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Published online by Cambridge University Press: 05 March 2021
Ancient Greek and Roman emotions have become a field of increasing academic interest over the last few decades. We can particularly refer to such formative scholars in the field as David Konstan, Douglas Cairns, Robert Kaster, and more recently Angelos Chaniotis – though the cast list goes much wider. Early interest in emotions prevalent across classical genres, such as shame, anger, pity, envy/jealousy, and erôs (erotic love, desire), has more recently expanded to include more peripheral emotions such as forgiveness, remorse, and disgust. A number of studies, too, have focused on specific genres. This research has been conducted against a background of much wider interest in emotion studies in fields as diverse as neuroscience, cognitive psychology, anthropology, medicine, philosophy, jurisprudence, history, literary studies, and the performing arts. Many publications by Classicists have demonstrated awareness of this wider body of research, and some of them directly incorporate theoretical findings – particularly from cognitive psychology, but from other disciplines too – into exploration of classical texts and other media.
Five of the six articles in this collection derive from a colloquium on ‘The Emotions of Medea’, held at the Fondation Hardt, 3–4 May 2019. The colloquium was organized by Damien Nelis and Douglas Cairns, and was funded by the Swiss Centre for Affective Sciences, the Faculty of Letters, the Commission administrative, and the Department of Classics, all of the University of Geneva. Our thanks is due to all of these.
1 For Konstan, see, in particular Konstan, D., The Emotions of the Ancient Greeks. Studies in Aristotle and Classical Literature (Toronto, 2006)CrossRefGoogle Scholar. Also Konstan, D., Friendship in the Classical World (Cambridge, 1997)CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Konstan, D., Pity Transformed (London, 2001)Google Scholar; Konstan, D., Before Forgiveness. The Origins of a Moral Idea (Cambridge, 2010)CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Konstan, D., In the Orbit of Love. Affection in Ancient Greece and Rome (Oxford, 2018)Google Scholar; and numerous shorter studies. For Cairns, see e.g. Cairns, D., Aidôs. The Psychology and Ethics of Honour and Shame in Ancient Greek Literature (Oxford, 1993)Google Scholar; Cairns, D., ‘Ethics, Ethology, Terminology: Iliadic Anger and the Cross-Cultural Study of Emotion’, in Braund, S. and Most, G. W. (eds.), Ancient Anger. Perspectives from Homer to Galen (Cambridge, 2003), 11–49Google Scholar; Cairns, D., ‘Look Both Ways: Studying Emotion in Ancient Greek’, Critical Quarterly 50.4 (2008), 43–63CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Cairns, D., ‘Looks of Love and Loathing: Cultural Models of Vision and Emotion in Ancient Greek Culture’, Mètis 9 (2011), 37–50Google Scholar; Cairns, D., ‘Mind, Body, and Metaphor in Ancient Greek Concepts of Emotion’, in Boquet, D. and Nagy, P. (eds.), Histoire intellectuelle des émotions, de l'antiquité à nos jours, L'Atelier du Centre de Recherches Historiques 16 (2016)Google Scholar, <https://doi.org/10.4000/acrh.7416>, accessed 16 November 2020. For Kaster, see R. A. Kaster, Emotion, Restraint, and Community in Ancient Rome (New York, 2005); R. A. Kaster, ‘The Passions’, in S. J. Harrison (ed.), A Companion to Latin Literature (Oxford, 2005), 319–30; R. A. Kaster, ‘Some Passionate Performances in Late Republican Rome’, in R. Balot (ed.), A Companion to Ancient Political Thought (London, 2009), 308–20. Chaniotis was principal investigator of ‘The Social and Cultural Construction of Emotions: The Greek Paradigm’ project, University of Oxford, 2009–14. Its output included A. Chaniotis (ed.), Unveiling Emotions. Sources and Methods for the Study of Emotions in the Greek World (Stuttgart 2012); A. Chaniotis and P. Ducrey (eds.), Unveiling Emotions II. Emotions in Greece and Rome. Texts, Images, Material Culture (Stuttgart, 2013); A. Chaniotis, N. Kaltsas, and I. Myonopoulos (eds.), A World of Emotions. Ancient Greece 700 bc–200 ad (New York, 2017).
