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

136 Pages·2017·7.459 MB·English

by  Douglas L. Cairns, Damien Nelis

HABES Emotions in
the Classical World
Heidelberger Althistorische Beitrage und Epigraphische Studien
Gegriindet von Geza Alfoldy
Methods, Approaches, and Directions
Herausgegeben von Angelos Chaniotis und Christian Witschel
Beirat: Fram;:ois Berard, Anthony R. Birley, Kostas Buraselis, Lucas de Blois,
Segolene Demougin, Elio Lo Cascio, Mischa Meier, Elizabeth Meyer, Edited by Douglas Cairns and Damien Nelis
Silvio Panciera, Michael Peachin, Henk Versnel und Martin Zimmermann
Band 59
@
FranzS teinerV erlag
Cover illustration: The grave stele of Demokleides from Athens (e a. 350 BCE),
National Archaeological Museum, Athens (inv. no. 752)
Photo: Eleutherios A. Galanopoulos
© YITOYPfEIO ITOAITU:MOY& A®AHTILMOY/TAMEIOA PXAIOAOrIKON ITOPON TABLE OF CONTENTS
© Hellenic Ministry of Culture and Sports/ Archaeological Receipts Fund
Introduction ...................................................................................... 1 7
••••••••••••••••••••••••
DOUGLASC AIRNS( Edinburgh) and DAMIENN ELIS (Geneva)
The emotion of disgust, provoked and expressed in earlier Greek literature ......... 31
DONALDL ATEINER( Ohio Wesleyan)
Horror, pity, and the visual in ancient Greek aesthetics ........................................ 53
DOUGLASC AIRNS( Edinburgh)
Grief: the power and shortcomings of Greek tragic consolation ........................... 79
DANA LACOURSEM UNTEANU( Ohio State)
The poetics of emotional expression: some problems of ancient theory ............. 105
STEPHENH ALLIWELL( St Andrews)
The Pseudo-Aristotelian Problems on sympathy ................................................. 125
WILLIAMF ORTENBAUGH(R utgers)
The life of statues: emotion and agency ............................................................... 143
ANGELOSC HANIOTIS( Institute for Advanced Study, Princeton)
Touching behaviour: proxemics in Roman art ..................................................... 159
GLENYSD AVIES (Edinburgh)
Emotions as a historiographical dilemma ............................................................ 1 77
Bibliografische Information der Deutschen Nationalbibliothek:
CYNTHIAD AMON (Pennsylvania)
Die Deutsche Nationalbibliothek verzeichnet diese Publikation in der Deutschen
Nationalbibliografie; detaillierte bibliografische Daten sind im Internet iiber The performance of grief: Cicero, Stoicism, and the public eye ......................... 195
MARGARETG RAVER( Dartmouth)
<http://dnb.d-nb.de> abrufbar.
The vagaries of hope in Vergil and Ovid ............................................................. 207
Dieses Werk einschliefslich aller seiner Teile ist urheberrechtlich geschutzt. LAURELF ULKERSON( Florida State)
Jede Verwertung aufserhalb der engen Grenzen des Urheberrechtsgesetzes
Reason vs. emotion in Seneca .............................................................................. 231
ist unzulassig und strafbar.
DAVID KONSTAN (New York/Brown)
© Franz Steiner Verlag, Stuttgart 2017
Druck: Hubert & Co., Gottingen Some thoughts on the anger of Seneca's Medea .................................................. 245
Gedruckt auf saurefreiem, alterungsbestandigem Papier. CHIARAB ATTISTELLA(U dine) ANDD AMIENNELIS (Geneva)
Printed in Germany.
Index locorum ...................................................................................................... 257
ISBN 978-3-515-rr619-o (Print)
ISBN 978-3-515-rr629-9 (E-Book)
INTRODUCTION
Douglas Cairns and Damien Nelis
The papers in this volume all derive from the conference, 'Emotions in the Classi
cal World: Methods, Approaches, and Directions', held at the F ondation 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 Com
petence 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 thriv
ing 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 sci
ence. 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 giv
en to the historical study of emotions by scholars such as William Reddy and Bar
bara 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
See http://www.affective-sciences.org.
2 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 affec
tive science, see Sander and Scherer 2009.
3 See n. 1 above, and cf. Languages of Emotion at the Free University of Berlin (http://www.
loe .fu-berlin.de/en/).
4 See Reddy 2001; Rosenwein 2006; among earlier works, note especially Stearns and Steams
1986; Stearns 1989, 1994.
