the broken materiality of this statue alludes to a break with the past, to a fragmented empire, to shattered identities and ideologies. Some cultures are more iconolatric than others, and that of the ancient Greeks certainly is dominated by the physical presence of statues of diverse sizes and materials, set up in different locations, performing various functions, and representing all kinds of subjects. Statesmen, benefactors, and kings were honoured with statues; funerary statues commemorated the dead; statues of gods received acts of worship; statues decorated spaces dedicated to the activities of the living and the dead, spaces both public and private, sacred and profane. To say that statues and their functions occupy a central position in the study of Greek religion, politics, art, society, culture, rituals, and literature is to bring owls to Athens – or statues to a Greek city, for that matter. Statues were made to be seen, to be observed, and to be discussed. They were part of the discourse of the philosophers and the literary ekphraseis of poets and orators, but also points of reference and orientation in the everyday life of the common people.2 Statues had lives after they left their workshops and before they fell off their bases, pushed by men or toppled by earthquakes.3 There were many ways to treat statues in Greek antiquity but one could hardly ignore them. Studies concerning the display and arousal of emotions in Greek culture cannot ignore them either. 2 STATUES AND EMOTIONS There is no such thing as a statue or a relief that does not have an emotional background: either because it represents an emotion (e.g. grief or fear), or because its display is motivated by an emotion (e.g. true or theatrical gratitude towards a god or a benefactor, pride for a victory), or because it is expected to arouse emotions among future viewers (e.g. apotropaic statues stirring fear). An example of the representation of emotion is a clay jug from Skyros imitating a version of the fa-

2 3

IG IV2.1.123 no. XLVI; cf. Stramaglia 1992. The concept of the ‘lives of statues’ is used e.g. by Smith 2007, Mylonopoulos 2010b, 12–18, Petrovic 2010, and Chaniotis 2014. Cf. Hölscher 2015: ‘life of images’.

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mous statue of the Drunken Old Woman (late second/early first century BCE).4 We may argue today about what emotions the statue of the Drunken Old Woman in Munich represented or was intended to arouse. But the jug from Skyros leaves no room for speculation, because an inscription presents an unambiguous explanation: ‘This old woman sits here full of joy holding her wine.’ It is also clear that the Nike of Paionios was motivated by the pride of the Messenians and Naupaktians for their victory over Sparta in 425 BCE (even if fear of the Spartans prevented the dedicators from inscribing the name of the enemy).5 The Naxian Apollo on Delos forever commemorates the pride of its maker through an inscription: ‘I am of one and the same stone, both the statue and the pedestal.’6 There can be no doubt that the Greeks were fully aware of the emotive function and power of statues. The very word for statue, agalma, ‘the object that offers pleasure’, can be understood as an emotional term. Inscriptions sometimes explained the emotions that had triggered the erection of a statue. For instance, the expressions kat’ euchēn or charistērion made clear that a statue was dedicated as an expression of gratitude towards the gods. A worshipper of Dionysos at Nikomedeia in the Imperial period had a statue of the god erected next to his grave; the statue visualized his affection towards the god in life and in death.7 I, Dion, am a concern to you, Dionysos, while alive, both when I dance with the children and at the symposia, when I hold in my hand the nectar of Bromios. And now I have set you up even by my tomb, at my side, for all to see, so that even when lying among the dead I may see you.

A decree of an association of athletes explicitly states what the erection of certain honorary statues for a fellow athlete, who had died young, aimed at: these images should offer consolation.8 We shall request from the city of Aphrodisias suitable locations in order to dedicate images of the great winner in sacred contests and in order to erect a portrait statue, exactly as in Ephe4 5 6 7

8

Athens National Archaeological Museum, inv. no. 2069. See Masséglia 2012, 421–424. Pausanias 5.24.1. On the circumstances of the dedication of the Nike of Paionios, see Hölscher 1974. I.Délos 4 (ca. 600 BCE). Recent discussion of the inscription, with earlier bibliography: di Cesare 2004. Merkelbach and Stauber 2001, no. 09/06/19 (Imperial period): Σοί, Δ∆ιόνυσε, Δ∆ίων ζωὸς µετὰ παισὶ χορεύων συνποσίοισι µέλω νέκταρ ἔχων Βροµίου· νῦν δέ σε καὶ παρὰ σῆµ᾿ ἐσορᾶν ἵδρυσα παρά µε ὄφρα καὶ ἂν φθίµενο[ς] κεισόµενός σε βλέπω. Cf. a funerary epigram from Perinthos that mentions that a man was buried near the statue of Apollo: SEG LVII 635 (ca. 170 CE); recent discussion: Jones 2011. IAph2007 12.719 (ca. 117–138 CE): αἰτήσασθαι τὴν Ἀφροδεισιέων πόλιν τόπους ἐπιτηδείους ὅπως ποιησώµεθα τοῦ µεγάλου ἱερονείκου εἰκόνων ἀναθέσεις καὶ ἀνδρειάντος ἀνάστασιν καθὰ καὶ ἐν τῇ µητροπόλει τῆς Ἀσίας Ἐφέσῳ ἐχουσῶν τῶν τειµῶν ἐπιγραφὰς τὰς προσηκούσας τῷ Καλλικράτει, ἵνα διὰ τούτου τοῦ ψηφίσµατος τὸ βαρύθυµον πρὸς εἱµαρµένην ἀπαραίτητον αἱ τῶν τειµῶν χάριτες εὐπαρηγόρητον ἡµεῖν τὸν συναθλητὴν καταστήσωσιν. The text’s syntax is not clear; cf. Robert 1965, XIII, 146: ‘afin que, par ce décret, pour ce qui est de l’irritation contre un destin inévitable, les faveurs et les égards témoignés par ces honneurs nous fassent (nous rendent) notre camarade athlète bien consolé’.

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Angelos Chaniotis sos, the metropolis of Asia; the honorific images shall have inscriptions appropriate to Kallikrates, so that through this decree, in our heaviness of heart at an inexorable destiny, the gracious gift of the honorific statues will provide consolation for our fellow athlete.

Admittedly, the emotional contexts of statues – the representation, expression, or arousal of emotions – are often hard or even impossible to reconstruct, and they may change in the course of time. But this should not discourage historians and archaeologists from trying to approach them. The emotional impact of statues in Greek culture certainly is connected with their materiality and physical presence. Unlike painted images and reliefs, statues are three-dimensional objects; often they are life-size representations, or close thereof; when they are over life-size, they dominate the surrounding space. Their display is subject to careful consideration. Placed on a base and raised above the spectator, they are at the same time separated from him and close to him. My aim in this study is not to present a collection of sources pertaining to the ‘emotive’ lives of statues or to provide lists of the emotions expressed, aroused, or expected to be aroused by statues. Such a list would be very long and would only prove the obvious: statues were closely linked to emotions. Instead, I would like to argue that, under certain conditions, emotional elements in the interaction between statues and viewers may make a statue appear to have agency and to be filled with life. 3 MORE THAN IMAGES Whether Greek statues represented or, in a sense, were understood as ‘being’ the mortals or the immortals whom they depicted is a complex question that defies brief answers.9 In Greece, divine images were not invested with powers – unlike divine images in the ancient Near East or images used in magic and theurgy.10 Although in many cases the words theos and thea are indiscriminately used to designate both a god or goddess and their statue,11 the textual evidence suggests that the image of a deity was strictly distinguished from the deity; it was a medium through which the deity manifested its powers, communicated with mortals, and responded to their prayers. To use an idea expressed by Dio of Prusa in a passage often quoted in this context, statues were ‘vessels’ (ἀγγεῖα) that accommodated divine epiphanies and facilitated the communication between worshipper

9 10

11

See e.g. Gladigow 1985/86; Jones 1998; Scheer 2000, 44–130; Steiner 2001, 79–134; Francis 2003; Hölscher 2010, 117f.; Bremmer 2013, 9; Guggisberg 2013; Chaniotis 2014, 259–277. On rituals of consecration of Greek statues, see Pirenne-Delforge 2008. On the special case of statues invested with powers in the context of magic and theurgy, see Dodds 1951, 291–295; Faraone 1992; Steiner 2001, 114–120. E.g. IG II2 1277 lines 8f.: ἐπεκόσµησαν δὲ κα[ὶ] τ[ὴ]ν θεόν (Athens, 278 BCE); SEG XLVIII 1104: ποτὶ τὰν τῶν θεῶν ἐπικόσµησιν (Kos, ca. 200 BC); IG V.2.265 (Mantineia, 64–61 BCE): [τὰν δὲ Κ]ό[ρ]αν ἐµ παντὶ καιρῶι θεραπεύουσα καὶ συνευκ[ο]σµ[οῦ]σα].

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and divinity.12 The image psychologically prepared the worshippers to communicate with the divinity.13 In the case of mortals, statues were regarded as their substitutes. They created the illusion of the mortal’s presence, with all the emotional ‘baggage’ that goes with it.14 A few examples may illustrate this. When the Ephesians sent an embassy to Emperor Caracalla, ‘Artemis, the ancestral goddess, was leading the embassy’, as a decree states.15 As the statue of Artemis was carried by the envoys, Artemis was thought to be present through her statue. During the devastating pestilence of the mid-second century CE, a city in Asia Minor, probably Sardis, received an oracle from Apollo Klarios advising its inhabitants to bring a statue of Artemis from Ephesos:16 Bring in her form from Ephesos, brilliant with gold. Put her up in a temple, full of joy; she will provide deliverance from your affliction and will dissolve the poison of pestilence, which destroys men, and will melt down with her flame-bearing torches in nightly fire the kneaded works of wax, the signs of the evil art of a sorcerer. But when you have performed for the goddess my decrees, worship with hymns the shooter of arrows, the irresistible, straight shooting one, and with sacrifices, her, the renowned and vigilant virgin; and during dancing and feasting, you girls together with the boys, above the salty lands of Maionic Hermos, praising her in every respect wear crowns of large myrtle, having called from the Ephesian land the pure Artemis, in order that she might always be to you an unfailing helper.

The physical presence of Artemis’ statue, in combination with rituals, resulted in the goddess’ epiphany and the presence of her protective powers. As a privileged locus of epiphany, the divine image had to be periodically prepared to receive the divinity. This was the aim of the statue’s ritual treatment, the removal of stain, and its adornment.17 In an inscription from Olbia (ca. 200– 210 CE), the washing of the statue of Zeus Olbios is directly connected with the manifestation of divine power. The decree praises the local statesman and benefactor Kallikrates:18

12

13

14 15 16 17 18

Dio, Oratio 12.59: ἀνθρώπινον σῶµα ὡς ἀγγεῖον φρονήσεως καὶ λόγου θεῷ προσάπτοντες. On this passage see Steiner 2001, 124f.; Betz 2004; Chaniotis 2014, 263f. On the significance of statues for prayer and epiphany, see Scheer 2000, 66–70; Steiner 2001, 105f.; Guggisberg 2013, 72–82; Chaniotis 2014, 264–270. Cf. Minucius Felix, Octavius 22.5, who asks when god comes into being (quando igitur hic nascitur): ‘now he is being decorated, consecrated, and addressed with prayers; now, finally, he is a god, in accordance with human desire and dedication’ (ecce ornatur, consecratur, oratur: tunc postremo deus est, cum homo illum voluit et dedicavit). E.g. Steiner 2001, 145–151. SEG XXXI 955; I.Ephesos 2026 (ca. 200–205 CE): προεπρέσβευεν ἡ πάτριος ἡµῶν θεὸς Ἄρτεµις. Graf 1992. On the washing of statues see Kahil 1994; Scheer 2000, 57–60. IOSPE I2 2: ἱερεὺς δὲ γενόµενος̣ [το]ῦ̣ προεστῶτος τῆς πόλεως ἡµῶν θεοῦ Δ∆ιὸς Ὀλβίου κ̣[αταλ]ούσας τὸν θεὸν ἁγνῶς, τῆς τῶν ἀέρων εὐκρασ̣[ίας δεόµενος] ἐπέτυχεν εὐετηρίας. I have restored the verb κ̣[αταλ]ούσας (or κ̣[αὶ λ]ούσας). The only verbs that produce a

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Angelos Chaniotis When he became priest of Zeus Olbios, the god who presides over our city, he washed the god in a pure manner, and praying for a good combination of winds, he achieved prosperity.

The god’s image was an agent of divine power, and as such it was thought to respond to prayers and to have healing powers; dedications were directly given to statues.19 The perception of statues as agents of divine power and epiphany explains why they could be associated with all the emotions that are connected with religious worship: fear, hope, gratitude, and affection. As for the statues of mortals, normally they were not believed to be identical with the people that they represented. They did not host the soul of a deceased individual, but rather preserved the memory of one’s life and qualities. The statues of mortals were hosts of memory, mnēmeia and hypomnēmata.20 As a decree from Olbia (third century BCE) puts it, the statue of a war hero was set up ‘in order that his deeds are commemorated’.21 The statues triggered memories and through them emotions, thus creating the illusion of a deceased or absent person’s presence.22 The epigram on the base of the honorific statue of a certain Apollodotos in Rhodes (ca. 200 BCE) invites the viewer to look at the image, which is filled with life (ἔµπνουν), and remember the man’s justice.23 When statues were incorporated into rituals, such as their periodic crowning during festivals, the power to trigger affective memory was enhanced. Through acts of commemoration, statues became a powerful instrument for the transmission of values. An instructive example is offered by a first-century-CE decree of consolation from Kyzikos. It was issued after the death of Apollonis, a woman of a prominent family, who was admired for her virtue, prudence, and behaviour as a wife. Her statue was dedicated in one of the buildings of the marketplace.24

19

20 21 22 23 24

participle ending in -ούσας are ἀκούω, κρούω, λούω, and their composita; only λούω can be restored here. Prayers in front of statues: e.g. van Straten 1974; Scheer 2000, 66–70; Steiner 2001, 105 and 115; response of statues to prayers: see note 31. Dedications directly presented to statues: e.g. Iliad 6.311; IG II2 1514 lines 41–43; 1523 ΙΙ 27f.; 1524 ΙΙ 202–207; Guggisberg 2013, 69; see also Mägele 2005 (anatomical votives placed on the base of statues of Asklepios and Koronis, Sagalassos, second century CE). The expression ‘I placed the property title in the arms of the goddess’ (τὴν ὠνὴν κατεθέµην εἰς τὰς ἀνκάλας τῆς θεοῦ et sim.), used in inscriptions that record the dedication of slaves to Meter Theon Autochthon (I.Leukopetra 3, 63, 93), suggests that the dedicators placed the documents in the arms of the (seated?) image of the goddess. A relief from Lydia (Saittai, 165 CE) shows a thief bringing stolen garments to the statue of Mes: Petzl 1994, 3–5 no. 3. Healing statues: e.g. I.Oropos 380: a statue is called παυσίπονον. For healing statues of athletes: Zanker 2003, 48f. E.g. Isocrates, Euagoras 73; IG II2 1326, 8396; IOSPE I2 171 lines 12–13; IG XII.7.240 lines 28–31. IOSPE I2 325: [σταθῆναι] αὐτοῦ εἰκόνα, ὅπως ἂν αἵ τε πράξει[ς αὐτοῦ µ]νηµονεύωνται. Steiner 2001, 145–151. Maiuri 1925, 19: ἀτθρήσας, ὦ ξεῖνε, τὸν ἔµπνουν χαλκὸν | µνᾶσαι τᾶς ὁσίας τοῦδε δικαιοσύνας. Sève 1979.

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After this building has been adorned with her statue, let the present kosmophylax and the future kosmophylakes (the guardians of order) use this building as their office. It will be the duty of those who register the celebration of weddings in the presence of the kosmophylax to crown the statue of Apollonis, which is consecrated in the office.

An ordinary and unoccupied building in the agora of Kyzikos changed its status because of the consecration (kathierōsis) of a statue of Apollonis. The statue of Apollonis became an eternal reminder of female virtues; through the ceremonial crowning of her statue, future couples asserted the values described in the honorary decree of Apollonis. Thus her statue became part of the cultural memory of a civic community, at least as long as the community read the inscription that explained why this particular woman had been honoured. This perception of statues explains their tremendous emotive impact. Statues were consciously manipulated as powerful visual media of emotional arousal, but as we shall now see, they could also arouse emotion simply by their presence. 4 EMOTIONALITY AND THE ILLUSION OF AGENCY Narratives about statues, both in the literary and in the documentary sources, make clear that under certain circumstances statues appeared to have agency. This agency took different forms. We see its most direct manifestation when statues were believed to kill, heal, or punish. Secondly, agency was also manifested when statues seemed to present the physical symptoms of life, such as moving, sweating, and shedding tears.25 Thirdly, the emotional arousal triggered by a statue could be so strong as to create the illusion that a direct communication with the statue was possible. Finally, in a less straightforward way, statues revealed agency when they influenced the actions of humans and triggered responses that were not the ones intended by their makers. An examination of a small selection of relevant sources shows that the agency of statues, both direct and indirect, occurred in contexts of strong emotionality. When statues appear to be filled with life, the emotional responses to and the emotional interaction with statues are largely determined by the same factors that govern emotions in interpersonal relations. 4.1 Statues as instruments of revenge and punishment It is said that when the athlete and statesman Theagenes of Thasos died in the early fifth century BCE, one of his political enemies came every night to his statue and flogged the bronze image as though he were ill-treating Theagenes himself (ἅτε αὐτῷ Θεαγένῃ λυµαινόµενος).26 The statue put an end to the outrage by 25 26

Bremmer 2013 studies the agency of statues only in this sense. Pausanias 6.11; cf. Dio of Prusa, Oratio 31.95–99; Eusebius, Praeparatio evangelica 5.34. For evidence on killer-statues see Jones 1998, 139f.

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falling on him and killing him. Recognized as an agent of homicide, the statue was thrown into the sea. When the Thasians were punished with disease, an oracle advised them to return the exiles. The calamity only stopped when the last ‘exile’, Theagenes’ statue, was coincidentally caught in the nets of fishermen and brought back to Thasos. Another killer statue likewise represented an athlete, this one by the name of Mitys. In a discussion of stories suitable for a tragic plot, Aristotle refers to accidental events (ἀπὸ τύχης) that arouse amazement (θαυµασιώτατα δοκεῖ) because they seem to have occurred with a purpose (ὥσπερ ἐπίτηδες φαίνεται γεγονέναι). As an example, he reports an incident that had allegedly unfolded in Argos. While the man responsible for the death of Mitys was looking at the latter’s statue, it fell on him and killed him.27 Although in these narratives the images appear to act on their own, one may argue that they were only the instruments of avenging spirits or punishing gods. We encounter the same ambiguity in a poem transmitted among Theocritus’ idylls.28 When a beautiful youth remained indifferent towards the suicide of the desperate man who had unsuccessfully pursued him, a statue of Eros fell upon the heartless boy and killed him. Whose agency was at work here? The statue’s or the god’s? The text is ambiguous. But in these narratives, what makes statues appear as agents in a very real sense is the strong emotional context. 4.2 Emotions make statues alive Strong emotionality is also the context of narratives about statues that suddenly reveal physical symptoms of life. An example is provided by a narrative concerning Timoleon of Syracuse and the liberation of cities in Sicily in 343/342 BCE. When he attacked the city of Hadranos, the inhabitants saw the gates of the temple of the homonymous local god open by themselves; inside, the god’s statue was seen with sweat all over its face, shaking its lance. This caused shuddering among the viewers.29 A similar story is told by Herodotus, who makes sure to state his own doubts on its historicity. When the Athenians attempted to remove the old statues of Damia and Auxesia from Aigina (late sixth century BCE), the images were seen falling on their knees to prevent this.30 In these two narratives, the context is load27 28 29

30

Aristotle, Poetics 9.11–12, 1452a1–10. Ps.-Theocritus 23. Plutarch, Timoleon 12.9: µετὰ φρίκης καὶ θαύµατος ἀπαγγέλλοντες, ὡς ἐνισταµένης τῆς µάχης οἱ µὲν ἱεροὶ τοῦ νεὼ πυλῶνες αὐτόµατοι διανοιχθεῖεν, ὀφθείη δὲ τοῦ θεοῦ τὸ µὲν δόρυ σειόµενον ἐκ τῆς αἰχµῆς ἄκρας, τὸ δὲ πρόσωπον ἱδρῶτι πολλῷ ῥεόµενον. On shuddering in this narrative: Cairns 2013, 97 and p. 58 n. 17 above. Herodotus 5.86.3: οὐ δυναµένους δὲ ἀνασπάσαι ἐκ τῶν βάθρων αὐτὰ οὕτω δὴ περιβαλοµένους σχοινία ἕλκειν, ἐς οὗ ἑλκόµενα τὰ ἀγάλµατα ἀµφότερα τὠυτὸ ποιῆσαι, ἐµοὶ µὲν οὐ πιστὰ λέγοντες, ἄλλῳ δὲ τεῷ· ἐς γούνατα γάρ σφι αὐτὰ πεσεῖν, καὶ τὸν ἀπὸ τούτου χρόνον διατελέειν οὕτω ἔχοντα. For similar stories see Steiner 2001, 182; Bremmer 2013, 10. For a discussion of the historical context of this tradition, see Figueira 1985.

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ed with emotions: fear and excitement during a battle, indignation for a sacrilegious deed. This also applies to divine images, in literary sources, that indicate through movement that they accept or reject the requests of praying mortals.31 Analogous miracles in other cultures are not a rarity. As recently as July 1998, dozens of people in thirty different locations in Ireland claimed to have seen statues of Mary and other saints move. More than 100,000 people visited one of these locations, Ballinspittle. A research team of psychologists explained this as an illusion caused by staring at the statues in the evening twilight.32 4.3 Emotional interaction with statues A nice example of how the excitement triggered by a statue could create the illusion that it was filled with life and invite a viewer to communicate with it is provided by an anecdote in Plutarch’s Life of Alexander.33 When he [Alexander] saw a large statue of Xerxes carelessly lying on the ground, having been thrown down by the multitude of those who were pushing their way into the palace, he stood above it and addressed it, as if it were filled with a living soul (καθάπερ ἔµψυχον). ‘What am I to do?’, he asked. ‘Should I pass by, leaving you on the ground for the campaign against the Greeks, or should I set you up again for the magnanimity and virtue that you otherwise showed?’ Finally, after long silent contemplation, he passed by.

By reminding Alexander of Xerxes’ deeds and properties, the statue made him feel the Great King’s presence and created the illusion that the conqueror could somehow communicate with him through his statue. At first sight, Alexander’s behaviour in this anecdote differs neither from that of Theagenes’ enemy, who flogged the dead man’s statue in order to ill-treat him, nor from that of his contemporaries who crowned statues in order to honour the people that they represented.34 In all these cases, someone seems to communicate with an individual through his statue, cultivating the illusion that the treatment of the statue allows him to honour or to humiliate the individual that the statue represents. There are, however, important differences between these stories. First, there is a difference in the intensity of emotional excitement. The enemy of Theagenes was dominated by hatred; those who honoured statues did this out of affection, pride, or gratitude, but they acted in a ritual manner; Alexander contemplated for a long time before he decided that revenge for Xerxes’ campaigns – more closely connected with a sense of justice than with a feeling of hatred – weighed more than a recognition of the king’s achievements.

31 32 33 34

Iliad 6.311; Aeschylus, Agamemnon 519–520; Euripides, Iphigeneia in Tauris 1167; Lucian, Lexiphanes 12. See also Steiner 2001, 134, 175f. and 182; Bremmer 2013, 8f. Ryan and Kirakowski 1985. Plutarch, Alexander 37.3. Examples of the periodical crowning of statues: SEG VIII 529 line 17; SEG XXVIII 953 lines 63–71; SEG XLI 1003 II lines 50–56; IG XII.4.348 lines 19–23.

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Second, a distinction should be made between the treatment of the statue in front of an audience or cryptically. Theagenes’ enemy acted in the secrecy of the night; he was under the illusion of ill-treating the man he hated (ἅτε αὐτῷ Θεαγένῃ λυµαινόµενος). In the cases in which the honourable or contemptuous treatment of a statue took place in front of an audience (see below), ultimately its target was not the represented individual but his reputation and memory. The honourable treatment of a statue – mainly triggered by affection and gratitude – was commemoration; its destruction – motivated by hatred, envy, or indignation – was damnatio memoriae in a very clear manner.35 Reputation and memory also explain rituals directed towards the image of a mortal. When Kritolaos of Amorgos established a foundation in honour of his son Aleximachos, a pankratiast who had died prematurely, Aleximachos’ statue was the focal point of the ceremony.36 A sacrifice took place near the statue, which was also presented with an offering of food. The dead Aleximachos was regarded as present through his statue. In the contests that took place during this celebration, no competition in pankration was held, but instead the dead youth was announced as the winner. Furthermore, reputation and memory underlay attacks against statues – open attacks, dissimilar to the abuse of Theagenes’ statue. The statue of the Carian dynast Hekatomnos was set up in Mylasa as an expression of the city’s loyalty and gratitude, but it was enmity and resentment that caused an attack by a group of men around 360 BCE.37 That statues could provoke insulting responses was well known to Euarestos of Oinoanda, a teacher and sponsor of athletic contests, who had proudly set up five statues of himself. In an epigram written on the base of the latest statue (ca. 238 CE) he describes what he felt looking at his statues:38 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.

Euarestos knew, however, what we should expect from his fellow countrymen: not gratitude but envy, not delight but mocking. So, he uses one feeling against another, emulation against envy. Now give up your carping criticism, all you who are in thrall to dread envy, and gaze at my statue with eyes of imitation.

35 36 37

38

On damnatio memoriae in Hellenistic Greece and in Rome see Varner 2004; Savalli-Lestrade 2009. IG XII.7.515 (ca. 100 BCE). I.Mylasa 2: παρανοµήσαντας ἐς τὴν εἰκόνα τὴν Ἑκατόµνω. Cf. the traditions concerning the destruction of hundreds of statues of Demetrios of Phaleron in Athens in 307 BCE: Strabo 9.1.20 (C 398); Plutarch, Praecepta gerendae reipublicae 27.13; Dio, Oratio 37.41. SEG XLIV 1182 B: 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 ἔχουσ[ιν] | µειµηλοῖς ὄσσοις εἰσίδετ᾿ εἰκόν᾿ ἐµήν. On this epigram see Dickie 2003.

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Euarestos felt the anxiety of a proud man eager to preserve his kleos. He had a future audience in mind. An audience was also important for Nero’s attack against the statue of a famous musician. It is reported that during his grand tour in Greece, the emperor forced the elderly kitharode Pammenes to compete with him, in order to be able to claim that he had defeated the greatest performer of his time and to have the opportunity to ridicule Pammenes’ honorific statues.39 Incidents such as this explain Herodes Atticus’ fear that his statues and those of relatives and friends might become the victims of envy and enmity.40 In the above examples in which people interact with statues, the intensity of emotions varies according to the circumstances, which range from a spontaneous reaction to a ritualized display of honour or a carefully planned attack. Although the interaction is with a statue, what ultimately determines the reaction is not the statue but the individual it represents. We reach yet another level of agency emanating from statues when we turn to stories in which emotions are directed towards the statue as a physical object. 4.4 Uncontrolled emotions: erotic desire for statues In all of the above cases, the emotional impact of a statue, whether intended and desirable or not, derived from the god or the mortal that it depicted or the values for which an individual stood. Agency did not directly stem from the statue itself. Things are quite different in the case of statues that provoked erotic desire directed towards the material object. The best known case of ‘agalmatophilia’41 is that of Pygmalion, the mythical king of Cyprus, who fell in love with an ivory statue. His story had a happy ending, but most similar anecdotes did not. The story of how the statue of Praxiteles’ Knidian Aphrodite aroused such a strong sexual desire in a young man that he attempted to have sex with it is narrated by the author of the Affairs of the Heart.42 He describes how an Athenian enters the temple of Aphrodite, sees the statue, and expresses his admiration. When he notices a mark on one thigh, which he takes to be a defect of the marble, he is told of the heartache of a young man who once fell in love with the statue. All day long he would sit facing the goddess with his eyes fixed upon her and whispering words of love, until one night he slipped unnoticed into the temple and attempted to have sex with the statue – in the pederastic manner, as the author explains to curious readers. ‘These marks of his amorous embraces were seen after day came

39 40 41 42

Cassius Dio 62.8.4–5: καὶ τὸν Παµµένην ἐκεῖνον ἐπὶ τοῦ Γαΐου ἀκµάσαντα κατηνάγκασε, καίτοι γέροντα ὄνα, ἀγνωνίσασθαι, ἵνα αὐτοῦ τοὺς ἀνδριάντας κρατήσας αἰκίσηται. On the curse inscriptions set up by Herodes in order to protect his statues, see Tobin 1997, 113–160. On this motif in art and literature see Corso 1999, 102–104; Steiner 2001, 186–207; Hersey 2009. Pseudo-Lucian, Amores 13–16. Recent discussion by Mylonopoulos 2010b, 1–3.

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and the goddess had that blemish to prove what she had suffered.’ Out of his mind, the young man then committed suicide. A statue of Aphrodite is expected to arouse delight, awe, and hope – and indeed, those who saw the young man staring at the statue interpreted this as religious awe (δεισιδαίµων ἁγιστεία). When a community sets up a statue, intended emotions may include gratitude towards the deity, hope for future protection, admiration for the sculpture, and civic pride for the splendour of a work of art. An ancient statue may also cause the indignation of the citizenry for the expenses or the envy of a neighbouring community; in these cases, the emotions do not turn against the statue but against those who commissioned it. But when a statue causes a man not to kneel in front of it but to rape it, this is a different matter. This paradox explains the appeal of the narrative; it explains why such anecdotes were preserved in the literary tradition. It would not be shocking if a man, turned on by the statue’s beauty, went home to have sex with his wife or to a brothel for possibly better options. This was done by Makareus of Perinthos, another man allegedly struck by erotic desire for the Knidian Aphrodite; the goddess advised him to have sex with Ischas, a famous courtesan of that time.43 The shocking element in this story is that a man fell in love not with Aphrodite – this is known to have happened in myth and is alluded to in the earliest Greek metrical inscription44 – but with her statue. It is a story of losing control, of being driven to irrationality through love; the agency does not originate in the maker of the statue, Praxiteles, or those who commissioned it, but in the statue itself. Ultimately, this is a story about emotions as much as it is a story about statues. Significantly, it is not narrated in a treatise about statues but in one about affairs of the heart. A similar story was told about the statue of Agathe Tyche in Athens, again a work of Praxiteles.45 A young man in Athens, descendant of a noble family, fell strongly in love with the statue of Agathe Tyche, which stood in front of the prytaneion. First, he used to embrace the statue and kiss it. Then, mad with love and driven by desire, he appeared in front of the council, begging them to sell the statue, which he was eager to buy for a lot of money. As he failed to persuade the council, he bound many ribbons around the statue, crowned it, offered a sacrifice, decorated it with valuable ornaments and, after shedding many tears, he committed suicide in front of it.

5 CONCLUSIONS: NO WAY TO TREAT A STATUE! Statues were made to be seen, exactly as inscriptions were made to be read. In a time in which the keen interest in novelty sometimes defeats common sense, it may not be uncalled-for to stress such trivial things. The textual evidence, consist43 44 45

Ptolemaios Chennos, Kaine historia, fr. inc. sed. 1 ed. Chatzis. Recent edition: Dubois 1995, 22–28 no. 2: ‘whoever drinks from this cup, here, will be momentarily seized by desire for Aphrodite, the one with the beautiful garland’. Aelian, Varia historia 9.39.

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ing of both literary texts and inscriptions and ranging from incredible anecdotes to prescriptions for the ritual treatment of statues, illustrates that ancient statues were part of a dynamic interaction between images and viewers. Statues were washed and perfumed, anointed, carried in processions, greeted, offered food, touched, kissed, flagellated, raped, and castrated; women dressed them, men insulted them, birds left their dung on them, enemies captured them; they were attacked, carried away, destroyed, burned, repaired, or buried.46 Statues had life precisely through this continual interaction with humans. This life was not free of dramatic changes, and under certain conditions one could have the impression that statues were not passive objects in this interaction but actors themselves. They killed and healed, performed some biological functions such as movement, and influenced the actions of their viewers in a manner that clearly exceeded the intended emotional effect. In the cases examined in these study, the impression that statues were filled with life and the illusion that they had agency of their own were created or enhanced by the strong emotional impact generated by their physical presence. The most interesting manifestations of agency can be observed when the emotive impact of statues was unintended and undesirable – when they aroused hatred and envy instead of gratitude, erotic desire instead of religious awe, contempt instead of respect. In some of these cases, emotion was closely connected with cultural memory and private memories. Two incidents, one possibly an anecdote, the other attested in a documentary source, illustrate the interplay of memory and unintended emotional arousal. When Kassandros saw a statue of Alexander the Great, it was not admiration for the conqueror that he felt, not grief for his death or friendship; instead, it is said that he had all the physical symptoms of panic: he physically shuddered and trembled; he was dizzy.47 The statue of Philites in Erythrai (early third century BCE) had been erected as a symbol of freedom; its impact on the supporters of an oligarchical regime was the opposite: fear. Afraid of the statue’s emotive agency – the statue encouraged the people to fight for democracy – they literally disarmed the statue by removing the sword, ‘believing that his posture/attitude was directed against them’. After the collapse of this regime, the statue was restored to its earlier form.48 46

47 48

For the ritual treatment of statues see Scheer 2000, 54–66; Bettinetti 2001; Steiner 2001, 105– 120; Broder 2008; Montel 2014. For attacks against statues see notes 26 and 37. Attacks against statues, and also against divine images, are well attested long before the destruction of statues by Christian mobs: e.g. an inscription from Kollyda reports that during the celebration of a festival in 197 CE, people came together and marched against a sanctuary. Armed with swords, sticks and stones, they attacked the sacred slaves and smashed the statues of the gods. SEG LVII 1185. Statues captured in war or stolen: e.g. Pausanias 1.8.5; Arrian, Anabasis 3.16.7; 7.129.2; SEG XLII 273 bis; I.Laodikeia 72; Reynolds 1982, no. 12; Bernard 1990; Knoepfler 1997; Scheer 2000, 201–229. Repaired statues: I.Ephesos 519; IAph2007 4.308, 12.402, 13.116; SEG XLIV 938; IG X.2.2.336. Buried statues: Caseau 2011. For a discussion of these phenomena, see Chaniotis 2014. Plutarch, Alexander 74.6. See Cairns 2013, 89. I.Erythrai 503. Recent discussion of the statue’s manipulation by Teegarden 2013, 142–172.

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Perhaps the most revealing cases of agency through emotion are the narratives concerning the Knidian Aphrodite and the murderous statue of Theagenes. These narratives have several things in common: the affective responses to these statues – love in the first case, hatred in the second – differed from the intended emotional arousal. The Thasians had erected the statue of Theagenes as an expression of gratitude, honour, and pride, not to see it flogged. Both incidents took place in the night: the darkness and secrecy of the night stressed the element of transgression. The third common element is the physical contact with the statue as a result of strong emotion. The inappropriate treatment of a statue was perceived as an expression of emotion that was so intense and out of control that it caused irrational actions: the raping of marble and the flogging of bronze. In both narratives, the culprit was punished with death – in the case of Theagenes, through the statue’s direct agency. Affective responses to statues were part of the life of statues; statues were manipulated as visual stimuli of emotions, but the circumstances sometimes made them emotive agents that triggered unexpected or unintended emotions. What do we learn about emotions from all this? Not much, but this is not surprising. What I have realized after five years of engagement in a project concerning emotions is that in ancient studies, we should not study texts and images in order to understand emotions, but that we should study emotions in order to understand texts and images in their contexts. These conclusions are encapsulated in the heading: ‘no way to treat a statue!’ Ignoring the emotional context of its life is certainly no way to treat a statue. BIBLIOGRAPHY Bernard, P. (1990) Vicissitudes au gré de l’histoire d’une statue en bronze d’Héraclès entre Séleucie du Tigre et la Mésène, Journal des Savants, 3–68. Bettinetti, S. (2001) La statua di culto nella pratica rituale greca, Bari. Betz, H. D. (2004) God Concept and Cultic Image: The Argument in Dio Chrysostom’s Oratio 12 (Olympikos), Illinois Classical Studies 29, 131–142. Bremmer, J. N. (2013) The Agency of Greek and Roman Statues, Opuscula 6, 7–21. Broder, P.-A. (2008) La manipulation des images dans les processions en Grèce ancienne, in Image et religion dans l’antiquité gréco-romaine. Actes du colloque de Rome, 11–13 decembre 2003, Naples, 121–135. Cairns, D. (2013) A Short History of Shudders, in A. Chaniotis and P. Ducrey (eds.), Unveiling Emotions II. Emotions in Ancient Greece and Rome: Texts, Images, Material Culture, Stuttgart, 85–106. Caseau, B. (2011) Religious Intolerance and Pagan Statuary, in L. Lavan and M. Mulryan (eds.), The Archaeology of Late Antique ‘Paganism’, Leiden, 479–502. Chaniotis, A. (2014) Ἡ ζωὴ τῶν ἀγαλµάτων, Πρακτικὰ τῆς Ἀκαδηµίας Ἀθηνῶν 89, 246–297. Corso, A. (1999) Ancient Greek Sculptors as Magicians, Quaderni Ticinesi. Numismatica e Antichità Classiche 28, 97–111. di Cesare, R. (2004) Sull’Apollo dei Nassii a Delo e le iscrizioni della base, Eidola 1, 23–60. Dickie, M. W. (2003) The Topic of Envy and Emulation in an Agonistic Inscription from Oenoanda, in E. Csapo and M. Miller (eds.), Poetry, Theory, Praxis: The Social Life of Myth, Word, and Image in Ancient Greece. Essays in Honour of William J. Slater, Oxford, 232–246.

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Dodds, E. R. (1951) The Greeks and the Irrational, Berkeley/Los Angeles. Dubois, L. (1995) Inscriptions grecques dialectales de Grande Grèce. I. Colonies eubéennes. Colonies ioniennes. Emporia, Geneva. Faraone, C. (1992) Talismans and Trojan Horses: Guardian Statues in Ancient Greek Myth and Ritual, Oxford. Figueira, T. J. (1985) Herodotus on the Early Hostilities between Aigina and Athens, American Journal of Philology 106, 49–74. Francis, J. A. (2003) Living Icons: Tracing a Motif in Verbal and Visual Representation from the Second to the Fourth Centuries C.E., American Journal of Philology 124, 575–600. Gladigow, B. (1985/86) Präsenz der Bilder – Präsenz der Götter. Kultbilder und Bilder der Götter in der griechischen Religion, Visible Religion 4/5, 114–133. Graf, F. (1992) An Oracle Against Pestilence from a Western Anatolian Town, Zeitschrift für Papyrologie und Epigraphik 92, 267–279. Guggisberg, M. (2013) Lebendige Götter. Zum Verhältnis von Gottheit und Gottesbild im antiken Griechenland, in M. M. Luiselli, J. Mohn, and S. Gripentrog (eds.), Kult und Bild. Die bildliche Dimension des Kultes im alten Orient, in der Antike und in der Neuzeit, Würzburg, 67– 89. Hersey, G. L. (2009) Falling in Love with Statues: Artificial Humans from Pygmalion to the Present, Chicago. Hölscher, F. (2010) Gods and Statues. An Approach to Archaistic Images in the Fifth Century BCE, in J. Mylonopoulos (ed.) 2010a, 105–120. Hölscher, T. (1974) Die Nike der Messenier und Naupaktier in Olympia. Kunst und Geschichte im späten 5. Jahrhundert v. Chr., Jahrbuch des Deutschen Archäologischen Instituts 89, 70–111. ––– (2015) La vie des images grecques, Sociétés de statues, rôles des artistes et notions esthétiques dans l’art grec ancien, Paris. Jones, C. P. (2011) An Apamean at Philippopolis, Zeitschrift für Papyrologie und Epigraphik 176, 96–98. Jones, S. C. (1998) Statues that Kill and the Gods Who Love Them, in K. J. Hartswick and M. C. Surgeon (eds.), Στέφανος. Studies in Honor of Brunilde Sismondo Ridgway, Philadelphia, 139–143. Kahil, L. (1994) Bains de statues et de divinités, in R. Ginouvès et alii (eds.), L’eau, la santé et la maladie dans le monde grec. Actes du colloque organisé à Paris du 25 au 27 novembre 1992, Paris, 217–223. Knoepfler, D. (1997) Cupido ille propter quem Thespiae visuntur. Une mésaventure insoupçonnée de l’Eros de Praxitèle et l’institution du concours des Erôtideia, in D. Knoepfler et alii (eds.), Nomen Latinum. Mélanges de langue, de litérature et de civilisation latines offerts au professeur André Schneider à l’occasion de son départ à la retraite, Neuchâtel, 17–39. Mägele, S. (2005) Ein besonderer Ort für Votive: Anmerkungen zu einem ungewöhnlichen Befund an drei Statuen aus einem Nymphäum in Sagalassos, Mitteilungen des Deutschen Archäologischen Instituts (Istanbuler Abteilung) 55, 289–307. Maiuri, A. (1925) Nuova silloge epigrafica di Rodi e Cos, Florence. Masséglia, J. (2012) ‘Reasons to be Cheerful’: Conflicting Emotions in the Drunken Old Women of Munich and Rome, in A. Chaniotis (ed.), Unveiling Emotions: Sources and Methods for the Study of Emotions in the Greek World, Stuttgart, 413–430. Merkelbach, R. and J. Stauber (2001) Steinepigramme aus dem griechischen Osten. Band II: Die Nordküste Kleinasiens (Marmarameer und Pontos), Munich/Leipzig. Montel, S. (2014) Espaces, environnement architectural et rituels autour des statues dans les sanctuaires grecs, Revue de l’histoire des religions 231, 729–744. Mylonopoulos, J., ed. (2010a) Divine Images and Human Imaginations in Ancient Greece and Rome, Leiden. ––– (2010b) Divine Images Versus Cult Images; An Endless Story about Theories, Methods, and Terminologies, in J. Mylonopoulos (ed.) 2010a, 1–19.

