CLAS 3024 - Emotions in Greco-Roman Antiquity

The course focuses upon the ways in which various extreme emotional states (anger, love, grief, ecstasy etc.) were expressed and explored in the poetry and prose of the Ancient Greek and Roman worlds. Beginning with the destructive power of anger in Homer's Iliad and ending with the ecstatic 'passions' of the martyrs in the poetry of the early Christian poet Prudentius, the course traverses a wide variety of emotional states and literary genres including Greek tragedy (which delves deeply into emotions such as anger, grief and fear), the passionate love lyrics of poets such as Sappho and the grief-stricken letters of Cicero on the death of his daughter. Throughout the course the following questions will be addressed; 1. How did people express and deal with extreme emotional states in the ancient world? 2. To what extent did ancient attitudes to various emotional states differ from modern attitudes? 3. To what extent was ancient poetry (as opposed to prose) an effective vehicle for expressing and exploring emotion? 4. How far were there set conventions and established methods of conveying these emotions in various ancient literary genres?