5 See the websites for the Australian Research Council Centre of Excellence for the History of
Emotion (http://www.historyofemotions.org.au), Les emotions au Moyen Age (EMMA,
8 Douglas Cairns and Damien Nelis Introduction 9
development in Classics has been Angelos Chaniotis' University of Oxford pro honour and shame offered by Classical thinkers such as the Sophists, Plato, and
ject, funded by the European Research Council, entitled 'The Social and Cultural Aristotle with the representation of aidos and similar affective phenomena in im
Construction of Emotions: The Greek Paradigm'. This has so far yielded two sub aginative literature, especially epic and tragedy.10 The cognitive-evaluative ac
stantial volumes of essays (with more forthcoming) and has considerably broad count of emotion was central also to the spate of monographs and edited collec
ened the evidence base and the focus of emotion research in Classics. 7 tions on emotion and particular emotions that appeared in the 2000s, 11 works
A truth established by emotion research across the disciplines in which it is whose central strength was their focus on the ancient emotional lexicon and the
practised is the ubiquity, pervasiveness, and centrality of emotion in everything construction, conceptualisation, and valorisation of emotion in ancient authors,
that human beings do and everything that they have ever done. This is one reason genres, philosophical schools, and societies.12
why it cannot by any means be said that Classics research had, before the recent A central figure in galvanizing, supporting, and generating much of this
upsurge in interest, ignored emotion. Inevitably, this was a topic that featured scholarship has been David Konstan, who (in several accounts of particular emo
prominently wherever it was regarded as particularly important for our under tions and affective phenomena and in his major study of The Emotions of the An
standing of the works, contexts, and genres in which it occurred - in ancient phi cient Greeks) has contributed in particular to our understanding of ancient theories
losophy, for example, where the views of ancient thinkers and schools on the role of emotion (particularly those of Aristotle and the Stoics, which offer particularly
of emotion in the good life have always been central subjects of scholarship; in fruitful opportunities for dialogue with modem cognitive-evaluative approach
the study of ancient poetics, aesthetics, and rhetoric; in scholarship on epic and es), 13 to the semantics and history of ancient emotional concepts, 14 and to the
tragedy; and so on. sharpening of our appreciation of salient differences between ancient emotional
At the same time, however, the development of a dialogue in which research lexica and our own. It is salutary to remember that not even the concept of emo
in Classics and Ancient History slowly began to take account of contemporruy tion itself is a transcultural historical constant, 15 even if it is true that few or no
research in other fields can be traced to the later years of the twentieth century. A cultures have ever been able entirely to dispense with a category of a similar
pioneering work here is William Fortenbaugh's 1975 book on Aristotle, which is sort.16 One of the central emphases ofKonstan's work {and of many of the other
fully informed by the cognitive-evaluative approach to emotion which achieved studies on ancient emotion produced since the l 990s) has been the interaction
prominence in the 1950s and 1960s. 8 A measure of the advance that this work between emotion and moral and social norms. This is an interaction that needs to
represented over traditional approaches may be taken by means of a comparison be viewed from both angles, not only in terms of the embeddedness of ancient
with W. B. Stanford's Greek Tragedy and the Emotions, published eight years emotions, emotion concepts, and theories of emotion in social interaction and cul
later.9 Useful enough in many of its individual observations, Stanford's work tural normativity, but also in terms of the fundamentally affective character of
nonetheless falls short in its reliance on traditional philological connoisseurship
and the absence of theoretical underpinning. 10 D. L Cairns 1993.
The approach outlined in Fortenbaugh's book was a crucial stimulus to 11 Monographs: e.g. Harris 2001; Konstan 2001; Graver 2002; Zaborowski 2002; Kaster 2005;
Caims's 1993 volume on aidos, which sought to synthesize the perspectives on Sternberg 2006; Konstan 2006; Graver 2007; Konstan 2010; Munteanu 2012. Edited collec
tions: 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
http://emma.hypotheses.org), the Queen Mary University of London Centre for the History of philosophers Bernard Williams (1993) and Martha Nussbaum (1994, 2001).
Emotions (http://projects.history.qmuLac.uk/emotions), and The History of Emotions project 12 For recent and valuable studies in the same vein, see e.g. Caston 2012; Fulkerson 2013;
of the Max Planck Institnte for Human Development, Berlin (https://www.mpib-berlin.mpg. Sanders 2014.
de/en/research/history-of-emotions). 13 See Konstan 2006 on Aristotle and 2015 on Seneca; cf. pp. 231-242 in this volume. On the
6 For overviews of trends in the historical study of emotion, see Frevert 2009, 2011; Plamper Stoics, see also (in primis) Graver 2007; on the Epicureans, see Annas 1989; Fowler 1997;
2010; Hitzer 2011; Matt 2011; Rosenwein 2011; Matt and Stearns 2014; Plamper 2015; Procope 1998; Armstrong 2008. On emotion in Hellenistic ethics and psychology, see also
Schnell 2015. Cf. Stearns and Steams 1985; Konstan 2009; Corbin 2016. Annas 1992, Nussbaum 1994; Sihvola and Engberg-Pedersen 1998; Gill 2010. Cf. Fitzgerald
7 See http://emotions.classics.ox.ac.uk, with Chaniotis 2012d; Chaniotis and Ducrey 2013. 2008. For contemporary cognitivist approaches, see e.g. Nussbaum 2001; Solomon 2003,
8 Fortenbaugh 1975; a second edition appeared in 2002. Landmarks in the development of the 2006.
cognitiye-evaluative approach include (as well as the philosophical contributions cited by 14 See esp. Konstan 2001 on pity and 2010 on forgiveness.
Fortenbaugh himself) the appraisal theories of Magda Arnold (Arnold 1960) and Richard 15 Salient differences between English 'emotion' and Greek pathos emerge particularly in
Lazarus (summed up in e.g. Lazarus 1991) and the experiments of Schachter and Singer Fortenbaugh's discussion in this volume.
(Schachter and Singer 1962) which purported to demonstrate that it is was not arousal of the 16 On the historical contingency of the English-language concept of emotion, see Dixon 2003,
autonomic nervous system but situational appraisal that specified an episode as emotional and 2012. Against the assumption that the English-language category of emotion (and its constit
differentiated one emotion from another. uent taxonomies) are universal, but also in favour of the existence of at least broadly analo