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Petrovic, I. (2010) The Life Story of a Cult Statue as an Allegory. Kallimachos’ Hermes Perpheraios, in J. Mylonopoulos (ed.) 2010a, 205–224. Petzl, G. (1994) Die Beichtinschriften Westkleinasiens (Epigraphica Anatolica, 22), Bonn. Pirenne-Delforge, V. (2008) Des marmites pour un méchant petit hermès! ou comment consacrer une statue, in S. Estienne et alii (ed.), Image et religion dans l’Antiquité gréco-romaine, Naples, 103–110. Reynolds, J. (1982) Aphrodisias and Rome, London. Robert, L. (1965) Hellenica. Recueil d’épigraphie, de numismatique et d’antiquités grecques. Volume XIII. D’Aphrodisias à la Lycaonie, Paris. Ryan, T. and J. Kirakowski (1985) Ballinspittle: Moving Statues and Faith, Cork/Dublin. 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. Sève, M. (1979) Un décret de consolation à Cyzique, Bulletin de Correspondance Hellénique 103, 1979, 327–359. Smith, R. R. R. (2007) Statue Life in the Hadrianic Baths at Aphrodisias, CE 100–600: Local Context and Historical Meaning, in F. A. Bauer and C. Witschel (eds.), Statuen in der Spätantike, Wiesbaden, 203–235. Steiner, D. T. (2001) Images in the Mind. Statues in Archaic Greek Literature and Thought, Princeton. Stramaglia, A. (1992) Il leone, il tesoro e l’indovinello, Zeitschrift für Papyrologie und Epigraphik 91, 53–59. Teegarden, D. A. (2013) Death to Tyrants! Ancient Greek Democracy and the Struggle Against Tyranny, Princeton/Oxford. Tobin, J. (1997) Herodes Attikos and the City of Athens. Patronage and Conflict under the Antonines, Amsterdam. van Straten, F. T. (1974) Did the Greeks Kneel Before their Gods?, Bulletin Antieke Beschaving 49, 159–189. Varner, E. R. (2004) Mutilation and Transformation: Damnatio Memoriae and Roman Imperial Portraiture, Leiden. Zanker, P. (2003) Der Boxer, in L. Giuliani (ed.), Meisterwerke der antiken Kunst, Munich, 28– 49.

TOUCHING BEHAVIOUR: PROXEMICS IN ROMAN ART Glenys Davies Although the face is the main site for the expression of emotion we also use the body as a whole to express what we are feeling, whether voluntarily and consciously or not. One aspect of this ‘body language’ involves proxemics (how close people stand to one another and the extent to which they invade another’s space) and haptics (touch).1 This paper looks at some examples of Roman art in the light of modern research into Nonverbal Communication (as body language is more properly called), taking as its premise that Roman artists observed the body language in use in Roman society and used their observations as a communicative device in their art. But although some aspects of body language are universal and found across cultures many behaviours are culture-specific, and it should not be assumed that an interpretation that seems natural or obvious to us would have been so for the Roman viewer. There are several interrelated questions here: does Roman art reflect how people actually behaved? Does the body language depicted give us an insight into the expression of emotion among the Romans, or is art more concerned with the expression of status and identity? My starting point for this paper is the central group on the Palazzo della Cancelleria relief B (fig. 1), one of two reliefs found in Rome in 1939 and now on display in the Vatican Museo Gregoriano Profano.2 Although other suggestions have been made since, I see no reason to doubt the original identification of the two main figures as Domitian on the left and Vespasian on the right, and the occasion depicted as Vespasian’s arrival in Italy as emperor in 70 CE.3 The poses of 1 2

3

For a good general introduction to the study of this aspect of nonverbal behaviour see Argyle 1988, especially chapters 11 (Spatial behaviour) and 14 (Touch and bodily contact). The earliest substantial publication was Magi 1945. For a good summary and bibliography of subsequent publications see Kleiner 1992, 191f. and 203f. Many of the subsequent articles were primarily interested in the question of style, date, and the recut (or not) portrait heads. McCann 1972 argues that the relief was carved early in the reign of Hadrian and represented Trajan’s adoption of Hadrian, but when Hadrian later backpedalled on this justification for his assumption of power the head of Trajan was recut to represent Vespasian, so that the relief now represented Vespasian’s approval of a young Nerva. The arguments are based entirely on the portraits and the style of the relief: the postures and gestures of the main protagonists are barely mentioned. McCann’s interpretation of the relief has not received general acceptance. Other interpretations involve the suggestion that ‘Vespasian’ originally represented Domitian, who is shown with some other less important figure but the head was recut after Domitian’s damnatio memoriae (see most recently Petruccioli 2014): for the view the heads in relief B were not recut see Varner 2004, 119f., and n. 62.

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the two figures and the gesture being made by Vespasian in particular look as though they ought to be communicating something about their relationship, yet the body language used by the two figures is difficult to read, enigmatic even. This is not a hackneyed, stereotypical scene: rather it gives the impression that the sculptor created a new motif in an attempt to say something very specific about the relationship between father and son – but what?

Fig. 1. Detail of relief B from the Palazzo della Cancelleria, Rome, Museo Gregoriano Profano (Vatican Museums): Vespasian and Domitian.

‘Domitian’, a young man with down on his cheeks,4 stands on the left, immobile but in a relaxed pose wearing an immaculately draped toga, his body virtually frontal, with only his head turned towards his father; ‘Vespasian’ stands next to him in a similar pose, but there is a significant gap between the two which is bridged by Vespasian’s raised right hand: he appears to be in the act of patting his son on the shoulder. His head is turned into side view as he looks at his son. Brilliant describes this as ‘Vespasian’s warm gesture of greeting’,5 but the distance the two stand from each other does not in fact suggest great warmth of feeling; Kleiner also interprets this as a gesture of greeting, though she says Vespasian actually puts his hand on Domitian’s shoulder (in fact it does not quite make contact).6 Last starts out by identifying the gesture as greeting, but later corrects this

4 5 6

The meeting is estimated to have taken place early in the autumn, just before Domitian’s 19th birthday, before he shaved off his youthful beard. Brilliant 1963, 102. Kleiner 1992, 191. Varner 2004, 120 also speaks of a ‘gesture of greeting’.

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to ‘friendly approbation… even congratulation’.7 Toynbee also speaks of a ‘gesture of approval’.8 Whatever the ‘meaning’ of the gesture, Vespasian is making all the moves, whereas Domitian stands aloof and unresponsive; the gestures appear stiff and unnatural, not the outpourings of the kind of emotion one would expect at the meeting of father and son after a long separation during which the father has been elevated to the position of the ruler of the Roman world.9 Domitian and Vespasian stand immobile amid other figures which include lictors, personifications of the Senate and the Roman people, and Victory hovering behind Vespasian, putting a wreath on his head. At the far left is a group of Vestal Virgins, with Roma appearing in the top left corner implying that the scene takes place at Rome.10 The meeting is mentioned by Dio Cassius, who says that although Vespasian met Mucianus and other VIPs at Brundisium he met Domitian at Beneventum (not Rome).11 Dio, Tacitus and Suetonius all criticise Domitian’s conduct in Rome up to this point, and imply that the meeting would not have been a cordial one.12 Tacitus tells us that before coming back to Italy from Egypt Vespasian had heard unfavourable reports of Domitian’s behaviour in Rome, but Titus urged him to be impartial and forgiving of his son.13 Vespasian judged the situation to be critical, as there were only 10 days’ worth of grain left in Rome.14 Dio tells us that while Vespasian was in Egypt Mucianus and Domitian ruled in Rome ‘like absolute rulers’;15 Domitian was afraid of his father ‘because of what he had done and far more because of what he intended to do’:16 Domitian was consequently ill at ease. (It is at this point that Dio introduces the famous anecdote that Domitian’s favourite pastime was impaling flies on his stylus, which he sees as a significant indicator of his character defects). He then goes on to say that Vespasian proceeded to humble his son’s pride, while greeting all the rest not as an emperor but as a pri-

7 8 9 10

11 12

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14 15 16

Last 1948, 10f. Toynbee 1957, 5. Varner’s suggestion that ‘Domitian welcomes his father’ does not seem to me to be supported by the visual evidence (Varner 2004, 120). As several commentators have pointed out, the presence of axes in the fasces carried by the lictors shows that the setting is outside the pomerium, although presumably near the city because of Roma and the Vestals. Dio Cassius, Roman History 65.9.3. Dio 65.2; 65.9.3; Suetonius, Domitian 1.3; Tacitus, Histories 4.2.1 (no care for his duties; debauchery and adultery); 4.39.2; 4.51.2 (Vespasian hears unfavourable reports of Domitian’s transgressions, and that is the reason for his return to Rome). Tacitus Histories 4.52, Tacitus says that Vespasian is impressed by this show of brotherly affection (pietas), rather than being persuaded that Domitian was not as black as he was painted. Tacitus, Histories 4.52; Dio (65.9.2) also says Vespasian sent corn ships from Egypt to Rome, but does not mention actual shortages. Dio 65.9.2. Dio 65.9.3.

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vate citizen.17 Throughout their accounts all three authors imply that relations between Domitian and his father (and indeed his brother) were not good. So perhaps an affectionate hug is not what we would expect to see here. The explanation elaborated by Hugh Last and questioned by Jocelyn Toynbee in her study of the reliefs, is that this was a propaganda work erected in the reign of Domitian, much later than the events depicted, in an attempt to re-write history:18 instead of the dressing-down Domitian received for his mismanagement of affairs in Rome while Vespasian was away we see him being treated with approval. Vespasian is giving Domitian an approving pat on the shoulder. Toynbee describes Domitian as ‘the pivot of the whole scene, composed, confident, and somewhat aloof, accepting as though it were his natural right the gesture of approval with which the Emperor greets him’.19 She adds that The unpleasant encounter of father and son at Beneventum, when the former rebuked the latter sharply for his outrageous conduct, is over and forgotten; and it would seem that Domitian was publicizing here his own version – not so much a wholly false as a ‘rose-coloured’ version – of his situation as Caesar in Rome at the time of his father’s accession, as the recipient of congratulations on the ‘vice- regency’ exercised by him in the capital while Vespasian was 20 still absent in the East.

She notes that ‘the emphasis does not seem to be laid on mutual friendliness, for Domitian in no way reciprocates his father’s friendly gesture’; she comments on ‘the contrast between the youthful Caesar’s cool self-possession and Vespasian’s almost deprecating air’.21 Last is even more critical of Domitian’s appearance, describing him as ‘smug and self-satisfied’ and ‘surprisingly unresponsive’.22 Last and Toynbee here give a plausible explanation of the scene based on their reading of the body language displayed (though in 1948 and 1957 they would not have called it that), and their knowledge of the historical situation based on the writings of the ancient historians. Last acknowledges the subjectivity of his interpretation: When first I saw this relief, it seemed to me to speak clearly enough to be at least vaguely intelligible – and to say something rather different from what it appears to have said to others. Nevertheless its meaning to me may well not be what the artist intended and I must repeat my

17

18

19 20 21 22

Dio 65.10 See also Dio 65.3.4 (Domitian was afraid of his father because of what he had done) and Tacitus, Histories 4.86.1 (Domitian felt he was treated contemptuously by his father and brother). Toynbee 1957, 6 insists that the message of the relief had a positive purpose (enhancing Domitian’s prestige), whereas Last’s view (Domitian was attempting damage limitation in response to rumours alleging bad relations with his father) is too negative. These seem to me to be two sides of the same coin. Toynbee 1957, 5. Toynbee 1957, 5f. Toynbee 1957, 6. Last 1948, 10.

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recognition that each man’s impression of a work like this must be his own alone and that it 23 cannot be imposed on others.

Using more recent studies of nonverbal behaviour helps to explain why a modern viewer reads the scene in this way: it may also help to elucidate what the artist intended to convey and what a Roman viewer might have seen in it. The scene on the relief is not, of course, a straightforward realistic representation of events in 70 CE (not a ‘photographic record’):24 Domitian and Vespasian are accompanied by deities and allegorical figures (Victory, personifications of the Roman people and the Senate) as well as the lictors and Vestal Virgins, and the other historical characters present at the actual meeting are not represented. The two-figure group of Domitian and Vespasian embodies a concept (such as ‘Vespasian’s approval and recommendation of Domitian’) rather than or as well as representing an event. Two-figure groups (sometimes with a third figure in the background between them) were used in this way on imperial coins, but the ‘patting on the shoulder’ gesture adopted by Vespasian on the Cancelleria relief was not used elsewhere in Roman art. On the coinage the most common gesture linking two figures is the right handclasp: a handclasp between the emperor and a praetorian was famously used on coinage early in the reign of Claudius to acknowledge the debt owed to the praetorian guard for his elevation to imperial power.25 Two soldiers linked by the handclasp were represented on the coinage of Vespasian with the legend ‘consensus exercitus’, again suggesting Vespasian had the support of the army;26 Domitian also appears on coins taking the hand of a soldier in the presence of other soldiers.27 During Vespasian’s reign coins depict his two sons together, but without any physical contact between them:28 it is not until the reign of Titus that two members of the imperial family are shown linking right hands (fig. 2).29

23 24

25

26 27 28 29

Last 1948, 10. He also begins his article with the statement that ‘the interpretation of monuments such as these is largely subjective’. Last 1948, 12: he rejects the idea that the scene simply represents the meeting of father and son in 70 CE because of the lack of emotion displayed; ‘no sign of the emotions to be expected at the reunion of father and son after long absence through the perils of four fateful years’ (Last 1948, 10). Brilliant 1963, 78, fig. 2.7; also BMC I Claudius no. 228, pl. 34.4. Aureus 41–42 CE. Brilliant interprets this as an image of ‘their joint amity’, but also points out that the Praetorian occupies what he identifies as ‘the principal right-hand position’, and refers to Claudius’ ‘passive receptivity to the prerogatives of power’. BMC II Vespasian no. 369 pl. 12,6 and 7 and nos. 414–416 pl. 14, 11, 12, and 13. BMC II Domitian nos. 301–303 pl. 71,4 and no. 368 pl. 74,3 (86 CE). BMC II Vespasian no. 6, pl. 1 and 2; no. 430 pl. 15, 9; no. 443 pl. 15.20; no. 456 pl. 16, 8 (all togate); no. 528 pl.20, 1 in military dress (also Brilliant 1963, 92 fig. 2.97). BMC II Titus no. 177 pl. 49 2 Brilliant 1963, 92 fig. 2.96. Sestertius of 80–81 CE.

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Fig. 2. Sestertius of Titus, 80–81 CE: Titus and Domitian link right hands with the legend ‘pietas’ (British Museum).

Titus and Domitian are both togate, they stand facing one another clasping right hands and holding sceptres in their left, and there is a third, female, figure standing between them in the background. She is identified by Mattingly as possibly representing Concordia, although the legend on the coin refers to Pietas: she looks towards the right hand figure (Titus).30 Also used on the coinage of Titus’ reign is the image of Vespasian and Titus standing opposite one another with their right hands extended and a globe held between them: the legend refers to the ‘providentia’ (foresight) of the emperor in providing a son and heir to take over ruling the Roman world.31 Providentia, this time of the Senate, is also represented by the same motif on coins issued early in the reign of Trajan;32 coins minted early in the reign of Hadrian use the same formula (right hands extended with globe) to link Trajan and Hadrian, but with the legend ‘adoptio’ or ‘Concordia’.33 ‘Adoptio’ (referring to Hadrian’s supposed adoption by Trajan shortly before he died) is also used as the legend for coins with a right handclasp between Trajan and Hadrian (fig. 3),34 and another design with the same legend shows Trajan extending both hands to Hadrian who holds out his right hand.35 Hadrian is also shown on his coinage clasping hands with the Senate (or a representative senator) with Roma in the background, with Roma (with the legend ‘adventus’ – his return to Rome from abroad), with Felicitas, and with Fortuna (with a legend referring to Fortuna Re-

30

31 32 33 34 35

Brilliant 1963, 92 fig. 2.96 identifies the third figure as Pietas rather than Concordia, emphasises that ‘Although the expectations of Domitian were soon to be realised, he was still subordinate to his brother’ and sees the dextrarum iunctio (with Titus on the right) as reinforcing the dynastic bond. BMC II Titus nos. 178–181 pl. 49; Brilliant 1963, 92, fig. 2.94. BMC III p. 38 (no number): exceptional issue: 5 denarius piece, 98–99 CE. Brilliant 1963, 134 fig. 3.71. BMC III Hadrian nos. 1–4, pl.46, 1 and 2. Aurei and denarii, 117 CE. BMC III Hadrian nos. 5–8 pl. 46, 3 and 4. The motif was used again when Hadrian adopted Aelius: Brilliant 1963, 134 fig. 3.72. BMC III Hadrian p. 243, figs. 47, 1–2 (No number; irregular issues of 117 CE).

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dux, again alluding to his safe return to Rome).36 Roma is also represented handing a globe to Hadrian on a relief panel from an unknown monument in the Capitoline Museums (Conservatori).37

Fig. 3. Aureus of Hadrian, 117 CE: Trajan and Hadrian clasp right hands with the legend ‘adoptio’ (British Museum).

The various messages represented by the images on these coins would all be relevant to Domitian as emperor recalling the events of 70 CE: a handclasp with his father could imply the concord between them, the handclasp with globe Vespasian’s ‘providentia’ in providing a second son to succeed him as heir to the imperial power; the handshake might also be associated with return to Rome, implying Domitian, like Roma, welcomed his father’s return to the city. Such images continued to be used after Domitian’s time not only on coins but also in official relief sculpture (see fig. 4), the ‘Concordia’ scene from the arch of Septimius Severus in Leptis Magna).38 The hand clasp (dextrarum iunctio) was already in use in private contexts in Roman funerary art, as we shall see, albeit as a gesture that usually linked a male and female figure. The designer of the Cancelleria relief however chose not to use any of these motifs and presumably therefore wished to convey something different and original. Since, unlike the coins, the reliefs do not have 36

37 38

BMC III Hadrian nos. 506f., pl. 56, 17 and 18 (Hadrian and Senate); nos. 581–588, pl. 58, 16–18 (Hadrian and Roma; ‘adventus’); nos. 613–617, pl. 59, 6; nos. 634 and 653–655, pl.59, 12 and 59, 17 (Hadrian with Felicitas or Fortuna). McCann 1972, 270, pl. 114,2. To confuse matters the figure of the emperor has been wrongly restored with the head of Marcus Aurelius. Kleiner 1992, 340–343, fig. 310. Septimius Severus (on the right) clasps the hand of his elder son Caracalla, while the younger son Geta stands behind and between them, in the position previously taken by Concordia/Pietas.

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legends which point the viewer in the right direction, it is proposed here that we should look at the body language of the scene, and see what emerges if it is analysed and read as if it were a record of actual behaviour.

Fig. 4. Detail of one of the Attic reliefs from the arch of Septimius Severus at Leptis Magna: Concordia Augustorum.

The use of proxemics and touch in this scene raises questions about how Romans actually did behave. Would it be normal for a father and son greeting each other after a long separation to behave in this way? (Last interpreted it as odd behaviour in the circumstances, but would it have seemed odd to its Roman audience?) Is the distance between the figures meant to be significant? What does the gesture made by Vespasian suggest? Is it to be read as greeting – or approval? Is patting-on-theshoulder a gesture which had the same connotations for the Romans as it does for us?39 How different, in short, was Roman body language from our own?40 According to Michael Argyle, one of the experts on this aspect of body language in the modern world, Touch has two main dimensions of meaning: warmth and dominance … The person who touches is seen as having enhanced status, assertiveness and warmth; the person who is 41 touched as having less.

So how should we interpret this depiction of the relationship between Vespasian and Domitian? If Vespasian’s attempt to touch Domitian is an expression of his 39 40 41

Argyle 1988, 227 in a table called ‘a vocabulary of touch’ identifies a ‘pat on the hand, arm or back’ in modern Western societies as ‘friendship, reassurance, support’. On cultural difference in body language in the modern world see Argyle 1988, 49–70 (chapter 4), with discussion of spatial behaviour and touch. Argyle 1988, 226. See in general Argyle 1988 chapters 11: spatial behaviour; 12: gestures and other bodily movements; 13: posture; and 14: touch and bodily contact.

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superior power (both as father and emperor) what are we to make of Domitian’s failure to respond, to acknowledge that power? The rest of this paper explores various aspects of touching behaviour as recorded in Roman art, and asks the question of whether ancient Rome was a ‘contact’ or a ‘non-contact’ culture. Argyle says that ‘people from contact cultures stand closer, face more directly, touch and look more, and speak louder’ – he lists as typical ‘contact cultures’ Arabs, Latin Americans, and Southern Europeans (he specifies Greeks and Turks); in the non-contact group he puts Asians, Indians and Pakistanis, and Northern Europeans. But he also points out that there are different rules governing spatial behaviour for different groups within any culture.42 Should ancient Rome be classed as a ‘contact culture’ or not – or to put it another way, how touchy-feely were the Romans? Argyle also discusses the expression of dominance through spatial behaviour: the more important a person is, the greater the distance between him and other people. The higher status person can choose the degrees of proximity of others to himself – he can allow or not allow others to come close. The subordinate person has little choice, even though invasion of their territory will cause discomfort or annoyance. Feminist writers on body language have pointed out that where relations between men and women are concerned touching implies power and being the recipient of touch is associated with lower status. Men interpret touch initiated by men of equal status to themselves as a put down. This may explain the modern tendency to interpret Domitian’s response as an attempt to negate his subordinate position. But Argyle also says: ‘touch is theoretically rather puzzling: it involves an invasion of personal space, but it is sometimes very well received’.43 He adds that there appear to be social rules which permit certain kinds of touch between certain people, on certain occasions only, and the dominance rule does not necessarily apply in all circumstances. The issue of touch, and more specifically embracing, represented in Roman art is explored in one chapter of Natalie Kampen’s Family Fictions.44 Her starting point is the embrace shared by pairs of the Tetrarchs in the statue groups in Venice and the Vatican Library. She asks what contemporary observers would have made of these images, and what visual precedents they could have drawn on to interpret them. There is only one other clear example of Roman men embracing – and that is so unusual that it slaps you in the face when you see it: this occurs on scene 44 from the spiral relief on Trajan’s column (fig. 5).45

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Argyle 1988, 60. He also cites a study made in 1966 of the frequency with which couples were observed to touch each other at cafes – in Puerto Rico the tally was 180 times per hour, in Paris 110, and in London 0. Argyle 1988, 224. Kampen 2009, 104–122 (chapter 5: Tetrarchs and Fictive Kinship). Kampen 2009, 115, fig. 40: the group with the soldiers embracing is discussed on p. 118f.

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Fig. 5. Cast of scene 44 from Trajan’s Column.

This appears to be not just an embrace, but kiss, and it is clearly mutual; it would be hard to say who initiated the touch. This scene occurs after a Roman victory against the Dacians (the previous scene shows captives herded together in a prison camp): Lino Rossi’s commentary says that Trajan is shown distributing gifts and decorations to the brave soldiers who have been victorious: ‘Auxiliary soldiers are bowing before their emperor while they receive from his own hands their gifts (and implicitly, Roman citizenship): they then embrace and greet one another with joy.’46 It is perhaps significant that it is auxiliaries, not legionaries, who behave in this rather flamboyant way, as we shall see. As Kampen points out, this image of soldiers embracing is unique, and scenes of embracing in general – indeed any kind of touching – are rare in Roman art, and where they do occur they tend to be on funerary monuments and involve family members, often parents and children or husband and wife. A rare example of an embrace between a mother and her sons appears on the sides of the grave altar of Passienia Gemella in the Ince Blundell collection (Liverpool) (fig. 6).47

46 47

Rossi 1971, 154–156, fig. 40. Davies 2007, 140–145, no. 104, pl. 104–106.

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Fig. 6a and b. Sides of the grave altar of Passienia Gemella (Ince Blundell collection, Liverpool Museum).

The scenes appear rather naïve and crude (and have been quite heavily restored), but they do appear to be genuine. Their style can perhaps be accounted for by the fact that this was such an unusual subject: the sculptor did not have appropriate models to copy. The front of the altar, with its portraits of the mother and her two sons, is of much higher quality. The inscription reveals that the mother was her husband’s freedwoman, and one of the two sons was born in slavery (though later freed by his father): they did not belong to the Roman elite. Roman art seems rather reticent compared to some examples of Etruscan art: two sarcophagus lids, for example, show the couple commemorated and buried inside in an intimate embrace, as if lying in bed together.48 Etruscans seem to have had fewer inhibitions about representing intimacy than the Romans. The Etruscans may have enjoyed a contact culture that was not shared by the Romans, or at least by elite male Romans. So, it would seem that Romans of the mid imperial period (unlike the Etruscans earlier) were not really a touchy-feely contact sort of a people, and the lack of affection demonstrated between Vespasian and Domitian 48

Brilliant 1963, 31f., fig. 1.46 (sarcophagus from Vulci in Boston). The lids of both sarcophagi are illustrated in Brendel 1978, 389 figs. 299 and 300.

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should not surprise us. Kampen, however, also suggests it was a matter of status. ‘Physical contact between emperor and other mortals except in the form of a handclasp is a significant absence, rooted, I think, in fundamental attitudes towards class and gender.’49 She suggests that touching is the mark of women and low-class men: elite men in general (and emperors in particular) are not touched by and do not touch others. Thus on the Cancelleria relief B she points out that Vespasian ‘raises his right hand towards Domitian’s shoulder’ – but she is not convinced that Vespasian actually touches him: ‘Vespasian’s hand seems to mark a visible join that is at the same time a halt’.50 Or to put it another way, Vespasian’s hand hovers near Domitian’s shoulder, and it is not clear whether contact has actually been made. Kampen also points out that on the other Cancelleria relief (A) Domitian is touched, but by a goddess or personification (Roma or Virtus) who takes him by the elbow to urge him on to war: Domitian can allow such a touch from an immortal, but seems reluctant to do so from his own father. Is this because by accepting his father’s touch he is acknowledging Vespasian’s dominance over him, and by failing to respond to it he is asserting his own superiority over his father? Suetonius in his Life of Domitian says two possibly significant things about him, one immediately after the other: he says that from his youth Domitian was far from affable – when his father’s mistress Caenis returned from Histria and offered to kiss him as usual, he held out his hand to her instead (Suetonius, Domitian 12.3).51 He goes on to say (13) that when Domitian became emperor he did not hesitate to boast in the Senate that he had conferred their power on both his father and his brother. Suetonius seems to link Domitian’s disdain for affectionate touching with his desire to show himself superior to his father. The failure to use the handclasp, associated with concord and the transfer of power from one emperor to another, on the Cancelleria relief may have been a deliberate and conscious decision. Trajan, on the other hand, is praised by Pliny in the Panegyricus (23, 1– 2) for not being so stand-offish: ‘There was general delight when you embraced the members of the Senate, as they had embraced you when you went away’ and Pliny goes on to suggest that Trajan even allowed himself to be jostled by the people. And as mentioned above, Dio says that Vespasian on his return to Italy greeted those who came to meet him (with the exception of Domitian) ‘not as an emperor, but as a private citizen’ – because he remembered where he came from.52 It seems that Domitian’s lack of touchy-feely behaviour may have contributed to the Senate’s negative assessment of him – but it may also have been deliberately used by Domitian as an assertion of status.

49 50 51 52

Kampen 2009, 111. Kampen 2009, 112. This could, of course, be seen as evidence that touching was quite normal as a form of greeting in Roman society, and Domitian was seen as unusual in his behaviour. Dio Cassius, Roman History 65.10.

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The scene on Trajan’s column containing the two embracing soldiers (fig. 5) also has another very unusual scene involving the use of touch, this time between the emperor and one of the soldiers who are being rewarded by him for bravery: the auxiliary bows before the emperor and holds him by the wrist, as if about to kiss his hand. Trajan does not otherwise get as close as this to touching, or being touched by, anyone on the column. Rather, it is noticeable on Trajan’s column that although Trajan is omnipresent on campaign, he is generally kept separate from the mass of the soldiery: he is usually accompanied by a couple of highranking officers, but he does not touch them, and they do not touch him (see fig. 7).53 Instead they act as a kind of frame for him and help to make his figure stand out visually. This adlocutio scene illustrates the general principles at work: there is a large gap between the imperial group (elevated on a tribunal) and the crowd of soldiers, and the amount of space surrounding the emperor and senior officers indicates their superior status. The isolation of the emperor of course is an artistic device to make him stand out visually – although Trajan is in the thick of the action he has a decided clear space around him, and does not touch, and is not touched by, those around him. The direction of everyone else’s gaze also serves to draw the viewer’s attention to him: even the two officers with Trajan look at him, but they do not touch him, and he does not seem to acknowledge their presence by looking at them. He is also represented as slightly taller than they are: Trajan’s height is also commented on favourably by Pliny in the Panegyricus as something which gives Trajan natural superiority.

Fig. 7. Cast of scene 77 on Trajan’s column: adlocutio. 53

Scene 77: Rossi 1971, 172–174, fig. 69. This is an adlocutio to the soldiers at the end of the first war (it comes just before the image of Victory writing on a shield): the soldiers are proclaiming Trajan imperator for the third time.

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Trajan is behaving extremely affably in allowing an auxiliary soldier to touch him in the award scene, but it is noticeable how far Trajan extends his arm away from his body. He does not so much initiate touch as permit it. This is not an invitation to closer contact. (Even Domitian, according to Suetonius, allowed Caenis to touch his hand). The soldiers embracing and the emperor allowing a soldier to touch his hand are not the only instances of unusual forms of touching on this section of the column: the next scene along is one of the most infamous – it is the scene where Dacian women torture naked men (who they are is debated):54 here too the emphasis is on touch, but in this case the natural order is inverted: women inflict pain on bound men who are powerless to deny them the right to touch them.55 Domitian’s unresponsiveness, then, would appear to be in character; it is also not surprising in a teenager who is intent on asserting himself as an adult, but it was also the sort of behaviour one might expect of an emperor, indeed from any elite Roman male. It could perhaps in fact be Vespasian’s hand-on-shoulder gesture on the Cancelleria relief that is anomalous, rather than Domitian’s unresponsiveness. The dextrarum iunctio gesture used on Roman imperial funerary monuments involved a certain degree of touch, but it was usually only the right hands of husband and wife that made contact;56 the figures did not stand particularly close together, and the extent to which their bodies were oriented towards one another, and the degree of mutual gaze, varied. The couple were often placed side by side, both looking out of the relief at the viewer, rather than at each other: the high relief busts of Gratidia Chrite and Gratidius Libanus (fig. 8)57 are typical in that although they are placed side by side with their heads turned inwards they still do not look at one another. Here, though, there is an additional element of touch, as the wife’s left hand rests on the man’s shoulder: the gesture is not flamboyant, but does serve to intensify the bond indicated by the linking of right hands.58 This added element can be found in other dextrarum iunctio scenes, and it is usually (but not always) performed by the woman. It is the woman who is expected to make this

54 55

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Scene 45: Rossi 1971, 156; also illustrated in Kampen 2009, 51 fig. 16. The idea that Roman men should be ‘impenetrable penetrators’ is discussed in Walters 1997: although he is mostly concerned with sexual penetration it would seem that the principle also applied to the penetration of personal space by touching any part of the body. He argues that males with a low place in the social hierarchy lacked the manly characteristic of ‘corporeal inviolability’. Davies 1985. Also popularly known as ‘Cato and Porcia’. In the Vatican Museum, Sala dei Busti, inv. 592. Kleiner 1977, 215, no. 34; Kockel 1993, 188–190, no. L19: Kockel suggests that although he appears to be freeborn, Gratidius was probably the son of a freedman; Gratidia Chrite was his freedwoman and wife. Augustan. For another example of portrait busts linked by the handclasp and with the wife’s hand on the husband’s shoulder see Kleiner 1981, 519–522, cat. 2, pl. XX fig. 3, in the Vatican Museums, Museo Chiaramonti inv. 1477. In this case, however, the wife’s hand rests on his left shoulder, so her arm extends across his back.

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extra demonstrative gesture: the man allows it, but does not react to it or reciprocate.

Fig. 8. Portrait busts of Gratidia Chrite and M. Gratidius Libanus linked by dextrarum iunctio (Vatican Museums).

This can be seen particularly clearly in a later (Antonine) funerary relief from Ostia (fig. 9):59 she leans in towards him, resting her left wrist rather than hand on his shoulder, and gazes at him intensely. He does not react, but stares out of the scene at the viewer.60 The same applies to statue groups of a husband and wife as Mars and Venus (his portrait head is added to a heroic nude statue type, the Ares Borghese, hers to a type which originally represented Venus writing on a shield, the Venus of Capua) (fig. 10).61 When put together she appears to be embracing him. But he does not seem to respond: she looks at him, but he does not look at her. It does not seem that initiating touch in these cases is the privilege of the dominant figure. It might seem that in attempting to touch Domitian Vespasian is playing the woman’s part, and that Domitian in failing to react is behaving in a manly fashion.

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Ostia, Museo Ostiense, 140–150 CE. Kleiner 1981, 513–519, cat. 1, pl. XVII fig. 1 and XIX fig. 2. Kleiner 1981, 522–529 also discusses two other reliefs with couples, but without the handclasp: one in the Palazzo Valentino (cat. 3, pl. XXI and XXII figs 4 and 5) and the other in the Villa Albani (cat. 4, pl. XXIII, fig. 6). In both cases the woman puts her left hand on the man’s shoulder. The couple turn their heads to gaze at one another in the Villa Albani relief, and the woman puts her right hand on the man’s chest. Statue group found in the Isola Sacra cemetery (Ostia) in the Capitoline Museum (inv. 652) c. 145–150 CE. Kleiner 1981, 537f., pl. XXV fig. 8. Kleiner 1981 discusses three other statue groups which combine the Mars and Venus figures in the same way, two of them (in the Louvre and Museo Nazionale Romano) with portrait heads. See Kampen 2009 pl. XXII for the statue in the Louvre (MA 1009).

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Fig. 9 (left). Funerary relief with figures of a couple joined by dextrarum iunctio. From the Isola Sacra (Ostia Museum). Fig. 10 (right). Portrait statue group of a couple as Mars and Venus. From Ostia (Capitoline Museum).

One possibly significant difference between the Cancelleria relief and the funerary images with husband and wife couples, however, is the direction of the gaze of the two figures. Domitian and Vespasian both stand with their bodies in near frontal view (Domitian turns slightly towards his father, but this is not the strong orientation of the woman seen in figs. 9 and 10), and both turn their head sharply into side view so they are looking directly at one another. While husband and wife may on occasion be shown with a mutual gaze, this is usually combined with a greater degree of orientation of their bodies towards one another, and the majority of couples do not look directly at each other (as in fig. 8). The impressive frontally posed togate bodies of Domitian and Vespasian stress their width and masculine dominance: the substantial gap between them does not encourage the view that this mutual gaze is one of affection but rather it suggests hostility and aggression.62 Vespasian may be attempting to lessen the tension by his friendly gesture, but if so it is having little effect on Domitian, who is refusing to back down and 62

Argyle 1988 chapter 10 on Gaze: ‘Mutual gaze gives a feeling of intimacy, mutual attraction, and openness’ (p. 160); ‘People look more at those they like’ and ‘Married couples who report marital discord look at each other less’ (p. 162), but ‘Gaze is widely used by animals, as a threat signal’, ‘Gaze is used by primates as a threat signal, and it evokes aggression or submission; cut-off or gaze aversion signals appeasement’, ‘Gaze aversion is an appeasement signal, while gaze is a threat signal’ (p. 157).

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concede his father’s superiority. This would seem to fit with the suggestion in the historical sources that Domitian saw his father and brother as rivals for power, felt belittled and ignored by them, and thought he was in fact superior to them. It seems likely that imperial Rome was not a contact culture, at least as far as the dominant group, elite Roman men, was concerned. Touching is used sparingly in Roman art, and where it is used it is usually initiated by women, and seen on monuments erected by the non-elite classes (Barbarians and imperfectly Romanised provincials I suspect are also represented as more liable to touch one another, but that is a subject for another paper). It is not surprising that Domitian and Vespasian are not shown in a friendly embrace, but the gesture that may be meant as a pat on the shoulder still needs some explanation. Vespasian’s gesture is not quite the same as the hand-on-shoulder gesture seen on the funerary reliefs, but it may be significant that he is the one initiating the touching gesture: far from being the prerogative of the dominant figure this would appear to be associated in Roman art with women. In male-female groups the man, like Domitian, does not respond to touch. It may be that Domitian’s aloofness is meant to be an assertion of superior status, and Vespasian’s attempt to touch him is meant to underline his (Vespasian’s) lack of elite manly reserve. Domitian’s immaculate toga, elegant hairstyle and youthful features also contrast with Vespasian’s more rugged appearance: his bluff manners are those of an earlier generation and the country squire. Domitian may well have felt that the behaviour recorded in stone on the Cancelleria relief expressed his cultural superiority to his father and right to rule: in fact it may rather have served to confirm his total lack of affability and popular charm. BIBLIOGRAPHY Argyle, M. (1988) Bodily Communication, 2nd edition, London 1988 (1st ed. 1975). BMC = Mattingly, H. Coins of the Roman Empire in the British Museum vol. I Augustus to Vitellius, London 1923; vol. II Vespasian to Domitian, London 1930; vol. III Nerva to Hadrian, London 1966. Brendel, O. (1978) Etruscan Art (Pelican History of Art series), Harmondsworth. Brilliant, R. (1963) Gesture and Rank in Roman Art (Memoirs of the Connecticut Academy of Arts and Sciences vol. XIV), New Haven. Davies, G. (1985) The Significance of the Handshake Motif in Classical Funerary Art, American Journal of Archaeology 89.2, 627–640. ––– (2007) The Ince Blundell Collection of Classical Sculpture, volume 2: The Ash Chests and other Funerary Reliefs, Mainz am Rhein. Kampen, N. B. (2009) Family Fictions in Roman Art, Cambridge. Kleiner, D. E. E. (1977) Roman Group Portraiture. The Funerary Reliefs of the Late Republic and Early Empire, New York/London. ––– (1981) Second-Century Mythological Portraiture: Mars and Venus, Latomus 40, 512–544. ––– (1992) Roman Sculpture, New Haven/London. Kockel, V. (1993) Porträtreliefs stadtrömischer Grabbauten. Ein Beitrag zur Geschichte und zum Verständnis de spätrepublikanisch-frühkaiserzeitlichen Privatporträts, Mainz am Rhein. Last, H. (1948) On the Flavian Reliefs from the Palazzo della Cancelleria, Journal of Roman Studies 38, 9–14. Magi, F. (1945) I rilievi flavi del Palazzo della Cancelleria, Rome.

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McCann, A. M. (1972) A Re-dating of the Reliefs from the Palazzo della Cancelleria, Römische Mitteilungen 79, 249–276. Petruccioli, G. (2014) The Cancelleria Reliefs, Vespasian the Younger, and Domitian’s Dynastic Program, BABesch 89, 109–127. Rossi, L. (1971) Trajan’s Column and the Dacian Wars, London. Toynbee, J. M. C. (1957) The Flavian Reliefs from the Palazzo della Cancelleria in Rome, London. Varner, E. (2004) Mutilation and Transformation. Damnatio Memoriae and Roman Imperial Portraiture, Leiden/Boston. Walters, J. (1997) Invading the Roman Body: Manliness and Impenetrability in Roman Thought, in J. P. Hallett and M. B. Skinner (eds.), Roman Sexuality, Princeton.

PICTURE CREDITS Figure 1: Figure 2: Figure 3: Figure 4: Figure 5: Figure 6:

Figure 7: Figure 8: Figure 9: Figure 10:

Detail of relief B from the Palazzo della Cancelleria, Rome, Museo Gregoriano Profano (Vatican Museums): Vespasian and Domitian. (photo: DAIR 2007.0009). Sestertius of Titus, 80–81 CE: Titus and Domitian link right hands with the legend ‘pietas’. British Museum 1872,0709.490 (photo: ©Trustees of the British Museum). Aureus of Hadrian, 117 CE: Trajan and Hadrian clasp right hands with the legend ‘adoptio’. British Museum 1938,0207.6 (photo: ©Trustees of the British Museum). Detail of one of the Attic reliefs from the arch of Septimius Severus at Leptis Magna: Concordia Augustorum (photo: Koppermann DAIR 61.1701). Cast of scene 44 from Trajan’s Column (photo: Faraglia DAIR 31.311). 6a and b Sides of the grave altar of Passienia Gemella. Ince Blundell collection, Liverpool Museum (photo: ©National Museums, Liverpool, Antiquities Collections). Cast of scene 77 on Trajan’s column: adlocutio (photo: author’s own). Portrait busts of Gratidia Chrite and M. Gratidius Libanus linked by dextrarum iunctio. Vatican Museums (photo: Anger DAIR 96VAT 2126). Funerary relief with figures of a couple joined by dextrarum iunctio. From the Isola Sacra, in Ostia Museum (photo: Singer DAIR 67.1071). Portrait statue group of a couple as Mars and Venus. From Ostia, in the Capitoline Museum (photo: Koppermann DAIR 64.1832).

EMOTIONS AS A HISTORIOGRAPHICAL DILEMMA Cynthia Damon It is well known that historiography is undertheorized in our ancient sources. Ancient critics had a regrettable tendency to address this genre indirectly, by likening it to other genres: historiography is, in Cicero’s words, an ‘eminently rhetorical project’ (opus ... oratorium maxime, De legibus 1.5). Or, in Quintilian’s, ‘very close to the poets’ (historia ... proxima poetis, 10.1.31). With respect to the topic of the present paper, the emotions in historiography, such analogies provide limited insight into the ancient historians’ very rich engagement with emotions. And they do no good at all when it comes to historiography’s defining feature, its truth claim.1 In order to reduce this vast topic to manageable dimensions I will be looking at historiographical emotions in just three venues, so to speak.2 First, in the story. This involves considering the emotions of the past as the historian’s raw material. Obviously, history-worthy events often involve actors in the grip of strong emotions: one remembers Xerxes’ anger at the Hellespont after the thwarted crossing, or Lucretia’s shame at being violated by Tarquin, or Scipio’s sorrow upon seeing the destruction of Carthage, or Agrippina’s horror when Nero eliminates Britannicus. Or, on a broader canvas, the despair of Athens’ plague victims or the conflicting emotions present in the Roman army victorious over their compatriots fighting for Catiline: delight and sorrow, grief and joy. More abstract, but still under the heading of raw material, are emotions as historical explanations. Thucydides’

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I build upon some important recent discussions of the emotions in ancient historiography, esp. Levene 1997, Marincola 2003, Lateiner 2009, Chaniotis 2013. Translations are mine unless otherwise attributed. I omit one important venue, that of the performer, so memorably represented in Plato’s Ion as the middle ring in the chain of emotional response to the magnet-Muse (for the performer’s emotion see esp. 535c–d). For historiographical texts we have very little information about live performances beyond the fact of their occurrence (e.g., on Herodotus Plutarch, Moralia 862A, Lucian, Herodotus 1–2, and, on recitations of histories in the Roman world, Suetonius, Claudius 41, Pliny, Epistulae 1.13.3, 8.12, 9.27.1, Lucian, Quomodo historia conscribenda sit 7, Herodotus 8; for the Hellenistic period see Chaniotis 2013, 81f.). Plutarch assigns the intermediate role to the historian himself: ‘But all the other historians [besides Xenophon] ... have been for the exploits of others what actors are for plays, exhibiting the deeds of the generals and kings, and merging themselves with their characters as tradition records them’ (Moralia 345E, Babbitt translation).

