The Passions in Roman Thought and Literature

by Susanna Morton Braund , Christopher Gill

• ISBN13: 9780521030908
• ISBN10: 0521030900
• Format: Paperback
• Copyright: 2007-01-29
• Publisher: Cambridge University Press

Summary

Essays by an international team of scholars in Latin literature and ancient philosophy explore the understanding of emotions (or 'passions') in Roman thought and literature. Building on work on Hellenistic theories of emotion and on philosophy as therapy, they look closely at the interface between ancient philosophy (especially Stoic and Epicurean), rhetorical theory, conventional Roman thinking and literary portrayal. There are searching studies of the emotional thought-world of a range of writers including Catullus, Cicero, Virgil, Seneca, Statius, Tacitus and Juvenal. Issues of debate such as the ethical colour of Aeneas's angry killing of Turnus at the end of the Aeneid are placed in a broad and illuminating perspective. Written in clear and non-technical language, with Greek and Latin translated, the volume opens up a fascinating area on the borders of philosophy and literature.

Table of Contents

Preface

Conventions

Introduction: about this volume

Introduction: the emotions in Greco-Roman

Epicurean anger

Cicero and the expression of grief

The subjugaton of grief in Seneca's

A passion unconsoled? Grief and anger in Juvenal Satire 13

Passion, reason and knowledge in Seneca's tragedies

Imagination and the arousal of the emotions in Greco-Roman rhetoric

Pity, fear and the historical audience: Tacitus on the fall of Vitellius

All in the mind: sickness in Catullus 76

Ferox uirtus: anger in Virgil's

'Envy and fear the begetter of hate': Statius' Thebaid and the genesis of hatred

Passion as madness in Roman poetry

Bibliography

Index of ancient passages

General index

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