9 Stanford 1983. gous categories in all languages, see Wierzbicka 1999.
10 Douglas Cairns and Damien Nelis Introduction 11
ancient moral, social, and legal values. These are features that are emphasized in succeed in fostering that engagement. Not only do works of literature embed and
some of the most important contributions within Classical Studies,17 but they also embody the emotion scripts of their society and culture, they also constitute emo
constitute major topics in other disciplines.18 tion scripts in themselves, feeding back into, recalibrating, and extending the emo
Literature has loomed large in these discussions, especially because literary tional repertoires and capacities of their audiences. 23 The emotion-eliciting power
sources provide tich evidence for the complex dynamics of emotional episodes in of texts is not just a matter of the depiction of emotion in the text.24 The mecha
multifaceted depictions of more or less realistic forms of social interaction. Gen nisms by which texts exert this power, however, as well as the nature of the re
res such as epic and drama provide various perspectives on characters' motivation sponses that these mechanisms elicit, are matters of controversy; this is an area
and substantial information on the eliciting conditions of their emotions, all of where the centuries' worth of implicit and explicit testimony that classical litera
which can guide our interpretation both of explicit ascriptions of emotion and of ture and classical literary theory have to ofter on the emotional power of texts and
implicit representations of emotional behaviour. A wide range of other genres performances can still make a contribution to contemporary debate, not only in
(from elegiac poetry and historiography to forensic oratory and biography) rely applying modem theory to ancient sources or in bringing our literary-theoretical
similarly on narrative constmctions of characteristic affective scenatios as con approaches into contact with the cognitive and affective sciences,25 but also in
texts for their representations of and appeals to emotion. In a very real sense, then, using the richness of ancient theory to interrogate modem assumptions.26
the manifold forms of dramatic enactment and narrative representation of emotion If literary texts draw on the paradigmatic emotion scenarios of the culture in
in literature reflect the paradigmatic scenarios of emotion in the wider culture or which they are created, they also help create, disseminate, and extend those para
in particular 'emotional communities' within that culture. 19 If literary representa digms, not only in individual readers and audience members, for whom the emo
tions of agency are successful, then we have good evidence of affectivity in action tional scripts embedded in a literary work may be exemplary or who may find
in the cultures we study - in the agents represented in literary artefacts, in their their emotional repertoires stretched by engagement with literature, but also in the
interaction with other agents and with internal audiences, and in the appeal to the work of other artists and in whole genres. Other works of literature constitute a
emotions of external audiences. This is one reason why Classicists have been tight significant aspect of the contextual background against which the emotions por
to make such extensive use of literary evidence in their contributions to the histor trayed in and elicited by particular texts must be read, as Battistella and Nelis re
ical study of emotion,2° and why literary sources still provide much of the evi mind us in this volume.27
dence and subject matter in this volume.21 Historiography perhaps constitutes a special case in this general connection.
The emotional texture and affective character of literary works also figure On the one hand, th~ role of emotion in the genre became a subject of debate al
prominently in contemporary emotion research.22 But a further feature of this ready in antiquity: historiography is penneated by the. theories of emotion that
strand of research is its focus on the emotional responses of readers and audienc prevailed in ancient aesthetics, ethics, and rhetoric, just as it is thoroughly influ
es, the subject of Caims's and Halliwell's chapters in this volume and a topic in enced by the practices of other literary genres (especially tragedy), yet the purpose
several of the others. Here, the concerns of modem emotional research and those and use of emotion-eliciting scenarios in the genre could be the subject of polemic
of ancient poetics, aesthetics, and rhetoric coalesce in seeing emotion as a salient and controversy.28 At the same time, historiography needs to confront emotion as
element in readers' and audiences' -",...,~,,-,,~-,,w. ith texts, performances, and nar a factor in historical causation. And, as Damon notes, ancient historians did pre
ratives and in the techniques by which those texts, performances, and narratives cisely that: as she points out 'Thucydides' "trnest cause" for the Peloponnesian
17 See e.g. (on emotion, moral and social norms, and the emotional of ordinary social 23 See D. L. Cairns 2014, esp. 103-109; cf. Cairns, this volume (pp. 53-78), with references in
interaction) Harris 2001; Kaster 2005; Sanders 2014. On the affective character of ancient n. 69; Munteanu, this volume (pp. 79-103).
Greek moral, social, and legal norms see also D. L. Cairns 1993, 2003a, 2003b, 2015. In this 24 See Halliwell, this volume (pp. 105-123), and cf. Damon, pp. 183f. on Thucydides 7 .29-30.
volume, see esp. Graver on the norms, scripts, and display rules that conditioned Cicero's 25 As indeed is happening, within Classics, in the work of scholars such as Felix Budelmann
grief over the death of his daughter. (see e.g. Budelmann and Easterling 2010; Budelmann and LeVen 2014; Budelroann,
18 On the intimate relationship between emotions and social norms, see esp. Elster 1999. On the Maguire, and Teasdale 2016), Jonas Grethlein (e.g. Grethlein 2015a, 2015b), Elizabeth
emotional character of moral norms, see e.g. Prinz 2007; De Sousa 2008; Bagnoli 2011. On Minchin (e.g. Minchin 2001), Ruth Scodel (e.g. Scodel 2014), and Ineke Sluiter (e.g. Duijn,
emotions, values, and legal norms, see Deigh 2008 and the January 2016 issue of Emotion Sluiter, and Verhagen 2015), with much more in the pipeline. So far, however, few have con
Review (vol. 8.1,pp. 3-61). centrated specifically on emotion.