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‘truest cause’ for the Peloponnesian war – Sparta’s fear, φόβος, of Athens’ growing power (1.23.6) – is the tip of a very large iceberg.3 But emotions are not just the matter of historiography; they are also one of the genre’s most celebrated effects. Dionysius of Halicarnassus pays Thucydides a great compliment in suggesting that Demosthenes – Dionysius’ favourite orator – learned from the historian how to give his speeches their emotional impact.4 So the second venue for emotions that I’ll be looking at is the audience. The unknown author of the treatise On the sublime is particularly informative on how historians produce an emotional response in their readers.5 Emotion-provoking historiography, however, can backfire badly, particularly if the historian himself is seen or suspected to be at the mercy of emotion. Horace’s advice to would-be dramatists – ‘if you want me to weep, you yourself must suffer first’ – does not apply in any simple fashion to historians, who are much more likely to assert loudly, like Tacitus, that they write sine ira et studio, ‘without anger or favour’.6 So this is my third emotional venue, the author.7 After looking at emotions in all three venues we will be in a position to appreciate what a dilemma emotions were for the historian. 1 IN THE STORY In all of our ancient historical narratives, even Caesar’s commentarii, one can find people under the sway of powerful emotions. And this is not just a matter of ‘reporting what Alcibiades did and (especially) what he suffered’ (τί ἔπαθεν, Aristotle, Poetics 9, 1451b8–11); it is intimately connected with historians’ claims about the merits of their genre. My term ‘merits’ is necessarily vague, since different historians associate emotions with different merits. One merit, obviously, is significance. In defending the proposition that the Peloponnesian War was ‘a greater war than any in previous history’ (1.21.2), for example, Thucydides points to the vast quantity of sufferings (παθήµατα) it 3 4

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On φόβος and other forms of fear in Thucydides see de Romilly 1956. Dionysius of Halicarnassus, De Thucydide 53, 412.18–26: ‘He added to his own political speeches merits received from Thucydides which were possessed by neither Antiphon, nor Lysias, nor Isocrates ... The qualities ... are swiftness, concentration, intensity, pungency, firmness and vehemence that arouses emotion’. Here and elsewhere I quote Pritchett’s translation. Chaniotis 2013, 60 and passim calls this the historian’s ‘stagecraft’, but he is also attentive throughout to the overlapping techniques of orator and historian. For the historian as dramaturge see also Lucian, Quomodo historia conscribenda sit 26 (quoted below). Horace, Ars poetica 102f. si vis me flere, dolendum est / primum ipsi tibi; Tacitus, Annales 1.1.4. Both Levene 1997 and Marincola 2003 divide the topic into two parts equivalent to my first two venues. Levene labels them ‘analytical emotion’ and ‘audience-based emotion’, respectively, and looks at the tension between the two. Marincola focuses on the second (2003, 293f.).

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caused in Greece (1.23.1).8 And Thucydides is praised by Dionysius (and others) for his representations of these sufferings: ‘Having often been compelled to write of the capture, overthrow, and enslavement of cities and other similar disasters, he sometimes makes the sufferings (πάθη) appear so cruel, so terrible, so piteous, as to leave no room for historians or poets to surpass him’.9 Another merit is utility. Polybius cites as a familiar prefatory move by historians a claim about the therapeutic value of their works: All historians, one may say without exception, and in no half-hearted manner ... have impressed on us that the surest and indeed the only method of learning how to bear bravely the vicissitudes of fortune is to recall the calamities (περιπετειῶν) of others.10

This merit is shared with other emotion-filled literary genres such as tragedy, glancingly alluded to with the term περιπέτειαι.11 A third merit is entertainment value. Cicero offers the historian Lucceius a long list of reasons why a narrative of the emotion-filled peripeties of his career from glorious consulship to ignominious exile to triumphant return would enthrall and delight prospective readers: My experiences will give plenty of variety to your narrative, full of a certain kind of delectation to enthrall the minds of those who read, when you are the writer ... [I]n the doubtful and various fortunes of an outstanding individual we often find surprise and suspense, joy and distress, hope and fear.12

In fact, according to Dionysius of Halicarnassus, the representation of emotions (παθῶν µίµησις) was a generic imperative, the fifth of ten stylistic virtues par-

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10 11 12

Here and elsewhere I quote Hammond’s translation of Thucydides. On the rhetoric of this passage see Woodman 1987, 29–32, who argues that ‘it demonstrates that [Thucydides] is writing a “disaster narrative” of the most vivid and dramatic type’ (30). Dionysius of Halicarnassus, De Thucydide 15, 347.15–20. Dionysius subsequently faults Thucydides’ scantier narratives for failing to give readers even ‘an inkling of [their] terrors’ (αἴσθησιν δεινῶν, De Thucydide 15, 347.21). In his note on this passage Pritchett quotes a comment by Walbank that stresses the sensory richness of Thucydidean narratives over their emotional impact: ‘The examples [Dionysius] quotes are Plataea, Mytilene, and Melos; in all three the modern critic would be inclined to regard Thucydides’ treatment as vivid but emotionally restrained’ (my italics). The Melians’ fate (Thucydides 5.116.4), for example, is reported but not depicted. But see below for Thucydides’ emotion-filled accounts of the landing on Sphacteria and the sack of Mycalessus, and, on Scione (Thucydides 5.32.1), Rood 1998, 76f. (with n. 77): ‘the result is ... pathos.’ Polybius 1.1.2; cf. also Lucian, Quomodo historia conscribenda sit 42. Here and elsewhere I quote Paton’s translation of Polybius, as recently updated by Walbank and Habicht. See recently Marincola 2013, 83–85 on this passage and, more generally, McGing 2010, 71– 75. Cicero, Ad familiares 5.12.4–5 (Shackleton Bailey translation) Multam etiam casus nostri varietatem tibi in scribendo suppeditabunt plenam cuiusdam voluptatis, quae vehementer animos hominum in legendo tuo scripto retinere possit ... at viri saepe excellentis ancipites variique casus habent admirationem exspectationem, laetitiam molestiam, spem timorem.

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ticular to historiography.13 Furthermore, we find the author of On the sublime asserting that the depiction of emotion licenses stylistic innovation and audacity in historiography as well as in Homer, Greek lyric, and tragedy ([Longinus] 38.5). For example, speaking about Thucydides’ hyperbolic account of the desperately thirsty Athenians’ arrival at the Assinarius river after their defeat at Syracuse, the critic maintains that ‘it is the intense emotion of the moment which makes it credible that dirt and blood should ... be fought for as drink’.14 The same is true of Herodotus’ hyperbolic version of the last stand at Thermopylae, where the Spartans defend themselves with knives, and then even with hands and teeth, as they were buried in a hail of missiles: hyperboles, says our author, are effective ‘when they are connected with some impressive circumstance and with moments of high emotion’.15 A necessary corollary is of course that an inappropriate or untimely depiction of emotion makes an author look silly. Poor Callisthenes, an Alexander-historian of whom the works are lost but about whom the following verdict survives: ‘he has not so much risen to heights as been carried off his feet’, says our critic ([Longinus] 3.2). Historians, like other authors, can get ‘carried away ... into emotions unconnected with the subject, which are simply their own pedantic invention’ ([Longinus] 3.5).16 Lucian, in his satirical How to write history, gives an unforgettable example from an unnamed (and probably unreal) author’s Parthian War: [H]e has a centurion, one Afranius Silo, climb up onto the tomb as a rival to Pericles. This man declaimed over [Severianus, a Roman governor and gourmand] in such a strange and over-blown (µεγαλοπρεπῶς) way that, by the Graces, I couldn’t stop crying with laughter, especially when Afranius the orator at the end of his speech burst into tears, and with passionate groans (οἰµωγῇ περιπαθεῖ) reminded us of all those lavish dinners and toasts. Then he capped it all by acting like Ajax: he drew his sword, and with the absolute nobility befitting an Afranius he killed himself on the tomb in front of everyone – and by the god of war he deserved to die long before for making a speech like that. The writer went on to say that all the onlookers were astonished and praised Afranius to the skies. As for me, I condemned him overall for all but telling us about the soups and the shell-fish, and crying over the memory of the cakes (ἐπιδακρύοντος τῇ τῶν πλακούντων µνήµῃ); but most of all I blamed him for dying before he had first slaughtered the historian who had stage-managed the show (διδάσκαλον τοῦ δράµατος).

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Dionysius of Halicarnassus, Epistula ad Pompeium 3, 239.14–16. This is one of only three criteria on which Thucydides surpasses Herodotus in Dionysius’ rather pedantic comparison of the two authors; the others are concision and intensity. Among the key features of Thucydides’ style, according to Dionysius, are ‘a tendency to inspire awe and fear (deinon kai phoberon) and above all these the power of stirring the emotions (pathētikon)’ (De Thucydide 24, 363.14–15). [Longinus] 38.3 on Thucydides 7.84. Here and elsewhere I quote Russell’s translation. [Longinus] 38.3–4 on Herodotus 7.225. On historians fabricating emotions see, e.g., Polybius 2.59 on Phylarchus’ τερατεία, with Marincola 2013, 83–85.

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‘Crying over the memory of the cakes’ is an apt shorthand for the fault of misjudged emotion in the story.17 Turning from the merits and demerits of emotion-producing events to other forms of emotion in the story, we can briefly consider emotions as historical forces. Thucydides on the truest cause of the Peloponnesian War (1.23.6 φόβον), or on the Corinthians’ hatred of Corcyra (1.25.3 µίσει), which indirectly precipitated it, or on the Athenian’s renewed desire (6.1.1 ἐβούλοντο αὖθις) for invading Sicily, which was the beginning of its end, are three prominent examples of the type, and they can be supplemented by Sallust’s numerous references to the invasive passions responsible for Rome’s decline: lubido, superbia, avaritia, metus, maeror, lascivia, etc., and by many other discussions of causae.18 However, this is one of the least satisfactory features of ancient historiography – my students always find it baffling – so I am not inclined to dwell on it.19 When historians give words to an emotional character so as to show causae instead of stating them in abstract terms the results are somewhat more appealing, at least. But I’m not inclined to dwell on this aspect of my topic, either, since the manifold contributions of emotional speeches in historiographical texts are on the whole well understood and I want to move on to the next emotional venue, the audience.20 2 IN THE AUDIENCE When Herodotus says that he is going to expound the ‘amazing’ (1. praef. θωµαστά) achievements of the Greeks and barbarians he presumably expects to arouse amazement in his readers. Vitruvius, for his part, emphasizes the emotion of suspense in historical narrative. As the author of a boring technical treatise he comments rather enviously on the inherent attractiveness of history, saying that ‘histories automatically grip their readers’, tenent lectores, ‘for they offer ever-

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Lucian, Quomodo historia conscribenda sit 26 (Costa translation). Lucian discusses the historian’s need for a tight hand on the reins with stylistic boldness later in the same work (45). On historical frigidity see von Möllendorff 2001. On Corinth’s hatred see recently Rusten 2010. For emotional causation in Sallust see, e.g., Bellum Catilinae 2.5; cf. Bellum Iugurthinum 3.3, 11.1, 12.2, 39.1, 41.3. The topic is particularly salient in the study of Thucydides. See recently Wohl (forthcoming), Tamiolaki 2010 (esp. 70 ‘for [Thucydides] feelings ... are facts’ [emphasis original]), Rood 1998 (passim: see Index under ‘fear’, ‘hope’, ‘morale’, ‘pathos’, ‘reason/passion antithesis’, ‘Sicilian expedition ... emotional’). The bibliography on speeches in historiography is vast. For a recent overview see Pausch 2010. On the capacity of emotional speeches to prompt both emotion and analysis in the reader see, e.g., Macleod 1983, 227–246 on the speeches about the fate of Plataea (Thucydides 3.9–12, 37–48): ‘[P]ity is doubled for the reader when ... he sees how no pity can be raised for a sufferer. And that emotional response is also to recognize what it is that reduces human morality and fellow feeling to nothing’ (246).

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changing expectations of surprising developments’.21 Furthermore, Cicero’s above-mentioned characterization of historiography as an opus ... oratorium maxime (De legibus 1.5) speaks to a more general presumption that the historian, like the orator, intends to move his audience, a presumption that underlies Cicero’s reference to Thucydides as an author who ‘sounds the war-horn’.22 A major question for us is what these readerly emotions are and what their result is. The simplest position, expressed by Plutarch among others, is that the emotions of participant and reader are, at least ideally, the same.23 In his view, when Thucydides, for example, recounts the perverse situation at Pylos whereby the Spartans were fighting a land battle from on board ship and the Athenians a naval battle from the shore (4.14.3), he desired to produce in the minds of his readers ‘the emotions of amazement and consternation (ἐκπληκτικὰ καὶ ταρακτικὰ πάθη) ... experienced by those who beheld [the combatants]’.24 And the emotions in this particular scene are so powerful that they propel the onlookers into action: ‘Anguished by the sight of this disaster (ἃ ὁρῶντες ... καὶ περιαλγοῦντες) the Spartans came running in support ... There was huge confusion (θόρυβος µέγας) and an inversion of their usual roles ... [W]ith the energy induced by the shock (ὑπὸ προθυµίας καὶ ἐκπλήξεως) the Spartans were virtually fighting a sea-battle from land, etc.’ (Thucydides 4.14.2–3.)

At the other extreme is Seneca, no fan of historiography, who argues that what readers experience when reading about historical topics (inter lectiones rerum vetustarum) – Clodius driving Cicero into exile, say, or Hannibal prowling outside of Rome – are not emotions such as anger or fear but something much less consequential: in essence, they are rehearsals for emotion rather than emotions themselves (principia proludentia adfectibus).25 Both positions can be nuanced in various ways. And by looking more closely at what the readers’ emotions are we will get a clearer sense of why historians aim to arouse them. 21 22

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Vitruvius 5. praef. 1 historiae per se tenent lectores; habent enim novarum rerum varias expectationes. For a discussion of suspense in Livy in particular see Pausch 2011, 191–250. Cicero, Orator 39 de rebus bellicis canit etiam quodam modo bellicum. On the capacity of the war-horn to arouse see, e.g., Seneca, Dialogi 4.2.6: Sic enim militaris viri in media pace iam togati aures tuba suscitat equosque castrenses erigit crepitus armorum. Seneca insists that this is a motus of the soul but not an emotion, in that it doesn’t involve intellectual assent, but Cicero is speaking in layman’s terms. John Marincola argued in a recent talk (at the annual meeting of the APA in 2013, ‘Historiographical advocacy: Cicero’s opus oratorium maxime revisited’) that Cicero is thinking particularly of the forensic advocate here. Heldmann 2011, 105–120 argues for a deliberative model, instead, whereby (Roman) historiography is a form of ‘Politik mit anderen Mitteln’. See further below for the connection between emotion and judgement. Plutarch is deliberately simplifying here, in the context of an argument that belittles writers and painters by comparison with the men whose deeds these artists depict. For a more sophisticated analysis see Levene 1997. Plutarch, Moralia 347A (Babbitt translation). Seneca, Dialogi 4.2.2–6. On Seneca’s view of historiography see Damon 2010 and Marincola 2003, 290 n. 13. On the Stoic principia, or προπάθειαι, see Konstan in this volume.

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Rhetorical teaching about enargeia, vividness, stresses a Plutarchean equivalence of emotion between participant and reader. The object was to make the reader feel present at the events narrated. Livy has what is practically a formula for this: he writes an internal audience into an event so as to give readers a model for engagement.26 Cicero in his infamous letter to Lucceius reminds us, however, that the effect on the reader of a character’s experiences (including emotions) can be quite distinct from the effect of those experiences on the character: ‘although these vicissitudes were not what I would have wished in the event’, he says, ‘in the reading they will give pleasure’ (erunt iucundae).27 The difference is that the reader is in no danger and no pain; this is a secura recordatio, in which the reader’s vicarious participation in the character’s wonder, suspense, delight, pain, hope and fear results in real delectatio.28 This kind of asymmetrical emotional response is familiar from other literary genres, including, to mention only the most obvious example, tragedy, where the pity and fear in the audience are aroused by the anguish of the characters on stage.29 But emotionally powerful vividness need not involve emotion in the story itself. An example will be helpful. In Thucydides’ narrative of the raid on Mycalessus (7.29–30) no participant emotions are mentioned.30 The facts are bad enough: an unprotected city is attacked unawares, and the barbarian attackers spare neither the old nor the young, nor women and children; indeed they kill anything that breathes. Furthermore, circumstantial detail situates the atrocity in a particular time and place: the children had just come in for their lessons. And its impact is magnified by diction and hyperbole: ‘they butchered (7.29.5 κατέκοψαν) the entire school’, ‘spared neither ... nor ... automatically killed even ... destruction in every form ... the greatest disaster...’. The thematic relevance of the episode is guaranteed by the fact that the violence, although perpetrated by Thracians, was unleashed by Athenians: their instructions to the commander escorting the barbarians back to Thrace are ‘to make what use of them he could to do harm (7.29.1

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On how Livy developed a practice used to notable effect by Homer, Herodotus, Thucydides and other writers see Feldherr 1998. For ‘onlookers’ in other authors see, e.g., Dewald 1999 on Herodotus and Thucydides, Greenwood 2006 (ch. 2) on Thucydides, Davidson 1991 on Polybius. Walker 1993 provides a synthesis. Cicero, Ad familiares 5.12.4 quae (sc. vicissitudines) etsi nobis optabiles in experiendo non fuerunt, in legendo tamen erunt iucundae; cf. delectationem lectoris, and 5.12.5 iucundissima lectionis voluptate. Cicero, Ad familiares 5.12.4–5 habet enim praeteriti doloris secura recordatio delectationem; ceteris vero nulla perfunctis propria molestia, casus autem alienos sine ullo dolore intuentibus, etiam ipsa misericordia est iucunda. For the asymmetry between character and readerly emotion in historiography see, e.g., Levene 1997, 131f. (with the bibliography there cited). Hammond supplies one in his translation, the ‘total panic’ of the townspeople. But this renders Thucydides’ more clinical ταραχὴ οὐκ ὀλίγη (7.29.5).

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βλάψαι) to the enemy as he sailed along the coast’.31 ‘Harm’ is starkly reified at Mycalessus – ‘a whole swath of the population was wiped out’ – and Thucydides pronounces the episode ‘a calamity (7.30.3 πάθει ...) which, relative to the size of the city, was more pitiable (... ὀλοφύρασθαι ἀξίῳ) than any other in this war’, scripting the pity that his narrative evokes without any help from lamenting Mycalessians. He may also expect gratification when his readers learn of the punishment inflicted on the barbarians by the Thebans, which was swift and deadly, and was complemented by Athenian betrayal (7.30). But none of the concomitant emotional responses is mentioned. As for the historian’s purpose in arousing readerly emotions, this needs to be considered under several headings. First, Cicero’s longing for a history of his consular career that would produce the aforementioned voluptas and delectatio in readers arises, as he tells Lucceius with a blush, from his desire for the perpetuation of his memory.32 The author of On the sublime makes the causal connection between emotion and memory explicit in his introductory discussion of the emotions aroused by sublimity: ‘real sublimity’, he says, ‘is difficult or rather impossible to resist, and makes a strong and ineffaceable impression on the memory’.33 This is a consequence of particular relevance for historiography, obviously. It is a great shame that the process of textual transmission (or authorial decision) has deprived us of the fuller discussion of the emotions that On the sublime promises but doesn’t deliver in its present state. This is especially true for my topic, since the author of that work is uniquely generous with illustrative passages drawn from historiography. That scenes arousing an emotional response in readers tend to be remembered is no surprise. But here too the historian must exercise caution: not everything warrants an emotional response and the memories it produces. For example, after Nero humiliated some contemporary descendants of noble families by forcing them to go on stage, Tacitus has to decide whether or not to name names. That Tacitus knows the names is suggested by the fact that Dio knows them, and in fact uses them to produce a scene full of scorn comparing these degraded specimens with their illustrious forebears.34 But here is Tacitus’ verdict: ‘These men, now dead, I will not name, in due deference to their ancestors. For the offence is his who gave money for wrongdoing’.35 Tacitus’ decision to keep silent in this instance must have been adopted at many other times by historians conscious of the power of narrative to confer a lasting memory, for better or worse.36 31

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See, e.g., Kallet 1999. Hornblower notes ad loc. that the Athenian expedition leader ‘was not apparently in disgrace after the episode’ and that this brutal incident is followed by one very like it in Sicily (7.32). He also asks, ‘Could [7.27–30] have been a recitation piece?’ Ad familiares 5.12.1, etc. [Longinus] 7.3. Dio Cassius 61.17.2–5. Tacitus, Annales 14.14.3. Here and elsewhere I cite my Penguin translation. Tacitus evokes the decorum of silence again at Annales 16.16.2, where he lists ‘disasters to our armies or the capture of cities’ as examples of events that are ‘to be simply announced

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Another consequence of audience emotion particularly relevant to historiography – although perhaps even more so to oratory – is that emotions underpin judgements, at least if you’re not a philosopher.37 We just saw Tacitus refusing to arm his readers with reasons to despise the well-born actors, lest they blame the victims rather than the man responsible for their degradation, whom Tacitus himself blames: ‘the offence is his’. There are any number of programmatic statements that frame the historian’s task as enabling readers to judge historical agents and actions, to condemn (and avoid) the base, to admire (and emulate) the virtuous.38 Readerly emotions aroused in aid of a verdict are clearly distinct from those of the agents. That is, where the agents feel anger, anguish, ambition etc., the reader is prompted to feel, say, indignation or compassion or admiration. An example discussed by David Levene is Tacitus’ account of the last moments of the short-lived emperor Vitellius.39 Vitellius, the third of the four emperors of 69 CE, is dragged from the palace – where he hid, abandoned by his household, after the Flavians seized control of Rome – then frog-marched through the streets of Rome, mocked, abused, and hacked to death. While Vitellius feels fear, shame and perhaps some defiance, the internal audience hasn’t got a tear for him because, Tacitus tells us, ‘the unseemliness of [Vitellius’] death had banished pity’ (misericordiam abstulerat).40 The reader’s aversion from and condemnation of Vitellius are meant to align with those of the internal audience, which sees Vitellius’ end as a foedum spectaculum, a ‘disgraceful spectacle’.41

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and passed over’. Here, however, he does name names. The passage is famously obscure and often emended, but it is clear that his failure to keep silence will be associated with hatred, either as a sign of his hatred of those whose disgrace he reports, or his readers’ hatred of the disgraced (reading ne oderim or the emendation ne oderint respectively), and that he tries to keep the hatred at bay. Failure to keep silence is one of the categories Plutarch uses to argue for malignity in a historian (Moralia 855C–D). Similarly, Dionysius of Halicarnassus uses Thucydides’ failure to keep silence about a war in which Athens was defeated in charging him with spite against Athens (Epistula ad Pompeium 3, 233.8–11: ‘Thucydides ... writes of a single war which ... should have been consigned to silence’; Lucian, Quomodo historia conscribenda sit 38 disagrees). There is a large modern bibliography on the role of emotions in judgement. See Marincola 2003, n. 12 and Lateiner 2009, 127f. for a start. Of the ancient sources Polybius is particularly interesting, since he insists that the historian should, by explaining causes and motives, help his reader ‘feel pity on reasonable grounds’ and ‘become appropriately angry’ (2.56.13). On this passage see further below. E.g., Polybius 2.56.13, 2.61.6–11, Livy, praefatio 10, Tacitus, Annales 3.65.2, etc. Cf. Dionysius of Halicarnassus, Epistula ad Pompeium 6, 246.16–247.4 (Usher translation): ‘Indeed, I feel in some way that the fabled examination before the judges of the other world, which is conducted in Hades upon the souls that have been released from the body, is of the same searching kind as that which is carried out through the writings of Theopompus’. See Levene 1997. Tacitus, Historiae 3.84–85. Fear: terret solitudo ... inhorrescit vacuis; shame: pudenda latebra, contumeliis; defiance: una vox non degeneris animi. At least at first. Levene 1997, 136–149 shows how Tacitus ‘works’ the readers’ emotions and judgement in the larger context of Vitellius’ fall from power (Historiae 3.36–86), concluding

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There is plenty of emotion to go around in this gruesome scene, but a historian doesn’t in fact need character emotion to elicit an emotion-based judgement. An example from Caesar, who otherwise might not make it into this paper: when his legate Cotta is killed in an ambush by the Eburones in Book 5 of the Bellum Gallicum, Caesar just gives the facts: ‘There Lucius Cotta was killed as he fought, as was the majority of his men’.42 The events of the surrounding narrative – Cotta’s unsuccessful argument against leaving camp, his co-commander’s culpable credulity, the treacherous ambush, the brave last-ditch defense, the proud refusal to capitulate – all prompt the reader to feel the pity and anger that motivate Caesar’s pursuit of revenge throughout Book 6.43 If Caesar hadn’t succeeded in arousing pity and anger, his ruthless punishment of the Eburones, who were hounded and starved into extinction, might have been judged – ruthless.44 Here again, however, the historian’s power can provoke censure. Polybius holds up Phylarchus as a particularly egregious offender, for his deliberate arousing of pity for a people that, in Polybius’ view, deserved worse treatment than they in fact suffered. ‘Against such men, one asks oneself, can any indignation (ὀργή) be too strong?’ (2.58.8).45 That is part of Polybius’ response to Phylarchus’ pity-rousing depiction of conquered Mantinea, which featured ‘women with their hair disheveled and their breasts bare ... and crowds lamenting as they are led away to slavery’ (2.56.6).46 Prompting (a negative) judgement of the conquering Achaeans was precisely, Polybius claims, Phylarchus’ aim, ‘evidently deeming it a historian’s duty to lay stress on criminal acts’ (2.61.1 τὰς παρανόµους τῶν πράξεων), but Polybius puts the historian himself in the dock. Similarly Lucian with Theopompus, whom he faults for making his narrative more like a prosecution speech than like a history,47 a criticism that echoes succinctly Polybius’ more long-winded, not to say caustic, critique of the historian of Philip II (8.9–11). On a more sober note Polybius recommends that the historian keep the need for judgement in view, so that a reader can feel ‘legitimate pity’ (ἐλεεῖν εὐλόγως) and ‘proper anger’ (ὀργίζεσθαι καθηκόντως).48 The last outcome of audience emotion to consider here is action, the sort of action, say, that Sempronius Asellio seems to want when he criticizes the narra-

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(149): ‘[Tacitus] arouses our sympathies in ways that are not primarily related to a reasoned morality at all, by the use of the internal audience and enargeia. Thus, Vitellius’ standing is improved in our eyes precisely because of the sympathy that has been generated for him’. Caesar, Bellum Gallicum 5.37.4 ibi Lucius Cotta pugnans interficitur cum maxima parte militum. See Caesar, Bellum Gallicum 6.34.8 for his intent to avenge. For the combination of pity and anger see Marincola 2003, 295–302. Caesar, Bellum Gallicum 6.43.1–3, cf. 6.34.5, 8, 6.42.3. On this passage see Marincola 2013. On Phylarchus’ emotional effects and Polybius’ counterattack see recently Thornton 2013. Lucian, Quomodo historia conscribenda sit 59. Polybius 2.56.13. On this key passage see recently Marincola 2003, 301–302, 2010, Levene 1997, 133–136, Schepens 2005, 158–164.

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tive-poor annales libri on the grounds that they ‘can do nothing to make people more quick to defend the state or more hesitant to do wrong’.49 Or that Sallust wants when he imagines his reader being inspired, literally ‘set afire’, for excellence by narratives of exemplary figures from the past (Bellum Iugurthinum 4.5: ad virtutem adcendi). Inspiring patriotic and valiant actions and instilling reluctance to do wrong might seem to be unobjectionable aims in a historian. However, the capacity for historical narrative to move readers to practical action can get a historian into trouble. This is precisely the situation in which Tacitus shows his historian/character Cremutius Cordus. Brought before a senatorial court, with Tiberius looking on, Cordus offers a defense against what Tacitus calls a ‘novel charge, heard then for the first time’: ‘In published annals, after praising Brutus, he called Cassius “last of the Romans”’.50 The novelty lies in the fact that verba, not facta, constitute the crime.51 Thus Cordus’ defense culminates in a question about facta: num ... incendo? ‘I’m not firing the people for civil war, am I?’ Cordus’ question, with its introductory particle num, presses for the answer ‘No, you are not currently inciting the populace.’52 He is, as he says, factorum innocens (4.34.2), and if his verba produce an emotional response in his readers, he implies, it is simply an index of literary excellence.53 However, it is not at all clear that Tacitus himself wants Cordus’ defense to be seen as the whole truth of the matter. As Martin and Woodman put it at the end of their note on this passage, ‘It would not have been difficult to interpret Cordus’ narrative as criticism of the principate and a call to arms.’ Indeed this is surely how Cordus’ accusers presented it in the treason trial. His inflammatory books, whatever the precise nuance of the metaphor in incendo, got Cordus killed and the books themselves burned. This famous passage suggests that the emotions aroused by historiography can be dangerously efficacious. And that brings us to the end of our consideration of emotion in the historian’s audience, a category not without its perils, as we have seen, but on the whole, and within generically and ethically appropriate limits, an openly desiderated effect.54

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Sempronius Asellio F2 FRHist, Nam neque alacriores ... ad rempublicam defendundam neque segniores ad rem perperam faciundam annales libri commovere quicquam possunt. Tacitus, Annales 4.34.1 novo ac tunc primum audito crimine, quod editis annalibus laudatoque M. Bruto C. Cassium Romanorum ultimum dixisset. Or part of the novelty. The trial also expanded the purview of maiestas to cover victims outside the imperial family and to punish praise as well as libel. Tacitus, Annales 4.35.2 num ... belli civilis causa populum ... incendo? As is noted by Martin and Woodman ad loc. Cf. Levene’s conclusion 1997, 149: ‘We can now see that the “audience-based” approach to the passions is far from being inimical to historical analysis; it can lie at its very heart’.

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3 IN THE AUTHOR Emotions in the author are quite a different matter. Anger and favour, in particular, are censured.55 Hence prefatorial protestations about the author’s freedom from bias; I’ve quoted Tacitus’ famous sine ira et studio from the Annals already.56 In the preface to his earlier Histories Tacitus is explicit about what is at stake: in the works of prior historians, he says, truth was crippled in many ways, first by ignorance of public affairs ..., eventually – here come the emotions – by the passion for flattery (libidine adsentandi) or on the other hand by 57 hatred of the rulers (odio adversus dominantes).

He draws the obvious conclusion that historians who have promised undiminished honesty (incorruptam fidem) must speak of no 58 person with favour (amore) and of each person without hatred (sine odio)’.

Comparably lofty standards are asserted by many a historian, and even where they are not made explicit one assumes that they are generically programmed. According to Josephus, for example, in lamenting the fate of his country as he does in the Jewish War he is giving scope to an emotion, a πάθος, ‘contrary to the law of history’.59 And yet one finds in ancient and modern scholarship titles such as ‘On the Malignity of Herodotus’ and ‘Mendacity in Velleius’, not to mention the occasional mud-slinging on similar grounds at a whole array of historians.60 As Taci55

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For an overview of how historians address the issue of authorial bias and a discussion of authorial ‘friendliness’ and its opposite see Marincola 1997, 158–174 and 2003, 306–308 respectively. On the topic of authorial bias Luce 1989 remains fundamental, but for a useful attempt to re-center the debate, at least for Roman historiography, around subjectivity see Heldmann 2011. Dionysius of Halicarnassus suggests that Thucydidean bias against Athens after his exile is responsible for the reprehensible arguments he assigns to the Athenian side in the Melian dialogue, which, Dionysius says, would cause Athens ‘to be hated by all men’ (De Thucydide 41, 397.5). In this discussion I focus on authorial emotion visible in the narrative or in reactions to it. For a discussion of emotions, especially indignatio, deployed in polemical passages about fellow historians see Marincola 1997, 218–236. Cf. Cicero’s approving précis of a Lucceian preface (Ad familiares 5.12.3): de qua (sc. gratia) suavissime quodam in prohoemio scripsisti, a qua te flecti non magis potuisse demonstras quam Herculem Xenophontium illum a Voluptate. Tacitus, Historiae 1.1.1 simul veritas pluribus modis infracta, primum inscitia reipublicae ut alienae, mox libidine adsentandi aut rursus odio adversus dominantis. The connection between authorial emotion (specifically, eagerness to please or hatred) and falsification is expressed even more directly by Josephus (Bellum Judaicum 1.2, cf. 1.6–8); see also Polybius 16.14.7–8, Sallust, Bellum Catilinae 1.3.2 plerique quae delicta reprehenderis malevolentia et invidia dicta putant. Tacitus, Historiae 1.1.3 sed incorruptam fidem professis neque amore quisquam et sine odio dicendus est. Bellum Judaicum 1.9–12, esp. 11, παρὰ τὸν τῆς ἱστορίας νόµον; similarly 5.19–20. ‘On the malignity of Herodotus’ is an essay by Plutarch (Moralia 854E–874C), ‘Mendacity in Velleius’ a paper by Ronald Syme (AJP 99 (1978) 45–63). Mud-slinging: (1) malice: Thucydides (Dionysius of Halicarnassus, Epistula ad Pompeium 3, 235.3 φθονερῶς), Timaeus (Po-

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tus observed in the preface to the Histories, it is easy enough to understand and compensate for the self-interested bias inherent in a work like that of Velleius, a history written under Tiberius with Tiberius as its narrative telos. But something like Herodotus’ malignity, κακοήθεια, or Tacitus’ own fervour – ‘er ... glüht’, said Norden (1909, 1.326) – these are harder to explain. And yet emotional authors are not the exception but almost the rule. One of the things that was forcefully borne in on me while I was working on this paper is how exceptional Caesar is in his avoidance of authorial emotion. Plenty of emotion-worthy events are recorded in the commentarii, but in the face of crushing defeats, decisive victories, painful betrayals, and disappointments and successes of all kinds Caesar, as both actor and author, maintains an imperturbable surface. Other authors don’t keep themselves on so tight a leash.61 It is worth asking why. A small point to begin with. As Horace points out in the Ars poetica (102f., quoted above), the easiest way to arouse emotions in your audience is to feel them yourself. He is speaking about poetry, but Aristotle had made much the same point about orators: ‘the hearer always feels sympathy with the person who expresses emotions’.62 Given the overlap between historiography and both poetry and oratory one would expect to find historians using this technique. Josephus’ lamentations are presumably one instance of this, and if we had more of Theopompus’ Philippic History we might have others, since he is praised by Dionysius for the pungency (πικρότης) of passages where he yields to his emotions (ἐπιτρέψῃ τοῖς πάθεσι) in rebuking the injustices perpetrated by Philip and others (Epistula ad Pompeium 6, 247.9–11).63 More broadly, I’ll observe that authorial bias and authorial emotion are not co-extensive categories. Nobody has anything good to say about bias, which both detracts from an author’s credibility and reflects poorly on his character. However, historians often claim to share their readers’ emotions. Livy’s preface, for example, engages in a complicated negotiation on this topic. After initially pointing to a divergence between author and reader – the story of Rome’s earliest days relieves the author’s anxiety but makes readers impatient – he evokes both parties’ common experience of suffering in the corrupt present, a period in which ‘we can

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lybius 12.14 πικρία, and passim), Theopompus (Dionysius of Halicarnassus, Epistula ad Pompeium 6, 246.20 βάσκανος), (2) resentment: Thucydides (Dionysius of Halicarnassus, Epistula ad Pompeium 3, 238.19 µνησικακοῦσα), (3) partiality: Philistus (Dionysius of Halicarnassus, Epistula ad Pompeium 5, 243.3 κολακικόν); Lucian, Quomodo historia conscribenda sit 7–20 is an extended rant on the flattering historiography produced by hopeful historians. With some honourable exceptions, such as Thucydides. See, e.g., Hornblower 1987, 115f. on Thucydides’ understated conclusion to the Sicilian expedition, ‘Few out of all those many returned home’ (7.87.6). Hornblower shows that tragic structure (i.e., a reversal) is per se moving, without adornment (1987, 148). See also n. 9 above. Aristotle, Rhetoric 3.7, 1408a23–25 (Hubbard translation). See further Gill 1984, esp. 155. Polybius, as we saw earlier, thought otherwise (8.9–11). For discussion see Bearzot 2005.

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endure neither our vices nor the remedies for them’.64 He posits a shared reaction to history again in Book 10, after yet another Sabine war. ‘Who’, says Livy, ‘would begrudge the length of time spent on writing and reading of wars that did not exhaust the men fighting them?’65 And when at the beginning of Book 31 Livy reports that he is happy – me quoque iuvat, he says – to have reached the end of the second Punic war, one suspects that he imagines his readers to have been happy as well.66 The emotions that Tacitus shares with his readers are rather darker: Were I recording with such similarity of event foreign wars and deaths on state service, surfeit would have mastered even me, and I would expect impatience in others, too, spurning fellow citizens’ ends, however honourable, as dismal and unending. As it is – i.e., given that he is providing individualized death scenes for Nero’s victims – slavish passivity and the volume 67 of blood squandered at home weary the spirit, hobble it with sorrow.

The history of Nero’s reign, in Tacitus’ view, is likely to afflict both writer and reader with surfeit, impatience, tedium and sorrow: too much, too sad.68 Such expressions of authorial emotion are a stylistic device, one among many, used by historians to establish a rapport with their readers, to create a commonality of expectation and experience, or at least to create a plausible and attractive authorial persona.69 At a minimum, one might say, they are meant to keep the reader reading as long as the writer kept on writing.70

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Livy, praefatio 4–5 legentium plerisque haud dubito quin primae origines proximaque originibus minus praebitura voluptatis sint ... ego contra hoc quoque laboris praemium petam, ut me a conspectu malorum ... avertam and 9 haec tempora quibus nec vitia nostra nec remedia pati possumus, well elucidated in Moles 1994, esp. 146–148. Livy is even willing to admit to emotions affecting the author alone: in the preface we hear of his pleasure in telling Rome’s story – he speaks of ‘love of the task I have set myself’ (amor negotii suscepti, praefatio 11, cf. praefatio 3 iuvabit) – and his imagined disappointment if the work doesn’t repay his efforts (consoler, pr. 3). And later of something close to dismay at the thought that, after writing 30 books, he still has so much Roman history left to cover: it’s like walking into the ocean – the water just gets deeper and deeper (31.1.5). Livy 10.31.15 quinam sit ille quem pigeat longinquitatis bellorum scribendo legendoque quae gerentes non fatigaverunt? Livy 31.1.1 me quoque iuvat, velut ipse in parte laboris ac periculi fuerim, ad finem belli Punici venisse. Tacitus, Annales 16.16.1 Etiam si bella externa et obitas pro re publica mortis tanta casuum similitudine memorarem, meque ipsum satias cepisset aliorumque taedium expectarem, quamvis honestos civium exitus, tristis tamen et continuos aspernantium: at nunc patientia servilis tantumque sanguinis domi perditum fatigant animum et maestitia restringunt. He had made much the same point earlier, about Tiberius’ principate, at Annales 6.7.5, but whereas in that passage he justified himself by saying that the event he reports (others had bypassed it) is ‘worth knowing’, here he seems to give his readers the upper hand: ‘My defence – the only one I would ask from those who come to know these words – is that I must not hate men perishing so slackly’ (reading oderim); see also n. 36 on this difficult passage. Dionysius praises Thucydides for ‘abstaining from envy and flattery of every kind, particularly in his appreciation of men of merit’, in view of the fact that he gave their due to Themisto-

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But there is more to it than that: authorial emotion seems to be in some sense an index of an author’s worth. Thucydides, who is routinely credited with an outstanding ability to depict and arouse emotion, is also credited with ‘greatness of thought’ ([Longinus] 14.1). I suspect that the two qualities are related, perhaps owing to the aforementioned link between emotion and judgement.71 We have already considered this as a factor motivating authors to arouse their readers’ emotions, but authors also pronounce or convey judgements of their own. Herodotus has figured rather little in this paper because, as the ancient critics observe repeatedly, emotions are not his forte.72 He is not a particularly judgemental historian, either. Which makes the moment when he pronounces judgement on the man who betrayed the Greeks at Thermopylae all the more striking: ‘It was Ephialtes who showed the Persians the way around the mountain along the path, and I hereby record his guilt’.73 This departure from Herodotus’ authorial norm gives voice to the emotion-based judgement that his narrative is designed to arouse, and he takes care to show that the judgement is not just his but that of the Greek world more generally, as represented by the Amphictyons, who condemned Ephialtes in absentia, and by the Spartans, who rewarded his murderer (7.213). Thucydides, who is extremely judgemental, tends to let his verdict emerge from the narrative rather than pronouncing it, but for Nicias he does register a summation: ‘Of all the Greeks in my time he was the least deserving of this depth of misfortune, since he conducted his whole life as a man of principle’.74 The regret Thucydides feels for the sorry story of Nicias’ role in the Sicilian expedition is palpable, and again, it is a shared verdict, as can be seen in Plutarch’s much longer meditation on the same point.75 In the Jugurthine War Sallust says he doesn’t wish to pronounce a verdict on Sulla (whose story lies in the narrative future), but he nevertheless lets us see his emotional reaction to the material (Bellum Iugurthinum 95.4): ‘as for what Sulla did later, I don’t know whether the tale causes more shame (pudeat) or more pain (pigeat)’. But historians are also conscious of the dangers inherent in this rhetorically effective mode of writing. Tacitus, for example, tries to immunize readers against the persuasive force of expressions of authorial hostility, which, he says, are ‘re-

70

71 72 73 74

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cles, Pericles, Demosthenes the general, Nicias and Alcibiades (De Thucydide 8, 334.16– 335.7). An author envious of his characters would presumably be unattractive. Cf. Pausch 2011, 249: ‘Hält man sich vor Augen, daß das Gesamtwerk ursprünglich 142 Bände umfaßte, wird deutlich, daß es sich hier sicherlich um einen kritischen Punkt bei der Frage der Aufrechterhaltung der Kommunikation zwischen Autor und Leser gehandelt haben dürfte’. See, e.g., Aristotle, Rhetoric 2.1, 1378a19–22. But see Lateiner 2009, 110–114, 126 for discussion of some weepy scenes. Herodotus 7.214 (Waterfield translation). Thucydides 7.86.5. Hornblower ad loc. comments, before proceeding to discussion of the verdict’s undeniable complexities, ‘And therefore was, according to Aristotelian criteria, deserving of pity’. Plutarch, Nicias 26.4–6. Plutarch is more critical of Nicias’ death at the end of the comparison between Crassus and Nicias (5.2).