2 For shame, see Cairns 1993 (n. 1); B. Williams, Shame and Necessity (Berkeley, CA, 1993); C. A. Barton, Roman Honor. The Fire in the Bones (Berkeley, CA, 2001); R. Alexandre, C. Guérin, and M. Jacotot (eds.), Rubor et pudor. Vivre et penser dans la Rome ancienne (Paris, 2012). For anger, see W. V. Harris, Restraining Rage. The Ideology of Anger Control in Classical Antiquity (Cambridge, MA, 2001); Braund and Most (n. 1); K. Kalimtzis, Taming Anger. The Hellenic Approach to the Limitations of Reason (London, 2012). For pity, see Konstan 1997 (n. 1); R. H. Sternberg (ed.), Pity and Power in Ancient Athens (Cambridge, 2005); D. L. Munteanu, Tragic Pathos. Pity and Fear in Greek Philosophy and Tragedy (Cambridge, 2011). For envy and jealousy, see D. Konstan and N. K. Rutter (eds.), Envy, Spite, and Jealousy. The Rivalrous Emotions in Ancient Greece (Edinburgh, 2003); R. R. Caston, The Elegiac Passion. Jealousy in Roman Love Elegy (New York, 2012); E. Sanders, Envy and Jealousy in Classical Athens. A Socio-Psychological Approach (New York, 2014). For erôs, see C. Calame, I greci e l'eros. Simboli, pratiche, e luoghi (Rome, 1992); M. C. Nussbaum and J. Sihvola (eds.), The Sleep of Reason. Erotic Experience and Sexual Ethics in Ancient Greece and Rome (Chicago, IL, 2002); E. Sanders, C. Thumiger, C. Carey, and N. J. Lowe (eds.), Erôs in Ancient Greece (Oxford, 2013); E. Sanders (ed.), Erôs and the Polis. Love in Context (London, 2013); S. Caciagli (ed.), Eros e genere in Grecia arcaica (Bologna, 2017).
3 For forgiveness, see Konstan 2010 (n. 1); C. L. Griswold and D. Konstan (eds.), Ancient Forgiveness. Classical, Judaic, and Christian (Cambridge, 2012). For remorse, see L. Fulkerson, No Regrets. Remorse in Classical Antiquity (Oxford, 2013). For disgust, see D. Lateiner and D. Spatharas (eds.), The Ancient Emotion of Disgust (New York, 2017).
4 E.g. D. Konstan, Sexual Symmetry. Love in the Ancient Novel and Related Genres (Princeton, NJ, 1994); Munteanu (n. 2); Caston (n. 2); E. Visvardi, Emotion in Action. Thucydides and the Tragic Chorus (Leiden, 2015); E. Sanders and M. Johncock (eds.), Emotion and Persuasion in Classical Antiquity (Stuttgart, 2016); D. Spatharas, Emotions, Persuasion, and Public Discourse in Classical Athens (Berlin, 2019).
5 E.g. R. Kaster, ‘Introduction’, in Kaster, Emotion (n. 1), 3–12; D. Konstan, ‘Pathos and Passion’, in Konstan 2006 (n. 1), 3–40; Cairns 2008 (n. 1); A. Chaniotis, ‘Introduction’, in Chaniotis (n. 1), 11–36; D. Cairns, ‘Introduction: Emotion History and the Classics’, in D. Cairns (ed.) A Cultural History of the Emotions in Antiquity (London, 2019), 1–15.
6 L. Fulkerson, ‘Helen as Vixen, Helen as Victim: Remorse and the Opacity of Female Desire’, in D. L. Munteanu (ed.), Emotion, Genre and Gender in Classical Antiquity (Bristol, 2011), 113–33, might be considered such a study in miniature for Helen across multiple texts; however, it focuses on only one emotion, which appears to greater or lesser extent in each text. Z. M. Torlone, ‘Engendering Reception: Joseph Brodsky's “Dido and Aeneas”’, in ibid., 241–60, provides a better parallel, as her various Didos exhibit a greater range of emotions. It is notable that both studies also focus on a mythological figure with multiple literary instantiations.
7 See J. J. Clauss and S. I. Johnston (eds.), Medea. Essays on Medea in Myth, Literature, Philosophy and Art (Princeton, NJ, 1997), esp. the chapters in Parts II and III; B. Gentili and F. Perusino (eds.), Medea nella letteratura e nell'arte (Venice, 2000); H. Bartel and A. Simon (eds.), Unbinding Medea. Interdisciplinary Approaches to a Classical Myth from Antiquity to the 21st Century (London, 2010), esp. the first few chapters. For a brief overview, see E. Griffiths, Medea (London and New York, 2006), 14–22.
8 This is not to say that analysis of a historical character's emotions, as presented in different texts over time, might not also be a worthwhile exercise.