19 To use the term introduced by Rosenwein 2006; see also Chaniotis 2011. 26 See the chapters by Cairns and Halliwell in this volume, with further references (pp. 53-78
20 Sec nn. 11-12 above. and 105-123).
21 See esp. the chapters by Battistella and Nelis, Cairns, Damon, Fulkerson, Halliwell, Lateiner, 27 See also Nelis 2015; and cf. (e.g.) F. Cairns 2005.
and Munteanu. 28 See Damon. this volume (pp. 178-194), with references to ancient sources and modem dis
22 See esp. Oatley 2011, 2012. cussion.
12 Douglas Cairns and Damien Nelis Introduction 13
war Sparta's fear, rp6~ot;, of Athens' growing power (1.23.6) - is the tip of a appraisal theory, as represented in the work of figures such as Magda Arnold,
very large iceberg. '29 The Greeks and Romans recognized the importance of emo Richard Lazarus and Nico Frijda.34 In the case of the 'component process model'
tions in history, if not of emotion history, in ways that are only now coming back developed by the Geneva school under Klaus Scherer this is a multidimensional
into focus. At the same time, this is an enterprise that is fraught with difficulty. and multifactorial approach that encompasses a range of cognitive and physiolog
That we live in an infinite affective continuum is a point made not only by the ical processes. 35 Models of this type can be adapted in the attempt to take account
likes of William James,30 but also (as emerges from a passage quoted in this vol of cross-cultural and historical variation,36 but in general they are not much .con
ume by Stephen Halliwell) by the ancient author of On the Sublime (22.1): 'there cerned with labels, categories, and the variqus things that language can do to emo
is an indefinite multiplicity of emotions (pathe) and no one can even say how tion. 37 Many rival and complementary approaches pay even less attention to such
many they are'.31 Every motive that every living human being has ever enter things: for Paul Griffiths, only 'basic emotions' or 'affect programme responses',
tained has been affectively charged: affectivity is fundamental to consciousness, i.e. short-term, spontaneous, and physical experiences, can be studied scientifical
to cognition, and to the ways that we make sense of the natural and social envi ly; conceptual analysis can elucidate a society's beliefs about emotion, but cannot
ronments.32 The experiences we pick out and label as emotions or emotional epi get us any closer to what emotions really are.38 Jesse Prinz's 'embodied appraisal'
sodes are just the peaks and troughs in this continuous emotional landscape. But if model recognizes that emotion episodes are multi-componential events, yet seeks
this is true, the history of emotions will be a difficult thing to write. Certain emo to isolate the one single component that is the emotion,39 finding it (like William
tions, in certain individuals, sectors of society, and communities, are inevitably James and Kurt Lange before him) in the perception of bodily change. For a large
privileged in terms of the causal force they are felt to have exerted. This tendency number of other researchers, the primary focus of investigation is the physical
towards schematization can extend even to the point at which it becomes an as experience of the individual, whether in terms of facial expressions or neurophys
pect of periodization the 'age of anxiety', and so on. iological changes.40 But the fundamental problem with thi:'i is that, as features of
It is, however, undeniable that emotions are powerful historical forces. It is language, thought, and culture, the phenomena that we categorize as emotions and
also undeniable that there is a history not only of such forces but also of their cat that other cultures have categorized in other, at least partly comparable terms,
egorization and conceptualization. We can historicize emotions in tenns of their encompass much more than these approaches attempt to address.41
importance as causes of particular historical events, the norms and values that The general approach to emotion that has become established in Classics,
regulate their expression in different places at different times, their role in the his then, based on language and literary or philosophical texts, still has much to offer.
tory of ideas and belief systems, and the ways in which the language, labelling, But that approach has been and can be further transformed by the broadening of
and valorization of emotion shifts over time and varies from culture to culture.33 the field, its focus, and its source base. This is the pa;rticular merit of Angelos
In attempting to pursue this project, Classics has to date - for the good reasons Chaniotis' Oxford ERC-funded project, mentioned above. Its inaugural publica
outlined above - concentrated extensively on language and texts. This marks a tion, Unveiling Emotions: Sources and Methodv for the Study of Emotions in the
substantial difference of emphasis behveen Classics (and certain other historically Greek World, both outlines and fulfils a programme of expanding the source ma
focused Humanities disciplines) and much mainstream emotion research in other terial for the study of ancient Greek emotion, from the traditional and virtually
disciplines. Although there is no single agreed definition of emotion or accepted exclusive focus on literary and philosophical sources towards a wider range of
account of what counts as emotion across the range of disciplines that deal with non-literary and sub-literary documents and a much greater concentration on ma
the issues and phenomena in question, it would be fair to say that the most fa terial culture.42
voured approach in many branches of the behavioural sciences is some form of In one respect, this represents a move away from elite and culturally authori
tative literary texts to other forms of textual evidence e.g. ktters, wills, and peti-
29 Damon, this volume, pp. 178 and 181. See also the studies of Thucydidean historiography
cited in her n. 19. 34 See Amold 1960; Frijda 1986; Lazarus 1991.
30 James 1890, ii.485. 35 See the interview with Scherer in Lombardo and Mulligan 2008.
31 rcoU&y ap Kat &vapi0µrrm rc&0n1 ml ouo' &v E1.7CEnt<V: ;6 rc6aa0 VVO:l"t(oq uoted by Halli 36 See Parrott 2010, 2012; Frijda and Parrott 2011.
well, below, p. 114). 37 For a good account of which see Colombetti 2009.
32 See now Colombetti 2014. 38 Griffiths 1997.
33 Again, there is much to be learned here from the work of David Konstan, whether it concerns 39 See Prinz 2004, 3.
the shifts in meaning of Greek phthonos and nemesis (Konstan 2003), the changing valoriza 40 Facial expressions: see (most recently) Elanan and Cordaro 2011; brain studies: see Damasio
tion of pity, clemency, etc. (Konstan 200 I), or the emergence of a modem concept of forgi 1994; LeDoux 1996; Rolls 1999, 2005; Fox 2008.
veness in contradistinction to the scenarios envisaged by ancient Greek syngnome or Roman 41 Cf. Cairns and Fulkerson 2015b, 1-6.
ignoscere (Konstan 2010). 42 See Chaniotis 2012b, 24-27, with 2012d, 37-150, 177-355, 389-430.