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ceived into eager ears’.76 Polybius, too, specifically on the subject of manifestations of authorial emotion in historiographical polemic, feels that the historian loses more than he gains through vehemence. His whipping boy Timaeus was famously harsh towards fellow historians. According to Polybius, the πικρία of Timaeus’ refutations convinces some readers of his superior accuracy and judgement (12.25c, 26d.3–4). But other readers, including of course Polybius himself, are inclined to dismiss everything Timaeus says once they realize, from closer study, that he is guilty of inaccuracies of his own (12.26d.4–5). The only benefit such readers get from Timaeus’ emotional protests about professional malfeasance, says Polybius, is practice in debunking Timaeus (12.26d.5). It is clear that emotions are involved in the whole historiographical enterprise. Vividness in the depiction of emotionally charged events produces an impact on emotionally engaged readers, activating memory, judgement and emulation or rejection – and perhaps even action. The historian’s dilemma is that in every one of the venues discussed in this paper emotion is dangerous. In the story, if it leads to stylistic oddities or silly inventions like ‘crying over the memory of the cakes’, in the audience if it incurs charges of sensationalism or perpetuates the memory of undeserving people or actions, in the author if it leads to suspicions of falsification. The risks are considerably higher for the historian than for other authors. After all, if a tragedian misjudges his emotional content he’s just liable to be called turgid ([Longinus] 3.1). But if a historian does so, he may forfeit his claim to be a historian. Returning to Cremutius’ Cordus num ... incendo one last time, I might say that in giving the past its emotions the historians were indeed playing with fire. BIBLIOGRAPHY Babbitt, F. C. (1936) Plutarch’s Moralia, Vol. IV 263D–351B, Cambridge, MA. Bearzot, C. (2005) Polibio e Teopompo: Osservazioni di metodo e giudizio morale, in G. Schepens and J. Bollansée (eds.), The Shadow of Polybius: Intertextuality as a Research Tool in Greek Historiography, Leuven, 55–71. Chaniotis, A. (2013) Empathy, Emotional Display, Theatricality, and Illusion in Hellenistic Historiography, in A. Chaniotis and P. Ducrey (eds.), Unveiling Emotions II, Stuttgart, 53–84. Cornell, T. J. (ed.) (2013) The Fragments of the Roman Historians, 3 vols, Oxford. Costa, D. (2005) Lucian: Selected Dialogues, Oxford. Damon, C. (2010) Too Close? Historian and Poet in the Apocolocyntosis, in J. F. Miller and A. J. Woodman (eds.), Latin Historiography and Poetry in the Early Empire: Generic Interactions, Leiden, 49–70. Damon, C., trans. (2012) Tacitus, Annals, London. Davidson, J. (1991) The Gaze in Polybius’ Histories, Journal of Roman Studies 81, 10–24. Dewald, C. (1999) The Figured Stage: Focalizing the Initial Narratives of Herodotus and Thucydides, in T. M. Falkner et alii (eds.), Contextualizing Classics: Ideology, Performance, Dialogue, Oxford, 221–252. 76

Tacitus, Historiae 1.1.2 obtrectatio et livor pronis auribus accipiuntur.

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Feldherr, A. (1998) Spectacle and Society in Livy’s History, Berkeley. Gill, C. (1984) The ethos/pathos Distinction in Rhetorical and Literary Criticism, Classical Quarterly 34, 149–166. Hammond, M., trans. (2009) Thucydides: The Peloponnesian War, Oxford. Greenwood, E. (2005) Thucydides and the Shaping of History, London. Heldmann, K. (2011) Sine ira et studio: Das Subjektivitätsprinzip der römischen Geschichtsschreibung und das Selbstverständnis antiker Historiker, Munich. Hornblower, S. (1987) Thucydides, Baltimore. ––– (1991–2008) A Commentary on Thucydides, 3 vols., Oxford. Hubbard, M. E., trans. (1972) Aristotle, in D. A. Russell and M. Winterbottom (eds.), Ancient Literary Criticism: The Principal Texts in New Translations, Oxford, 85–170. Kallet, L. (1999) The Diseased Body Politic, Athenian Public Finance, and the Massacre at Mykalessos, American Journal of Philology 120, 223f. Lateiner, D. A. (2009) Tears and Crying in Hellenic Historiography: Dacryology from Herodotus to Polybius, in T. Fögen (ed.), Tears in the Greco-Roman World, Berlin, 105–134. Levene, D. S. (1997) Pity, Fear, and the Historical Audience: Tacitus on the Fall of Vitellius, in S. M. Braund and C. Gill (eds.), The Passions in Roman Thought and Literature, Cambridge, 128–149. Luce, T. J. (1989) Ancient Views on the Causes of Bias in Historical Writing, Classical Philology 84, 16–31. Macleod, C. W. (1983) Collected Essays, Oxford. Marincola, J. (1997) Authority and Tradition in Ancient Historiography, Cambridge. ––– (2003) Beyond Pity and Fear: The Emotions of History, Ancient Society 33, 285–315. ––– (2010) Aristotle’s Poetics and ‘Tragic History’, in S. Tsitsiridis (ed.), Παραχορήγηµα: Μελετήµατα γιὰ τὸ ἀρχαῖο θέατρο πρὸς τιµὴν τοῦ καθηγητῆ Γρηγόρη Μ. Σηφάκη, Heraklion, 445–460. ––– (2013) Polybius, Phylarchus and ‘Tragic History’: A Reconsideration, in B. Gibson and T. Harrison (eds.), Polybius and his World: Essays in Memory of F. W. Walbank, Oxford, 73– 90. Martin, R. H. and A. J. Woodman (1989) Tacitus, Annals Book IV, Cambridge. McGing, B. (2010) Polybius, Oxford. von Möllendorff, P. (2001) Frigid Enthusiasts: Lucian on Writing History, Proceedings of the Cambridge Philological Society 47, 117–140. Moles, J. (1994) Livy’s Preface, Proceedings of the Cambridge Philological Society 39, 141–168. Norden, E. (1909) Die antike Kunstprosa vom VI. Jahrhundert v. Chr. bis in die Zeit der Renaissance, 2nd ed., 2 vols., Leipzig. Paton, W. R., trans. (2010) Polybius, The Histories: Books 1–2, revised by F. W. Walbank and C. Habicht, Cambridge MA. Pausch, D., ed. (2010) Stimmen der Geschichte: Funktionen von Reden in der antiken Historiographie, Berlin. ––– (2011) Livius und der Leser: Narrative Strukturen in Ab urbe condita, Munich. Pritchett, W. K. (1975) Dionysius of Halicarnassus: On Thucydides, Berkeley. de Romilly, J. (1956) La crainte dans l’oeuvre de Thucydide, Classica & Mediaevalia 17, 119– 127. Rood, T. (1998) Thucydides: Narrative and Explanation, Oxford. Russell, D. A. (1972) ‘Longinus’, On Sublimity, in D. A. Russell and M. Winterbottom (eds.), Ancient Literary Criticism: The Principal Texts in New Translations, Oxford, 460–503. Rusten, J. S. (2010) Four Ways to Hate Corcyra: Thucydides I 24–55 against the Background of Odyssey 13, Herodotus III 48–53, and VII 168, in G. Rechenauer and V. Pothou (eds.), Thucydides: A Violent Teacher? Göttingen, 99–114.

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Schepens, G. (2005) Polybius’ Criticism of Phylarchus, in G. Schepens and J. Bollansée (eds.), The Shadow of Polybius: Intertextuality as a Research Tool in Greek Historiography, Leuven, 141–164. Shackleton Bailey, D. R. (1978) Cicero’s Letters to his Friends, Atlanta. Tamiolaki, M. (2013) Ascribing Motivation in Thucydides: Between Historical Research and Literary Representation, in A. Tsakmakis and M. Tamiolaki (eds.), Thucydides between History and Literature, Berlin, 41–72. Thornton, J. (2013) Tragedia e retorica nella polemica sulla presa di Mantineia (Polibio II, 56–58), in M. Mari and J. Thornton (eds.), Parole in movimento. Linguaggio politico e lessico storiografico nel mondo ellenistico, Pisa, 353–374. Usener, H. and L. Radermacher, eds. (1899–1929) Dionysius Halicarnaseus, Vol. VI, Opuscula, 2 vols., Leipzig. Usher, S., trans. (1974–1985) Dionysius of Halicarnassus, The Critical Essays, 2 vols., Cambridge MA. Walker, A. D. (1993) Enargeia and the Spectator in Greek Historiography, Transactions of the American Philological Association 123, 353–377. Waterfield, R., trans. (1998) Herodotus, the Histories, Oxford. Wohl, V. (forthcoming) The Political Passions in Thucydides, in S. Forsdyke et alii (eds.), Oxford Handbook on Thucydides, Oxford. Woodman, A. J. (1988) Rhetoric in Classical Historiography: Four Studies, London.

THE PERFORMANCE OF GRIEF: CICERO, STOICISM, AND THE PUBLIC EYE Margaret Graver Often mentioned for its political significance, the death of Caesar’s daughter Julia in 54 BCE had also another kind of cultural significance: it provided the occasion for the practical Caesar to turn himself into an exemplum. On campaign in Britain, Caesar receives word of Julia’s miscarriage and sudden death with composure and without loss of military effectiveness, allowing himself a brief mourning period but returning to action a mere two days later. An appreciative Quintus Cicero observes this conduct at first hand and reports it to his more famous brother, who likewise approves: ‘I was very glad to learn from your letter of the manly restraint’ – the virtus and gravitas – ‘that was shown by Caesar in his heavy affliction’.1 Scrutinized, admired, reported, Caesar’s emotional restraint becomes eligible to be cited on future occasions, as for instance in Seneca’s Consolation to Marcia 14.3 and, according to Tacitus, in Tiberius’ soothing address after the death of Germanicus.2 Caesar thus joins the ranks of men like Quintus Fabius Maximus, Aemilius Paulus, and Marcus Porcius Cato the Elder, all of whom were remembered for restricting their expression of personal sorrow in order to fulfill their responsibilities as magistrates of the Roman people.3 The exceptional self-control of Caesar will serve to illustrate a Roman cultural norm in the realm of emotional behavior: that in times of personal affliction, males of elite status were able to gain in stature by restricting their expression of grief in favor of concern for the interests of the community. It is my case here, however, that while this standard of behavior is easily recognized in Roman public discourse, it was by no means inviolable. In what follows, I present for study several examples of a characteristically Ciceronian discursive practice that deliberately reverses the expectation created by Caesar and others like him. These are cases in which the public figure projects an image of himself as one who is strongly moved by emotion, and in particular by grief and distress. In observing 1 2

3

Cicero, Ad Quintum fratrem 3.6.3, De virtute et gravitate Caesaris, quam in summo dolore adhibuisset, magnam ex epistula tua accepi voluptatem. Seneca, Consolatio ad Marciam 14.3 intra tertium diem imperatoria obit munia et tam cito dolorem vicit quam omnia solebat; Tacitus, Annales 3.6.2; for the circumstances Gelzer 1968, 146–148; for a well-articulated conception of exemplarity, Roller 2004. Cicero, Tusculanae disputationes 3.70; Ad familiares, 4.6.1 (both concerning Cicero’s selfconsolation); Seneca, Consolatio ad Marciam 13.3f.

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Cicero’s technique, we find that the refusal to show emotion was only one possibility: first-century Roman culture also offered options for advancing one’s influence through the performance of grief. Indeed, the prevailing tendency to valorize self-mastery in political leaders made an occasional move in the opposite direction rhetorically powerful. I argue here that Cicero was fully aware of that rhetorical potential and used it for his own political and philosophical ends. So as not to prejudge what we find in the texts, it is important to remember that what we are studying is precisely the expression of feeling, regardless of whether we think the feeling is sincere. I take it as axiomatic that the inner life of somebody who is dead is just not available for study. All we can look at is expression, and what a person expresses to others is not determined by inner experience: a highly effective expression of feeling might or might not be sincere, and deeply felt emotions may or may not be expressed. Naturally this is all the more true of written forms of expression, where the presumed feelings have not only been articulated but phrased as formal prose, written out or dictated to a slave, and for the published works also delivered to a scriptorium for copying and circulation. We are dealing then with deliberate acts of self-representation, with gestures that Cicero chooses to make toward his own emotional nature. It is my hope that in learning to read that kind of gesture we might free ourselves from some unhelpful assumptions that have affected interpretations of Cicero’s philosophical works. Psychological readings have been accorded especially to the Tusculan Disputations, no doubt because that work seems especially to invite them.4 In the Tusculans, Cicero speaks explicitly of the power grief has had over him, and in that work too he makes his strongest claims for the power of philosophy, especially Stoic philosophy, to alleviate sufferings like his. It is hardly surprising, then, that interpreters of the treatise have been preoccupied with Cicero’s inner experience of grief to such an extent that the work often comes out as a kind of self-therapy, Cicero’s way of working through his feelings about his daughter’s death earlier in the year. But understandable as these readings may be, they seem to me quite mistaken as to the nature of Roman literary utterance. They pick up on the narrative Cicero creates about himself but fail to realize that it is just that: a narrative created within a particular social, political, and philosophical nexus and for specific and identifiable reasons. For my purposes here it will be sufficient to concentrate on quite a small number of examples, primarily three from among many instances of emotional display in Cicero’s works. These are selected not only to illustrate the range of rhetorical ends that can be served, but also because these particular examples offer 4

MacKendrick 1989 (164: ‘In this book he tried manfully to assuage his grief for Tullia’); White 1995 (226: ‘the entire work is in effect a sustained consolatio composed in the aftermath of grave personal loss’); Erskine 1997 (39f: ‘the account of the passions in the Tusculans is so coloured by Cicero’s own experience that the two are virtually inseparable’); more recently Lefevre 2009, 193–212; presumed textual support in Tusculanae disputationes 1.111, 5.121. Resistance in Graver 2002, xi–xv; cf. Gildenhard 2007, 69 n. 228, Baraz 2012, 86–95.

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the best connections to my more specific concern with Cicero’s reception of Stoicism. The essential step is to consider each instance of emotional display within the tightest possible chronological frame and with the greatest possible sensitivity to its immediate frame of reference. 1 PITY OUT OF ORDER: THE CHASTISEMENT OF CATO My first example is one among many in which Cicero claims to experience a strong emotion while delivering a speech, with obvious relevance to the case in hand. This was one situation in which some display of emotion was accepted and even expected in public life, for the effort to stir the emotions of a jury in favor of one’s client is a standard device of the rhetorical handbooks, and a tried and true means of arousing emotion in others is to express the same emotion oneself. In this case, the emotion is of pity, a standard type of emotional appeal that is especially useful when one’s client happens to be guilty. This particular example holds special interest, however, because of the way it interacts with philosophical material in the same speech. I have in mind a passage from the Pro Murena, a speech delivered during Cicero’s consulship in 63. Murena, a successful candidate for the next year’s consulship, had been indicted on charges of electoral malpractice; his guilt seems to have been an entirely open secret. Cicero, of course, was speaking for the defense.5 The interesting moment comes just as the orator is preparing to respond to the one really significant charge made by the prosecution, that of buying and bartering votes. He means to refute this charge – but first, he has to express some personal feelings about the situation in which poor Murena now finds himself. But first let me briefly voice the distress that has suddenly welled up within me at Lucius Murena’s misfortune. The distress of others, gentlemen, no less than my own daily anxieties and labors, has often in the past made me envy the peace and tranquility of those free from the pressures of ambition. Today, however, I have been so deeply moved by the extent and suddenness of Lucius Murena’s peril that I cannot deplore strongly enough either the situation 6 in which we all find ourselves or the unhappy course that his life has taken.

To us, reading the written version and far removed from the situation, the device seems quite stagey, even forced. It’s impossible to say, though, what Cicero’s actual feelings were or what he might have been able to summon up in the heat of the moment. What we do know is that it was part of his job to deliver the lines 5 6

For the rhetoric of the speech esp. Leeman 1982 and Craig 1986. Pro Murena 55: Sed pauca quae meum animum repente moverunt prius de L. Murenae fortuna conquerar. Nam cum saepe antea, iudices, et ex aliorum miseriis et ex meis curis laboribusque cotidianis fortunatos eos homines iudicarem qui remoti a studiis ambitionis otium ac tranquillitatem vitae secuti sunt, tum vero in his L. Murenae tantis tamque improvisis periculis ita sum animo adfectus ut non queam satis neque communem omnium nostrum condicionem neque huius eventum fortunamque miserari. Translation by Macdonald 1977.

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effectively. And of course he knew very well how to do that; in fact, he claims in the Orator to have been especially proficient in the use of this very device, which he designates by the term of art commiseratio, the expression and evocation of pity.7 That much is standard enough, but in this particular work the display of distress has a further significance that becomes evident when we consider its position within the speech. The usual place for an appeal to pity was near the end of the oration; Cicero, perhaps following Aristotle, sometimes places it earlier.8 Here, however, the move is made unusually early, before any details of the case have even been presented, with the result that pity for Murena becomes an important theme of the defense. The emotion expressed by Cicero as defender is thus made to contrast with the pitiless character attributed to the principal prosecutor, Marcus Porcius Cato the Younger, on grounds of his interest in Stoic ethics. The connection is especially evident in the written version of the speech, where the omission of some of what Cicero actually delivered sets things up so that the philosophical polemic follows almost immediately. Cato is first represented as a true descendant of Cato the Elder, who had objected without success to a famous appeal for pity by Servius Sulpicius Galba in 149.9 Then, in an elaborate philosophical excursus, Cicero represents his opponent as committed to a ridiculously inflexible system that refuses to allow any role to the emotions in decision-making. A tendentious list of the precepts Cato is supposed to have inherited from the Stoic Zeno of Citium gives special prominence to the denial of pity: The wise person is never influenced by favor, never forgives anyone’s wrongdoing. Only the foolish and lightweight person experiences pity. It is not manly to yield to entreaty or to be appeased. Some poor disaster-stricken people come begging for aid. ‘You will be scandalously wicked if you do anything for them out of pity’.10

By contrast, the philosophers Cicero himself admires do have room for pity in their scheme of ethics: they are ‘moderate and well-tempered people’ who ‘take after Plato and Aristotle’, and they say that a good man does feel pity.11 To Zeno’s 7 8

9 10

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Orator 128–132. Solmsen 1938 and Wisse 1989 argue for direct dependence on Aristotle in this regard. Fortenbaugh 2005, 45 cautions that while Cicero might conceivably have read Aristotle’s Rhetoric in a cursory manner, he can hardly have studied it carefully. A safer hypothesis is that he was influenced indirectly by the work through his contact with the Peripatetic tradition of rhetorical training. Pro Murena 59. Pro Murena 61f: Sapientem gratia numquam moveri, numquam cuiusquam delicto ignoscere; neminem misericordem esse nisi stultum et levem; viri non esse neque exorari neque placari. … Supplices aliqui veniunt miseri et calamitosi; sceleratus et nefarius fueris, si quicquam misericordia adductus feceris. Pro Murena 63: nostri, inquam, illi a Platone et Aristotele, moderati homines et temperati, aiunt apud sapientem valere aliquando gratiam; viri boni esse misereri.

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precept ‘Don’t be moved by pity’, they respond, ‘Not so as to remit a penalty; nonetheless, it is praiseworthy to show some compassion’.12 Coming right after Cicero’s own effusion of pity, the excursus legitimates an emotion-driven vote on the part of the jury. In turn, the real or imagined feelings of pity add force to the philosophical posturing (one can hardly call it argumentation) that Cicero uses to degrade the authority of Cato, both at the time of the speech and later on when he circulates the written version. There can be no doubt that Cicero means to create a productive tension between his own use of the pity defense and the Stoic ethics favored by Cato as his opponent in the court and sometimes later within the Senate. If the rhetoric of the Pro Murena were not clear enough, we have also several passages from the De Oratore, several years later, that make the same connection. The presentation of Stoicism in De Oratore has a number of similarities to that of the Pro Murena; the Stoic orator Rutilius Rufus appears there as a kind of surrogate Cato. The pity defense continues to be a concern: the Stoic orators decline to use it, while Antonius regards it as useful and indeed necessary for success.13 Antonius insists, moreover, that when such tactics are used, the orator should not only express the requisite emotion, but should even feel it at a visceral level. We do not have to regard this as Cicero’s authorial position; after all, Antonius’ speech is meant to be that of an advocatus diaboli, and we know that some years later, in Tusculan Disputation 4, Cicero’s principal speaker insists that authenticity of emotion is not needed in this situation, that feigned emotions work just as well.14 There seem to be multiple levels of irony here. Still, Antonius’ assertions do make it clear that when Cicero makes a show of strong emotion in a speech like the Pro Murena, he is fully aware of the effect he is creating and equally aware of the philosophical and ethical implications of doing so. 2 GRIEF OUT OF BOUNDS: THE PASSING OF TULLIA Let’s leave that for the moment and turn to something that seems very different, a very different moment in Cicero’s life and a very different sort of text. The text is an intimate personal letter, which I quote here in its entirety. On March 7 of 45, about ten days after his daughter’s death, Cicero writes this to Atticus: 12 13

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Pro Murena 65 ‘Misericordia commotus ne sis’. Etiam, in dissolvenda severitate; sed tamen est laus aliqua humanitatis. De oratore 2.189–196. Observe also the tension between Servius Sulpicius Galba and Cato the Elder in De oratore 1.227, where Sulpicius’ commiseratio is criticized by Rutilius Rufus. The implied derogation of Rutilius’ perspective is in keeping with the reference to Servius Sulpicius Galba already in Pro Murena 59. Tusculanae Disputationes 4.55. Wisse 1989, 257–268 derives this entire Ciceronian dichotomy from the philosophical rather than the rhetorical tradition, referring specifically to the controversy between Stoics and Peripatetics as to whether the emotions have a useful function in human life.

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Margaret Graver Please see that my excuses are made to Appuleius from day to day, since a once for all excuse does not seem advisable. In this lonely place I do not talk to a soul. Early in the day I hide myself in a thick, thorny wood, and don’t emerge till evening. Next to yourself solitude is my best friend. When I am alone all my conversation is with books, but it is interrupted by fits of weeping, against which I struggle as best I can. But so far it is an unequal fight. I shall answer Brutus as you recommend. You shall have the letter tomorrow. Forward it when you have the 15 opportunity.

The page bleeds. The emotion certainly appears to be genuine and I have no doubt it is genuine; Tullia had always been important to her father.16 Nonetheless, I mean to argue that in this letter and in several others that are along these lines, the gesture toward the writer’s personal feelings has a clearly identifiable rhetorical purpose. The display of emotion may not be devious or artificial, but it is deliberate, and it is meant to influence others in accordance with Cicero’s interests. Consider the situation. The customary nine-day period of mourning was over; Cicero was expected to resume his usual round of visits at Rome, among which was attendance at a state event for the Appuleius mentioned in the letter.17 Cicero had already asked Atticus to sign a deposition on his behalf stating that the absence was for reasons of health: for that particular obligation, emotional turmoil was not a suitable excuse. Then there was the larger picture. It was March of 45. Caesar was in Spain, preparing for his final showdown against the republican armies; Rome was full of his supporters, and any move by a prominent member of the Senate would immediately be noticed. In this setting the usual expectation that a man and a political leader should rise above his personal concerns had a real urgency to it. Atticus had already written words to this effect, as had Brutus in the letter mentioned here. Brutus’ letter, and to some extent those of Atticus, belonged to the genre of the consolatio or consolatory epistle, the elaborate Roman notion of a note of condolence. We might expect such notes to be exempt from political pressures, but that was not the case at Rome. A recent study by Amanda Wilcox highlights the eristic rhetoric such letters could employ as writers and recipients negotiated their relative status in the hierarchy of virtus.18 Cicero later 15

16 17 18

Ad Atticum 12.15: apud Appuleium, quoniam in perpetuum non placet, in dies ut excuser videbis. in hac solitudine careo omnium conloquio, cumque mane me in silvam abstrusi densam et asperam, non exeo inde ante vesperum. secundum te nihil est mihi amicius solitudine. in ea mihi omnis sermo est cum litteris. eum tamen interpellat fletus; cui repugno quoad possum, sed adhuc pares non sumus. Bruto ut suades, rescribam. eas litteras cras habebis. cum erit cui des, dabis. Translation by Shackleton Bailey 1966. Circumstances in Griffin 1997, 8– 14, Mitchell 1991, 282–288. Evidence on this point is collected in Treggiari 1998. Ad Atticum 12.13.2, 12.15. Examples include Ad familiares 5.16, Ad Brutum 17, Ad familiares 4.5 from Sulpicius, 5.14 from Lucceius (but cf. the alternative view of Shackleton Bailey ad. loc.); others are often mentioned, notably Ad Atticum 12.13.1 from Brutus. Frequently also for political disappointments, e.g. Ad familiares 4.3 to Sulpicius, 4.13 to Nigidius Figulus, 6.1 to Torquatus. See Wilcox 2012, 40–63; Wilcox 2005; Hutchinson 1998, 59–77; for the philosophical tradition Graver 2002, 187–194.

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described Brutus’ letter as ungentle, obiurgatoria: it can only have chastised Cicero for unmanly conduct, mere days after his bereavement.19 Atticus’ own several letters not only urged a show of fortitude but reminded Cicero pointedly of the notice his behavior was attracting in the city.20 One should remember that however close the friendship was between Atticus and Cicero, Atticus was also frequently in company with supporters of Caesar: when Cicero writes to him of ‘your friends’, he means Balbus and Oppius.21 It was in this context that Cicero took the unprecedented step of composing a consolatory letter to himself on the occasion of his own bereavement. The rhetoric of this document must have been extraordinary. We don’t have the text, but the fragments and reports make it clear that this was a formal work of some erudition, intended for circulation and in fact circulated, probably before the end of March.22 In it, Cicero presented himself to his readers in two roles simultaneously, as the bereaved sufferer and as the eloquent friend who supplies all the arguments of philosophy, history, and common sense that might have efficacy against that grief. He thus provided Romans with an interestingly layered self-portrait: on the one hand, he advertised the fact of his emotional debility, answering the questions about his inopportune absence from public business; on the other, he dramatized his conquest of grief, answering to the cultural imperative in favor of strength and self-mastery. More obliquely, he provided evidence that grief had in fact been mastered in the disciplined elegance of his language and in the sheer rapidity with which he produced the work. Yet even as he gave this demonstration to the reading public, Cicero still had need to convince his closest associates that in fact his grief had not been mastered. As that momentous spring advanced, Cicero’s continued absence from the city was becoming increasingly awkward. A long letter from Servius Sulpicius Rufus leans heavily on Cicero’s commitment to public service. More specifically, it spells out the implications that some would be likely to draw from Cicero’s having exceeded the conventional period of mourning: And then, since in the pass to which we have come we must not disregard even this aspect, do not let anyone suppose that it is not so much a daughter you are mourning as the public predicament and the victory of others. I am ashamed to write at greater length to you on this mat23 ter, lest I seem to doubt your good sense.

19 20 21 22

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Ad Atticum 13.6.3; cf. Ad Brutum 1.9.1. Atticus in Ad Atticum 12.20.1, 12.38a.1. ‘Your friends’ is Shackleton Bailey’s rendering for isti in Ad Atticum 13.1.3; 13.27.1 (both May 45); compare 12.4.2 tui convivae (May 46). Ad Atticum 12.14.3–4 (copies being made on March 6), 12.18.2, 12.20.2 (fact-checking); the work is quoted and/or mentioned as a circulated work in Tusculanae disputationes 1.66, 3.70, 3.75–76, 4.63; De divinatione 2.3. Ad familiares 4.5.6 (SB 248): Denique, quoniam in eam fortunam devenimus, ut etiam huic rei nobis serviendum sit, noli committere, ut quisquam te putet non tam filiam quam rei publicae tempora et aliorum victoriam lugere. Plura me ad te de hac re scribere pudet, ne videar

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What exactly Sulpicius means depends in part on the date assigned to the letter. Bailey puts it in mid-March, but only as a terminus post quem to allow for news of Tullia’s death to reach Sulpicius in Greece. If Sulpicius knows already about Caesar’s victory at Munda, or even if he anticipates that victory, his words are extremely pointed. He means that if Cicero fails to appear in Rome for the celebration, he risks giving the dangerous impression that his withdrawal from public life is a gesture of disaffection. By the time the letter reached Cicero’s villa at Astura, the implication was there to be drawn in any case. Atticus will have made the same point in his letters, and Cicero’s old friend Lucius Lucceius says something similar, when he writes not long afterward of how Cicero’s absence is actually doubling his problems. With these pressures acting upon him, it was quite prudent of Cicero to insist to Atticus and to all of these friends that in fact his grief for Tullia was still extreme and inconsolable.24 If he could convince these close associates that his delay was owing to personal rather than political griefs, they would convince others, and Cicero would have the time he wanted for grieving, or for writing, or for planning his next move. 3 CAESAR OUT OF BOUNDS: THE SORROWS OF TUSCULUM Let’s now move forward another five months, to late summer of 45 and the composition of the five Tusculan Disputations. This time, Cicero’s gesture toward his own emotional weakness has substantial philosophical context. Books 3 and 4 of the treatise offer a lengthy and rather technical analysis of the causation of occurrent emotions, treating first grief and then all types of emotion including grief. For the most part, the argumentation is modeled on that of the Stoic Chrysippus of Soli, insisting that emotions of the kind with which we are familiar are inherently wrong, because they are causally dependent on false beliefs about the value of externals. Within the lecture format of this work, quite different from that of the Academica and the De Finibus, Cicero allows his authorial figure to advocate quite forcefully for this position, with only brief reminders of his usual Academic stance. At two points, however, he intervenes in his essentially Stoic discussion with references to his personal experience of grief as addressed in the Consolatio Sui: at Book 3, sections 75–76 and again at Book 4 section 63, both in the context of strategies for consolation. As the rhetoric is essentially the same in both instances, I treat here only the Book 4 passage. Cicero writes, But the means of calming distress have been explained already, both in yesterday’s discussion and in my Consolation, which I composed in the midst of sorrow and pain, not being a wise person myself. I did what Chrysippus says one should not do: applied a remedy to the mind’s

24

prudentiae tuae diffidere. Translation in Shackleton Bailey 1977, vol. 2; the discussion of its date is in Shackleton Bailey 1977, vol. 2, 415. Ad familiares 4.6 to Sulpicius (mid-April), Ad Atticum 12.38a, 12.40, 12.41 (early May); 5.15 to Lucceius (early May).

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swelling while it was still fresh. I brought the force of nature to bear upon it, so that my great 25 pain would give way to the greatness of the medicine.

The reference to his earlier work puts Cicero as author in an interesting relation to his present argument. One of Chrysippus’ recommendations for the therapy of grief had been that one should refrain from talking to the sufferer until some time has passed. This is troped both in Cicero’s Latin and in our principal Greek sources as ‘allowing the swelling to subside’.26 The Consolatio Sui, circulated so soon after Tullia’s death, declined to follow this recommendation, and yet was effective: ‘so that my great pain would give way to the greatness of the medicine’. Cicero’s earlier venture in self-consolation thus presents a contradiction to the Stoic material he is expounding. Now, for those who want to read the Tusculan Disputations as a kind of selfdirected therapy, Cicero working through his feelings for Tullia and for his loss of political power, this reference to the Consolatio Sui is an important exhibit. But should we in fact read the passage in that way? To my mind, the point is quite different. Cicero does not project any present emotional turmoil in the way he did in the previous two examples. He speaks of his grief now as a thing of the past, as a great enemy but one he has conquered. He offers the world an image of his present self as a man healed through his own devices, in control of every argument philosophy can supply and able to purvey that powerful medicine to others. In fact, he is better at this task than the Greek philosophers he has read: he can critique their methods, and he can succeed at a task the supreme Stoic philosopher thought impossible. With that said, this is still a kind of emotional display. Cicero does make a point of reminding his readers of his personal emotional experience, and he does speak of that experience as having been extremely painful. Why mention those feelings at all? One answer might be that having circulated the Consolatio Sui, Cicero felt he needed to acknowledge its existence, so that it would not seem to undermine his present point about the available methods of consolation. But the reference also makes a positive contribution to the argument of the Tusculan Disputations. It will be remembered that in the Pro Murena, Cicero appears to have set up a display of his own pity in opposition to the rigid and unrealistic Stoicism 25

26

Tusculanae disputationes 4.63: Etsi aegritudinis sedatio et hesterna disputatione explicata est et in Consolationis libro, quem in medio – non enim sapientes eramus – maerore et dolore conscripsimus; quodque vetat Chrysippus, ad recentis quasi tumores animi remedium adhibere, id nos fecimus naturaeque vim attulimus, ut magnitudini medicinae doloris magnitudo concederet. Translation in Graver 2002. Compare Tusculanae disputationes 3.75–76: Sunt etiam qui haec omnia genera consolando colligant – alius enim alio modo movetur – ut fere nos in Consolatione omnia in consolationem unam coniecimus; erat enim in tumore animus, et omnis in eo temptabatur curatio. Cicero’s tumor in this context corresponds to what Chrysippus in his treatise On Emotions calls phlegmonē or ‘inflammation’ (apud Galen, PHP 4.7.26–27 = SVF 3.467; Origen, Against Celsus 8.51 = SVF 3.474). The metaphor is also a commonplace of the consolatory tradition: ps-Plutarch, Consolatio ad Apollonium 102a–b. See Graver 2002, 123, 189f, 205.

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of his opponent Cato. Here we have a similar interaction between emotional display and philosophical argument, but working in the opposite direction. The detailed account of the Stoic position has sought to show that the Stoics have good reasons for seeking to eliminate the emotions, that their view is well argued, can handle all the usual objections, and is psychologically realistic. Within this project it is quite useful to Cicero to be able to refer to a real-life emotional crisis and to claim from a first-personal perspective, as it were, that the consolations of philosophy are efficacious. Moreover the somewhat heroic self-positioning that puts Cicero’s own consolation above and beyond the recommendation of Chrysippus tends a fortiori to make the Stoic approach appealing to the ordinary person. If the fortitude of Cicero himself seems unattainable, one can still follow the advice of Chrysippus, which seems quite reasonable by comparison. We thus have a way to read Cicero’s display of grief in relation to the philosophical argument conveyed in his work. We are not finished, however. Remembering the political tensions of the period following Tullia’s death, it is reasonable also to consider whether this backward glance at Cicero’s period of mourning might not convey a message to the current political regime. We know that the Caesarians were deeply interested in Cicero’s literary activities in this period and were in contact with him about them. Caesar’s lieutenants Hirtius and Pansa had practiced disputation with Cicero at his villa the previous summer; as Ingo Gildenhard points out, the setting and format of the Tusculan Disputations seem to refer to that rather uncomfortable teacher-student relationship.27 Then during the summer of 45, Cicero had been engaged in a series of tight-lipped negotiations with the Caesarians about his writings. His eulogy for Cato had certainly attracted their attention; first Hirtius and then Caesar himself had circulated pamphlets meant to refute it.28 Then in early summer, with urging from Atticus and Brutus, Cicero had drafted a short work addressed to Caesar in the format of the Hellenistic ‘letters to princes’. The draft had been shown to Oppius and Balbus and revisions suggested, but these were revisions Cicero was unwilling to make, and the matter was dropped.29 Later in the summer, however, Cicero received one more letter of consolation, this time from Caesar’s own pen.30 It seems that Caesar still wanted Cicero to write something in his honor, for just one week later, Brutus appeared at Cicero’s villa with exactly that suggestion. This was just as Cicero was beginning to plan the Tusculans, so that it would have been convenient for him to address that work to the dictator; but again, this was a gesture he did not wish to make, and the work was given instead to Brutus himself.31 Further com27 28

29 30 31

Ad familiares 9.16.7, 7.33.1; Gildenhard 2007. Cicero’s anxiety about the Cato is evident already in summer and fall of 46 (Ad Atticum 12.4.2, 12.5.2, Orator 35). The matter is still very much a concern in May of 45 (Ad Atticum 12.40.1, 12.41.4, 12.44.1). The work was referred to in Greek as the Sumbouleutikon: Ad Atticum 12.40.2, 13.26.2, 13.1.3, 13.27.1, 13.28.2–3, 13.31.3 (all in May of 45). Ad Atticum 13.20.1. Ad Atticum 13.44.1.

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munication took place in August, again about the Cato pamphlets. This was outwardly cordial, with the two authors complimenting one another’s style – but of course the compliments did nothing to mask the realities of the situation.32 Let us try then to read the grief of the Tusculans within the context of these mutually uncompromising negotiations, considering first the passage from Book 4 and then the more generally consolatory or self-consolatory nature of the work. As to the Book 4 passage, surely we ought to read it against Caesar’s letter of consolation and of a piece with the dedication to Brutus rather than to Caesar. Brutus had already received the dedications of four Ciceronian treatises; he didn’t need another. But even if Cicero was unwilling to honor Caesar with a work of this nature, he could still have balanced that refusal with some kind of reference to Caesar’s effort at consolation, here at the point in his work where it would have been appropriate. He could have observed, conventionally and in accordance with Chrysippus’ views, that it is advantageous for the consolatio to arrive after a lapse of time (like five months). He could have remarked on how wonderful it is to have words of comfort spoken by great leaders who pardon the vanquished and reinvent the calendar. But he does not say any of those things. Instead, he refers back to his own work of consolation, speaking of it as premature and yet effective. There is nothing openly defiant in this, but when the full story is known, the note of obstinacy is evident. That same note of obstinacy can also be heard in the Tusculan Disputations as a whole, when we consider how Cicero’s choice of themes projects a larger narrative of grief and consolation with himself as the protagonist. The point of that narrative comes clear finally in a scalding passage in Book 5. What benefit it might bring to others I cannot very well say; but for my own very bitter sorrows, sorrows of many kinds assailing me from every side, there was no other consolation to 33 be found.

Coming from the author of the Consolatio Sui, it is inevitable that these words will be referred to the author’s personal bereavement and recovery process. But the frame has now been broadened. The words ‘sorrows of many kinds assailing me from every side’ cannot refer merely to a singular and private misfortune. Spoken thus and within the formal and public venue of utterance, they transform the story of Cicero’s grief as a father into that of his grief as a public figure. It is as if he had erected a statue of himself in grieving posture right in the middle of the Forum. The message, then, is that Cicero the statesman has experienced ills for which Caesar has not provided any consolation, which can only be consoled by philosophy – and that would now be Stoic philosophy – and that would be Cato’s philosophy.

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Ad Atticum 13.46.2, 13.50.1, 13.51.1. Tusculanae disputationes 5.121: Quantum ceteris profuturi sumus non facile dixerim, nostris quidem acerbissimis doloribus variisque et undique circumfusis molestiis alia nulla potuit inveniri levatio.

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BIBLIOGRAPHY Baraz, Y. (2012) A Written Republic: Cicero’s Philosophical Politics, Princeton. Craig, Chr. P. (1986) Cato’s Stoicism and the Understanding of Cicero’s Speech for Murena, Transactions of the American Philological Association 116, 229–239. Erskine, A. (1997) Cicero and the Expression of Grief, in S. Braund and C. Gill (eds.), The Passions in Roman Thought and Literature, Cambridge, 36–47. Fortenbaugh, W. (2005) Cicero as a Reporter of Aristotelian and Theophrastean Rhetorical Doctrine, Rhetorica 23, 37–64. Gelzer, M. (1968) Caesar: Politician and Statesman, 6th ed., Cambridge MA. Gildenhard, I. (2007) Paideia Romana: Cicero’s Tusculan Disputations, Cambridge. Graver, M. (2002) Cicero on the Emotions: Tusculan Disputations 3 and 4, Chicago. Griffin, M. (1997) The Composition of the Academica: Motives and Versions, in B. Inwood and J. Mansfield (eds.), Assent and Argument: Studies in Cicero’s Academic Books, 1–35. Leiden. Hutchinson, G. O. (1998) Cicero’s Correspondence: A Literary Study, Oxford. Leeman, A. D. (1982) The Technique of Persuasion in Cicero’s Pro Murena, in W. Ludwig (ed.), Éloquence et rhétorique chez Cicéron (Entretiens Hardt), Geneva, 193–236. Lefèvre, E. (2009) Philosophie unter der Tyrannis: Ciceros Tusculanae Disputationes, Heidelberg. MacDonald, C. (1977) Cicero: In Catilinam I–IV; Pro Murena; Pro Sulla; Pro Flacco, Cambridge MA. MacKendrick, P. (1989) The Philosophical Books of Cicero, New York. Mitchell, T. N. (1991) Cicero: The Senior Statesman, New Haven. Roller, M. (2004) Exemplarity in Roman Culture: The Cases of Horatius Cocles and Cloelia, Classical Philology 99, 1–56. Shackleton Bailey, D. R., ed. (1977) Cicero: Epistulae ad familiares, 2 vols, Cambridge. ––– ed. (1966) Cicero’s Letters to Atticus, vol. 5, Cambridge. Solmsen, F. (1938) Aristotle and Cicero on the Orator’s Playing upon the Feelings, Classical Philology 33, 391–404. Repr. in F. Solmsen (1982), Kleine Schriften, Hildesheim, 216–230. Treggiari, S. (1998) Home and Forum: Cicero between ‘Public’ and ‘Private’, Transactions of the American Philological Association 128, 1–23. White, S. (1995) Cicero and the Therapists, in J. G. F. Powell (ed.), Cicero the Philosopher: Twelve Papers, Oxford, 219–246. Wilcox, A. (2012) The Gift of Correspondence in Classical Rome: Friendship in Cicero’s Ad Familiares and Seneca’s Moral Epistles, Wisconsin. ––– (2005) Paternal Grief and the Public Eye: Cicero Ad Familiares 4.6. Phoenix 59, 267–285. Wisse, J. (1989) Ethos and Pathos from Aristotle to Cicero, Amsterdam.