9 P. E. Easterling, ‘The Infanticide in Euripides’ Medea’, YClS 25 (1977), 178 and 183; B. M. W. Knox, ‘The Medea of Euripides’, YlCS 25 (1977), 196–202; A. H. Gabriel, ‘Living with Medea and Thinking after Freud: Greek Drama, Gender, and Concealments’, Cultural Anthropology 7 (1992), 353; D. M. Mastronarde, Euripides. Medea (Cambridge, 2002), 8–9; L. Holland, ‘Πᾶς δόμος ἔρροι: Myth and Plot in Euripides’ Medea’, TAPhA 133 (2003), 270.
10 Harris (n. 2), 266 and 383; Mastronarde (n. 9), 17–18; Konstan 2006 (n. 1), 57–9.
11 A. P. Burnett, Revenge in Attic and Later Tragedy (Berkeley, CA, 1998), 194; Mastronarde (n. 9), 16; F. McHardy, Revenge in Athenian Culture (London, 2008), 61–2; Cairns 2008 (n. 1), 53–6; E. Sanders, ‘Sexual Jealousy and Erôs in Euripides’ Medea’, in Sanders et al. (n. 2), 41–57; contra Konstan 2006 (n. 1), 59 and 233–4.
12 C. Gill, ‘Passion as Madness in Roman Poetry’, in S. M. Braund and C. Gill (eds.), The Passions in Roman Thought and Literature (Cambridge, 1997), 217–18 and 222–3; G. Guastella, ‘Virgo, Coniunx, Mater: The Wrath of Seneca's Medea’, ClAnt 20.2 (2001), 197–219; H. M. Roisman, ‘Women in Senecan Tragedy’, Scholia 14 (2005), 82–6; C. Battistella and D. Nelis, ‘Some Thoughts on the Anger of Seneca's Medea’, in D. Cairns and D. Nelis (eds.), Emotions in the Classical World. Methods, Approaches, and Directions (Stuttgart, 2017), 245–56.
13 Other classical works could have been chosen instead, but there are natural limits to a small collection.
14 Michalopoulos refers to an ‘emotional storm in her soul’.
15 Volumes particularly concerned with methodological issues include Chaniotis (n. 1), and Cairns and Nelis (n. 12).
16 Konstan 2006 (n. 1) approaches a range of genres, especially epic, tragedy, and oratory, through the prism of Aristotle's discussion of individual emotions in Rh. 2.2–11. M. R. Graver, Stoicism and Emotion (Chicago, IL, 2007), a different type of study, nevertheless somewhat similarly uses Stoic ideas to understand a number of (principally mythical) classical figures.
17 See e.g. D. Konstan, ‘Rhetoric and Emotion’, in I. Worthington (ed.), A Companion to Greek Rhetoric (Malden, MA, 2010), 411–25; S. Halliwell, ‘The Poetics of Emotional Expression: Some Problems of Ancient Theory’, in Cairns and Nelis (n. 12), 105–23.
18 Script theory is used by Kaster, Emotion (n. 1); and Sanders (n. 2). For cognitive psychology, see e.g. C. Thumiger, A History of the Mind and Mental Health in Classical Greek Medical Thought (Cambridge 2017), 335–418. For trauma theory, see A. Eckert, ‘“There is no one who does not hate Sulla”: Emotion, Persuasion and Cultural Trauma’, in Sanders and Johncock (n. 4), 133–45. For metaphor studies, see e.g. Cairns 2011 and 2016 (n. 1); D. Cairns, ‘Horror, Pity, and the Visual in Ancient Greek Aesthetics’, in Cairns and Nelis (n. 12), 53–77. See also M. Theodoropoulou, ‘The Emotion Seeks to Be Expressed: Thoughts from a Linguist's Point of View’, in Chaniotis (n. 1), 433–68. For politeness studies, see E. Dickey, ‘Emotional Language and Formulae of Persuasion in Greek Papyrus Letters’, in Sanders and Johncock (n. 4), 237–62. For pragmatics, see F. Iurescia, ‘Strategies of Persuasion in Provoked Quarrels in Plautus: A Pragmatic Perspective’, in ibid., 281–94. For discursive psychology, see K. Hammond, ‘“It ain't necessarily so”: Reinterpreting Some Poems of Catullus from a Discursive Psychological Point of View’, in ibid., 295–313.
19 Aristotle's theories of emotion are frequently a fruitful approach to Attic tragedy, since that genre was his primary focus of study in the Poetics. He mentions Euripides’ Medea briefly at 54b1.