14 Douglas Cairns and Damien Nelis Introduction 15
tions;43 inscriptions set up by private individuals;44 and inscriptions, both religious Angelos Chaniotis' chapter in this volume indicates another fruitful approach
and secular, commissioned by communities of various kinds.45 But the broadening in this connection, in so far as it represents a growing tendency to consider the
of the source base also encompasses a shift of focus on to non-textual forms of products of the visual arts not just in their own right, as evidence for the depiction
evidence - to visual and material culture. Visual culture, in particular, is an area in of emotion, but ( as far as possible) in their wider original context, as functional
which great opportunities exist, but also considerable obstacles. In principle, objects in specific physical and cultural settings: statues not only represent emo
sources such as vase-painting and sculpture might be thought to afford direct ac tional experience, but also express emotional commitment and elicit emotional
cess to the physical expression of emotion in gesture and body language. But, as responses. Chaniotis' study, in this volume, of the multiple ways in which the
Glenys Davies points out, 'although some aspects of body language are universal dedication of a statue provides evidence for aspects of ancient affectivity com
and found across cultures many behaviours are culture-specific, and it should not plements earlier studies on the emotional dimensions of sanctuaries and other lo
be assumed that an interpretation that seems natural or obvious to us would have cations for ritual performance. 52 Epigraphic texts, dedications, religious architec
been so for the Roman [o r Greek] viewer' .46 Contemporary scientific accounts can ture, and the configuration of the site more generally all contribute to the creation
help, especially if they can offer strong grounds, with robust cross-cultural evi of a shared space for emotional experience and emotional performance, a locus for
dence, that a given expression or gesture genuinely is found in a range of cultures; the enactment of the emotions - awe, fear, wonder, respect, hope, gratitude, and
but even so it would be unsafe merely to assimilate representations of emotion in so on - on which religious experience depends.53 Such an orientation reflects the
the visual arts of the ancient Greeks and Romans to our own understanding ( even tum towards materiality in archaeology and ancient history more broadly, a con
if scientifically informed) of what appears to be depicted. To link the depiction of cern that is also manifest in studies that focus more generally on the affective im
non-verbal behaviour in ancient art to ancient concepts of emotion we typically plications of human beings' interaction with objects and artefacts.54
require warrant from linguistic (and especially narrative) sources,47 together with This is not an approach, however, that needs to restrict itself to material evi
as much contextual information ( e.g. about the identity and status of the individu dence alone. The literary texts that have dominated the study of ancient emotions
als depicted, the relation between their depiction and ancient norms of self to date also have a great deal to offer those who wish to investigate the concrete
presentation, proxemics, and emotional display, etc.) as can reasonably be ob physicality of ancient emotions as aspects of the ways in which embodied human
tained, as well as a thorough understanding of the iconography of the wider cor beings interact with the world and the objects that it contains. This is partly a con
pus to which the depiction belongs. Though progress is being made,48 works sequence of the fact that literary sources are rich in representations of the objects,
which in the past attempted to survey this field systematically are now outdated artefacts, spaces, symptoms, movements, postures, and gestures through which
and inadequate,49 and coverage remains in many respects sporadic.50 A systematic emotions can be expressed, symbolized, constructed, and elicited. 55 But it is also
and comprehensive study remains very much a desideratum.51 significant that there is a very real sense in which there is no absolute gulf be
tween the material and the textual, the physical and the mental, in the study of
emotion. To quote Caims's chapter in this volume:
43 Kotsifou 2012a, 2012b, 2012c.
44 Chaniotis 2012a; Salvo 2012. The importance of emotional symptoms in the construction of emotional concepts underlines
45 Chaniotis 2012a, 2012c; Martzavou 2012a, 2012b; Chaniotis 2015. the fundamental importance of physical embodiment in the. concept of emotion itself. In the
46 Davies, this volume, p. 159. case ofphrike, the symptom is one that has its roots in basic somatic mechanisms of tempera
47 See Chaniotis 2012b, 18, 27; Masseglia 2012a, 137-139, 2012c. ture regulation, that is manifested in a range of non-emotional contexts, and that is shared
48 See especially the recent contributions ofMasseglia 2012c, 2013; Bobou 2013. with other animals. From these materials, universal in humans and extending beyond the hu
49 Sitt! 1890; Neumann 1965. On body language in general (chiefly in literary sources), see man species, is constructed an emotional concept in which physical symptoms are intimately
Maier-Eichhorn 1989; Bremmer and Roodenburg 1991; Lateiner 1995; Aldrete 1999; Boege related to cognitive appraisals and evaluations. The mechanism by which this occurs is the
hold 1999; Lobe 1999; Ricottili 2000; Fagen 2001; Llewellyn-Jones 2003; Corbeill 2004; D. universal one of metonymy, by which the name of the symptom comes to function as a name
L. Cairns 2005. Among works on emotion expression in particular, one might single out Hal of the emotion. The concept of phrike is typical in locating the language and thought of emo-
liwell 2008 (on Greek laughter), Beard 2014 (on Roman); on tears, see the chapters in Fagen
2009. customs more generally (e.g. Vermeule 1979; Garland 1985; Loraux 1990/1998; Seaford
50 As well as the works cited in n. 48, note also e.g. Davies 1985, 1994, 1997, 2002, 2005; 1994; Engels 1998; Derderian 2001).
McNiven 2000 (and his unpublished 1982 dissertation). For Roman art, Brilliant 1963 re 52 See Chaniotis 2011, 2012a.
mains valuable. See also Kenner 1960 on laughter and tears in Greek art. 53 Cf. e.g. Masseglia 2012b.