THE VAGARIES OF HOPE IN VERGIL AND OVID1 Laurel Fulkerson ‘Hope is a waking dream’, says Aristotle (at least according to Diogenes Laertius, Vitae Philosophorum 5.18.3), and, although most of us in the modern world have been taught to see hope as significantly more positive than that, as being the thing that will ultimately help us to prevail over present hardships or imaginatively plan for future good, it is my goal here to begin making the case that Aristotle’s notion captures well the ancient intuition that hope is, at best, a double-edged sword. Rather than attempting in this small compass to treat hope fully, I instead offer two soundings from Roman poetry, of two roughly contemporary authors in the same genre, but with rather different viewpoints about most things. Before this, I offer a definition, and then briefly examine the question of whether hope is properly to be considered one of the emotions (it is less controversial than some potential emotions, but there is certainly room for debate). I then explore some of the terrain covered by spes and spero in the Aeneid and the Metamorphoses. My choice of these authors is deliberate: while Vergil is much more regularly considered to be philosophical than Ovid is, I do not imagine that either of them had any particular message to convey about hope, nor even that they thought about it very much; similarly, Roman poetry is not the obvious place to look for a history of mentalité. My aim is rather to begin sketching out a layman’s theory of what spes is and does in two poets of the Augustan period. Vergil’s Aeneid is a poem with a roughly linear trajectory: the hero Aeneas undergoes various trials and tribulations, some foreseen and some unforeseen, and eventually makes it to a new land, where the future is bright (if somewhat clouded). Ovid’s Metamorphoses is a primarily non-linear poem in which lots of terrible things happen, and a few good ones, almost all of them unexpected. In both poems, the hopes of many are frustrated, and of a few, realized. This chapter attempts to draw the strands of hope in the two poets together, drawing some larger conclusions from the uses of spes in these poems and showing, in particular, how hope of various sorts functions in an extended narrative context.2 1

2

I offer here many thanks to the editors of this volume for the invitation to speak at the conference at which it originated, to my hosts in Geneva for their generous hospitality, and to the audience and speakers for stimulating questions and discussion. This is, of course, not the place to discuss the role of the goddess Spes in Augustan thought and iconography; for entry into the bibliography, see Fears 1981, Clark 1983, and LIMC s.v. spes.

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First, to outline the semantic range of hope (or rather, the Latin words spero and spes): like any good Latinist, I start with Greek. Elpis and elpizō, the Greek equivalents of spes and spero, carry a pretty broad semantic range: they can mean hope, but also things more like expect, or even think; they can also be used for things one believes might happen but does not want to happen (i.e., they can be roughly equivalent to the English ‘fear’), or even for things one feels fairly secure about (i.e, they can mean ‘confidence’). That said, the notion seems to be profoundly ambiguous from the start: the noun first appears, of course, in Hesiod, in conjunction with Pandora’s jar, Opera et dies 96 where it is seemingly classed with the evils – but that passage itself is by no means easy to interpret.3 Essentially, the question there centers around why, when Pandora opens the pithos and all of the evils fly out of it into the world to punish humanity, elpis remains inside. Many have argued that its presence inside the pithos mirrors its presence in us, but it is unclear whether this is a boon or a further punishment (i.e. does human elpis mitigate the other evils, or make them even worse?). Perhaps the most important part of the problem is its ambiguity; we seem to have one noun with two aspects (this may be something like Hesiod’s good and bad eris). Sometimes, hope is all people have and it helps them to soldier on through difficulties. But at other times, it simply prolongs human agony; recognizing that things are not going to get better on their own may be the first necessary step to ameliorating them yourself. Note that elpis has already become rather complicated, including, especially, the fact that its status depends on the reality of the situation. And any Greek could tell you that human beings are not nearly as competent as they think they are at judging reality. I take one other quick Hellenic sounding: in Thucydides elpis tends to be a marker of how bad things really are. Take, for instance, the pithy statement at 4.108.4: εἰωθότες οἱ ἄνθρωποι οὗ µὲν ἐπιθυµοῦσιν ἐλπίδι ἀπερισκέπτῳ διδόναι, ὃ δὲ µὴ προσίενται λογισµῷ αὐτοκράτορι διωθεῖσθαι. Men are wont to entrust what they desire to unreflecting hope, and to push aside with sover4 eign reason what they do not want.

Earlier in the narrative, the Corinthians had characterized the Athenians as euelpides (1.70.3): this might have seemed like a good thing, as it made them resilient, but as the war, and the narrative, continue, and especially in the Mytilenean debate and the Sicilian expedition, we begin to see that hope regularly leads people to behave rashly because it impedes their perceptions of reality.5 At the 3

4 5

The bibliography on this controversial passage is vast; see West 1978 and Verdenius 1985 ad loc. The discussion continues at Adams 1932, Kerschensteiner 1944, Greene 1945, Schrijen 1965, 16–41, Neitzel 1976, Noica 1984, and Komornicka 1990. Translations throughout are my own. Interestingly, Thucydides’ statement fits in well with the modern notion of the confirmation bias, wherein people tend to find more plausible evidence that supports already-held theories, and to discount as implausible that which does not.

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same time, there are narrative voices in the History that also emphasize hope’s potential to save the day, when it is buttressed by careful planning (and a good amount of luck); while hopeful individuals and city-states sometimes make terrible mistakes of judgement, those without hope never prevail. Spes is, it seems, similarly double-edged, as is suggested by the fascinating sixty-six line elegiac poem De Spe, which comes to us as part of the Senecan corpus and details the myriad ways in which hope deceives people into continuing on in situations they ought to find intolerable. But here again, that is only one side of the picture. As with many emotions described in narrative contexts, elpis and spes often serve as an index of the story as a whole. You can tell a lot about characters in a story (and perhaps also in real life) by what they hope, and whether their hopes are fulfilled. Perhaps not surprisingly, it is often the case that those who are favored by the narrator tend to hope for things they deserve, and so they get them. And villains regularly have their hopes dashed. My first point, which may or may not be controversial, is that in narrative contexts, hope functions as a kind of road-marker, helping us to figure out where we are going. Hope sometimes foreshadows things that will happen, or alternatively, it points away from the story, raising expectations in the reader soon to be dashed.6 The emotion of hope is, of course, more complicated, and certainly more interesting, than this, especially in Ovid, but for the purposes of this study, we will focus primarily on its narrative role. Before discussing Vergil and Ovid, I also want to address, briefly, the question of whether hope and its ancient equivalents are in fact emotions. There are certainly cases that make the question a legitimate one, especially when hope involves an accurate assessment of reality. So, for instance, we might say that I have good hopes of being able to conquer my enemies because my forces and position are vastly superior – and here, we might simply be saying that it seems – i.e., it would also seem to any reasonable observer – fairly likely that I will conquer them. At the same time, and crucially, my own assessment of reality is in part colored by emotion: I ‘have good hopes’ not only because I think that I am likely to conquer, but because I want to do so. I might, however, also have good hopes although my forces and position are not vastly superior, because I really want to conquer, and I know that the troops want to do so, or because I know that if we lose our city will be destroyed, or even because I have misjudged or been misinformed about the situation and believe I cannot lose. And, of course, the other side may also have hopes, which may derive from good reasons, e.g. that they have set an ambush, or expect reinforcements at any moment, or they may not. And one’s perception of reality in turn colours one’s emotions: if I think I have no real chance of winning, it is difficult to be hopeful. In part because of its inherent unpredictability and innumerable complicating factors, war is a situation in which all

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On techniques used by epic poets for foreshadowing, see Duckworth 1933, 6–27 (20–22 on hope and fear), and on false foreshadowing, 113f.

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parties involved, however implausibly, might feel hope, and this is reflected by its frequency in ancient sources in battle contexts. Conversely, hope may seem more like an emotion and less like a thought the more improbable its object of fulfillment (I’m hoping to win the race next week, although I haven’t really trained for it), and this slippage is important, as it helps to explain the negative aspects of the ancient assessment of it. Where a modern thinker sees hope as useful in inculcating perseverance in difficult circumstances, ancient Greeks and Romans seem more likely to see hope as deriving from false belief, and so as impeding an accurate understanding of the world. But hope cannot automatically be deemed unrealistic simply because it is unfulfilled, or viceversa: as every human being knows, the most plausible and successful-seeming plans can be thwarted by circumstance, and the pleasing narrative in which an underdog beats the odds does actually occur in real life. The disjunction between expectation and reality, in fact, is what creates much of the drama of human existence, and the emotional aspects of that gap are well worth further attention. Aristotle’s brief but illustrative discussions of elpis suggest that it is, at least some of the time, close enough to an emotion to be considered one.7 The extremely frequent occurrence of spes and metus together, as alternative choices, throughout Latin literature, suggests that Romans too would not have found it preposterous to think of spes as an emotion.8 It is even possible to come up with an Aristotelian-type schema for hope (although no such thing appears in Aristotle): if pain and pleasure are the emotions associated with present evil and good, and fear and joy are associated with future evil and good, then worry and hope are associated

7

8

Aristotle discusses elpis in a variety of contexts: in addition to the ‘Dutch courage’ variety brought by alcohol (Ethica Eudemia 1229a18–20, Nicomachean Ethics 1117a15, Problems 955a1–5), he points out that the truly brave man remains courageous even without hope in a shipwreck, whereas sailors are hopeful merely because of experience (Nicomachean Ethics 1115b3; see further discussion through 1117), notes that good men have good hopes for the future, and wicked have the expectation of further bad deeds (Nicomachean Ethics 1166a–b; elpis is regularly connected by Aristotle to tharros), points out that pleasures such as smell, memory and hope have no corresponding pain (Nicomachean Ethics 1173b19), observes that the female of every species is less courageous and more inclined to despair (duselpi) than the male (History of Animals 608b12) and that cold climates tend to produce hopeful individuals (Problems 910a31), while youth makes people more hopeful (Rhetoric 1389a–1390a), speculates that a science of expectation (elpistikē) could exist (De memoria 449b11–12), and defines aretē as concerned with bodily pains and pleasures, either in the present, or in the past, or in expectation (elpis, Physics 247a9–13; cf. further discussion of past and future pleasures at Rhetoric 1370a–b). He also notes that things people want tend to seem more plausible to them (Rhetoric 1378a3), the point made above by Thucydides, and identifies a category of reasonable or justifiable hope (elpidi epieikei, Rhetoric 1380b5). So Aristotle, while never defining hope as an emotion, is clearly willing to grant it a related status, and to treat it as if it is one. See too Leighton 1988, 96f. on the subject of hope in Aristotle. The issue is less clear in Latin, because it does not contain as much discussion of emotions as emotions. But fear is usually considered to be one of the very most basic emotions, present in all humans; so its co-presence with hope suggests that we may think of the two as analogous.

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with the potential of future evil and good.9 One of the particular difficulties of hope – namely, that of deciding whether and when it is ‘reasonable’ or ‘justifiable’, is also applicable to fear, though there seems to be somewhat less attention to baseless fears than to baseless hopes in ancient literature as a whole. Furthermore, it is tempting to base our judgements about whether hope and fear are appropriate on the result (irrational fears are those which do not come about; well-founded hopes are those which come true) – but this is to prejudice the inquiry. In any case, hope is similar enough to an emotion, if it is not actually one, that the theoretical models developed for the study of the emotions in antiquity can usefully be deployed in examining it. 1 VERGIL’S AENEID The Aeneid is, among other things, a poem about the founding of Rome, but it casts that past event into the future, and so hope plays a significant role in the epic: throughout the narrative, spes is a primary marker of Rome’s future glory, focalized in a number of different ways and with a number of different effects. The first appearance of spes in the poem comes early, and is characteristic of one of its primary roles:10 Aeneas is putting a good show on for his men, pretending that he believes they are better off than he really thinks they are (1.208–209): Talia uoce refert curisque ingentibus aeger spem vultu simulat he said these words, sick with massive distress but feigning hope on his face.

In this context, spes seems to be a good thing, even though (perhaps because) it is false; it encourages the men to go on. And it makes up, at least in part, for Aeneas’ outburst during the storm (1.94–102), which, at least implicitly, suggested despair. The picture offered is one of a good leader, who motivates his followers toward their shared goal. But, as O’Hara 1990 points out, this is a disturbing moment precisely because Aeneas does not really believe that they have a chance; he is deliberately misleading his men. Readers know it will all work out, so raising false hope may be justified here by the result – indeed, perhaps it even helps to bring about the result. At the same time, the fact that the first use of hope is deceptive raises troubling questions about the role spes will play in the poem. Aeneas receives a series of prophecies about the Trojan future in Italy which, as O’Hara has noted, regularly leave out important information. Not all of his ‘deceptive prophecies’ center on spes, but a good number do. O’Hara’s work is much

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As Bill Fortenbaugh points out to me, Aristotle may not treat elpis as an emotion precisely because he does not see it as intrinsically tied to action (and this may also help to provide an explanation for why ancient authors are suspicious of it). The noun spes is more frequent than the verb spero, 46:22. It is perhaps noteworthy that the verbs cluster around Dido and Aeneas.

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more detailed than I can be here, and has a different emphasis.11 But one of his most important points for our purposes is that the net result of prophetic omissions and misdirections is to manipulate Aeneas’ emotions in order to keep him focused on his mission in spite of himself: he is hopeful where he should be wary, and despairing just where things are, in fact, not so bad. This is well beyond the delusive capacity of human beings to hope for what they want, for Aeneas is regularly misled, and becomes almost a plaything of the gods. The second appearance of spes in the poem occurs at 1.217–221: amissos longo socios sermone requirunt, spemque metumque inter dubii, seu uiuere credant siue extrema pati nec iam exaudire uocatos [Aeneas’ men] yearn for their comrades in long conversation, hesitating between hope and fear, whether they should believe them alive or suffering the end and no longer hearing their names called.

It will turn out that they are nearly all alive; we might believe that the hope is therefore justified (or at least, more justified than their fear), but in fact, both make sense within the narrative context of the poem, which will bear witness to vast quantities of suffering and death. This use of spes is particularly vague, but also resonates with real life, since the future will bring, for pretty much everybody in the poem (let alone out of it), both things to hope for and things to fear, in some admixture – and the important details of how much of each, and when, are normally unknown. As with the prophecies that focus only on the positive, omitting the negative, hope misleadingly provides only a part of the full story (and, incidentally, heightens the narrative tension, resolved when we discover that the men are alive). On the other hand, in Book 7, a chance remark by Iulus reminds Aeneas of a prophecy delivered by his father (7.124–126): cum te, nate, fames ignota ad litora uectum accisis coget dapibus consumere mensas, tum sperare domos defessus. Son, when hunger forces you, carried to an unknown shore, to eat your tables because of a shortage of food then, worn out, hope for a home.

When it happens, this is not nearly as bad as it seemed; the incident is instantiated in the first historically recorded open-faced sandwich. Sometimes hope is even more ominous, as when Dido’s brother killed her husband Sychaeus (1.351f.): factumque diu celauit et aegram multa malus simulans uana spe lusit amantem

11

See especially his remarks about Aeneid 1.208f. on p. 8f., on 1.261–290 at p. 135, on 1.450– 452 at p. 36f., on 3.254–257 at p. 25f., on 4.477 at p. 136f., on 9.131 at p. 75, and on 11.49– 52 at p. 48. For Aeneas, the poem is a series of ‘cycles of hope followed by disappointment, followed by divine or other encouragement that leads to renewed hope’ (1990, 61). For thorough discussion of the prophecies of the Aeneid, see Moore 1921, 133–142.

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He hid the deed for a long time, and wicked man, pretending much, cheated the lovesick woman by an empty hope.

Here there is no positive future: Dido has been deceived by the hope encouraged by her brother. So too, when she welcomes Aeneas into Carthage (1.451f.): primum Aeneas sperare salute ausus et adflictis melius confidere rebus Aeneas first dared to hope for safety, and to trust in better things despite his damaged fortunes.

This hope is at first manifested, but only in the short term, and it brings terrible consequences for Dido and for Roman history. Ilioneus offers the suggestion that the gods care about human life, delivering the menacing warning (1.543f.): si genus humanum et mortalia temnitis arma, at sperate deos memores fandi atque nefandi If you think light of offending against the race of men and mortal arms, still, expect the gods to be mindful of right and wrong.

Here again, this is a pleasing enough sentiment, but we will be provided with ample evidence that the gods of this poem have only limited interest in right and wrong (see below, pp. 216f.). In Book 2, Sinon lyingly assures the Trojans (2.137, 2.162f.): nec mihi iam patriam antiquam spes ulla uidendi […] omnis spes Danaum et coepti fiducia belli Palladis auxiliis semper stetit. I have no hope now of seeing my old homeland. […] All the hope of the Greeks, and their trust in the war they began, lay in help from Pallas.

Pallas, he falsely claims, has turned against them. Finally, he says (2.169f.): ex illo fluere ac retro sublapsa referri spes Danaum From that time, the hope of the Greeks, ebbing, receded.

This deceptive use of spes is particularly sophisticated in its implicit irony: Sinon assures the Trojans that the Greeks have hoped for divine assistance in vain (thus providing an example, perhaps, of why it would be safer for the Trojans not to rely on hope – although this is not the lesson they gain from it). But his utterance, paradoxically, is also designed to encourage the Trojans to hope (again, in vain, although of course they do not know this). Here we see another troubling aspect of hope, in that one can deceptively inculcate it in another, to further one’s own ends. Turnus provides one of the poem’s main exemplars of deluded hope. First, in Book 9, the ships of the Trojans are turned back into nymphs. This might seem like a positive omen for them, but Turnus interprets it as follows (9.130f.): ergo maria inuia Teucris, nec spes ulla fugae And so, the seas are pathless for the Trojans, and they have no hope of flight.

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He concludes his speech, after noting that the Trojans have already been defeated (9.157f.): laeti bene gestis corpora rebus procurate, uiri, et pugnam sperate parari Be happy, men; refresh yourself after your deeds well done, and expect to prepare for war.

Later, Turnus misinterprets developments on the battlefield (10.647f.): tum uero Aenean auersum ut cedere Turnus credidit atque animo spem turbidus hausit inanem. Turnus thought Aeneas had yielded, and drank in this empty hope.

His misplaced hope in turn causes further misjudgements. In a speech to the Latins, he asserts (11.436f.): non adeo has exosa manus Victoria fugit ut tanta quicquam pro spe temptare recusem Victory has not so wholly fled from me that I refuse to dare anything for my hopes.

It is not long before (12.324f.): Turnus ut Aenean cedentem ex agmine uidit, turbatosque duces, subita spe feruidus ardet Turnus, when he saw Aeneas withdrawing, burned with a sudden hope.

This is, of course, the final, and fatal, delusion practiced upon Turnus. Here it is important not merely that Turnus has hopes that will be unfulfilled; their disappointment is central to the development of the narrative, creating and relieving tension in a number of ways (and this is true whether we ultimately sympathize with Turnus’ cause or not). Narratively speaking, the Aeneid’s misleading prophecies and signs get at the very nature and function of hope, which turns out to be an interpretive frame that we place around our guesses about the future. This is made all the clearer by the fact that so many of Aeneas’ hopes, as well as those of others in the poem, are either shown to be inappropriate or are fulfilled in unexpected ways. Some of this derives from the fact that Aeneas is misled by the gods, but some of it inheres in the nature of hope itself. Because hope focuses on future events, it cannot, by definition, have a secure basis. We can only try to compare present circumstances to other similar situations in the past, and engage in imaginative reconstruction. In a way less immediately obvious, but more pregnant for Roman history, Dido’s amatory hopes are also dangerous. First, her sister Anna (4.54f.): His dictis impenso animum flammauit amore spemque dedit dubiae menti She fanned the queen’s soul into lavish flame with her words, and put hope in her wavering mind.

Dubia mens, I think, gives us an important clue: Dido really does know better, at least partly. Interestingly, however, she does not hope alone: the queen’s hopes and expectations are interwoven with those attributed to Aeneas. When Jupiter sends Mercury to Aeneas to remind him that it is time to go, he says (4.235f.):

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aut qua spe inimica in gente moratur nec prolem Ausoniam et Lauinia respicit arua? With what hope does Aeneas tarry among a hostile people, and pay no attention to the race of Ausonia and Lavinian fields?

This is rephrased by Mercury in his speech to Aeneas (4.271): aut qua spe Libycis teris otia terris? With what hope do you waste your time in Libyan lands?

This almost sarcastic use of spes contributes to our understanding of Aeneas, who in fact clearly did hope that he was beginning a new life in Carthage, and did not conceive of himself as wasting time. He is told, once again, that he is wrong, and must therefore re-form his hopes. This interchange, of course, causes Aeneas to make plans to leave Carthage (4.291f.): optima Dido nesciat et tantos rumpi non speret amores Generous Dido does not know, nor expects the rupture, of so strong a love.

She discovers his plans and confronts him (4.305f.): dissimulare etiam sperasti, perfide, tantum posse nefas tacitusque mea decedere terra? Wretch, did you really hope to hide such a foul crime, and to succeed in leaving on the sly from my land?

Aeneas responds (4.337f.): neque ego hanc abscondere furto speraui (ne finge) fugam I did not expect – and do not think it – to hide my departure.

Dido, in turn, curses him (4.382–384): spero equidem mediis, si quid pia numina possunt, supplicia hausurum scopulis et nomine Dido saepe uocaturum I hope that, if the gods have any power, you will drink your punishment on the middle of the rocks, often calling Dido by name.

This, of course, precedes her more formal curse later. Dido then deceptively tells her sister (4.419f.): hunc ego si potui tantum sperare dolorem, et perferre, soror, potero. If I have been able to expect such a pain, sister, so too can I endure it.

With these words, and in the rest of her speech, we are told (4.477): maestam dictis adgressa sororem consilium uultu tegit ac spem fronte serenat She speaks to her mourning sister with an expression that hides her plan and wears serene hope on her face.

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Here, in fact, her behavior mirrors that of Aeneas in Book 1. The disappointed hopes of both parties to this ill-fated romance end, on the one side in loneliness and frustration, and on the other in suicide and a curse that brings the Punic wars. Dido’s immediate hope, however, that Aeneas will drown with her name on his lips, must go unfulfilled. As we will also see with Ovid, being mortal does not uniquely qualify one to have one’s hopes frustrated. Juno is the god in the poem most associated with hope, and her hopes are fated to be disappointed. Jupiter speaks to her thrice using the vocabulary of hope. On the first occasion, he explains (10.107f.): quae cuique est fortuna hodie, quam quisque secat spem, Tros Rutulusne fuat, nullo discrimine habebo Whatever is the fortune for each today, whatever hope each man follows, I will make no distinction.

Later in the same book, he tells her (10.625–627): sin altior istis sub precibus uenia ulla latet totumque moueri mutariue putas bellum, spes pascis inanis. If you think by your prayers to alter the war, you feed an empty hope.

She does, of course, hope for this, and in fact continues to interfere. Near the end of the poem, Jupiter obtains Juno’s final, semi-willing consent to the combination of Trojans and Latins to make the Roman people. Early in the speech, he asks her (12.796): aut qua spe gelidis in nubibus haeres? What hope do you cling to?

The goddess’ hope seems quite a lot like Aeneas’ in Carthage, fondly held but ultimately impossible. Venus, by contrast, seems to offer a more positive face of divine hope: while she claims to give up on her hopes for the future glory of the Romans, they are ultimately fulfilled (10.42f.): nil super imperio moueor. sperauimus ista, dum fortuna fuit I care nothing for empire. We hoped for that while fortune was.

As Juno discovers to her detriment, certain things are simply meant to be, and even her hopes of making what must come to be difficult are thwarted. This happens also on the human plane, as when Palinurus is warned by the Sibyl (6.376): desine fata deum flecti sperare precando Stop hoping that the fates of the gods can be turned aside by prayer.

He will not, cannot be buried – although she does promise him some recompense in the form of an empty tomb, cult offerings, and an eponymous promontory. But the gods, at least in this poem, are more often deceivers than deceived, and there are a number of additional deceptive messages from the gods that provoke hope. Aeneas makes a landing on Delos and visits the temple of Apollo. He asks for a divine sign, and immediately receives one: a voice commands him to

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seek his ancient mother, which will enable the ‘house of Aeneas’ to rule over all lands. Aeneas and his men are uncertain what to make of this, but his father Anchises interprets the prophecy (3.103): audite, o proceres, ait et spes discite uestras Hear, princes, and learn your hopes.

The men are to sail to Crete, which is gentis cunabula nostrae, the cradle of our race (105). This is all well and good, and it certainly cheers the men up, but Anchises is incorrect in his interpretation (as a dream soon informs Aeneas). The men eventually (and unexpectedly, insperata, 3.278) arrive at Buthrotum, where Helenus and Andromache rule. They then make landfall in Italy, and see four white horses. Anchises interprets this omen too: the horses will bring war (since horses are battle-animals), but there is perhaps hope of peace too, spes et pacis, (since horses are also used in farming, 3.543). For Anchises, the war seems certain, the peace less so. The interpretation of this omen is not precisely misleading in O’Hara’s sense, but it is somewhat lame as a prediction, since all wars eventually end in peace. And it is not at all clear how it is useful for Aeneas to know about this impending war so far in advance. There is a third significant kind of hope in the poem, introduced first in Book 1, that of the hope which future generations bring.12 This is a somewhat more neutral hope than many, insofar as it is not always explicitly assumed that offspring will improve upon their parents. In the poem, this sort of hope is for the most part focalized in two young characters, Aeneas’ son Ascanius/Iulus and Evander’s son Pallas. Its first appearance, also in the mouth of Iloneius, proclaims that Iulus is not the only potential future for the Trojans (1.556): [sin] nec spes iam restat Iuli If our hopes no longer live in Iulus...

But generally speaking, Iulus and Pallas are treated as the best, or only, recourse for their respective peoples.13 Mercury motivates Aeneas to leave Dido and Carthage by mentioning Ascanius (4.274f.): Ascanium surgentem et spes heredis Iuli respice Have regard for growing Ascanius, and the hopes of your heir Iulus.

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This kind of hope, the hope of continuance (also used in agricultural contexts) is probably most recognizable in Latin poetry from Vergil, Eclogues 1.15, where the goat gives birth on a rock and so destroys the spem gregis. Sometimes too, that hope is already destroyed, as when Aeneas addresses the dead Hector as o lux Dardaniae, spes o fidissima Teucrum (Light of the Dardanians, most faithful hope of the Trojans, 2.281). Here, of course, the Trojans are conceived of as beyond hope – as they will need to be in order to allow Aeneas to leave Troy. Thus the palace of Priam is described, along with quinquaginta illi thalami, spes tanta nepotum (The famous fifty chambers, the hope of descendants, 2.503).

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And Palinurus, dead and unburied, begs Aeneas to bury him by mention of his son (6.364): per genitorem oro, per spes surgentis Iuli By your father, by the hopes of growing Iulus I beg you, save this life.

After the death of Pallas, however, Aeneas is no longer a believer in the hopes which future generations bring: his response to the plea (10.524f.): per patrios manis et spes surgentis Iuli te precor, hanc animam serues gnatoque patrique By your father’s shades and by the hopes of growing Iulus, I beg you,

is to slaughter the suppliant Magus. Finally, Ascanius is reaffirmed as magnae spes altera Romae, (second hope of mighty Rome, 12.168). Pallas, on the other hand, embodies the poem’s worries about the problematic nature of placing hope in the young, the dark side of spes gregis. Evander entrusts his son to Aeneas with these words (8.514f.): hunc tibi praeterea, spes et solacia nostri, Pallanta adiungam I will give you too Pallas, our hope and comfort.

As he bids his son farewell for what will be the last time, Evander exclaims (8.579f.): o liceat crudelem abrumpere vitam, dum curae ambiguae, dum spes incerta futuri May I break the bonds of cruel life, while fears are unconfirmed, while hope does not know the future.

On the one hand, Evander’s fears seem unreasonable, or perhaps simply excessively cautious. But on the other, of course, Pallas will not return to his father, will not take over the kingdom of Arcadia. This betrayed hope is also put into Pallas’ mouth: urging the faltering Arcadians on, Pallas invokes his own hopes (10.370f.): per ducis Euandri nomen deuictaque bella spemque meam By the name of Evander, your victorious wars, my hopes just arising.

And then, shortly after Pallas’ death, Aeneas phrases Evander’s tragic situation as follows (11.49f.): et nunc ille quidem spe multum captus inani fors et uota facit cumulatque altaria donis, Evander, much taken in by empty hope, is perhaps offering incense at altars.

The poem gives similar attention to Euryalus, who asks his comrades (9.290f.): at tu, oro, solare inopem et succurre relictae. hanc sine me spem ferre tui I beg you, comfort my destitute mother and aid her when she is bereft; allow me to have this hope of you.

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And Marcellus provides a contemporary example of the frustration of the hopes we place in youth (6.875f.): nec puer Iliaca quisquam de gente Latinos in tantum spe tollet auos No Trojan youth will ever raise his Latin ancestry so high in hope.

The problem of assuring the future by means of one’s offspring is, of course, a main concern of Augustus during the period in which the Aeneid was written. And we ought not to overlook the ways Turnus’ youth and promise are also ultimately frustrated. This appears in terms of spes only where Amata, not ready to give up, beseeches Turnus with these words (12.56–58): Turne, per has ego te lacrimas, per si quis Amatae tangit honos animum: spes tu nunc una, senectae tu requies miserae, decus imperiumque Latini Turnus, by these tears, by any honor that touches you for the soul of Amata, I beg you: you are now my sole hope, you my reprieve in wretched old age, you the glory and rule of Latinus.

As with other kinds of hope, the hope that one’s descendants will prosper, or even continue the family name, sometimes becomes reality and sometimes does not. On the one hand, the Aeneid is a poem very concerned with the human cost of war, so it is not surprising that many young men die. On the other hand, it is also a poem concerned with the destiny of Rome, which cannot happen if all of the young men die. So Pallas dies, but Ascanius does not. It may be tempting to see the death of Pallas as a kind of displacement of the death of Ascanius, or even Aeneas; recent scholarship has had much to contribute to our understanding of the complex ways death in this poem functions.14 Finally, war brings its own kind of hope. So Turnus, catching up to the fleeing Lycus, exclaims (9.560f.): nostrasne euadere, demens, sperasti te posse manus? Fool, did you hope to evade my hands?

Whether he did or not, Lycus is soon despatched. Hisbo, for his part, hoping to surprise Pallas from above, does not succeed (10.384f.): quem non super occupat Hisbo, ille quidem hoc sperans; nam Pallas ante ruentem, Whom Hisbo, hoping, did not take from above, for Pallas, before the one attacking...

But often the fortunes of war are conceived of more generally in terms of hope, as when Aeneas’ army has no hope of escape from its palisades (10.120f.): at legio Aeneadum uallis obsessa tenetur nec spes ulla fugae 14

See Dyson 2001, Fulkerson 2008, and the ongoing debate about whether to understand Turnus as performing devotio.

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or when, conversely, their hopes are renewed (10.262f., 12.241–243): clamorem ad sidera tollunt Dardanidae e muris, spes addita suscitat iras, […] qui sibi iam requiem pugnae rebusque salute sperabant, nunc arma uolunt foedusque precantur infectum et Turni sortem miserantur iniquam. The Dardanians from the walls raised a cry to the heavens, and hope, renewed, kindled their anger […] Those who had been hoping for rest from battle and security for themselves, now wished for their arms, and prayed that the treaty be unmade, and pitied the wretched fate of Turnus.

After killing Mezentius, Aeneas rallies his men as follows (11.18): arma parate, animis et spe praesumite bellum Prepare your arms, take up the war with spirit and hope.

Latinus urges the Latins to give up hoping for an alliance with the Aetolians (11.308f.): spem si quam ascitis Aetolum habuistis in armis, ponite. spes sibi quisque If you put any hope in Aetolian arms, give it up. Each man is his own hope.

But surprisingly, he means by this statement to encourage them to make a treaty and not, as the sentiment usually does, to fight to the death; the line continues sed haec quam angusta uidetis (but you see how narrow this is). As a matter of fact, Latinus’ hopes turn out to be correctly founded, but he is ignored. Turnus replies in the same terms (11.411): si nullam nostris ultra spem ponis in armis Father, if you put no further hope in our arms, let us pray for peace.

This, of course, is not his ultimate advice. Quite the contrary (11.491): exsultatque animis et spe iam praecipit hostem In his hopes, he is already falling upon the enemy.

Latinus has the final word (12.34f.): bis magna uicti pugna uix urbe tuemur spes Italas; recalent nostro Thybrina fluenta Twice beaten, we can barely keep within our walls the hopes of the Italians.

Not that it does him any good; Turnus goes out, fights Aeneas, and is killed. There are, of course, other instances of hope in the Aeneid. But the above survey has outlined the major categories, delineating hope as a double-edged sword (at best): perhaps the safest conclusion to be drawn at this point is that hope that becomes reality is a useful and encouraging thing, and deluded hopes can make a bad situation worse, and narratively speaking can lead the reader to imagine future outcomes which will not come to pass.

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2 OVID’S METAMORPHOSES I move now to spes in the Metamorphoses. In that poem, and in Roman elegy, a genre to which it is closely related, the noun is significantly more common than the verb (a ratio of 40:15 in the Metamorphoses), but with uneven distribution throughout the books. As with the Aeneid, I focus primarily on the instructive examples, beginning with the point that the characters in the poem may well have many unexpressed hopes (so, for instance, in Book 1, presumably Jupiter hopes to be able to rape Io just as Apollo does Daphne, even though we hear nothing of the former). This is perhaps not as irrelevant as it seems, given that hopes are mentioned in the Metamorphoses mostly when they are just about to be dashed. That is, spes fulfills no plot-advancing function in the Metamorphoses; what it usually does is add a layer of irony, telling us that events did not turn out in the way one of the parties wanted. In some cases, there is a tension created as we wait to see what will happen, but in others, spes is invoked and then immediately identified as fruitless. In the Metamorphoses, then, Ovid rarely uses hope to build suspense; instead, it closes down narrative possibilities. It will be no surprise to readers of the Metamorphoses, chock-full of rape scenes and tales of illicit love, that hope often occurs in these contexts. I discuss below the amatory hopes of gods and humans, but I first want briefly to outline some of the other kinds of narrative situations in the Metamorphoses where spes happens, to give a sense of the range of the concept in this poem, and especially where it does and does not overlap with Vergilian spes. First, the hope placed in future generations, similar to but subtly different from its Vergilian manifestations: at Metamorphoses 9.341, the water lotus has blossoms, spem bacarum, and this scene is especially poignant because a mother picks these blossoms with her son, but the water lotus was herself once human, and became a plant in order to escape being raped by Priapus. This mother, Dryope, is just about to become a tree because of her innocent violation of Lotis. Pythagoras’ speech in Book 15 contains the other three examples of this sort in the Metamorphoses, as befits the philosopher’s cosmogonic role: at 15.113 a sow digs up roots, spem anni, the hope of the year, and so becomes the first sacrificial animal in recompense for her evil deed; in 15.217 we are reminded that in our mothers’ wombs we were spem hominum, the hope of men and, in a variation of the formula at 15.367, the bugonia-produced bees in spemque laborant, work toward their hope. What the bees hope for is not quite clear; presumably honey. This kind of spes is just as regularly fulfilled as unfulfilled (see above on human life in the Aeneid), and the Ovidian uses are also evenly divided; two of them describe the destruction of new life, and two of them seemingly hold out a genuine promise for the future. Related to this, I think, is the situation in Metamorphoses 8.498, where Althaea decides to kill her son Meleager, and with him spem patris, the hope of his father. This kind of spes serves to add poignancy to a tale, particularly when it is unfulfilled. And, if Vergilian usage in battle contexts points to his concern with the human costs of war, Ovid’s invocation of the topos in natural contexts makes clear just how delicate a thing spes is: even something as seemingly regular as blossoms ripening into fruit

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can be thwarted by unforeseen circumstances (and this is perhaps even more distressing given that in the Metamorphoses the dividing line between human and non-human is constantly blurred). The Metamorphoses also features a kind of spes not seen in the Aeneid, the spes of hubris, which occurs primarily in contexts of overreaching and punishment. The raven of Book 2 has turned informer (2.631): sperantemque sibi non falsae praemia linguae Hoping for a reward based on the truth of its statements

It is instead turned from a white bird into a black one for being a tattletale. So too, in a Roman imperial context, informants might well expect to be rewarded, but presumably this does not always occur. And in Book 6, Minerva tells Arachne (6.84): quod pretium speret pro tam furialibus ausis what reward she can hope for in exchange for such mad daring,

She does this shortly before she beats her into arachnid form. Here, we might characterize the spes as wildly inappropriate, and so, in a sense, as calling forth its own punishment (so too, the situation of Typhoeus at 5.348, who hopes for the heavenly realms, and Ixion’s hope of raping Juno at 12.506). This situation is an extension of the much more regular unfulfilled hope, different here, I think, because the hope is not simply in vain but prevents the person who feels it from judging the situation accurately. The hope of these offenders exceeds their grasp so much that it, and they, simply must be squashed. Arachne, however phenomenal a weaver she was, should never have imagined that she could defeat Minerva. But here is where this kind of hope becomes interesting, for the narrative is at great pains to suggest that Arachne’s tapestry was not inferior to Minerva’s (6.129f.): non illud Pallas, non illud carpere Livor possit opus doluit succesu flava virago Pallas was not able, nor was Envy, to pick at the work, and the blonde virago grieved at its success.

In the Metamorphoses it is not merely that humans cannot reasonably expect to have divine privileges, or to be rewarded when they (think they are) helping gods; rather, the deck is always stacked against them, such that their performances cannot even be judged fairly; from this kind of hope in Ovid we might be tempted to conclude that human hope will always be fruitless at best, and at worst, will be met with unfair punishment. In defense of the raven of Book 2, for instance, we might note that the difference between being a delator and a loyal subject is not as clear-cut as the seamless narration encourages us to believe. So too, it is surely not a coincidence that two of these examples center on those who hope to defeat or better the gods: whether your hope is hubristic or justified may depend on who your audience is –

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and the Metamorphoses is chock-full of powerful individuals becoming abusive, and of gods who are exceedingly jealous of their privileges.15 I offer one final example of hubristic spes, which further destabilizes this category’s appearance in Ovid. Having been raped by Tereus, her brother-in-law, Philomela swears to tell the world. But Tereus, enraged, draws his sword (6.553f.): iugulum Philomela parabat spemque suae mortis viso conceperat ense Philomela prepared her throat and conceived a hope of her own death, once she had seen the sword.

But instead of the killing she might find merciful, Philomela is instead silenced; Tereus cuts her tongue off and, finding her still appealing, rapes her again. Tereus is, of course, not a god; he is explicitly marked in the text as a barbarian (and indeed, this is the first rape of the poem perpetuated by a human man). But within the context of this story, at least for now, he is all-powerful, and it is up to him to fulfill or deny the hopes of those around him. The next category of spes is ‘ironic’, hopes which are fulfilled but detrimentally (this is in some ways quite similar to the deceptive, prophetic hopes of the Aeneid, although usually without the divine context). So, Procris hears that her husband has been unfaithful to her. The couple has a troubled marital history, but she tries not to believe (Metamorphoses 7.832): saepe tamen dubitat speratque miserrima falli Often, still, she hesitates and, poor thing, hopes she is being deceived.

In actual fact, Cephalus has been cheating on her only with the breeze, Aura. But unable to stop herself, Procris seeks the truth, only to be killed by her husband, and who believes that the noises she makes in the bushes while she is spying on him indicate a wild animal and so throws his always-accurate spear. So Procris’ hope is in fact fulfilled: she hopes she has been misinformed, and she has, but she dies anyway: she is both miserrima and falli. (And in a typically Ovidian linguistic turn, she herself is not only deceived, but a deceiver, since she is mistaken for an animal.) Here again we see the baleful influence of the divine, for there is more to Procris’ story. Cephalus had earlier cheated on his wife with a goddess named Aurora (note the similarity of names, Aurora and Aura), and that the spear’s ultimate origin is divine, at least in this version of the tale (Procris claims to have gotten it from Diana; normally it is her payment for sleeping with Minos). So the deck has been somewhat unfairly stacked against the human protagonists. So too, in Book 11, Midas has newly discovered that his touch turns things to gold (11.118f.): 15

Megan Drinkwater points out to me that this situation is not essentially different from the hopes of Turnus in the Aeneid; where that poem may have suggested that he was overreaching and perhaps even impious, this poem allows for a rather different reading, in which he, like so many others, simply got in the way of what was to be.

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In a way that he thinks lucky but which soon turns disastrous, his hope is fulfilled: absolutely everything he touches turns to gold, so he cannot eat. By comparison to Procris, Midas gets off easy, for he prays to Bacchus to take away the gift he had given, and is saved – at least temporarily. My penultimate category in the Metamorphoses is cases in which spes is fulfilled in a way that is unambiguously beneficial. So far as I can tell, this use does not appear in the Aeneid. The Metamorphoses contains only two examples of this, the first in Book 7, when Aeacus, having just lost all of the Aeginetans to plague, sees a colony of ants and prays that he will have as many subjects. An oak-tree rustles in response, which Aeacus is not sure is an omen (7.632f.): nec me sperare fatebar; sperabam tamen atque animo mea vota fovebam Nor did I confess that I was hoping, but still, I was hoping and I cherished my wishes within my mind.

He dreams that the ants turn into men, and wakes up to discover that the ants have in fact turned into men. So he thanks Jupiter and rules over the Myrmidons. In our second example, Iphis, the girl who has been raised as a boy, and who is in love with her betrothed, Ianthe, despairingly claims that Pasiphae had more hope of having her love fulfilled than she herself does (9.739): illa secuta est spem veneris She followed some hope of Venus.

But, interestingly, she’s wrong, as she is just about to be turned into a boy, once she and her mother pray to Isis on the morning of her wedding. We come to our final topic, and the main situation in which spes appears in the poem, and that is in scenes of sexual violence. In these narrative situations, it is often the aggressors who hope.16 In the majority of these examples, the sexual aggressor’s hope is fulfilled, to the detriment of the other party, who was presumably – though this is not mentioned – hoping for a different outcome. This is, however, not always the case, and it is a well-documented but still curious fact of the Metamorphoses that being an aggressor, or even a god, does not automatically give you what you want. But, of course, it takes two to tango, and another related use of spes in the Metamorphoses is in the opposite situation, when virgins either hope to remain virgins, or when they are raped despite the fact that many suitors 16

Sexual aggressors: Apollo (1.491, 1.496, 1.536 – a simile, 1.539), Mercury (2.719 – a simile), Jupiter (2.862), Narcissus (3.417, 3.457), Echo (3.389), Salmacis (4.368), Scylla (8.55, 8.112), Byblis (9.468, 9.534, 9.597, 9.639), Iphis (the female 9.739), Myrrha (10.336) Apollo (11.306), Ixion (12.506 – also hubristic), Circe (14.31), Apollo (14.134), Iphis (the male 14.704, 14.715).