51 There is a partial exception in the well-studied phenomenon of grief and mourning in ancient 54 See e.g. Masseglia 2012a, 2012b; Bourbou 2013. For theoretical perspectives on materiality
visual culture: see e.g. (on Greek art) Shapiro 1991; Huber 2001; Oakley 2004. This belongs and cognition, see e.g. Appadurai 1986; Brown 2004; Bennett 2010; Malafouris 2013, Bos
with a long-standing tradition of studies of (especially Greek) lamentation (see Alexiou cagli 2014.
1974/2002; Holst-Warhaft 1992; Schauer 2002; Due 2002, 2006; Suter 2008) and funerary 55 Cf. the works cited inn. 49 above on body language, and cf. (on objects) Mueller 2016.
16 Douglas Cairns and Damien Nelis Introduction 17
tion in embodied physical experience. There is nothing in any way surprising or unfamiliar language, and especially in the use of metaphor. Ahnost always, these metaphors
about this •· the point is precisely that ancient Greek emotional concepts are, to large extent, will be conventional, or at least not unique to individuals; very often, they will
built up out of the same materials as our own, materials that draw on our experience as physi
reflect not subjective experience as such, but shared models of the fonns that sub
cally embodied beings interacting with our physical and social environments. What needs to
jective experience was expected to take. In this way, however, metaphor us
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 from what cannot be studied historically - the totality of living human beings'
not that embodiment is relevant only in terms of emotions' physical ehanges, symptoms, and actual subjective experience of affective events and states (that 'indefinite multi
expressions and is left behind when emotional concepts take root in language, thought, and plicity of pathe' mentioned in On the Sublime 22.1) to what cah, the representa
culture. There is no disjunction, but rather a fundamental continuity between emotions as tion of subjective experience in language.
physical experiences and emotional concepts as linguistic and cultural categories. In terms of
There are complex issues to be explored here, in emotion research in general,
the development of emotional concepts, there is no wedge to be driven between the body, on
about the links between physical experience, observing and thinking about physi
the one hand, and language and culture on the other.
cal experience, responding emotionally to others' embodied experience, and the
Mechanisms of thought, such as metonymy and metaphor, regularly bring the
creation and reception of verbal and visual narratives of physical experience, es
body and its interactions with the material and social environments into the lan pecially in terms of possible connections between the represehtation of the subjec
guage and thought of emotion. A growing number of studies are beginning to ex
tive phenomenology of emotion in language, thought, and narrative and the emo
plore what metaphor can tell us about the conceptualization of emotion in ancient tional responses of the recipients and audiences of such language, mental repre
Greek and Roman societies.56 To say 'I shudder' rather than merely 'I am afraid' sentations, and narratives. 59 We have touched on these issues already above, with
is to give a more vivid and immediate sense of the emotion as a holistic, embodied regard to the emotional responses of audiences and readers. 'Longinus' is one of
experience; to present the onset of grief as the feeling of being suddenly envel many ancient authors who exhibits a pronounced interest .in how the representa
oped in a cloud or a garment presents an individual's emotion in terms of a shared tion of embodied experience in literature appeals to the emotions of readers and
cultural model of what that emotion feels like to a subject (and links it to the visi audiences: Halliwell's discussion in this volume brings out the author's sense of a
ble expression of the emotion in body language and dress). 57 When Achilles wish
symmetry between vivid representation of physical experience in texts and the
es that anger (c holos) would disappear from the world, that anger that is sweeter physicality of an audience's emotional response (and similarly highlights the role
than liquid honey and expands like smoke in a man's chest (Iliad 18.107-110), he of metaphor in mediating that symmetry).60 One of the sub-issues in this domain,
is, to be sure, telling us what anger has felt like to him, but he does so in a way concerning the relation between physical and mental or 'social' pain,61 and thus
that draws on his culture's metaphorical models of emotional experience (e.g. as between the emotional pain that an observer feels at the physical pain of another,62
the movement of gases and fluids in a container), so that his description is mean is raised in the pseudo-Aristotelian Problemata and discussed in Fortenbaugh's
ingful also in terms of the conceptual schemas that the poem's audiences use to chapter in this volume.63 The author of the Peripatetic treatise is puzzled by a
articulate their own subjective experiences. The similarity between these schemas question that remains an issue of contemporary scientific discussion.
and those that are currently in use in modem societies will at least partly reflect But these issues ultimately raise a more fundamental question concerning the
the constraints that actual physiology, symptomatology, and other features of hu
utilitv of the antithesis between mind and body when it comes to thinking about
man embodiment place on metaphors and metonymies that depend on embodi emotion as one of the ways in which human beings (and other organisms) make
ment.
sense of their environments. The phrike that registers a difference in temperature
As Angelos Chaniotis has pointed out, 'the ancient historian cannot study between an organism and its surroundings is a primary way in which that organ
what people really felt';58 but the ancient experience of emotion is not completely ism makes sense of the world; the same embodied sense-making capacities remain
inaccessible to us, at least in so far as we can study shared cultural models of implicated when phrike responds (e.g.) to presumed signs of divine presence or to
emotion phenomenology via their representation in the intersubjective medium of
the convincing representation of human suffering in the theatre, though the latter
56 See D. L. Cairns 2013a, 2013b, 2014, 2016a, 2016b, forthcoming. See also Canovas 2011 on 59 See e.g. Oatley 2011, 111-114; Wojciehowski and Gallese 2011 (with bibliography on the
the arrows of love and cf. Hom forthcoming on Homeric metaphors for death (which have wider issues in terms of mirror neurons, embodied simulation, etc.). On the issue of whether
some affinities with metaphors for grief and other emotions: D. L. Cairns 2016a). Latinists metaphors which draw on embodied experience involve embodied simulation of that experi
have focused less closely on emotion, but for the general approach, see Short 2012, 2013, ence in the brain, see the studies cited in D. L. Cairns 2014, 1111.5-8.