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had hoped to win them in marriage.17 I focus in some detail in what follows on three of these examples of aggressive amatory hope, chosen because they are places where spes and spero cluster, and also because they give a good sense of the terrain overall. The first of them is the tale of Apollo and Daphne, primus amor, Apollo’s first love, but also the first rape story of the poem. A bare outline of the story follows: Phoebus amat visaeque cupit conubia Daphnes, quodque cupit, sperat, suaque illum oracula fallunt (1.490f.) sic deus in flammas abiit, sic pectore toto uritur et sterilem sperando nutrit amorem (1.495f.) ut canis in vacuo leporem cum Gallicus arvo vidit, et hic praedam pedibus petit, ille salutem; alter inhaesuro similis iam iamque tenere sperat et extento stringit vestigia rostro (1.533–536) sic deus et virgo est hic spe celer, illa timore (1.539). Phoebus loves and desires a marriage with Daphne the instant she is seen, and what he desires, he hopes for, and his own oracles cheat him … Thus the god went up in flames, thus he burned in his whole heart, and fed a fruitless love by hoping … [chase scene follows] Just as when a Gallic hound sees a hare in an open plain, and he seeks her as booty with his feet, while she seeks safety; the one seeming as if he is about to cling to her any moment, he hopes he’s got her and grazes her footsteps with his muzzle extended long … Thus the god and the virgin; one swift from hope, the other from terror.

It is well known that this bit of the poem combines epic with elegiac themes in a quintessentially Ovidian manner, and I’ve recently argued that there are pastoral overtones as well (Fulkerson 2012 with bibliography). You will remember that this story begins when Apollo, fresh from his Pythic victory, runs into little Cupid, who is playing with his bow. Apollo makes fun of Cupid for his pretensions at archery, and Cupid shoots an arrow at him that kindles love, while also shooting an arrow at the nymph Daphne which kills it. Apollo sees the virgin, and immediately both cupit and sperit (490f.). But the two verbs are not simply synonyms, for before line 491 is over, we are informed that suaque illum oracula fallunt, his oracles deceive him, i.e., the god will not achieve his hope. This first rape of the poem, then, is a tale of failure, and the failure tells us something important about Apollo, about love, and about the poem as well. Indeed, the introduction to the tale had already foreshadowed the point that you cannot beat Cupid. So too, at 496, the word sperando is immediately preceded by sterilem, to let us know that Apollo is deluding himself. Hope next appears in a simile at 536, when, like Apollo, a hound hopes, so close to a terrified hare that neither of them is certain whether he has actually bitten her, sperat et extento stringit vestigia rostro. He is very nearly there, but, as the exit from the simile shows, he never actually makes it. 17

Virgins: Medusa (4.795), Persephone (5.377), Deianira (9.10): multorum fuit spes invidiosa procorum; cf. Caenis (12.192): multorum frustra votis optata procorum.

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Finally, at 1.539, Apollo runs swiftly because of his hope, and Daphne because of her fear. The episode offers a lesson on hope: even if you are a god, you never know. (We might, in fact, given the traditional Greco-Roman views about hope as often delusive, wonder why the gods need to hope in the first place, but Ovid’s gods, like Homer’s, are like us only bigger, so they make the same kinds of mistakes we do.)18 And there is perhaps a second lesson as well: Jupiter’s hope of raping Europa at 2.862 is expressed casually and just as casually fulfilled, which might reinforce the Thucydidean point that hoping too vehemently (but not acting) can also get you into trouble. There are a few further instances of divine amatory hope in the poem, but the majority of the rest of it is human – I would suggest that this is because nothing in the poem means very much to the gods. Our second example occurs in Book three, in the tale of Echo and Narcissus. This too is a well-known story, so I’ll summarize only briefly. Narcissus is a beautiful baby, and is told by Teiresias that he will live a long life si se non noverit (if he does not know himself, 3.346–348). This line is of course a calque on the Delphic maxim gnothi seauton, but in the context of this story it will turn out to be much more as well. The story then cuts to Echo, and we hear that she has lost her voice as a punishment from Juno, because she used to distract Juno while Jupiter was frolicking with nymphs on the mountainside. This is a part of the story that never gets much attention, but in fact it is quite interesting, as it offers us a new paradigm for erotic behavior in the poem, one we do not hear much about, in which both men and women are engaged in consensual activity. And this is no accident, for Echo is just about to become the first female desiring subject of the poem. Perhaps it is also no coincidence that her new nature makes it difficult for her to initiate speech, for her attitude may well be seen as aberrant, even dangerous. She sees the stunning Narcissus, and falls immediately in love (no arrows needed). She lucks out in that he loses his companions and so calls out to them, so that she can respond. And eventually, they agree to meet (although his consent is given unwittingly). Echo comes out of the woods in order to throw her arms around the hoped-for neck (sperato, 3.389). She is, of course, repulsed by Narcissus and eventually melts away into nothing, which is how we come to have echoes, voices with no body. But Narcissus’ problems are just beginning: he, as you will probably remember, is just about to fall in love with himself. One of the many spurned youths has prayed that Narcissus too will know what it is to feel rejection. And in the economy of this tale, he is the only desirable object, so his eye is caught by himself, when he sees his reflection in a clear spring and is captivated by his own beauty. In fact, the two stories of Echo and Narcissus are connected, for Narcissus loves a hope without body (spem sine corpore amat, 3.417), which is just what 18

There is much bibliography on the gods in this poem; see Fulkerson 2006 on Apollo’s frequent falling-short of fully divine status.

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Echo has become. Ovid has a good time with this story, focusing on the frustration caused by the simultaneous absence and presence of the love object in a way that becomes fruitful for a number of later thinkers: this culminates in the witty 3.432f.: credule, quid frustra simulacra fugacia captas? quod petis, est nusquam; quod amas, avertere, perdes! Poor fool, why do you seek to capture in vain a fleeting image? What you seek is nowhere, turn away and what you love, you destroy!

Later in the book, as he stares mesmerized at himself, he delivers a soliloquy in which he characterizes his shadow as proffering hope (3.457): spem mihi nescio quam vultu promittis amico You promise me some sort of hope with your friendly appearance.

His tears mar the surface of the water, and he mourns the subsequent disappearance of his reflection. So he too, like Echo, is overcome by his beauty and he too melts away, this time into the narcissus, a river-loving flower. Here we see again that hope is deceptive; Echo thinks that Narcissus is genuinely engaged in a mutual exchange with her, and the discovery that she is mistaken dissolves her identity. So too, the hope-giving reflection of Narcissus is always a lie, and one which destroys him. This story, as all know, has been repeatedly, and fruitfully, mined for psychological insights. But it has not, so far as I know, received any attention as a case study of what can happen when hopes are disappointed: one’s very identity can disappear. The doubling of the hope is significant: Ovid provides us with a tale of two people, both desperately wanting something they cannot have, and both ultimately destroyed by the frustration of their desires. Our final example is the case of Byblis, one of the several examples of aberrantly desiring women in this part of the poem. Byblis is a nice girl, daughter of Miletus, the king of Miletus. She has a twin brother, Caunis. It takes her some time to realize that there is a problematic aspect to her desire to kiss her brother and throw her arms around him; she manages to convince herself that she is simply showing sisterly affection. When she is awake, she will not admit her spes obscenas (468); only in her dreams do her real wishes become clear to her. She delivers a long speech in which she tries but fails to overcome her incestuous desires, and eventually resolves to write a letter to spare her shame. It seems better not to begin her letter with a direct address to her brother as brother, since that is precisely the point at issue, and she notes that she would prefer to remain incognito (9.534): nec cognita Byblis ante forem, quam spes votorum certa fuisset. I would not be known as Byblis, before the hopes of my vows have become more certain.

This is, of course, not how love works, even when you are not courting your brother – it is precisely the specificity of the person that makes or breaks the deal. And Byblis suffers from just the same problem as Narcissus, since love requires closeness, but also a certain degree of distance: twin brothers, it turns out, are not quite far enough from one’s self. But let’s return to her letter. She fills up the

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whole tablet, even the margins, seals it, drops it while handing it to a servant to give to her brother, and waits anxiously. Caunis, in the meantime, reads the letter only halfway through and then throws the servant out in a rage. The scenario is, of course, tragic, reminiscent of Phaedra’s relationship with Hippolytus among other things, but perhaps that of the Aeolidae, Canace and Macareus, too. Byblis faints, and when she recovers, she realizes that her mistake was to write her love rather than speak it. She now sees in the falling tablet an omen of her own hopes (9.595– 597): Quid quod et ominibus certis prohibebar amori indulgere meo, tum cum mihi ferre iubenti excidit et fecit spes nostras cera caducas? What of the fact that I was prohibited from indulging my love by secure omens, then, when the tablet fell from my hands as I was giving them to a servant, and made my hopes also liable to fall?

She seems, however, only to find fault with their written expression – and so she determines to face him directly, deciding that if she does not he will think her fickle, or worse, will believe that she was falsely trying to entrap him. So she continues to pursue him until he eventually leaves town and founds a new city, whereupon she follows him (9.638–640): iamque palam est demens, inconcessaeque fatetur spem veneris, siquidem patriam invisosque penates deserit, et profugi sequitur vestigia fratris. Then she was openly mad, making public to all her hopes of illicit love, and left her homeland and hated family gods, and tracked the footsteps of her exiled brother.

Eventually, she falls, exhausted, and weeps so much that she becomes a fountain. She too, that is, loses her identity and her humanity because of disappointed hopes. These three examples, the places in the Metamorphoses where amatory hope clusters, have a number of things in common. The first is that hopes are regularly disappointed, even, sometimes, for the divine (though, as many have noted, Apollo is something of a special case in the poem; his divinity is regularly undermined). So too, the mortal among these hopes we might characterize as unreasonable to begin with: by as early as Book 3 of the poem, rape narratives have become increasingly tedious, but when the first one occurs, or rather, does not occur, it may seem aberrant. The other two defy the laws of physics and incest respectively; hoping for preposterous things will get you what you deserve – in this case, oblivion. And Apollo, the god who cannot even manage to rape a mortal woman? He seems simply to be unlucky in love. I’ve focused on the hope of lovers and would-be lovers in part because that is the major scenario in which hope occurs in the poem, but also because I have come to believe that gender relations in the Metamorphoses are nearly always a kind of Ovidian shorthand for power relations (this is a similar argument to that made by some scholars of Roman elegy, who see the stance taken by the elegists as their way of claiming that in the words of Paul Allen Miller, ‘there is no place

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from which to be a man’). So too, including discussion about the divine has not seemed inappropriate, since that is the poem’s other main example of differential equations of power, and the kinds of relationships which are and are not possible. 3 CONCLUSION In lieu of a formal conclusion, I draw attention to a few of the major differences between Vergilian and Ovidian epic hope. In Vergil, hope is narratively interesting because it creates tension, offering hints at several roads not traveled. The hope of future generations, as it must be in a poem such as this, is more or less fulfilled. There are, of course, losers in this game, and Vergil is not unsympathetic to them, but the trajectory of the poem as a whole is such that Trojan hopes are fated to be realized, even when that comes at the cost of the hopes of individual Trojans. Readers of Books 4 and 6, for instance, are often left with the sense that Aeneas really would have preferred to remain in Carthage. Beyond this, however, and in keeping with the critical tradition that sees Vergil as a poet of loss, a number of major characters in the poem suffer from unfulfilled hopes; while Aeneas may be comforted by the fact that his personal happiness has been sacrificed to a bright future for his son, there is little comfort for Turnus, and even less for Dido, neither of whom had hopes that were unreasonable. Ovid, characteristically, pays more attention to those narrative byways, the unfulfilled hopes that are cast aside as stories march to their conclusions. Some of this may derive from his lifelong experience with elegy, a genre which is predicated upon the implausible, perhaps even pathetic hopes of the amator that never materialize, or never permanently. So too, given Ovid’s greater interest in exposing power relations, it is not surprising that those who hope are sometimes viciously punished, and sometimes rewarded beyond expectation, but rarely in ways that seem equitable to observers. These two discrete senses of hope may reflect the two poets’ experiences of the world as it changed in the Augustan period. Beyond this, however, they offer two rather different takes on this ambiguous and problematic notion. BIBLIOGRAPHY Adams, S. M. (1932) Hesiod’s Pandora, Classical Review 46, 193–196. Clark, M. E. (1983) Spes in the Early Imperial Cult: ‘The Hope of Augustus’, Numen 30, 80–105. Duckworth, G. E. (1933) Foreshadowing and Suspense in the Epics of Homer, Apollonius, and Vergil, Princeton, NJ. Dyson, J. T. (2001) King of the Wood: The Sacrificial Victor in Virgil’s Aeneid, Norman OK. Fears, J. R. (1981) The Cult of Virtues and Roman Imperial Ideology, ANRW II.17.2, Berlin, 827– 948. Fulkerson, L. (2006) Apollo, Paenitentia, and Ovid’s Metamorphoses, Mnemosyne 59.3, 388–402. ––– (2008) Patterns of Death in the Aeneid, Scripta Classica Israelica 27, 17–33.

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––– (2012) Pastoral Appropriation and Assimilation in Ovid’s Apollo and Daphne Episode in E. Karakasis (ed). Post-Vergilian Roman Pastoral, De Gruyter Trends in Classics series, Berlin, 29–47. Greene, W. C. (1945) Fate, Good, and Evil, in Early Greek Poetry, Harvard Studies in Classical Philology 46, 1–36. Kerschensteiner, J. (1944) Zu Aufbau und Gedankenführung von Hesiods Erga, Hermes 3–4, 149– 191. Komornicka, A. M. (1990) L’elpis hésiodique dans la jarre de Pandore, Eos 78, 63–77. Leighton, S. R. (1988) Aristotle’s Courageous Passions, Phronesis 33, 76–99. Miller, P.A. (2004) Subjecting Verses: Latin Love Elegy and the Emergence of the Real, Princeton. Moore, C. H. (1921) Prophecy in the Ancient Epic, Harvard Studies in Classical Philology 32, 99–175. Neitzel, H. (1976) Pandora und das Fass: Zur Interpretation von Hesiod, Erga 42–105, Hermes 104, 387–419. Noica, S. (1984) La boîte de Pandore et l’ambiguïté de l’elpis, Platon 36, 100–124. O’Hara, J. J. (1990) Death and the Optimistic Prophecy in Vergil’s Aeneid Princeton. Schrijen, J. J. A. (1965) Elpis: de Voorstelling van de Hoop in de Griekse Literatur tot Aristoteles, Diss. Amsterdam. Verdenius, W. J. (1985) A Commentary On Hesiod Works and Days vv. 1–382, Leiden. West, M. L. (1978) Hesiod Works and Days, Oxford.

REASON VS. EMOTION IN SENECA David Konstan In a famous lapsus that has been variously explained or emended, Trimalchio, in Petronius’ Satyrica, affirms: ‘lest you think that I have disdained study, I have three libraries: one Greek, the other Latin’.1 There is what may appear to be an analogous incongruity in Seneca’s definition of emotion in his treatise on anger: so that you may know how emotions begin or grow or run wild, the first motion is not voluntary, but is like a readiness for emotion and a kind of alarm; another motion is accompanied by volition, but one that is not defiant, for example that I ought to take revenge because I have been injured, or this one ought to pay a penalty since he committed a crime; the third motion is by now out of control: it wishes to take revenge not if one ought to, but on any ac2 count, and it has wholly conquered reason.

Seneca continues to explain: ‘We cannot avoid that first blow to the mind by means of reason’, just as we cannot help blinking when someone’s finger is suddenly flashed before our eyes;3 ‘reason cannot conquer such things, though perhaps habit and constant attention can attenuate them. That other motion, which arises by virtue of a judgement, is eliminated by a judgement’.4 At this point, Seneca seems to embark on a wholly different topic: And now we must inquire whether those who rage habitually and delight in human blood are angry, since they kill those from whom they have received no harm nor do they themselves 5 think they have received any.

1 2

3

4 5

et ne me putes studia fastiditum, tres bybliothecas habeo, unam Graecam, alteram Latinam, 48.4; cf. Adamik 2005 for discussion. et ut scias quemadmodum incipiant adfectus aut crescant aut efferantur, est primus motus non uoluntarius, quasi praeparatio adfectus et quaedam comminatio; alter cum uoluntate non contumaci, tamquam oporteat me uindicari cum laesus sim, aut oporteat hunc poenas dare cum scelus fecerit; tertius motus est iam inpotens, qui non si oportet ulcisci uult sed utique, qui rationem euicit, 2.4.1. primum illum animi ictum effugere ratione non possumus, sicut ne illa quidem quae diximus accidere corporibus, ne nos oscitatio aliena sollicitet, ne oculi ad intentationem subitam digitorum comprimantur, 2.4.2. ista non potest ratio uincere, consuetudo fortasse et adsidua obseruatio extenuat. alter ille motus, qui iudicio nascitur, iudicio tollitur, 2.4.2. illud etiamnunc quaerendum est, ii qui uulgo saeuiunt et sanguine humano gaudent, an irascantur cum eos occidunt a quibus nec acceperunt iniuriam nec accepisse ipsos existimant, 2.5.1.

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Such people cannot be examples of a final stage of emotion, since Seneca declares: ‘this is not anger, it is savagery’,6 precisely because it does not respond to any cause’. What happened to the third motion? The solution to the puzzle, if puzzle it is, is that Seneca is not describing three stages in an emotion, but three distinct kinds of behavior.7 The first corresponds to what the Stoics sometimes called pre-emotions (propatheiai); the second is emotion proper; and the third is a habitual state of cruelty, which has its source in anger but has, by the continual exercise of vengeful behavior, been transformed into something else.8 It is only the second movement that may be called an emotion – the one that ‘arises by virtue of a judgement and is eliminated by a judgement’. Since, for the Stoics, an emotion just is an assent to a certain kind of proposition resulting from an impression, or more technically, two acts of assenting, it is no surprise to read that judgement is the key both to arousing and assuaging emotions. We may, of course, assent to a false proposition, and for the Stoics this is the case for all pathē or adfectus; but in this respect the opinion that constitutes an emotion is no different from any other false belief. And yet, there was something about emotions in particular that made such judgements especially difficult to alter or dislodge. As Seneca puts it, ‘it is easier to shut out destructive things than to control them’.9 In fact, reason itself is only powerful so long as it is separated from the emotions; once mixed with them, it is helpless.10 Seneca appeals to the familiar analogy with headlong running, when one cannot immediately come to a stop, as opposed to walking (1.7.4), but this is an image rather than an explanation. He then reaffirms that reason is absent when once emotion is admitted and authority is voluntarily handed over to it;11 for the mind does not occupy a separate place, but is itself changed into the emotion.12 Reason and emotion are alterations of the mind, for better or for worse;13 hence,

6 7

8 9 10 11 12 13

haec non est ira, feritas est, 2.5.2. Note that in one sense there is a logical sequence in the three forms of behavior, in that the stage of inveterate cruelty arises only as a perverted form of actual emotions; thus, animals do not experience this third stage (my thanks to Michael Champion for this observation). Just how the third stage arises is unclear in Seneca; it would seem to be a consequence of the frequent experience of a given emotion such as anger, and to take the form of a rationalization of a disposition to seek revenge, for example, even in the absence of a legitimate presentation (thanks to Megan Beasley for raising the question). origo huius mali ab ira est, quae ubi frequenti exercitatione et satietate in obliuionem clementiae uenit et omne foedus humanum eiecit animo, nouissime in crudelitatem transit, 2.5.3. facilius est excludere perniciosa quam regere, 1.7.2. ratio ipsa ... tam diu potens est quam diu diducta est ab adfectibus; si miscuit se illis et inquinauit, non potest continere quos summouere potuisset, 1.7.3. nihil rationis est ubi semel adfectus inductus est iusque illi aliquod uoluntate nostra datum est, 1.8.1. neque enim sepositus est animus et extrinsecus speculatur adfectus ..., sed in adfectum ipse mutatur, 1.8.2. adfectus et ratio in melius peiusque mutatio animi est, 1.8.3.

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reason cannot free itself from the mixture when the worse element prevails.14 If emotions, once triggered, can be brought under control at all, it is only when they have faded on their own and lost their initial potency (1.8.6). Those who, in the full flush of anger, abstain from harming someone who has offended them do so not because they submit to reason, but only when another emotion, such as fear or greed, has dislodged the first;15 but this is scarcely a trustworthy method for curbing anger. One problem with the emotions, indeed, is that they are fickle, and justifiable indignation may well yield inappropriately to pity.16 Seneca’s account of the conflict between reason and emotion might sound as though he has conceded something to the Platonic view that the soul is divided into a rational and irrational part, a view that Posidonius had adopted in some form or other, at least according to Galen.17 But Seneca’s point is rather that emotions and reason cohabit in the mind, that is, the ruling part of the psyche or hēgemonikon, which is the orthodox Stoic view: since emotions are judgements, this is just where we should expect them to reside.18 What then accounts for their stubborn resistance to correction by reason, to the extent that they can only be driven out, when in full swing, by another emotion – which is, after all, a judgement in its own right? Whence the special impetus that emotions have that makes them analogous to running at top speed? When he comes to defining anger more precisely in Book 2 of De ira, Seneca states that it is roused by the presentation or appearance of an offense.19 But he immediately adds that the emotion does not follow automatically upon the presentation itself, but only when the mind assents,20 a view that he takes to be orthodox Stoicism (cf. nobis). Seneca notes that, for anger to arise, one must receive the impression of having endured an offense and desire to avenge it, and what is more join two judgements together, namely that one ought not to have been harmed and that one ought to seek revenge, and this is not in the nature of the kind of impulse that is stimulated independently of our will.21 For the impulse or impetus by itself, 14 15 16 17

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quemadmodum ex confusione se liberabit in qua peiorum mixtura praeualuit?, 1.8.3. cum adfectus repercussit adfectum et aut metus aut cupiditas aliquid inpetrauit, 1.8.7. iram saepe misericordia retro egit; habet enim non solidum robur sed uanum tumorem uiolentisque principiis utitur, 3.17.4. Krewet 2013, 137 argues that Seneca departs from Posidonius’ ‘middle Stoa’ position. Galen’s testimony concerning Posidonius’ ostensibly Platonic account of emotion has been questioned by various scholars; see e.g. Gill 1998; Cooper 1999, 449–484; Tieleman 2003, 198– 287; contra Sorabji 2000, 93–108. Cf. Krewet 2013, 135: ‘Für ihn [sc. Seneca] also ist ein wahres Zorngefühl ohne einen kognitiven Akt nicht Denkbar’. iram quin species oblata iniuriae moueat non est dubium, 2.1.3; species here renders the Greek phantasia. nobis placet nihil illam [sc. iram] per se audere sed animo adprobante, 2.1.4. non est eius impetus qui sine uoluntate nostra concitatur; nam speciem capere acceptae iniuriae et ultionem eius concupiscere et utrumque coniungere, nec laedi se debuisse et uindicari debere, non est eius impetus qui sine uoluntate nostra concitatur, 2.1.4; I take utrumque to look forward to the two judgements that follow, each introduced by debere.

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Seneca affirms, is a simple thing, whereas a true emotion is compound and contains several elements: one has recognized something, become indignant, judged it to be an offense, and now seeks revenge, and all this cannot occur unless the mind has given its assent to what has struck it.22 At this point Seneca imagines his reader inquiring: ‘what is all this leading up to?’,23 and he replies that it is essential to knowing what anger is, since if it arises in us despite our will, it will never submit to reason.24 And just here Seneca launches on his discussion of what, he tells us, are not emotions in the strict sense but rather the initial preliminaries to emotion25 – that is, that first blow to the mind (primum illum animi ictum), which was the first of the three kinds of reaction that Seneca listed in the passage I quoted at the beginning (that passage follows immediately upon the discussion of the principia proludentia adfectibus), and which we cannot avoid by means of reason. But how do these preliminaries enter into Seneca’s conception of emotion? My answer will be that they are crucial to understanding just how emotions differ from other kinds of judgements.26 Let us recall Seneca’s account of these preliminary feelings, which pretty clearly correspond to what at least some Greek Stoics labeled propatheiai.27 Seneca’s detailed list of such reactions includes shivering with cold, squeamishness at certain kinds of touch, hair standing on end in response to bad news, blushing, dizziness caused by heights, and the sentiments we experience when seeing plays, reading books, hearing music or seeing horrible paintings, or watching people being severely punished even if they deserve it.28 What all these reactions have in common is precisely that they are involuntary and do not depend on judgement or assent. When you are watching a tragedy, you may shudder instinctively at the action on stage but you know perfectly well that there is no real danger, and hence 22 23 24 25 26

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ille simplex est, hic compositus et plura continens: intellexit aliquid, indignatus est, damnauit, ulciscitur: haec non possunt fieri, nisi animus eis quibus tangebatur adsensus est, 2.1.4. ‘quorsus’ inquis ‘haec quaestio pertinet?’, 2.2.1. ut sciamus quid sit ira; nam si inuitis nobis nascitur, numquam rationi succumbet, 2.2.1. omnia ista motus sunt animorum moueri nolentium, nec adfectus sed principia proludentia adfectibus, 2.2.5. D’Jeranian 2014, 230 sees Zeno as the inspiration for Seneca’s view, whereas Chrysippus’ more strictly intellectual analysis lies behind a fragment from the lost fifth book of Epictetus’ Discourses (fr. 9 Schenkel), quoted by Aulus Gellius Attic Nights 19.17: ‘Sénèque suivrait Zénon dans la mesure où il conclut, d’une part, que la passion est un élan irrationnel et non simplement un jugement, et, d’autre part, que l’affection préliminaire n’est pas un mouvement psychologique mais un trouble de l’âme à caractère non pathologique, une “morsure” naturelle, inévitable, rémanente et irréductible à la sagesse, quoique sans conséquence pratique. Contrairement à l’affection préliminaire, qui touche même l’âme du sage, la passion est une action, un mouvement intentionnel résultant d’un jugement erroné auquel l’insensé aurait donné son assentiment. Épictète incarnerait quant à lui la ligne intellectualiste dure initiée par Chrysippe’. I do not take here a position on the sources of Seneca’s view. Cf. Graver 1999. Krewet 2013, 138 rightly notes that music does not produce genuine emotions but rather preemotions; contra Nussbaum 2001, 239, 249–295.

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what you are experiencing is not fear, and your response is not in principle different from trembling because of a chill. In this same context, Seneca states that ‘the ears of a soldier prick up at the sound of a trumpet, even when peace reigns and he is wearing the toga, and the noise of arms rouses army horses’ (2.2.6); thus, animals too have a share in at least some of these involuntary responses (they too shiver with cold, after all), though of course they do not react anxiously to bad news, since they do not possess language.29 Indeed, in Book 1 of De ira, Seneca states: We must affirm that wild animals, and all creatures apart from human beings, are without anger; for since anger is contrary to reason, it does not arise except where reason has a place. Animals have violence, rabidity, ferocity, aggression, but do not have anger any more than they have licentiousness ... Dumb animals lack human emotions, but they do have certain impulses that are similar to emotions.

Seneca goes on to remark that animals can utter sounds, but they do not have language; their perceptions, moreover, are muddy and confused: ‘thus, their attacks and outbreaks are violent, but they do not have fears and worries, sadness and anger, but rather things that are similar to these’ (1.3.4–8; in the Consolation to Marcia 5.1, Seneca affirms that animals do not experience sadness and fear any more than stones do).30 Are the reactions that Seneca attributes to animals identical or similar to the principia proludentia adfectibus that he describes in the following book? To be sure, he does not label them as such, but it is not hard to see why: for animals there is no further stage, no moment when they judge rationally whether, for example, there is in fact a danger, which is what fear is, or whether they ought not to have been harmed and ought to take revenge, which are the judgements that are constitutive of anger; hence, animal responses are not preliminary to anything else. Soldiers, like war horses, are habituated to responding to the blast of a military trumpet, but only they can take the next step and experience a true emotion. Of course animals are not susceptible to some of the pre-emotions that affect human beings, for example those that are aroused by verbal reports of events; these require a degree of reason, but nevertheless do not involve assent, which is what discriminates the first motus from the second. But human beings can, it would seem, experience all or most of the quasi-emotions or instinctive reactions to which animals are liable: they too, one assumes, are capable of feeling ‘violence, rabidity, ferocity, aggression’, or the kind of instinctive hostile reaction that 29 30

Cf. Krewet 2013, 135: ‘Seneca jedenfalls stellt dem Zorn verschiedene sich physiologischkörperlich und nahezu mechanistisch abspielende Phänomene gegenüber’. For discussion of this passage, see Tutrone 2012, 228–234; Tutrone discusses in detail and with rich bibliography every passage in both philosophers in which animals figure importantly. Cf. Krewet 2013, 138: ‘Auch den Tieren gesteht Seneca ... keine Gefühle zu’ (p. 138), because they do not have the necessary cognitive apparatus; contrast Nussbaum’s ‘neo-Stoic’ revision, according to which animals can indeed experience emotions in the strict sense of the term (Nussbaum 2001, 89–137).

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these several postures have in common, and which are natural responses to certain kinds of stimulus. Indeed, the first blow or ictus that strikes us upon receiving certain kinds of impressions or appearances (species) will produce just such an impetus or impulse (in Greek hormē). If, in the case of an impression of the sort that can lead to anger, we judge that we have been wronged and that revenge is appropriate, then the emotion of anger supervenes. But what happens to this initial response, that preliminary movement that we share with non-rational creatures? The answer, I believe, is that it abides, forming part of that compound that, Seneca says, is in the nature of emotions as opposed to mere instinctive reactions. What is more, its locus is, I think, the hēgemonikon, which, if I understand the Stoic theory properly, is something that irrational animals too possess, not just human beings. As Julia Annas writes: Animals as well as humans are selves; an animal’s hēgemonikon, however, will unify its psychological events in a merely automatic and instinctual way. Because humans are rational, 31 everything in a human hēgemonikon will be organized and interpreted in a rational way.

So too A. A. Long affirms: ‘All mortal animals have the same eight psychic parts’, that is, the hēgemonikon, the five senses, what the Stoics call ‘voice’, and reproduction.32 To put it differently, in the case of other animals, the hēgemonikon does not develop to the point of acquiring reason, as it does with human beings.33 I expect that it is the presence of this primitive motion in the hēgemonikon, together with the movements that correspond to false judgements, that led Seneca to conclude that ‘reason cannot free itself from the mixture when the worse element prevails’: reason has to contend not just with a wrong judgement but with the combination of that judgement and the initial impetus that gave rise to it, all of which takes place in the hēgemonikon. And this is why it is so difficult to dislodge an active emotion: the judgement involved is supported by the initial, and abiding, impulse, which in human beings tends to demand justification and is thereby converted into an emotion proper. Reason may well be helpless to undo the effects of that amalgam. But it is not just that what Seneca calls the first motion, that is, the reaction to the impression that takes the form of a blow, enters into the construction, as it were, of emotion once assent has been given. For I should like to add the further point that is likely to be still more controversial, namely, that each of the emotions has, corresponding to or paired with it, a specific initial motion or impulse. The evidence, such as it is, for this latter claim is scattered among Seneca’s writings, and I shall now collect a few of the relevant passages. I begin with the eleventh letter in the Epistulae ad Lucilium, in which Seneca treats the topic of certain reflexes that are not amenable to change or correction by 31

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Annas 1992, 64; Annas cites Arius Didymus, Epitome Physicon 39D Diels = SVF 2.821 to the effect that every soul has a hēgemonikon, which is the seat of life, perception, and impulse. Long 1996, 242. Cf. Newmyer 2006, 46

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means of reason. The particular instance of such a response that he considers here is blushing. Seneca says that he was favorably impressed by a young friend of Lucilius’, who, having uttered an opinion impromptu, could not shake off his expression of shame (verecundia) even as he tried to gather his wits, since his face was suffused with a deep blush – something Seneca considers a good sign in a youth.34 Seneca suspects, however, that this tendency to blush will remain with the lad even when he is grown and has become wise, since no amount of wisdom can eliminate natural weaknesses of the body or the mind.35 Seneca provides examples of other such responses, such as sweating when one is tired or hot, a trembling in the knees when one is about to speak in public, and the like. Not that everyone is subject to such reactions; but in those who are, they are ineradicable. Correspondingly, even actors, who imitate a variety of emotions (adfectus), such as fear and sadness, may indeed lower their voices and look down at the ground, but they cannot summon up a blush at will when they try to represent verecundia (11.7). Now, blushing at obscene language is one of the reactions that Seneca includes among the principia proludentia adfectibus, and it is not unreasonable to suppose that in the present context as well it is to be understood as falling under this description. With characteristic abruptness, Seneca announces that his letter now demands a conclusion,36 and proceeds to advise Lucilius that we ought always to keep a man whom we love and respect before our eyes, so that we may act always as though he were observing us – a precept that Seneca attributes to Epicurus. When our mind has in view a person it reveres (quem vereatur; cf. qui sic vereri potest, 11.9), we behave better even in private; and whoever can feel such respect for another will in turn soon be the object of similar regard on the part of others.37 The feeling in question is verecundia, and I take it that it is, in contrast to the mere reflex of blushing, a full-fledged emotion. To be sure, in certain contexts verecundia may be more like a disposition, analogous to irascibility (iracundia) rather than to ira; but in the case of a blush, or the reaction that ensues upon imagining that someone is observing our behavior, it is clearly more like an occurrent emotion. Verecundia can also suggest a sense of shame, something like the Greek aidōs, and in this respect might be more like a virtue (it was deemed a eupatheia in some of the Stoic classifications); but since Seneca associates it with adfectus such as metus and tristitia, he is evidently thinking of it as an emotion here. As an emotion, verecundia should involve, for the Stoics, a double assent; I do not know of an explicit Stoic account of the judgements that constitute shame, but we may suppose that it comprises something like assenting to the view that the other’s

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ubi se colligebat, verecundiam, bonum in adulescente signum, vix potuit excutere; adeo illi ex alto suffusus est rubor, 11.1. nulla enim sapientia naturalia corporis aut animi vitia ponuntur, 11.1. iam clausulam epistula poscit, 11.8. qui sic aliquem vereri potest cito erit verendus, 11.9.

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disapproval of us is bad, and that we ought not to behave in such a way as to elicit it. What, then, is the connection between blushing and shame? As we have noted, not everyone blushes, but only those who have a physical constitution that is conducive to it.38 Does the kind of embarrassment or reaction to novel circumstances that causes some people to blush have no effect at all on others, or is blushing simply the visible sign of a reaction to which all are susceptible, even if it is not always manifested by blood rushing to the face? Seneca is careful to point out that not every instance of blushing is necessarily a positive indication of character. Some people are to be especially feared when they turn red, ‘as though they had poured forth all their shame’, and Sulla was at his most violent when the blood rushed to his face, whereas in others it is a becoming sign of modesty.39 The phrase, ‘as though they had poured forth all their shame’ (quasi omnem verecundiam effuderint), is not entirely perspicuous. Most commentators and translators, as far as I can judge, take it to mean that such people have cast aside all shame. Thus, Richard Gummere, in the Loeb edition, gives: ‘as if they were letting all their sense of shame escape’, which I cannot understand.40 The Penguin version by Robin Campbell has: ‘as if in so doing they let loose all their inhibitions’,41 but why on earth would this cause someone to redden? People so disposed as to be frightening do not of course feel shame in the proper sense, that is, they do not assent to the idea that their behavior is wrong; that is why it is ‘as though’ they were expressing shame. But they must experience something like shame – the preemotion that corresponds to it – and hence they blush involuntarily, just as a sage might, who of course has no reason to feel shame. So too, people who, for physiological reasons, do not blush but do experience shame, will presumably have responded initially to the external impression in the way that those who blush do, that is, even without the particular physical symptom will have been subject to the pre-emotion. And this is the correlation that I am arguing for. In his consolation to Marcia, Seneca challenges the idea that grief for the loss of loved ones is natural. That missing them (desiderium suorum) is, Seneca happily allows: ‘quis negat?’, he asks, provided that it is moderate. He points out that even the strongest minds will feel a certain sting at the departure of those who are dear, never mind their death.42 The problem, however, is that opinion adds more than nature demands.43 Here he gives the example of dumb animals, which also 38 39

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naturali in hoc facilitate corporis pronos, nam ut quidam boni sanguinis sunt, ita quidam incitati et mobilis et cito in os prodeuntis, 11.5. quidam numquam magis quamcum erubuerint timendi sunt, quasi omnem verecundiam effuderint; Sulla tunc erat violentissimus cum faciem eius sanguis invaserat ... Fabianum, cum in senatum testis esset inductus, erubuisse memini, et hic illum mire pudor decuit, 11.4. Gummere 1917, 61. Campbell 1969, 55. nam discessu, non solum amissione carissimorum necessarius morsus est et firmissimorum quoque animorum contractio, 7.1. sed plus est quod opinio adicit quam quod natura imperauit, 7.1.

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experience loss (desideria) intensely, but nevertheless for only a brief span of time, and he concludes: no animal has a lengthy sorrow for its offspring except man, who adheres to his grief and is 44 stirred not to the extent that he feels it but to the extent that he has decided to be.

In the 99th epistle to Lucilius, Seneca makes the same point about the brevity of a sense of loss in animals, but uses it to opposite effect: when the first news of a bitter death strikes us, when we hold the body that is about to pass from our embrace into the fire, a natural necessity forces out our tears.45

But these tears fall irrespective of our will.46 The case is different with the tears that we shed at the memory of those we have lost. Seneca affirms that to forget loved ones and bury memory of them along with their bodies is inhuman; this is what birds and wild animals do, which love their young with a fierce passion, but this is extinguished when they have died.47 Seneca concludes that a sensible man, on the contrary, will persist in remembering – but he will cease to mourn (lugere). Seneca again equates the pre-emotional sting that even a sage experiences upon the loss of a dear one with that of animals, but here he seems to disapprove of the transient, if intense, affection that animals bear toward their own in comparison with the enduring memory of the deceased that human beings retain. But Seneca’s real point comes in the final phrase, in which he insists that though one may rightly recall the dead, one ought not to mourn them. The pain that human beings feel upon such a loss ought not to be repressed – tears are entirely natural and expected – but it should not last more than a brief time; if our capacity to remember turns loss into grief or mourning, then it is a pathology and must be cured. Like the instinctive reaction that lies behind blushing and which enters into our sense of shame, the natural sense of loss is a part of mourning, which by the addition of belief becomes an emotion and hence something to be got rid of.48 Toward the beginning of his book On Benefits, in the course of arguing that that one ought to persist in providing help even to those who fail to show gratitude, since the second benefaction or the third may awaken their memory, Seneca states that ‘even wild beasts recognize services, and no animal is so savage that attention cannot render it gentle and make it affectionate’. Trainers, for example, put their hands in the mouths of lions, and food makes even elephants docile. The analogy between animals and human beings here might seem to suggest that even 44 45 46 47

48

nec ulli animali longum fetus sui desiderium est nisi homini, qui adest dolori suo nec tantum quantum sentit sed quantum constituit adficitur, 7.2. cum primus nos nuntius acerbi funeris perculit, cum tenemus corpus e complexu nostro in ignem transiturum, lacrimas naturalis necessitas exprimit, 99.18. hae lacrimae per elisionem cadunt nolentibus nobis, 99.19. oblivisci quidem suorum ac memoriam cum corporibus efferre et effusissime flere, meminisse parcissime, inhumani animi est. sic aves, sic ferae suos diligunt, quarum concitatus est amor et paene rabidus, sed cum amissis totus extinguitur, 99.24. See Konstan 2013a for an analogous treatment of grief in Epicurean texts.

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though animals cannot be said to provide a benefaction, since they will not do it intentionally and in a spirit of generosity, they can nevertheless recognize and feel gratitude for kindnesses received. But this is to mistake Seneca’s point. The passage continues: ‘to such an extent does persistence in unwavering service overcome even those creatures that are without intelligence and appreciation of a benefaction’.49 Repeated benefactions bestowed on a thankless human being will stimulate an instinctive tameness or compliance, similar to that of animals that have been treated kindly. This is not yet gratitude in the full sense of the term, but is a precondition for it; although an animal can never advance beyond this unthinking disposition, human beings can reflect on their behavior, once they are suitably trained, as it were, and make it a matter of conscious choice and values. I have already remarked on the way in which Seneca contrasts animal ferocity and aggressiveness with anger proper in De ira, and so will not elaborate further on that emotion here. I would like to conclude with a look at the emotion fear, which Seneca discusses in the fifty-seventh epistle to Lucilius. In this letter, Seneca begins by reflecting on his sense of unease while he was passing through a dark tunnel en route from Baiae to Naples. As he puts it, ‘I felt a kind of blow to my mind which the novelty of an unfamiliar situation together with the griminess produced’.50 He insists that this type of response cannot be eliminated by philosophy or wisdom, even that of the accomplished sage, since there are some things that no amount of virtue can escape.51 Seneca offers as a parallel the vertigo we experience upon looking down from a great height, one of the examples that he cites also in his list of pre-emotions in the De ira, and he goes on to explain that ‘this is not fear, but rather a natural affect that cannot be eliminated by reason’.52 Once again, as in the case of blushing, Seneca notes that this reaction varies among people: some men cannot endure the sight of another’s blood but are prepared to shed their own blood willingly; some faint at a fresh wound, others at one that has festered. Seneca then repeats that what he experienced was not an emotion but rather an alteration,53 and he begins to reflect on how foolish it is to fear some things more than others, since all end in death. After all, what difference does it make whether you are killed by the collapse of a mountain, as in the tunnel, or of a tower; both are equally lethal. Yet some do fear the former more. Seneca then moves, with a transition that on the surface seems characteristically abrupt, to a critique of the idea, ascribed here (if the text is sound) to certain Stoics, that when the body is buried under a huge mass the soul, finding no es49

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officia etiam ferae sentiunt, nec ullum tam inmansuetum animal est, quod non cura mitiget et in amorem sui vertat. leonum ora a magistris inpune tractantur, elephantorum feritatem usque in servile obsequium demeretur cibus; adeo etiam, quae extra intellectum atque aestimationem beneficii posita sunt, adsiduitas tamen meriti pertinacis evincit, 1.2.5. sensi quendam ictum animi et sine metu mutationem quam insolitae rei novitas simul ac foeditas fecerat, 57.3. quaedam enim, mi Lucili, nulla effugere virtus potest, 57.4. non est hoc timor, sed naturalis adfectio inexpugnabilis rationi, 57.4. sensi ergo, ut dicebam, quandam non quidem perturbationem, sed mutationem, 57.6.

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cape, is crushed along with it (57.7), a notion that he proceeds to refute by observing that the soul is constituted of such fine particles that it can, even more than fire, find an exit through the densest mass (57.8). He concludes the letter by affirming that the real question, accordingly, is whether the soul is immortal; if it does survive the body, then it cannot in any way be destroyed, since nothing eternal is vulnerable to harm.54 As stated, Seneca’s position here is odd, since the Stoics, and Seneca himself in the conclusion to the Consolation to Marcia, maintained that the souls of the wise did survive the death of the body, but not everlastingly, since they would be consumed, along with everything else, in the universal conflagration; perhaps Seneca means by ‘eternal’ here simply enduring till the ekpurōsis. Leaving that matter aside, Seneca’s principal point is that someone like himself, with reasonable beliefs about the soul, will perceive no distinction between being squashed in a tunnel or by a falling tree, and since his good cheer returned as soon as he exited the tunnel, what he experienced inside it cannot be described as fear in the proper sense of the term but rather some more primitive and ineradicable reaction (the imagery of a journey through subterranean obscurity and the emergence into light may be a symbolic parallel to the movement from fear of bodily extinction to the immortality of the soul). Seneca’s object, here as in the letter on blushing, is to distinguish the elementary response of shock or the like from emotion, which depends on judgement and assent. If some people do not fear being crushed under a nearby tower, it is because they do not believe that their souls are at risk from such a collapse. But what of those who do fear towers as much as tunnels, or fear some other impending danger? They give their assent, wrongly from the Stoic point of view, to the proposition that death is an evil and is to be avoided; but is their fear purely a matter of judgement, or do they also experience that cringing anxiety at the imminent destruction of their lives? Seneca has demonstrated that one can feel the ‘natural affect’ even if one is not afraid; but can one be afraid without sensing the natural ‘blow to the mind’? Seneca does not say so explicitly. But I take his tendency to associate particular kinds of instinctive response with given emotions as an indication that such organic reactions accompany proper emotions generally, and lend them that extra ictus that renders them so difficult to eliminate, once they have arisen, by argument and persuasion. It is interesting to observe that a similar correlation between certain instinctive responses that human beings share with animals and fully realized human emotions has been proposed in the context of modern experimental psychology. Thus, Gerrod Parrott suggests that we may ‘use the term ur-emotion to refer to the commonalities shared by otherwise different emotions of various species’.55 Parrott goes on to observe that 54 55

nec quicquam noxium aeterno est, 57.8. Parrott 2012, 247f. See also Parrott 2010, and Frijda and Parrott 2011, where ur-emotions are defined as ‘intentional states’ accompanied by a ‘mode of action readiness’ (the list of such modes – eighteen in all – includes acceptance, attending, avoid, reject, desire, exuberance,

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David Konstan there are many differences between the emotions marah (in Indonesian), ikari (in Japanese), song (in Ifaluk), and anger (in English), but in all of them the ur-emotion of antagonism is evident – all four are aimed at an object that is appraised as interfering in some way with one’s concerns, and all four give rise to a motivation to stop that interference in different, culturally specific ways ... The recognition of these components across cultures leads to the intuition that there is something universal about emotions, but it is a mistake to suppose that there exist universal ‘basic emotions’ – marah, ikari, song, and anger are not the same emotion! Rather, it is the presence of the ur-emotion of antagonism that provides the intuition of universality.56

In the conclusion to epistle 90, in which he treats the emergence of civilization and takes issue with Posidonius’ ascription of all technical advances to the work of sages, Seneca remarks that the characters of primitive men had traits that resemble virtues but are not true virtues, which are only acquired through education. In that early time, human beings lacked justice, wisdom, moderation, and courage, the four primary virtues, according to Plato; what they possessed was rather the basic material of virtue, not virtue itself.57 Aristotle too had distinguished between certain innate characteristics, which he called phusikai, that are common to children and animals and are similar to virtues but not virtues in the strict or proper sense (kuriōs).58 I suggest that the relation between proto-virtues, as we may call them, and the several virtues in the proper sense of the word is analogous to that between the pre-emotions, as Seneca describes them, and emotions proper. Just as the primitive disposition is not cancelled when we acquire true virtue but is deepened insofar as our behavior is now ratified by understanding, so too the preemotional tendencies common to all people subtend the emotions that emerge when people reach the age of reason. They are part of the compound sentiment of which Seneca speaks. If we fail to understand the nature of these instinctive responses, and mistake them for shame, fear, anger, or whatever the relevant emotion may be, we are likely to resist altering our judgements and, instead, to justify the sentiments by holding firmly to our false beliefs. And this is what makes emotions so hard to change once they have us in their grip.

56 57

58

domination, submission, tenseness, and inhibition). However, when Frijda and Parrott affirm that ‘Ur-emotions are elicited by events as appraised’ (p. 410), they would seem to part company with the classical analyses, or else to be using the term ‘appraise’ in a very latitudinarian sense in which non-human animals too can be said to appraise situations. Parrott 2012, 248. deerat illis iustitia, deerat prudentia, deerat temperantia ac fortitudo. omnibus his virtutibus habebat similia quaedam rudis vita: virtus non contingit animo nisi instituto et edocto et ad summum adsidua exercitatione perducto. ad hoc quidem, sed sine hoc nascimur, et in optimis quoque, antequam erudias, virtutis materia, non virtus est, 90.46. καὶ γὰρ ἡ ἀρετὴ παραπλησίως ἔχει ὡς ἡ φρόνησις πρὸς τὴν δεινότητα – οὐ ταὐτὸ µέν, ὅµοιον δέ – οὕτω καὶ ἡ φυσικὴ ἀρετὴ πρὸς τὴν κυρίαν. πᾶσι γὰρ δοκεῖ ἕκαστα τῶν ἠθῶν ὑπάρχειν φύσει πως· καὶ γὰρ δίκαιοι καὶ σωφρονικοὶ καὶ ἀνδρεῖοι καὶ τἆλλα ἔχοµεν εὐθὺς ἐκ γενετῆς· ἀλλ᾽ ὅµως ζητοῦµεν ἕτερόν τι τὸ κυρίως ἀγαθὸν καὶ τὰ τοιαῦτα ἄλλον τρόπον ὑπάρχειν. καὶ γὰρ παισὶ καὶ θηρίοις αἱ φυσικαὶ ὑπάρχουσιν ἕξεις, ἀλλ᾽ ἄνευ νοῦ βλαβεραὶ φαίνονται οὖσαι, EN 1144b1–9. For Aristotle’s view of natural (phusei) emotions in relation to Seneca’s, see Konstan 2013b.

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BIBLIOGRAPHY Adamik, B. (2005) Tres bybliothecas habeo, unam Graecam, alteram Latinam: Textkritische, philologische und soziolinguistische Interpretation von Petrons Satyricon 48.4, Acta Antiqua 45, 133–142. Annas, J. E. (1992) Hellenistic Philosophy of Mind, Berkeley. Campbell, R., trans. (1969) Seneca: Letters from a Stoic, Harmondsworth. Cooper, J. M. (1999) Reason and Emotion: Essays on Ancient Moral Psychology and Ethical Theory, Princeton. D’Jeranian, O. (2014) Deux theories stoïciennes des affections préliminaires, Revue de Philosophie Ancienne 32, 225–257. Frijda, N. H. and W. G. Parrott (2011) Basic Emotions or Ur-Emotions?, Emotion Review 3, 406– 415. Gill, C. (1998) Did Galen Understand Platonic and Stoic Thinking on Emotions, in J. Sihvola and T. Engberg-Petersen (eds.), The Emotions in Hellenistic Philosophy, Dordrecht, 113–148. Graver, M. R. (1999) Philo of Alexandria and the Origins of the Stoic Προπάθειαι, Phronesis 44, 300–325. Gummere, R. (1917) Senecae epistulae morales, vol. 1, London. Konstan, D. (2013a) Lucretius and the Epicurean Attitude toward Grief, in D. Lehoux, A. Morrison, and A. Sharrock (eds.), Lucretius: Poetry, Philosophy, and Science, Oxford, 193–209. ––– (2013b) Emotions and Morality: The View from Classical Antiquity, in Moral Emotions, special issue of Topoi: An International Review of Philosophy 32, DOI 10.1007/s11245–013– 9229–0. Krewet, M. (2013) Die stoische Theorie der Gefühle: Ihre Aporien, ihre Wirkmacht, Heidelberg. Long, A. A. (1996) Stoic Studies, Berkeley. Newmyer, S. T. (2006) Animals, Rights, and Reason in Plutarch and Modern Ethics, New York. Nussbaum, M. (2001) Upheavals of Thought: the Intelligence of Emotions, Cambridge. Parrott, W. G. (2010) Ur-Emotions and Your Emotions: Reconceptualizing Basic Emotion, Emotion Review 2, 14–21. ––– (2012) Ur-Emotions: The Common Feature of Animal Emotions and Socially Constructed Emotions, Emotion Review 4, 247f. Sorabji, R. (2000) Emotion and Peace of Mind: From Stoic Agitation to Christian Temptation, Oxford. Tieleman, T. (2003) Chrysippus on Affections: Reconstruction and Interpretation, Leiden. Tutrone, F. (2012) Filosofi e animali in Roma antica: Modelli di animalità e umanità in Lucrezio e Seneca, Pavia.

SOME THOUGHTS ON THE ANGER OF SENECA’S MEDEA Chiara Battistella, Damien Nelis Anger pervades Seneca’s Medea. In this paper we will examine some of its manifestations at the end of the play. In doing so, we will look back to Euripides’ Medea, clearly a key model text, while also keeping in mind some relevant features of Stoic ideas about the emotions. But mainly we will attempt to illustrate the extent of the direct influence on Seneca of the final scene of Vergil’s Aeneid.1 Even in comparison with the already highly emotional Euripidean Medea, Seneca’s play notoriously offers an escalation of passion, violence and horror. Right from the beginning, its driving force comes consistently from the main protagonist’s heightened emotional state. In Euripides’ version, the Nurse has the play’s opening speech, in which she expresses her fear for the children’s future (‘I am afraid that she will hatch some sinister plan’, 37). Seneca transfers the opening words to Medea herself, and the tone is immediately set (49–52): grauior exsurgat dolor: maiora iam me scelera post partus decent. accingere ira, teque in exitium para furore toto my bitterness must grow more weighty: greater crimes become me now, after giving birth. Arm yourself in anger, prepare to wreak destruction with full rage.

After hearing these appalling words, one can get a clear sense of why the Euripidean Nurse was so scared. It is almost as if Seneca’s prologue provides the ‘explanation’ for the fear of Euripides’ Nurse. By playing with the fictional chronology of literature, it is possible to imagine that the utterances of the Senecan Medea were spoken before the worried speech of the Euripidean Nurse. Established from the outset as central to the play, the vocabulary of extreme passion will recur throughout.2 That the anger of Seneca’s Medea reaches greater

1

2

We are not the first to see connections between the end of the Medea and the end of the Aeneid. See especially Putnam 1995, 263–265. See also Schiesaro 2003, 92–96 on Thyestes and the closing scene of the Aeneid as a model for sacrificial death scenes in later texts. On Seneca and Augustan poetry generally see now Trinacty 2014; at 136f. he links the anger at end of the Aeneid to the Hercules Furens; see also Littlewood 2004, 152f. On Senecan emotions see the summary of Konstan 2015. The following translations have been used: for Seneca’s Medea Fitch 2002; for Euripides’ Medea Kovacs 1994; for Seneca’s De ira Basore 1928; for Vergil’s Aeneid Ahl 2008. On the metadramatic nature of Medea’s passions in the tragedy see Schiesaro 2003, 16–18.

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heights than that of her Greek counterpart is shown in an exemplary way at lines 382–396: Alumna, celerem quo rapis tectis pedem? resiste et iras comprime ac retine impetum. Incerta qualis entheos gressus tulit cum iam recepto maenas insanit deo Pindi niualis uertice aut Nysae iugis, talis recursat huc et huc motu effero, furoris ore signa lymphati gerens. flammata facies, spiritum ex alto citat, proclamat, oculos uberi fletu rigat, renidet: omnis specimen affectus capit. haeret: minatur aestuat queritur gemit. quo pondus animi uerget? ubi ponet minas? ubi se iste fluctus franget? exundat furor. non facile secum uersat aut medium scelus; se uincet: irae nouimus ueteris notas. magnum aliquid instat, efferum immane impium: uultum Furoris cerno. di fallant metum! Like an ecstatic maenad taking erratic steps, crazed and possessed by the god, on snowy Pindus’ peak or Nysa’s ridges, so she keeps running here and there with wild movements, with signs of frenzied rage in her expression. Her face is blazing, she draws deep breaths, she shouts out, weeps floods of tears, beams with joy; she shows evidence of each and every emotion. She hesitates, threatens, fumes, laments, groans. Which way will the weight of her mind come down? Where will she implement her threats? Where will that wave break? Her rage is cresting. It is no simple or moderate crime she is contemplating: she will outdo herself. I know the hallmarks of her old anger. Something great is looming, savage, monstrous, unnatural. I see the face of Rage. May the gods prove my fears wrong!

These lines, spoken by the Nurse, have no counterpart in Euripides’ play. In fact, if one compares the two texts in close detail, Seneca’s quite striking variation on the model becomes obvious. In the corresponding section of the Euripidean play the pivotal encounter between Medea and Creon comes to an end at verse 356. In his closing words Creon gives Medea permission to stay in Corinth for just one more day (351–354): προυννέπω δέ σοι εἴ σ’ ἡ ‘πιοῦσα λαµπὰς ὄψεται θεοῦ καὶ παῖδας ἐντὸς τῆσδε τερµόνων χθονός, θανῇ· λέλεκται µῦθος ἀψευδὴς ὅδε But I warn you, if tomorrow’s sun sees you and your children within the borders of this land, you will be put to death. I mean what I have said.

Next comes a short speech by the Chorus (357–363), followed by a long speech of Medea (364–409). In Seneca’s version of the same events, the corresponding encounter between Medea and Creon comes to an end at verse 300. In his closing words, Creon orders Medea to leave Corinth before dawn on the following day (297–299):

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Capite supplicium lues, clarum priusquam Phoebus attollat diem nisi cedis Isthmo. You will be punished by death if you do not leave the Isthmus before Phoebus raises the bright day.3

This similarity clearly aligns the action of the two plays at this central moment in the plot. And as in Euripides, Seneca follows on with the Chorus, but with variations on the model that are all the more visible because of the connection between the lines we have just been discussing. In Euripides’ version Creon exits and the scene continues with an exchange between the Chorus and Medea. In Seneca’s imitation, both Creon and Medea exit together, and instead of the very short speech of the Chorus at Euripides 357–363 we get a full-scale choral ode running from verse 301 to 379. Then, instead of the long Euripidean speech of Medea at 364–409, we get the much shorter speech of the Nurse quoted in full above, and only then a longer reply by Medea (397–425), who has evidently just reappeared on stage with the Nurse. The Euripidean order of speeches involving Creon+Medea–Chorus–Medea becomes in Seneca Creon+Medea–Chorus–Nurse– Medea. Seneca thus draws attention to his originality in including a speech by the Nurse at this point. It is all the more noteworthy, therefore, that the Nurse’s words offer a remarkably concentrated and powerful depiction of a Medea subsumed by passionate wrath, as the vocabulary of anger piles up: iras, furoris, furor, irae, Furoris. In addition, we get such related vocabulary as impetum, insanit, lymphati, flammata, fletu, minas. Indeed, we almost seem to find in these few lines, as the Nurse herself states, ‘evidence of each and every emotion’ (omnis specimen affectus, 389).4 Although Euripides’ Nurse too brings out in two of her speeches Medea’s savage nature and her propensity to show violent emotions (cf. 103f. and 187– 189), the Nurse’s description of Medea in Seneca rather resembles quite closely the portrait of the angry man at De ira 1.1.3–5. They appear to share almost the same symptoms. The colour of her face, the frantic movement, the tears in her eyes, the groaning, to mention only a few obvious features, help to present Medea as a character stereotypically prone to this hideous vice (uitium deforme): Vt scias autem non esse sanos quos ira possedit, ipsum illorum habitum intuere; nam ut furentium certa indicia sunt audax et minax uultus, tristis frons, torua facies, citatus gradus, inquietae manus, color uersus, crebra et uehementius acta suspiria, ita irascentium eadem signa sunt: flagrant ac micant oculi, multus ore toto rubor exaestuante ab imis praecordiis 3

4

We may have Ennius’ version of this crucial moment in the play: si te secundo lumine hic offendero / moriere (Vahlen fr. 6). Jocelyn 1967, 349 is cautious, but see Boyle 2014, on 296–299. This point reminds us of just how much our appreciation of the full complexity of Seneca’s intertextual strategies is hindered by the absence of this key model. On Seneca and Ovid’s Medea see most recently Battistella 2015; there is much of interest also in Curley 2013. Traina’s claim that the uertere of the Romans stresses the pathos of the original both at the level of the signifier and the signified may be also applied to Seneca’s rewriting of his Euripidean model (19874, 37).

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Chiara Battistella and Damien Nelis sanguine, labra quatiuntur, dentes comprimuntur, horrent ac surriguntur capilli, spiritus coactus ac stridens, articulorum se ipsos torquentium sonus, gemitus mugitusque et parum explanatis uocibus sermo praeruptus et conplosae saepius manus et pulsata humus pedibus et totum concitum corpus magnasque irae minas agens, foeda uisu et horrenda facies deprauantium se atque intumescentium – nescias utrum magis detestabile uitium sit an deforme. You have only to behold the aspect of those possessed by anger to know that they are insane. For as the marks of a madman are unmistakable – a bold and threatening mien, a gloomy brow, a fierce expression, a hurried step, restless hands, an altered colour, a quick and more violent breathing – so likewise are the marks of the angry man; his eyes blaze and sparkle, his whole face is crimson with the blood that surges from the lowest depths of the heart, his lips quiver, his teeth are clenched, his hair bristles and stands on end, his breathing is forced and harsh, his joints crack from writhing, he groans and bellows, bursts out into speech with scarcely intelligible words, strikes his hands together continually, and stamps the ground with his feet; his whole body is excited and performs great angry threats: it is an ugly and horrible picture of distorted and swollen frenzy – you cannot tell whether this vice is more execrable or more hideous.

Medea’s character is thus presented by Seneca in relation to an established, canonical register of extreme emotionality.5 Reference to the literary tradition and comparisons with philosophical investigations underpin both her inner disposition to get angry and the forms in which it can be expressed. Horace’s Ars poetica 123 comes inevitably to mind, where he states that Medea must be fierce and implacable: sit Medea ferox inuictaque.6 When the Senecan Nurse says at verse 394, ‘I know the hallmarks of her old anger’ (irae nouimus ueteris notas), she makes the same point that the Nurse makes right at the start of Euripides’ play, based on her previous experience (37–39): δέδοικα δ’ αὐτὴν µή τι βουλεύσῃ νέον· βαρεῖα γὰρ φρήν, οὐδ’ ἀνέξεται κακῶς πάσχουσ’ (ἐγᾦδα τήνδε) […] I am afraid that she will hatch some sinister plan. Her temper is violent, and she will not put up with bad treatment (I know her) […]

Within the terrible logic of the Senecan play itself, it is only by committing the horrible crime of infanticide that Medea can fulfil the role demanded of her by literary precedent and thus tragically become truly herself. This point is suggested by the terrible irony of the first half of verse 171. There the Nurse starts to say something, beginning with the name Medea, only to be immediately interrupted by Medea herself, who famously interjects the single word fiam (‘I will become her’). The point is that she will indeed only become fully Medea through the completion of her murderous vengeance. In this way, Seneca inscribes his play into a long literary tradition, declaring his status as a latecomer but using this declaration as a marker of his success in taking his Medea to new depths of crime and suffering, which will also result in the creation of a different and more poignant finale. 5 6

In narratological terms, emotionality may be defined as the competence preceding action (cf. Bartezzaghi 1988, 58; cf. also Greimas 1983, 245). Medea’s traditional depiction in tragedy seems to contravene Aristotle’s warning against manly representations of female characters, cf. Poetics 1454a20.

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The ending of Seneca’s play, where the infanticide takes place, engages with the climactic effects of such emotionality. Of course, the death of the children at the play’s end comes as no surprise. Nonetheless, the fact that in Seneca’s version it is articulated in two distinct phases represents an element of novelty when compared with Euripides’ version. The way in which Seneca has reworked the Euripidean scene may offer some food for thought, especially if one considers another literary text in which ira and the motifs of mercy, murder, punishment and sacrifice are put on display: the final scene of Aeneid 12. And in addition, as if the intertextual mix were not already complex enough, it is always important to keep an eye open for the presence of possible allusion to specifically Stoic thinking about the emotions, given that it has now been recognised that Seneca tragicus cannot be fully understood without taking into account philosophical components.7 According to De ira 2.4.1, anger, like other passions, develops gradually and is articulated in three movements (motus):8 the first is involuntary, a preparation for passion; the second is an act of volition, which assumes that revenge is necessary because of an injury, but which still may be controlled. The third movement is quite beyond control: est iam impotens, qui non si oportet ulcisci uult sed utique, qui rationem euicit (in that it wishes to take vengeance, not if it is right to do so, but whether or not, and has utterly vanquished reason). At the play’s close, Medea’s ira has clearly already entered this third stage. From the De ira we also learn that anger is bent on punishment (auida poenae, 1.5.3), which perfectly fits our tragic narrative, the ultimate goal of which is murderous revenge. However, Seneca warns, pudor and morae can serve as checks (De ira 3.1.2): alios pudor coepto deiecit, alios mora, lentum praecipitis mali remedium9 (others are turned from their course by shame, others by procrastination – a slow remedy, this last, for a swift disorder). Now, Medea has been attentively depicted as both refusing pudor (900 abeat expulsus pudor let any sense of shame be expelled) and raising the possibility of delay, mora (988 quid nunc moraris, anime? quid dubitas? why delay now, my spirit? why hesitate?) only to refuse it too. Horribly, the only thing that is slow in this case is the pleasure she takes in the accomplishment of her crime: perfruere lento scelere (relish your crime in leisure, 1016). With the possibility of any kind of delay or change of mind eradicated, the play’s spectators/readers10 can only wait for the final acts in order to find out precisely how Seneca will decide to present the infanticide. It is at this point that the presence of a possible Vergilian intertext merits discussion. In the last scene of the Aeneid Turnus is wounded by Aeneas. Turnus makes a suppliant’s plea. His words seem to take effect, and Aeneas stops his hand, until 7 8 9 10

The problems are numerous and the bibliography vast, but for holistic views of Seneca’s writings see, for example, Tarrant 2006 and Ker 2006. On this cf. Graver 2014, 271ff. and passim. Cf. also 3.12.4 maximum remedium irae dilatio est, ut primus eius feruor relanguescat et caligo, quae premit mentem, aut residat aut minus densa sit. On this cf. Kohn 2013 and 2015.

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his eyes light on Pallas’ baldric.11 He then strikes and kills Turnus in a fit of passionate anger. In order to facilitate comparison with the close of Seneca’s Medea, we will quote the closing lines in full (930–952): ille humilis supplex oculos dextramque precantem protendens ‘equidem merui nec deprecor’ inquit; ‘utere sorte tua. miseri te si qua parentis tangere cura potest, oro (fuit et tibi talis Anchises genitor) Dauni miserere senectae et me, seu corpus spoliatum lumine mauis, redde meis. uicisti et uictum tendere palmas Ausonii uidere; tua est Lauinia coniunx, ulterius ne tende odiis’. stetit acer in armis Aeneas uoluens oculos dextramque repressit; et iam iamque magis cunctantem flectere sermo coeperat, infelix umero cum apparuit alto balteus et notis fulserunt cingula bullis Pallantis pueri, uictum quem uulnere Turnus strauerat atque umeris inimicum insigne gerebat. ille, oculis postquam saeui monimenta doloris exuuiasque hausit, furiis accensus et ira terribilis: ‘tune hinc spoliis indute meorum eripiare mihi? Pallas te hoc uulnere, Pallas immolat et poenam scelerato ex sanguine sumit’. hoc dicens ferrum aduerso sub pectore condit feruidus ira; ast illi soluuntur frigore membra uitaque cum gemitu fugit indignata sub umbras. Low on the ground and on bended knee, he appeals with extended hand, with an earnest look in his eyes, and declares: ‘I’ve deserved this, now am I begging for life. Opportunity’s yours; and so use it. But, if the love of a parent can touch you at all (for you once had just such a father, Anchises), I beg you to pity the aged Daunus, and give me, or if you prefer, my lightless cadaver, back to my kin. You’ve won; the Ausonians have witnessed the vanquished reaching his hands out to make his appeal. Now Lavinia’s your wife. Don’t press your hate any further’. Aeneas, relentless in combat, stops; and though rolling his eyes, he holds back his hand from the death-stroke. Slowly but surely, the words take effect, but when a harness catches his gaze, high on Turnus’s shoulder, gleaming with amulet studs, those pleas have no chance of fulfilment: Pallas’s oh so familiar belt, which Turnus has shouldered after defeating and killing the boy. It’s the mark of a hated personal foe. As his eyes drink in these mementoes of savage pain, these so bitter spoils, Aeneas grows fearsome in anger, burning with fire of the Furies. ‘You, dressed in the spoils of my dearest, think that you could escape me? Pallas gives you this death-stroke, yes Pallas makes you the sacrifice, spills your criminal blood in atonement!’ And, as he speaks, he buries the steel in the heart that confronts him, boiling with rage. Cold shivers send Turnus’ limbs into spasm. Life flutters off on a groan, under protest, down among shadows.

Close comparison between this scene and Seneca’s account of the death of Medea’s children will reveal a number of similarities. One must always allow, of course, for the possibility of accidental verbal confluences, given that we are deal11

The bibliography on this closing scene is of course vast; for ways in to the debates see the recent expert contributions by Putnam 2011; Tarrant 2012, 16–30.

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ing with two climactic scenes of killing. Nevertheless, we will try to set out as clearly as possible the parallels between the two texts, taking Seneca as our starting point, in order to try to assess whether he is indeed alluding to Aeneid 12 in any meaningful sense. At 970, Medea strikes to kill the first child: uictima manes tuos / placamus ista (with this sacrifice I placate your shade); it is these words that mark the actual death stroke. She presents the murder of her child as a sacrifice that will placate her brother Apsyrtus, whom she had murdered during the journey from Colchis back to Greece. References to his death are frequent in the play.12 After expressing doubts and hesitations right up to the last minute (especially lines 926–932), but in fact right up to line 952 (inuitam manum), the struggle in her soul continues, before the climactic declaration ira, qua ducis, sequor at 953 (anger, where you lead, I follow). Then, as she prepares to kill her son, her brother Apsyrtus comes to mind. In lines 958–966 she seems to imagine his shade approaching, alongside the Furies,13 who desire vengeance for his death. She then declares that her breast is ‘open’ to the Furies (pectus en Furiis patet) and invites her brother to tell them to withdraw (967f.). She goes on to ask Apsyrtus to act, apparently imagining that he is the one who is going to strike the blow with the sword she has drawn: utere hac, frater, manu / quae strinxit ensem (969f.). Eventually she kills, while the second half of line 971, quid repens affert sonus? (what is the meaning of this sudden noise?) marks the beginning of the next stage of the action. If we now compare this first killing with the end of the Aeneid, a number of similarities come easily to mind. There too the essential movement of the climactic scene is one that proceeds from hesitation (et iam iamque magis cunctantem flectere sermo/coeperat, 12.940f.) to mention of the Furies (furiis/Furiis accensus, 12.946),14 to the actual strike of the sword. At that moment, enraged by the sight of Pallas’ baldric, Aeneas speaks thus (12.948f.): ‘Pallas te hoc uulnere, Pallas immolat et poenam scelerato sub pectore sumit’ ‘Pallas gives you this death-stroke, yes Pallas makes you the sacrifice, spills your criminal blood in atonement!’

With these words he presents Pallas as the killer of Turnus. In addition, he presents the killing as a sacrificial act (immolat). This strikingly unexpected doubling, which has Aeneas plunge the sword into Turnus precisely as he presents Pallas as the killer, is repeated by Seneca. At 969f. Medea tells Apsyrtus to ‘use this hand that has drawn the sword’, and then goes on to use the first-person plural form placamus. This can of course be taken simply as plural for singular, but there is added point if Medea is in fact imagining herself and Apsyrtus together killing 12 13 14

Cf. 278; 452; 473; 487; 911; 936. On this cf. Aygon 2004–2005. On the inherent ambiguity created by the fact that it is hard to decide whether one should read either furiis or Furiis see, for example, Polleichtner-Nelis 2009, 109; Konstan 2010, 14f. More generally see Feeney 1991, 83.

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the child, thus producing a climactic doubling up, exactly as in Vergil.15 Seneca’s phrase utere hac, frater, manu (969) is highly evocative in this respect. It is as if both Pallas and Apsyrtus enact their own vengeance. The sight of Pallas’ baldric may also have a counterpart in Medea’s vision of her brother (963f.): cuius umbra dispersis uenit incerta membris? Frater est, poenas petit whose shade approaches ill-defined with limbs dispersed? It is my brother, he seeks amends.

Seneca’s phrase poenas petit strikingly activates a point of textual contact with Aeneid 12.949 poenam…sumit: in both cases, retribution is successfully exacted. As Medea moves on to the final stage of her actions and the killing of the second child, we once again pass first through a moment of doubt and hesitation: quid nunc moraris, anime? quid dubitas? (Why delay now, my spirit? Why hesitate? 988). She then rejoices in the presence of Jason as a spectator of the final moments of the play: derat hoc unum mihi, spectator ipse (this was the one thing I lacked, this spectator, 992f.). Jason then first asks her to spare the second son: iam parce nato (spare our son now, 1004), before going on to ask Medea to kill him, presenting this action as sacrificial: noxium macta caput (sacrifice my guilty life, 1005). Medea replies that she will drive the sword (ferrum, 1006) where it hurts most and uses the adjective superbus of Jason: i nunc, superbe, uirginum thalamos pete (go on now, arrogant man, seek out virgins’ bedrooms, 1007). Jason replies that the death of one son is enough punishment: unus est poenae satis (one boy is enough to punish me, 1008). Finally, at verse 1018, Medea kills the second son, saying misereri iubes (you bid me have pity, 1018). Once again, there are parallels with the Vergilian text. There, as we have seen, hesitation precedes final action. There too, strong attention is drawn to the presence of an internal audience: in lines 928f., when Turnus is first wounded by Aeneas, Vergil takes care to devote two whole verses to the reaction of the Rutulians as they watch the scene unfold: Consurgunt gemitu Rutuli totusque remugit mons circum et uocem late nemora alta remittunt. Up leaped Rutulians moaning in notes re-intoned in the whole hill’s rippled response, as their voices are echoed around by the high woods

In Turnus’ final speech, he refers to the presence of the Italian onlookers: uicisti et uictum tendere palmas / Ausonii uidere (you’ve won; the Ausonians have witnessed the vanquished reaching his hands out to make his appeal, 12.936f.), thus strengthening the idea of the presence of an internal audience in the minds of readers. At this point, also Turnus asks to be spared: et me … redde meis (and give me … back to my kin, 12.934f.). He specifically asks Aeneas to pity his father 15

Putnam 1995, 265 notices that Medea 970f. uictima manes tuos / placamus ista recalls Vergil’s immolat in Aeneid 12.949. In comparing Medea’s with Aeneas’ anger, gender is not an obstacle, since women are often represented as masculine when they are affected by anger and punish in tragedy. Cf. Seneca, Medea 42; 268 and Harris 2003, 137 and passim.

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(oro… Dauni miserere senectae, I beg you to take pity the aged Daunus, 12.933f.; cf. 12.932 miseri … parentis). When Aeneas finally thrusts his sword (ferrum, 12.950) into Turnus, he presents the act, as we have already noted, both as one of punishment and as a sacrifice. The presence of the motif of the internal audience, hesitation, the request for pity, the iron sword, the lethal blow seen as both a punishment and a sacrificial act are all features common to both texts. In these passages also the wider context is one in which a perceived wrong now leads to revenge, with the underlying idea that arrogance must be punished. Just as Medea describes Jason as superbus at verse 1007, Turnus is consistently presented as superbus across the Aeneid, in which the adjective usually refers to overbearing arrogance.16 The reader’s memory can easily go back at least to Aeneid 10.51417 … te, Turne, superbum / caede noua quaerens (he seeks you out, Turnus, proud of your latest slaughter). At 12.326 he is described as superbus for the final time.18 Turnus’ and Jason’s arrogance paves the way to the ultimate act of revenge, in which a bloody price in the form of human sacrifice is exacted (macto; litarem; immolat) to assuage the protagonists’ ira and furor.19 The function of monimentum doloris assigned to Pallas’ baldric worn by Turnus is transferred, as it were, to Medea’s children in that they embody the living memory of her recent past.20 Moreover, it may be added that Turnus’ plea to Aeneas not to extend his hatred further at 938 (ulterius ne tende odiis) looks conceptually close to Jason’s request to Medea to spare the second child (unus est poenae satis, 1008). If the arguments set out here succeed in convincing anyone that Seneca’s intertextual strategy at the end of his Medea includes allusion to the final scene of Aeneid 12, the connection between the two texts may be thought to raise the question of the legitimacy of Medea’s anger in light of debates about the morality of Aeneas’ actions. Looking at the commonalities on which we have been insisting, key differences stand out. Medea revels in a double murder; she even experiences 16 17 18

19

20

On the adjective in the Aeneid see Lloyd 1972. Cf. Lloyd 1972, 131f. Anchises’ advice to Aeneas at Aeneid 6.853 parcere subiectis et debellare superbos (to spare the humble and to tame the proud in war) must resonate at the poem’s end, ensuring that Turnus can be thought of as superbus right up to the very end and, at the very least, complicating the possibility of seeing him as simply subiectus. Cf. also Seneca, Medea 38f. postque sacrificas preces / caedam dicatis uictimas altaribus (with reference to the first murder in the tragedy, that of the new bride and her father). For the upsetting choice of staging a human sacrifice in the Aeneid cf. Putnam 1995, 254; cf. also Polleichtner-Nelis 2009, 105f.; Tarrant 2012, 21 on revenge and sacrifice as an old motif of tragedy. Considerations of space here preclude detailed discussion of the ways in which Seneca may have read the closing scene of the Aeneid as a text constructed out of tragic models and motifs. On ancient anger and retaliation cf. e.g. Vogt 2006, 58. Or because they remind her of Jason? On the children’s resemblance to their father as a reason for Medea’s vengeance, which is perhaps adumbrated in Seneca, Medea 23–26, cf. Bessone 1997, 258f. On Dido acting as Medea see, for example, Vergil, Aeneid 4.84; 328f.; 600f. and in general Nelis 2001, chap. 4.

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pleasure through it (uoluptas, 991). Moreover, she makes a shocking claim by professing herself ready to probe her vitals with the sword, should another child lie hidden in her womb (1011–1013).21 Manifesting pleasure in exacting revenge was firmly condemned by the Stoics (Seneca, De ira 1.6.5). As for the Epicureans,22 Philodemus in his On Anger (44) rejects the idea that the wise man may find any pleasure in revenge: revenge is necessary, but there is no pleasure in it (he is not ‘impelled to his revenge as to something enjoyable – because it has nothing pleasurable to offer him – but approaches it as something most necessary and most unpleasurable, as he would the drinking of apsinthion or surgery’ [trans. courtesy of D. Armstrong]).23 In this light, the contacts between Seneca and Vergil rather than bringing them closer, make Medea’s cruelty stand out even more terribly and invite us to turn back to the final scene of the Greek play.24 The infanticide section at the close of Euripides’ Medea is almost devoid of the vocabulary of anger that is so predominant in the rest of the play. The monologue Medea delivers shortly before her murder does not give prominence to any sign of anger or similar emotion, as if she had already evacuated her passions (Medea 1242–1250): ἀλλ’ εἶ’ ὁπλίζου, καρδία· τί µέλλοµεν τὰ δεινὰ κἀναγκαῖα µὴ πράσσειν κακά; ἄγ’, ὦ τάλαινα χεὶρ ἐµή, λαβὲ ξίφος, λάβ’, ἕρπε πρὸς βαλβῖδα λυπηρὰν βίου, καὶ µὴ κακισθῇς µηδ’ ἀναµνησθῇς τέκνων, ὡς φίλταθ’, ὡς ἔτικτες· ἀλλὰ τήνδε γε λαθοῦ βραχεῖαν ἡµέραν παίδων σέθεν, κἄπειτα θρήνει· καὶ γὰρ εἰ κτενεῖς σφ’, ὅµως φίλοι γ’ ἔφυσαν· δυστυχὴς δ’ ἐγὼ γυνή. Come, put on your armor, my heart! Why do I put off doing the terrible deed that must be done? Come, luckless hand, take the sword, take it and go to your life’s miserable goal! Do not weaken, do not remember that you love the children, that you gave them life. Instead, for this brief day forget them – and mourn hereafter: for even if you kill them, they were dear to you. Oh, what an unhappy woman I am!

It is the Chorus, on the contrary, that draws attention to the character’s enraged emotionality, when it comments on the killing; by hinting at Medea as bloody Erinys (1260), it asks her (1265–1267): δειλαία, τί σοι φρενοβαρὴς χόλος προσπίτνει καὶ ζαµενὴς φόνος ἀµείβεται; 21 22

23 24

On Medea’s womb as a locus of both life and death cf. Rimell 2012. The wise man may be affected by anger on the condition that it is a short-lived and not impetuous emotion springing up for a legitimate reason (Indelli 2004, 103). Anger in some respects may also be considered intrinsic to the nature of human being. Cf. Konstan 2010, 17f. Ovid too in Metamorphoses 7.396f. does not seem to approve of Medea’s act: sanguine natorum perfunditur inpius ensis, / ultaque se male mater Iasonis effugit arma. On the way philosophical doctrines may have influenced poetry cf. Gill 1996, passim.

Some Thoughts on the Anger of Seneca’s Medea

255

O unhappy woman, why does wrath falls so heavy upon your mind and one rash murder succeed another?

As we have seen, unlike that of Euripides, Seneca’s finale counts on an accumulation of the vocabulary of furious anger. Medea’s monologue (893–977) preceding the infanticide is packed with ira (7x) and furor (3x), to which the appearance of the Furies Medea envisions is to be added (4x). Ira, as we have already pointed out, leads the way (ira, qua ducis, sequor, 957), but Medea’s action, to be successful, needs, as it were, the final validation of an external force, the Furies, her brother’s avenging divinities, so that they may inject furor into her and ira may turn into something even more violent and irrational.25 And incidentally, from Seneca’s treatise On Anger we learn that ira has a retenue of comites adfectus, amongst which rabies, saeuitia, crudelitas and furor are listed (2.12.6). The concourse of ira and furor, or rather the progression from the one to the other, is effectively described in 2.36.5: Aiacem in mortem egit furor, in furorem ira (it was frenzy that drove Ajax to his death and anger drove him into frenzy). It is our belief that, in addition to the relevance of philosophical analysis of passionate anger and his overall adherence to Euripides as a key model text, it was in the final scene of Aeneid 12 that Seneca encountered a powerful and climactic meditation on anger and murderous revenge, one that profoundly influenced the ways in which he went about bringing his own play to a close. BIBLIOGRAPHY Ahl, F. (2008) Virgil. Aeneid, Oxford/New York. Basore, J. W. (1928) Seneca. Moral Essays. De providentia, De constantia, De ira, De clementia, Cambridge MA/London. Bartezzaghi, S. and S. del Gaudio di Jueli (1988) The Quest and the Doubt. Knowledge and Emotions in Oedipus: Between Sophocles and Seneca, Versus 50–1, 57–69. Battistella, C. (2015) Medea Reaches Maturity: On Ovidian Intertextuality in Sen. Med. 905–15, Classical Journal 110.4, 446–470. Bessone, F. (1997) P. Ovidii Nasonis Heroidum Epistula XII: Medea Iasoni, Florence. Boyle, A. J. (2014) Seneca, Medea, Oxford. Curley, D. (2013) Tragedy in Ovid, Cambridge. Feeney, D. (1991) The Gods in Epic, Oxford. Fitch, J. G. (2002) Seneca. Hercules, Trojan Women, Phoenician Women, Medea, Phaedra, Cambridge MA. Gill, C. (1996) Ancient Passions: Theories and Cultural Studies, in K. Cameron (ed.), The Literary Portrayal of Passion Through the Ages: An Interdisciplinary View, Lewinston/Queenston/ Lampeter, 1–10. Graver, M. (2014) Ethics II: Action and Emotion, in G. Damschen and A. Heil (eds.), Brill’s Companion to Seneca. Philosopher and Dramatist, Leiden/Boston, 257–275.

25

‘Allusion to the Furiae is the major addition here to Seneca’s ordinary vocabulary of emotion’ (Putnam 1995, 265).

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Greimas, J. (1983) De la colère. Étude de sémantique lexicale, in Du Sens II. Essais sémiotiques, Paris, 225–246. Harris, W. (2003) The Rage of Women, in S. Braund and G. W. Most (eds.), Anger in Classical Antiquity, Cambridge, 121–143. Indelli, G. (2004) The Vocabulary of Anger in Philodemus’ De ira and Vergil’s Aeneid, in D. Armstrong, J. Fish, P. A. Johnston, M. B. Skinner (eds.), Vergil, Philodemus, and the Augustans, Austin, 103–110. Jocelyn, H. D. (1967) The Tragedies of Ennius, Cambridge. Ker, J. (2006), Seneca, Man of Many Genres, in K. Volk and G. D. Williams (eds.), Seeing Seneca Whole: Perspectives on Philosophy, Poetry and Politics, Leiden/Boston, 19–42. Konstan, D. (2010) The Passions of Achilles and Aeneas: Translating Greece into Rome, Electronic Antiquity 14.1, 7–22. ––– (2015) Senecan Emotions, in S. Bartsch and A. Schiesaro (eds.) The Cambridge Companion to Seneca, Cambridge, 174–184. Kovacs, D. (1991) Euripides. Cyclops, Alcestis, Medea, Cambridge MA/London. Littlewood, C. A. J. (2004) Self-representation and Illusion in Senecan Tragedy, Oxford. Loyd, R. B. (1972) Superbus in the Aeneid, American Journal of Philology 93.1, 125–132. Nelis, D. (2001) Vergil’s Aeneid and the Argonautica of Apollonius Rhodius, Leeds. Polleichtner, W. and D. Nelis (2009) Emotions and the Death of Turnus in Vergil’s Aeneid 12, in P. Borgeaud and A. C. Rendu-Loisel (eds.), Violentes Émotions. Approches Comparatistes, Geneva, 101–113. Putnam, M. J. C. (1995) Virgil’s Tragic Future: Senecan Drama and the Aeneid, in Virgil’s Aeneid. Interpretation and Influence, Chapel Hill/London, 246–285. ––– (2011) The Humanness of Heroes, Amsterdam. Rimell, V. (2012), The Labour of Empire: Womb and World in Seneca’s Medea, Studi Italiani di Filologia Classica 10.2, 211–238. Schiesaro, A. (2003) The Passions in Play. Thyestes and the Dynamics of Senecan Drama, Cambridge. Tarrant, R. (2006) Seeing Seneca Whole?, in K. Volk and G. D. Williams (eds.), Seeing Seneca Whole: Perspectives on Philosophy, Poetry and Politics, Leiden/Boston, 1–18. ––– (2012) Virgil, Aeneid Book XII, Cambridge. Traina, A. (19874) Lo stile drammatico del filosofo Seneca, Bologna. Trinacty, C. V. (2014) Senecan Tragedy and the Reception of Augustan Poetry, Oxford. Vogt, K. M. (2006) Anger, Present Injustice and Future Revenge in Seneca’s De Ira, in K. Volk and G. Williams (eds.), New Developments in Seneca Studies, Leiden, 57–64.