2014. 60 See Halliwell, p. 116 and n. 22 on On the Sublime 15.2, 20.3, and 29.2.
57 See D. L. Cairns 2013a and in this volume on shudders (phrike) and 2016a on clouds and 61 See (for different views) Eisenberger 2012; Woo et alii 2014.
garments. 62 See Singer et alii 2004.
58 Chaniotis 2012, 94. 63 See Fortenbaugh, this volume, pp. 125-142.
18 Douglas Cairns and Damien Nelis Introduction 19
clearly involve much more in the way of affective and cognitive processing. At This volume cannot survey or represent the totality of what is becoming a
both ends of the scale, in non-human animals and in human beings, phrike is an substantial volume of work on ancient emotions. Nor can it anticipate all the di
experience of a body that is simultaneously an experience of the world. The rections that future research in the field might take. We are conscious of what we
body's sense-making capacities are involved at all levels; they remain involved have omitted, not least because several colleagues who made valuable contribu
when symptoms of this type, the primary sense-making capacities that they re tions to the 2013 Geneva conference were sadly unable, for various reasons, to
flect, and other embodied forms of experience are used to construct the metonyms contribute. At the conference, the focus of Chaniotis and Davies on visual and
and metaphors that structure emotion concepts. At all levels, these phenomena material culture was supplemented by papers by Ioannis Mylonbpoulos and Em
reflect the fact that cognition is embodied and that cognition and affectivity are ma Stafford. The absence of a chapter on ancient medicine, a subject treated at the
inextricably linked as aspects of the single complex system that is the living or conference in William Harris's paper on Greek emotions and mental illness, will
64
ganism. If we as Classicists can insist on the extent to which our discipline, too, shortly (though sadly not here) be made good by contributions by George Ka
focuses on embodied, embedded, and enactive aspects of emotion, then we can zantzidis.68 Cristobal Pagan Canovas' paper on emotion metaphor complemented
69
engage in meaningful dialogue with emotion researchers in a variety of other dis nicely the paper by Cairns, but rested substantially on published work. David
ciplines, while also seeking to pursue a dialogue within our own discipline in syn Armstrong's work on Philodemus' On Anger is being published in fuller form in
thesizing the material, visual, and textual data that the ancient evidence has to his edition of that work (in collaboration with M. McOsker); we particularly feel
offer. the lack of the Epicurean perspective. We shall naturally be less conscious of what
In studying the emotions of the ancient Greeks and Romans we already en we have overlooked; but we hope that what we have managed to include gives a
gage in cross-cultural comparison: none of us is an ancient Greek or an ancient reasonably accurate impression of an exciting and developing field.
Roman. In bringing this comparative and historicizing impetus to bear Classicists In his paper Donald Lateiner investigates what he describes as an unjustly ne
are already in a position to supply perspectives that are too often overlooked in glected emotion, disgust. He does so by looking at three literary genres: epic,
other branches of emotion research. We do this well when we interrogate to the tragedy and comedy. Following an analysis of disgust as an emotion, concluding
best of our abilities the linguistic, social, and cultural habits that inform our own that is not an innate instinct but a response and signal system that depends on de
and our own societies' views about emotion. But we can also do more. It is a vir veloped capacities and socialization, he goes on to look at Homeric narrative,
tue of the current volume that so many of our contributors ( especially Battistella concluding that for all the references to and brutal descriptions of fighting,
and Nelis, Halliwell, and Munteanu) treat both Greek and Roman evidence - an wounding, and killing Homer rarely provides detailed descriptions of disgust
obvious cultural interface which is too often overlooked and which should much arousing encounters. Turning to tragedy, Lateiner refers to the gruesome features
65
more regularly form the focus of our investigations. Other comparators readily . of such monstrous creates as the Aeschylean Furies and such horrible events as
suggest themselves: conferences and workshops have begun to examine similari the blinding of Oedipus in order to show just how grim this genre can be, remark
ties and differences between Greek and Arabic, Greek and Chinese classical tradi ing in conclusion that disgust can sometimes make room for the typically tragic
tions;66 and a new international research network has been set up to examine the emotion of pity. After a section about smell as it features in a range of Greek
interface between ancient Greek and Byzantine affectivity, taking into account texts, he concludes by looking at comic drama and the staging and description of a
also the influence of Christianity and Islam and Byzantium's relations with the remarkable array of disgusting acts, odours, and substances, before some conclud
67
Mediaeval West. ing 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 e4posure to of others to
them.
64 See Damasio 1994, 1999, 2003, 2010, and now Colombetti 2014, with its background in the
Douglas Cairns takes as his starting point the reappearance on stage of the
enactivist approach of(e.g.) Varela, Thompson, and Rosch 1991, Thompson 2007.
Sophoclean Oedipus, after he has blinded himself. He does so in order to focus on
65 See now the essays collected in Cairns and Fulkerson 2015a. For recent studies that also en
gineer an explicit confrontation between the affective worlds of Greek and Roman societies, one specific aspect of the Chorus' emotional response at Oedipus Tyrannus 1297-
cf. Konstan 2010 and Fulkerson 2013. 1306, the phrike that they experience on first setting eyes on the blinded king and
66 For the former project, see hhtp://nyuad.nyu.edu/en/news-events/abu-dhabi-events/2015/02/ in confronting his tragedy. Emphasizing the fact that it is both an emotion and a
emotions-across-cultures.html, with working papers at https://archive.nyu.edu/handle/2451/ fundamentally physical experience common to a range of emotional and non-
33966. For ancient Greek and Chinese emotions in an intellectual-historical context, involv
ing 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. 68 See Kazantzidis forthcoming, a, b, and c.
67 See http://emotions.shca.ed.ac.uk/. 69 Canovas 2011.
20 Douglas Cairns and Damien Nelis Introduction 21
emotional events, the experience of a body that shivers and shudders, Cairns goes are frequently inaccurate and that modem scholars often work with over
on to study phrike in relation to the tragic emotions and also to Greek ideas about confident generalisations about the approaches of ancient critics.
literature and enargeia and phantasia. The phrike of an internal audience in trage William Fortenbaugh devotes his paper to the little-studied pseudo
dy or in narrative offers a perspective on the text's emotion-eliciting power. Look Aristotelian work, the Physical Problems. He points out that throughout the Prob
ing at a wide range of sources beyond tragedy, from Homer and Gorgias to Jose lems there are numerous references to emotional response, and that three of the
phus and Galen, Cairns demonstrates that though it is typically a symptom of fear, thirty-three books that make up the work carry in their headings explicit reference
horror, or revulsion, phrike can also be an expression of the link between these to an emotion or to dispositions closely tied to emotional responses. Fortenbaugh
emotions and the shared sense of vulnerability that gives rise to pity. As such, it is attracted especially to Book 7, devoted to 'Problems arising from Sympathy'. It
can be dissociated neither from pity and fear as the typical tragic emotions nor deals with such topics as shared pain, which is presented as a cognitive response
from broader questions about emotional empathy and sympathy in the analysis of to another person's suffering; painful sounds and sights, some of which but not all
literary texts. involve thought; infectious yawning and urinating, which might be considered
Dana Munteanu sets out to explore the relationship between stories depicting automatic reactions, but in the Problems are presented as responses involving
extraordinary suffering and the fact that they may be recounted with a clear prac thought. Overall, he sees pleasure and pain as constituting one unifying feature
tical purpose, namely to help a grieving person by restoring him or her to normal that renders intelligible the grouping together of the phenomena discussed in
social interactions and activities. She is in addition interested in the frequent de Book 7, but not the most important one. Rather, taking his cue from its title, he
bates of Greco-Roman philosophers about the degree of usefulness of such cases. sees the presence of the word sympatheia as capturing the essence of this book,
Following a discussion of the fundamental role of narrative in arousing emotion, which brings together and discusses shared affections, a better translation of the
using modem research into the ways in which narrative clues guide readers to one Greek pathos than the more usual term emotion.
emotional state or another, clues that can be detected in all popular and long In his contribution, Angelos Chaniotis studies the emotive power of Greek
lasting genres, she goes on to focus on the ways in which tragic stories, both in statues. Starting from their ubiquity in Greek culture, their variety in terms of
epic and drama, can function as means of consolation. By the fifth century BCE, form and function and the immediate materiality of their physical presence, he
she proposes, tragedy may have been seen as a geme offering consolation to the surveys the various ways in which they display and arouse emotions. He notes
spectators, by turning their attention from personal misfortunes to the unparalleled that the very existence of a statue may arise from an emotional response, offering
suffering of others and thus giving them pleasure and relief. But subsequently as one example among several the fact that the Nike of Paionios was motivated by
Plato opposes this notion, arguing instead that the relief and pleasure felt when the pride of the Messenians and Naupaktians for their victory over Sparta in 425
people watch tragedies, instead of providing solace, stir the soul. Since lamenta BCE. Once they have been set up, the perception of statues as agents of divine
tion for fictional others fosters lack of restraint in expressing grief when one is power and epiphany explains in part why they can be associated with all the emo
faced with personal loss, Plato proposes an alternative model of endurance tions that are connected with religious worship: fear, hope, gratitude, and affec
through philosophy. Hellenistic philosophers continued to debate the utility of tion. In tum, statues of human beings are seen as hosts of memory, which prompts
tragic examples, while advancing their own paradigms of consolation. the idea that one aspect of commemoration is the transmission of communal val
Stephen Halliwell devotes his paper to looking at ancient theorizing about the ues. A series of examples next illustrates what Chaniotis describes as 'the illusion
poetics of emotional expression. He begins by asking three crucial, closely related of agency': cases where a statue was believed to kill, heal, or punish or when stat
questions about the triangular relationship involving author, text, and audience: ues seemed to present the physical symptoms of life, by moving, sweating, and
when emotional expression is predicated of a literary text, is that emotion to be shedding tears. When statues appear to be filled with life, the emotional responses
ascribed directly to the author? If so, must a distinction be made between the 'bi to and the emotional interaction with them is largely determined by the same fac
ographical' author and the 'virtual' author (i.e. the author created from the reading tors that also govern emotions in interpersonal human relations. Consistently
of the text) to make sense of such expression? Alternatively, is emotional expres aware of the methodological difficulties inherent in the kinds of reconstructions
siveness an effect that inheres in the linguistically constituted worlds of literary he is attempting, Chaniotis concludes that we must study the emotions if we want
works themselves? Or is the essential test of what is at stake in emotional expres to understand ancient statues.
sion best approached by concentrating on the production of emotion in the reader Glenys Davies studies some examples of Roman art in the light of modern re
or audience of a literary text? Halliwell goes on to offer close analyses of some search into nonverbal communication, or body language. She has a special interest
ancient texts (for example, Aristotle's Poetics, Horace's Ars poetica, Longinus, in what she describes as proxemics (how close people stand to one another and the
On the Sublime) that have important things to say about such questions and have extent to which they can be thought tb invade another person's space) and haptics
as a result been much cited and studied by those modern scholars who have inves (touch), taking as a basic premise that Roman artists observed the body language
tigated these matters, arriving at the conclusion that standard readings of key texts in use in Roman society and used their observations as a communicative device in