Index locorum

INDEX LOCORUM Inscriptions I.Aph.2007 12.719: 145 n. 8 I.Aph.2007 4.308: 155 n. 46 I.Aph.2007 12.402: 155 n. 46 I.Aph.2007 13.116: 155 n. 46 I.Délos 4: 145 n. 6 I.Ephesos 519: 155 n. 46 I.Ephesos 2026: 147 n. 15 I.Erythrai 503: 155 n. 48 IG II2 1277: 146 n. 11 IG II2 1514: 148 n. 19 IG II2 1523 II: 148 n. 19 IG II2 1524 II: 148 n. 19 IG IV2.1.123 XLVI: 144 n. 2 IG V.2.265: 146 n. 11 IG X.2.2.336: 155 n. 46 IG XII.7.240: 148 n. 20 IG XII.4.348: 151 n. 34 IG XII.7.515: 152 n. 36 I.Laodikeia 72: 155 n. 46 I.Leukopetra 3, 63, 93: 148 n. 19 I.Mylasa 2: 152 n. 37 I.Oropos 380: 148 n. 19 IOSPE I2 2: 147 n. 18 IOSPE I2 171: 148 n. 20 IOSPE I2 325: 148 n. 21 Merkelbach and Stauber, SGO 09/06/19: 145 n. 7 SEG VIII 529: 151 n. 34 SEG XXVIII 953: 151 n. 34 XXXI 955: 147 n. 15 SEG XLI 1003 II: 151 n. 34 SEG XLIV 1182 B: 152 n. 38 SEG XLII 273 bis: 155 n. 46 SEG XLIV 938: 155 n. 46 SEG XLVIII 1104: 146 n. 11 SEG LVII 635: 145 n. 7 SEG LVII 1185: 155 n. 46

Coins BMC I Claudius 228: 163 n. 25 BMC II Vespasian 369: 163 n. 26 BMC II Vespasian 414–416: 163 n. 26 BMC II Domitian 301–303–416: 163 n. 27 BMC II Domitian 368: 163 n. 27 BMC II Vespasian 6: 163 n. 28 BMC II Vespasian 430: 163 n. 28

BMC II Vespasian 443: 163 n. 28 BMC II Vespasian 456: 163 n. 28 BMC II Vespasian 528: 163 n. 28 BMC II Titus 177: 163 n. 29 BMC II Titus 177–181: 164 n. 31 BMC III p.38: 164 n. 32 BMC III Hadrian 1–4: 164 n. 33 BMC III Hadrian 5–8: 164 n. 34 BMC III Hadrian p.243: 164 n. 35 BMC III Hadrian 506f: 165 n. 36 BMC Hadrian III 581–588: 165 n. 36 BMC Hadrian III 613–617: 165 n. 36 BMC Hadrian III 634: 165 n. 36 BMC Hadrian III 653–655: 165 n. 36

Literary texts Achilles Tatius 1.12.3: 56 n. 10 3.17.7: 58 n. 18 5.25.4: 59 n. 22 Aelian De natura animalium 56 n. 10 Varia Historia 9.39: 154 n. 45 Aeschylus Agamemnon 519–520: 151 n. 31 783–1071: 88 n. 35 975–1034: 88 1035–1041: 87 1035–1071: 88 1050–1052: 88 n. 36 1072: 88 1040f: 88 n. 33 1178–1230: 88 n. 35 1233: 38 n. 32 1307: 34 n. 15 1309–1311: 43 n. 45 1330: 91 n 46 1388f: 47 n. 67 1590–1599: 34 n. 15 Choephori 249: 38 n. 32 928 39 n. 35 994: 38 n. 32, 39

258 998: 39 1047: 38 n.32 Eumenides 48–51: 39 52: 38 53: 39 54: 39 55f: 39 69f: 39 117: 39 124: 39 137: 43 183f: 39, 43 186–193: 39 n. 34 253: 43 937–942: 39 n. 34 Prometheus Vinctus 566–608: 70 n. 59 631–634: 69 638f: 70 651–588: 69 640–686: 69 684f: 69 687–695: 69, 70 n. 59 695: 58 n. 17 Septem contra Thebas 720f: 56 n. 13 Suppliants 346: 58 n. 17 Vita Aeschyli 9: 38 n. 31 Alcaeus Comitragedy: 92 n. 51 [Alexander of Aphrodisias] Problemata 2.26: 55 n. 9 4.159: 56 n. 10 Apollonius Dyscolus De constructione 413–.5–415.2: 56 n. 12 Apollonius Rhodius Argonautica 2.215: 61 n. 29 2.291f: 61 n. 29 4.1339–1342: 58 n. 18 Apollonius Sophista Lexicon Homericum 138.32: 55 n. 8

Index locorum Aelius Aristides Hieroi logoi 2, 297.20f: 60 n. 27 Aristophanes Acharnenses 6: 47 410–434: 93 n. 54 586f: 47 616: 47 n. 64 1168–1173: 43 n. 49 Ecclesiazusae 311–372: 47 n. 65 Equites 1285: 46 n. 63 Lysistrata 197: 46 n. 63 845: 46 n. 63 1061–1064: 46 n. 63 Nubes 158: 46 n. 62 162: 46 n. 62 1132f: 56 n. 13 Pax 1–175: 44 38: 44 48: 46 132: 44 138f: 45 152: 45 158: 45 162–176: 45 528: 47 n. 67 758: 48 1077: 46 n. 58 Ranae 1–11: 44 8–11: 47 145: 46 687: 46 n. 62 911–913: 90 924f: 91 n. 47 1070: 46 n. 62 1076: 46 n. 62 1280–1283: 46 1335: 58 n. 18 Vespae 225: 43 n. 48 259–261: 47 n. 64 578: 46 n. 60 604: 46 n. 61

Index locorum 626: 45 739–740: 43 n. 48 787–792: 47 806: 47 n. 64 807: 46 858: 47 n. 64 913: 47 n. 67 935–940: 47 n. 64 1031: 48 1035: 46, 48 1151: 47 n. 67 1172: 46 n. 61 1177: 45 1305: 46 1342–1350: 46 n. 60 Aristotle Categoriae 8, 9b34–10a10: 141 De anima 1.1, 402a9: 141 1.1, 403a16: 141 1.1, 403a21–24: 120 n. 32 1.1, 403a21–22: 132 n. 22 2.7, 418a26–2.9, 422a7: 129 3.10, 433b29–30: 135 n. 29 De generatione animalium 5.2, 781a30–31: 133 n. 24 De memoria 1, 449b5: 134 1, 449b11–12: 210 n. 7 1, 449b25: 134 1, 449b30–450a14: 134 1, 450b18: 134 1, 451a14–17: 134 2, 451b18: 135 2, 451b22–23: 135 2, 452a14: 137 2, 452a28: 137 2, 452a28–30: 136 n. 30 2, 453a4–14: 137 2, 453a10: 135 De motu animalium 7, 701b19–22: 120 n. 32 De partibus animalium 3.10, 673a: 32 n. 9 Ethica Eudemia 1229a18–20: 210 n. 7 Ethica Nicomachea 2.5, 1105b21–23: 127 n. 9, 141 n. 36 3.9, 1115b3: 210

259

3.11, 1117a15: 210 n. 7 3.11, 1117a17–22: 130 6.13, 1144b1–9: 242 n. 58 9.4, 1166a–b: 210 n. 7 10.2, 1173b19: 210 n. 7 Historia animalium 5.8, 542a32–b1: 132 8.1, 608b12: 210 n. 7 8.8, 613b28–29: 132 n. 21 Poetica 9, 1451b8–11: 178 9, 1452a1–10: 150 n. 27 13, 1453a4–6: 68 14, 1453b1–7: 61 14, 1453b12: 107 n. 6 15, 1454a20: 248 n. 6 17, 1455a22–b23: 121 17, 1455a22–34: 119 17, 1455a26–29: 119 26, 1462a14–18: 63 n. 35 Politica 8, 1342a4–15: 93 n. 55 Rhetorica 1.11, 1370a–b: 210 n. 7 2.1, 1378a3: 210 n. 7 2.1, 1378a19–22: 191 n. 71, 127 n. 9, 128, 141 n. 36 2.2, 1379a: 31 n. 4 2.3, 1380b5: 210 n. 7 2.5, 1382a21–25: 120 n. 32 2.5, 1382b29: 130 2.8, 1385b13: 68, 128 n. 13 2.8, 1385b13–16: 128 2.8, 1385b13–33: 68 2.8, 1385b14: 128 2.8, 1385b14–15: 128 2.8, 1386a25–29: 67 2.8, 1386a27–29: 67 2.8, 1386a28–34: 121 2.9, 1386b9: 128 n. 13 2.9, 1387a9: 128 n. 13 2.10, 1387b23 128 n. 13 2.11, 1388a32: 128 n. 13 2.12f, 1389a–1390a: 210 n. 7 3.7, 1408a23–25: 189 n. 62 3.8, 1385b20–22: 91 n. 45 [Aristotle] De mirabilibus auscultationibus 843a15f: 58 n. 18

260 Physiognomonica 812b30: 55 n. 9, 56 n. 10 Problemata 1.38, 863b11: 126 n. 7, 129 n. 16 3.33, 876a5–10: 135 n. 28 4.5, 877a5–9: 135 n. 28 5.31, 884a6–15: 135 n. 28 7, 886a24–887b8: 126, 133 7.1, 886a24–25: 136 7.1, 886a24–28: 126, 132, 137 7.1, 886a25: 132–133, 139 7.1, 886a26: 136–137 7.1, 886a27: 133, 137, 140 7.1, 886a28: 133 7.2, 886a29–36: 126, 133 7.2, 886a29–35: 133 7.2, 886a31: 134 7.2, 886a32: 134 7.2, 886a33: 137 7.2, 886a33–34: 134, 7.2, 886a34–35: 134 7.2, 886a37: 139 7.2–3, 886a37–b3: 138 7.3, 886a37–b3 : 126 7.3, 886b1: 139 7.3, 886b1–2: 138 7.3, 886b2–3: 138 7.4, 886b3–8: 131 7.4, 886b4: 131 7.5, 886b9–14: 129 7.5, 886b10: 130 7.5, 886b11–12: 129 7.5, 886b14–34: 129 7.5, 886b35–37: 129 7.5, 886b37–887a1: 130 7.5, 886b12: 126 7.5, 886b13–14: 130 7.5, 887a1–3: 130 7.6, 887a4–14: 126, 133, 136f 7.6, 887a7: 140 7.7, 887a15–18: 126–127 7.7, 887a16–17: 130 7.8, 887a24–27: 131 7.8, 887a27–33: 131 7.8, 887a33–37: 131 7.9, 887b1: 126 n. 7, 129 n. 16 8, 887b10–889b9: 55 n. 4 8.12, 888a38: 55 n. 9 8.20, 889a15–25: 55 n. 7 8.21, 889a26: 55 n. 9 10.16, 892b18: 135 11.29, 902b9–10: 132

Index locorum 11.44, 904a16–22: 133 n. 24 14.15, 910a31: 210 n. 7 27, 947b12–949a20: 126 28, 949a25–950a20: 126 30.1, 955a1–5: 210 n. 7 32.13, 961a38–b1: 133 n. 26 33.15, 963a10–12: 135 n. 28 35.1, 964b22–29: 58 n. 16 Supplementa problematorum 2.17: 133 n. 24 Arrian Anabasis 3.16.7: 155 n. 46 7.129.2: 155 n. 46 Fr. 94.2f (Jacoby): 60 n. 28 Athenaeus 6, 223b–d: 92, 100 n. 76 9, 389f: 135 n. 29 Bacchylides 5.89–92: 68 n. 54 5.155–162: 68 n. 54 5.160–162: 68 n. 54 Caesar Bellum Gallicum 5.37.4: 186 n. 42 6.24.8: 186 n. 43 6.34.5: 186 n. 44 6.34.8: 186 n. 44 6.42.3: 186 n. 44 6.43.1–3: 186 n. 44 Callias Tragedy of Letters: 92 n. 51 Cicero Academica priora 2.135: 95 n. 63 Consolatio 3.75–76: 202 4.63: 202 De divinatione 2.3: 201 n. 23 De legibus 1.5: 177, 182 De natura deorum 2.19: 126 n. 6 De oratore 1.227: 199 n. 13 2.189–196: 199 n. 13

Index locorum Epistulae ad Atticum 12.4.2: 204 n. 28 12.5.2: 204 n. 28 12.13.1: 200 n. 18 12.13.2: 200 n. 17 12.14.3: 98 12.14.3–4: 201 n. 22 12.15: 200 n. 15, n. 17 12.18.2: 201 n. 22 12.20.1: 201 n. 20 12.20.2: 201 n. 22 12.28a: 202 n. 24 12.38a.1: 201 n. 20 12.40: 202 n. 24 12.40.1: 204 n. 28 12.40.2: 204 n. 29 12.41: 202 n. 24 12.41.4: 204 n. 28 12.44.1: 204 n. 28 13.1.3: 204 n. 29 13.1.13: 201 n. 21 13.6.3: 201 n. 19 13.20.1: 204 n. 30 13.26.2: 204 n. 29 13.27.1: 201 n. 21, 204 n. 29 13.28.2–3: 204 n. 29 13.31.3: 204 n. 29 13.44.1: 204 n. 31 13.46.2: 205 n. 32 13.50.1: 205 n. 32 13.51.1: 205 n. 32 Epistulae ad Brutum 1.9.1: 201 n. 19 17: 200 n. 18 Epistulae ad familiares 4.3: 200 n. 18 4.5.6: 201 n. 23 4.6: 202 n. 24 4.13: 200 n. 18 5.12.1: 184 n. 32 5.12.3: 188 n. 56 5.12.4–5: 179 n. 12, 183 n. 27, n. 28 5.14: 200 n. 18 5.16: 200 n. 18 6.1: 200 n. 18 7.33.1: 204 n. 27 9.16.7: 204 n. 27 Epistulae ad Quintum fratrem 3.6.3: 195 n. 1 Orator 35: 204 n. 28

39: 182 n. 22 128–132: 198 n. 7 Pro Murena 55: 197 n. 6 59: 198 n. 9, 199 n. 13 61f: 198 n. 10 63: 198 n. 11 65: 199 n. 12 Tusculanae disputationes 1.66: 201 n. 23 1.111: 196 n. 4 3.24.59–60: 95 3.24.60: 97 3.29.71: 98 3.63.26: 97 n. 68 3.70: 195 n. 3, 201 n. 23 3.75–76: 201 n. 23, 202 n. 25 4.43: 121 n. 37 4.55: 199 n. 14 4.63: 201 n. 23, 203 n. 25 5.121: 196 n. 4, 205 n. 33 Clearchus Fr. 36 (Wehrli): 135 n. 29 [Clement of Rome] Homiliae 5.5.2: 60 n. 28 Cornutus De natura deorum 11.3–18: 60 n. 24 Crantor De luctu: 95 Cratinus Eumenides: 92 n. 51 Fr. 58: 47 n. 67 Demetrius De elocutione 27–28: 109, 111 57: 110 101: 60 n. 27 Democritus B 191 (Diels–Kranz): 93 Demosthenes 21: 115 21.72f: 116 23.74: 60 n. 25

261

262 Dio Cassius 8.36.29: 60 n. 28 36.49.2: 58 n. 17 48.37.2: 58 n. 17 61.17.2–5: 184 n. 34 62.8.4–5: 153 n. 39 65.2: 161 n. 12, n.15 65.9.2: 161 n.14 65.9.3: 161 n. 11, n. 12, n. 16 65.3.4: 162 n.17 65.10: 162 n. 17, 170 n. 52 Dio Chrysostomus Orationes 12.59: 147 n. 12 31.95–99: 149 n. 26 37.41: 152 n. 37 58.4: 56 n. 10 Diogenes Laertius 5.18.3: 207 10.64: 126 n. 6 Dionysius of Halicarnassus Epistula ad Pompeium 3, 233.8–11: 185 n. 36 3, 235.3: 188 n. 60 3, 238.19: 189 n. 60 3, 239.14–16: 180 n. 13 5, 243.3: 189 n. 60 6, 246.16–247.4: 185 n. 38 6, 246.20: 189 n. 60 6, 247.9–11: 189 De Thucydide 8, 334.16–335.7: 191 n. 69 15, 347.15–20: 179 n.9 15, 347.21: 179 n.9 24, 363.14–15: 180 n.13 41, 397.5: 188 n. 55 53, 412.18–26: 178 n. 4 Ennius Medea exul, fr. 6 (Vahlen) : 247 n. 3

Index locorum Cyclops 523: 47 n. 67 320: 56 n. 13 Electra 184–185: 39 n.36 Hecuba 282–287: 68 n. 54 1276: 47 n. 68 Helena 664: 47 n. 68 Hercules furens 560: 47 n. 68 Hippolytus 176: 128 n. 12 205: 128 n. 12 253–60: 128 n. 12 293: 128 n. 12 331: 128 n. 12 347f: 128 n. 12 415–418: 57 614: 47 n. 68 855: 56 n. 13 1201f: 58 n. 18 1215f: 58 n. 18 Hypsipyle Fr. 757 (Kannicht): 96 Ion 898: 56 n. 13 Iphigeneia in Tauris 1167: 151 n. 31 Medea 37–39: 248 103f: 247 187–189: 247 351–354: 246 357–363: 246–247 364–409: 246 1242–1250: 254 1260: 254 1265–1267: 254

Epictetus Discourses Fr. 9 (Schenkel) 234 n. 26

Orestes 255–257: 65 291: 65

Eupolis 198–204: 47 n. 67

Troades 1025–1028: 60 n. 26

Euripides Andromache 1147f: 58 n. 18

Epicurus Epistula ad Herodotum 126 n. 6

Index locorum Eusebius Praeparatio evangelica 5.34: 149 n. 26 Galen De tremore vii.612.9–12 (Kühn): 55 n. 8 vii.611.18–612.4 (Kühn): 55 n. 8 vii.627.11–629.5 (Kühn): 55 n. 7 vii.628.2–4 (Kühn):: 55 n. 7 De Hippocratis et Platonis decretis 4.7.26–27: 203 n. 26 Gellius 19.17: 234 n. 26 Getty Hexameters 13f: 59 n. 21 Gorgias Encomium of Helen 8.14: 62 9: 62, 66 n. 46, 73 n. 66 13: 63 15–19: 63 17: 63 Heraclitus B 101a (Diels–Kranz): 64 n. 39 Herodotus 1.praef: 181 1.8.1: 64 n. 39 1.86.6: 68 n. 54 5.86.3: 150 n. 30 5.92.2–3: 44 n. 50 7.46.2: 68 n. 54 7.214: 191 n. 73 Hesiod Opera et dies 96: 208 539f: 55 n. 4 fr. 165.4f (Merkelbach–West): 59 n. 19 Hesychius R299–302: 55 n. 8 Hippocrates Aphorisms 7.4: 55 n. 5 On Diseases 1.23–25: 55 n. 5 1.24: 55 n. 8

Homer Iliad 1.4: 36 1.347f: 86 2.158: 111 n. 11 2.174: 111 n. 11 2.415f: 38 n. 30 2.484–487: 63 3.259: 61 3. 398: 59 n. 23 4.30–36: 38 n. 29 4.162: 38 n. 30 5.59–68: 37 n. 24 5.67: 37 n. 24 6.57–60: 36, 38 n. 30 6.311: 148 n. 19 6.467: 63 n. 38 9.454: 38 11.97: 37 11.145–147: 37 12.185: 37 12.208f: 59 n. 23 13.202–204: 37 13.506–508: 37 13.605–619: 37 n. 24 13.650–652: 37 n. 24 13.830–832: 38 n. 28 14. 88: 111 n. 11 14.415: 41 14.487–505: 37 n. 24 14.496–500: 37 n. 25 14.517: 37 15.553: 111. n. 11 16.119f: 60 n. 25 16.732–743: 37 n. 24 17.38–40: 37 17.125: 37 17.126–127: 37 n. 25 17.314: 37 18.107–110: 16 18.175: 37 18.175–177: 37 n. 25 18.344–347: 37 n. 25 18.830–832: 38 n. 29 19.21–39: 87 n. 30 19.33: 41 19.36–39: 87 19.156–169: 85 19.216–234: 85 19.275: 85 19.282–300: 86 19.282–339: 85 n. 23

263

264 19.291–294: 86 19.300: 86 19.301f: 87 n. 29 19.301–303: 86 19.304: 86 19.319–321: 86 19.321: 86 19.321–336: 86 19.338f: 87 n. 29 19.340–356: 87 n. 30 19.351–356: 87 20.407–418: 37 n. 24 20.418–420: 37 22.414: 42 n. 43 22.60–67: 38 n. 30 22.346: 38 n. 29 24.163–165: 42 n. 43 24.212f: 38 n. 29 24.485–551: 68 24.521–526: 83 24.527–533: 83 24.534–541: 83 24.504: 83 24.549–551: 83 24.560–564: 83 24.600–613: 83 24.601f: 84 24.617–620: 84 24.624: 84 24.635–642: 84 24.517–564: 84 24.601f: 84 n. 19 24.617–620: 85 24.640: 42 n. 43 Odyssey 1.322f: 59 n. 23 3.372f: 59 n. 23 4.406: 41 4.121: 41 n. 42 4.442: 41 4.446: 41 n. 42 5.203f: 111 5.204: 111 n. 11 5.59: 41 n. 42 5.264: 41 n. 42 8.491: 63 9.210: 41 n. 42 9.374: 47 10.468: 41 n. 42 17.297–299: 42 n. 43 17.299f: 42 18.86–87: 42 n. 44

Index locorum 21.62: 41 n. 42 22.435–494: 42 23.216: 57 n. 14 23.474–476: 42 n. 44 Homeric Hymn to Apollo 134f: 59 n. 23 Homeric Hymn to Aphrodite 81–90: 59 n. 23 Horace Ars poetica 99–111: 106 99: 107 101f: 108 102f. 108 104: 108f 104–107: 109 105–107: 108f. 106: 108 108:109 108–111: 107 111: 116 102f: 178 n. 6, 189 Epodes 8: 40 n. 36 Isocrates Euagoras 73: 148 n. 20 Josephus Antiquitates Judaicae 3.353: 59 n. 22 19.344f: 59 n. 20 Bellum Judaicum 1.2: 188 n. 57 1.6–8: 188 n. 57 1.9–12: 188 n. 59 2.133: 60 n. 27 2.139: 60 n. 28 4.181f: 60 n. 25 4.286f: 58 n. 18 5.19–20: 188 n. 59 6.2: 58 n. 18 6.123: 60 n. 25 6.201–205: 6.202: 67 6.207: 67 6.210: 67 6.211: 67 6.213: 67 6.214: 67

Index locorum Vita 275: 60 n. 28 Julian Contra Heracleium 8.14–17: 60 n. 24 Epistulae 89b.169–175: 60 n. 24 Livy Praef. 3: 190 n. 64 Praef. 4–5: 190 n. 64 Praef. 9: 190 n. 64 Praef. 10: 185 n. 38 Praef. 11: 190 n. 64 10.31.15: 190 n. 65 31.1.1: 190 n. 66 31.1.5: 190 n. 64 Longinus De sublimitate 1.3: 112f. 1.4: 116 3.1: 192 3.2: 180 3.5: 180 7.3: 184 n. 33 8: 112 n. 14 8.1: 113 n. 17 9.2: 113 n. 15 10:114 10.1: 112 10.1–3: 111f 10.3: 113 14.1: 191 15.1f: 65 15.2: 17 n. 60, 116 n. 22 18.2: 114 n. 18 20.1: 116 n. 24 20.2: 115f 20.3: 17 n. 60, 115 n. 20, 116 21.2: 116 n. 21 22: 114 22.1: 12, 17, 113f 29.2: 17 n. 60, 116 n. 22 30.1: 118 n. 29 35.4: 113 n. 16 38.3: 180 n. 14, 117 38.3–4: 180 n. 15 38.5: 180 39.3: 116 n. 23

Lucian Herodotus 1–2: 177 n. 2 8: 177 n. 2 Juppiter tragoedus 30: 60 n. 27 Lexiphanes 12: 151 n. 31 Philopseudes 22: 58 n. 18 31: 61 n. 30 Quomodo historia conscribenda sit 7: 177 n. 2 7–20: 189 n. 60 26: 178 n. 5, 181 n. 17 38: 185 n. 36 42: 179 n. 10 59: 186 n. 47 [Lucian] Amores 13–16: 153 n. 42 Minucius Felix Octavius 22.5: 147 n. 13 Nicander Theriaca 721: 56 n. 10 727: 56 n. 10 Ovid Metamorphoses 1.490f: 225 1.491: 224 n. 16, 225 1.495f: 225 1.496: 224 n. 16 1.533–536: 225 1.536: 224 n. 16, 225 1.539: 224 n. 16, 226 2.631: 222 2.719: 224 n. 16 2.862: 224 n. 16, 226 3.346–348: 226 3.389: 224 n. 16, 226 3.417: 224 n. 16, 226 3.432f: 227 3.457: 224 n. 16, 227 4.368: 224 n. 16 4.795: 225 n. 17 5.337: 225 n.17 5.348: 222

265

266 6.84: 222 6.129f: 222 6.553f: 223 7.396f: 254 n. 24 7.632f: 224 7.832: 223 8.55: 224 n. 16 8.112: 224 n. 16 8.498: 221 9.10: 225 n. 17 9.341: 221 9.468: 224 n. 16 9.534: 224 n. 16, 227 9.595–597: 228 9.597: 224 n. 16 9.638–640: 228 9.639: 224 n. 16 9.739: 224, 224 n. 16 10.336: 224 n. 16 11.118f: 223 11.306: 224 n. 16 12. 192: 225 n. 17 12.506: 222, 224 n. 16 14.31: 224 n. 16 14.134: 224 n. 16 14.704: 224 n. 16 14.715: 224 n. 16 15.113: 221 12.217: 221 15.367: 221 Medea: 247 n. 3 Palladius Synopsis de febribus 24: 55 n. 8 Pausanias 1.8.5: 155 n. 46 6.11: 149 n. 26 Petronius Satyrica 48.4: 231 Philo Judaeus De decalogo 141.3: 60 n. 28 Philodemus De ira Fr. 44 (Armstrong and McCosker): 254

Index locorum Philostratus Heroicus 666.6–8: 59 n. 22 748.14–17: 58 n. 17 Vitae Sophistarum 2, 599.9–11: 61 n. 30 Phrynicus Tragedians: 92 n. 51 Plato Ion 535a: 67 535b–c: 65 535c–d: 177 n. 2 535d–e: 66–67 536a–d: 67 536e–542a. 67 Phaedrus 251a: 60 n. 27 264c: 112 Respublica 439c–440a: 40 n. 38 606b: 73 n. 66 10.606a: 94 10.606a3–b8: 94 10.603e: 94 Pliny Epistulae 1.13.3: 177 n. 2 8.12: 177 n. 2 9.27.1: 177 n. 2 Panegyricus 23.1–2: 170 Plutarch Moralia 165F: 59 n. 22 331F: 60 n. 26 343E: 59 n. 20 345E: 177 n. 2 347A: 182 n. 24 820F: 152 n. 37 854E–874C: 188 n. 60 855C–D: 185 n. 36 862A: 177 n. 2 947C: 55 n. 4 Aemilius 17.8: 59 n. 23 26.4–12: 70 27.4f: 70

Index locorum 29.5: 71 33.6–8: 70 34.8: 70 37.2: 70 Agesilaus 24.5: 59 n. 23 Alexander 30.11: 60 n. 28 37.3: 151 n. 33 74.6: 58 n. 17, 155 n. 47 Aratus 32.3: 58 n. 17 Aristides 18.2: 56 n. 10 Cicero 49.2: 58 n. 17 Comparatio Niciae et Crassi 5.2: 191 n. 75 Comparatio Lysandri et Sullae 2.4: 58 n. 18 Crassus 16.7: 61 n. 30 23.8f: 58 Demosthenes 20.3: 60 n. 26

267

[Plutarch] Consolation ad Apollonium 102a–b: 203 n. 26 Polybius 1.1.2: 179 n. 10 2.56.6: 186 2.56.13: 185 n. 37, n. 38, 186 n. 48 2.58.8: 186 2.59: 180 n. 16 2.61.1: 186 2.61.6–11: 185 n. 38 8.9–11: 186, 189 n. 63 12.4: 188 n. 60 12.25c: 192 12.26d.4–5: 192 12.26d.5: 192 16.14.7–8: 188 n. 57 26d.3–4: 192 Pollux Onomasticon 1.23: 60 n. 25 1.39: 60 n. 28 4.85: 58 n. 18 Porphyry 4.13: 60 n. 28

Lycurgus 28.8: 44 n. 51

Praxiphanes Fr 24 (Matelli = fr. 13 Wehrli): 111 n. 12

Marcellus 20.8: 59

Ptolemaios Chennos Kaine historia Fr. inc. sed. 1 (Chatzis): 154 n. 43

Marius 19.1: 58 n. 18 44.9: 58 n. 17 Nicias 26.4–6: 191 n. 75 Numa 10.6: 58 n. 17 Sulla 11.1: 59 n. 23 14.3: 58 n. 18 Tiberius and Gaius Gracchus 21.5: 60 n. 25 Timoleon 5.3: 61 n. 30 12.9: 59 n. 23, 150 n. 29 22.6: 56 n. 13 Fr. 73 (Sandbach): 55 n. 9 Fr. 178 (Sandbach): 60 n. 26

Quintilian Institutio oratoria 6.2.26–28: 122 n. 39 10.1.31: 177 Sallust Bellum Catilinae 1.3.2: 188 n. 57 2.5: 181 n. 18 Bellum Iugurthunum 3.3: 181 n. 18 4.5: 187 11.1: 181 n. 18 12.2: 181 n. 18 39.1: 181 n. 18 41.3: 181 n. 18 95.4: 191

268 Sappho Fr. 31 (PLF): 111 Sempronius Asellio Fr. 2 (FRHist): 187 n. 49 Seneca Consolatio ad Marciam 5.1: 235 7.1: 238 7.2: 239 13.3f: 195 n. 3 14.3: 195 n.2 De ira 1.1.3–5: 247 1.3.4–8: 235 1.5.3: 249 1.6.5: 254 1.7.2: 232 1.7.3: 232 n. 10 1.7.4: 232 1.8.1: 232 n. 11 1.8.2: 232 n. 12 1.8.3: 232 n.13, 233 n. 14 1.8.7: 233 2.1.3: 233 n. 19 2.1.4: 233 n. 20, n. 21, 234 n. 22 2.2.1: 234 2.2.5: 234 n. 25 2.4.1: 231, 249 2.4.2: 231 2.5.1: 231 2.5.2: 232 2.5.3: 232 n. 8 2.12.16: 255 2.36.5: 255 3.1.2: 249 3.12.4. 249 n. 9 3.17.4: 233 De beneficiis 1.2.5: 239f Dialogi 4.2.2–6: 182 n. 25 4.2.6: 182 n. 22 Epistulae 11.1: 237 11.4: 238 11.5: 238 11.8: 237 11.9: 237 57.3: 240 57.4: 240

Index locorum 57.6: 240 57.7: 241 57.8: 241 90.46: 242 99.18: 239 99.19: 239 99.24: 239 Medea 23–26: 253 n. 20 37: 245 38f: 253 n. 19 42: 252 n. 15 49–52: 245 171: 248 268: 252 n. 15 278: 251 n. 12 297–299: 246 300: 246 301–379: 247 382–396: 246 397–425: 247 452: 251 n. 12 473: 251 n. 12 487: 251 n. 12 893–977: 255 911: 251 n. 12 936: 251 n. 12 926–932: 251 952: 251 953: 251 957: 255 958–966: 251 963f: 252 967f: 251 969: 252 969f: 251 970f: 251, 252 n. 15 971: 251 988: 249, 252 991: 254 992f: 252 1004: 252 1005: 252 1006: 252 1007: 252–253 1008: 252–253 1011–1013: 254 1016: 249 1018: 252

Index locorum Sextus Empiricus Against the Physicists 1.78–85: 126 n. 6 Sophocles Ajax 121–126: 68 430–480: 39 n. 36 577–582: 39 n. 36 693: 61 n. 31 720–732: 39 n. 36 1059–1091: 39 n. 36 Antigone 997: 56 n. 13 1232: 47 n. 68 Electra 137–157: 89 147–152: 89 Oedipus Coloneus 117–141: 40 167: 41 224: 41 226: 41 566–568: 68 1606f: 59 n. 19 Oedipus Tyrannus 1260–1280: 40 1287: 40 1410f: 40 1186–1222: 53 1194: 68 n. 55 1211: 68 n. 55 1216–1221: 1265–1281: 40 1286: 68 n. 55 1287–1289: 54 1296: 68 n. 55 1297: 54 1297–1306: 19, 53 1299: 68 n. 55 1302–1306: 40 1303: 68 n. 55, 70 1303f: 54 1347: 68 n. 55 1371–1390: 54 1424–1431: 68 n. 55 Philoctetes 7: 43 8–11: 43 473: 43 481–483: 43

501–506: 68 520: 43 693–69: 43 813–820: 43 825: 43 872–876: 43 889–891: 43 890f: 43 1031–103: 434 1032: 43 Trachiniae 1007–1017: 40 n. 36 1044f: 69 1059–1090: 40 n. 36 Fr. 875 (Radt): 56 n. 10 Stobaeus 4.49.7: 98 n. 70 Strabo 9.1.20: 152 n. 37 Strattis Orestes the Man: 92 n. 51 Phoenician Women: 92 n. 51 Suetonius Divus Claudius 41: 177 n. 2 Domitianus 1.3: 161 n. 12 12.3: 170 13: 170 Tacitus Annales 1.1.4: 178 n. 6 3.6.2: 195 n. 2 3.65.2: 185 n. 38 4.43.1: 187 n. 50 4.34.2: 187 6.7.5: 190 n. 68 14.14.3: 184 n. 35 16.16.1: 190 n. 67 16.16.2: 184 n. 36 Historiae 1.1.1: 188 n. 67 1.1.2: 192 n. 76 1.1.3: 188 n. 58 3.36–38: 185 n. 41 3.84–85: 185 n. 404.2.1: 161 n. 12 4.39.2: 161 n. 12 4.51.2: 161 n. 12

269

270 4.52: 161 n. 13 4.86.1: 162 n. 17 [Theocritus] Idyllia 23: 150 n. 28 25.244f: 55 n. 9 Theophilus and Stephanus of Athens De febrium differentia 55, n. 8 Theophrastus De causis plantarum 3.2.6: 132 n. 21 Fr. 531.21 (FHS–G): 127 n. 11 Timocles Dionysiazusae Fr. 6 (Kassel–Austin): 92, 100 n. 76 Theopompus FGrHist 115: F225(c): 109 n. 9 Thucydides 1.21.2: 178 1.23.1: 179 1.23.6: 11, 178, 181 1.25.3: 181 1.70.3: 208 4.14.2–3: 182 4.108.4: 208 5.10: 48 n. 72 5.32.1: 179 n. 9 5.116.4: 179 n. 9 6.1.1: 181 7.27–30: 184 n. 31 7.29.1: 183–184 7.29.5: 183 7.29–30: 183 7.30: 184 7.30.3: 184 7.32: 184 n. 31 7.84: 180 n. 14 7.84.2: 118 n. 27 7.84.5: 117 7.85.1: 118 n. 27 7.85.4: 118 n. 27 7.86.5: 191 n. 74 7.87.6: 189 n. 61 7.213: 191 7.225: 180 n. 15

Index locorum Virgil Aeneis 1.94–102: 211 1.208f: 211, 212 n. 11 1.217–221: 212 1.261–290: 212 n. 11 1.351f: 212 1.451f: 213 1.450–452: 212 n. 11 1.543f: 213 1.556: 217 2.137: 213 2.162f: 213 2.169f: 213 2.281: 217 n. 13 2.503: 217 n. 13 3.103: 217 3.105: 217 3.254–257: 212 n. 11 3.278: 217 3.543: 217 4.54f: 214 4.235f: 214 4.271: 215 4.274f: 217 4.291f: 215 4.305f. 215 4.37f: 215 4.84: 253 n. 20 4.382f: 253 n. 20 4.382–384: 215 4.419f: 215 4.477: 212 n. 11, 215 4.600f: 253 n. 20 6.364: 218 6.376: 216 6.853: 253 n. 18 6.875f: 219 7.124–126: 212 8.514f: 218 8.579f: 218 9.130f. 213 9.131: 212 n. 11 9.157f: 214 9.290f: 218 9.560f: 219 10.42f: 216 10.107f: 216 10.120f: 219 10.262f: 220 10.370f: 218 10.384f: 219

Index locorum 10.514: 253 10.524f: 218 10.625–627: 216 10.647f: 214 11.18: 220 11.49f: 218 11.49–52: 212 n. 11 11.436f: 214 11.441: 220 11.491: 220 12.34f: 220 12.56–58: 219 12.168: 218 12.241–243: 220 12.324f: 214 12.326: 253 12.796: 216 12.928f: 252 12.930–952: 250 12.932: 253 12.933f: 253 12.934f: 252

12.936f: 252 12.938: 253 12.940f: 251 12.946: 251 12.948f: 251 12.950: 253 12.949: 252 n. 15 Bucolica 1.15: 217 n. 12 Vitruvius 5. pr. 1: 182 n. 21 Xenophon Cyropaedia 4.2.15: 59 Memorabilia 3.11.1: 64 n. 39

271

h e i d e l b e rg e r a lt h i s t o r i s c h e b e i t r äg e 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)

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45. Irene Berti / Marta García Morcillo (Hg.) Hellas on Screen Cinematic Receptions of Ancient History, Literature and Myth 2008. 267 S., 16 Taf., kt. ISBN 978-3-515-09223-4 46. Angelos Chaniotis / Annika Kuhn / Christina Kuhn (Hg.) Applied Classics Comparisons, Constructs, Controversies 2009. 259 S., kt. ISBN 978-3-515-09430-6 47. Henning Wirth Die linke Hand Wahrnehmung und Bewertung in der griechischen und römischen Antike 2010. 271 S., 12 Taf., kt. ISBN 978-3-515-09449-8 48. Patrick Sänger Veteranen unter den Severern und frühen Soldatenkaisern Die Dokumentensammlungen der Veteranen Aelius Sarapammon und Aelius Syrion 2011. 416 S., 14 Taf., kt. ISBN 978-3-515-09904-2 49. Angelos Chaniotis (Hg.) Ritual Dynamics in the Ancient Mediterranean Agency, Emotion, Gender, Representation 2011. 390 S., kt. ISBN 978-3-515-09916-5 50. in Vorbereitung 51. Ralf Behrwald / Christian Witschel (Hg.) Rom in der Spätantike Historische Erinnerung im städtischen Raum 2012. 409 S., kt. ISBN 978-3-515-09445-0 52. Angelos Chaniotis (Hg.) Unveiling Emotions

53.

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56.

57.

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Sources and Methods for the Study of Emotions in the Greek World 2012. 490 S. mit 25 Abb., kt. ISBN 978-3-515-10226-1 Takashi Fujii Imperial Cult and Imperial Representation in Roman Cyprus 2013. 248 S. mit 1 Abb., kt. ISBN 978-3-515-10257-5 Elizabeth A. Meyer The Inscriptions of Dodona and a New History of Molossia 2014. 201 S. mit 44 Abb., kt. ISBN 978-3-515-10311-4 Angelos Chaniotis / Pierre Ducrey (Hg.) Unveiling Emotions II Emotions in Greece and Rome: Texts, Images, Material Culture 2014. 387 S. mit 33 Abb., kt. ISBN 978-3-515-10637-5 James H. Richardson / Federico Santangelo (Hg.) Andreas Alföldi in the Twenty-First Century 2015. 327 S. mit 12 Abb., kt. ISBN 978-3-515-10961-1 Babett Edelmann-Singer Koina und Concilia Genese, Organisation und sozioökonomische Funktion der Provinziallandtage im römischen Reich 2015. 363 S., kt. ISBN 978-3-515-11100-3 Henning Börm / Marco Mattheis / Johannes Wienand (Hg.) Civil War in Ancient Greece and Rome Contexts of Disintegration and Reintegration 2016. 437 S. mit 25 Abb. und 2 Tab., kt. ISBN 978-3-515-11224-6

The study of ancient emotion has become a substantial and thriving sub-discipline in the fields of Classics and Ancient History, enabling Classicists to make a significant contribution to the wider upsurge in interest in the emotions that has taken place across a range of scholarly disciplines in recent years. In the belief that now is the time to take stock of what has been achieved so far and to attempt to give a sense of research opportunities to come, this volume assembles an international team of experts, including a number of those who have already made es-

sential contributions to the study of ancient emotion, to offer an authoritative and representative selection of contemporary methods and approaches. With a chronological range from Homer to Seneca, this volume deals with disgust, hope, horror, pity, grief, sympathy, and anger in a variety of contexts, including the poetics of emotional expression, philosophical theories of emotion, the role of emotion in historiography, intertextuality and the emotions, and the role of art and material culture in the representation of ancient affectivity.

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ISBN 978-3-515-11619-0