Emotions

Only recently has the history of emotions emerged as a field of investigation, and within that field the study of emotions in classical antiquity now plays a leading role. The belatedness of the field is due in part to the widespread assumption that emotions are universal and innate, and hence have no history: they were the same for the ancient Greeks and Romans as they are today. Recent analyses of the emotions as socially constructed, at least in some degree, have encouraged comparative and historical approaches. Classicists, in turn, are privileged in having access to detailed and astute accounts of the emotions by native speakers of Greek and Latin, in addition to a wealth of literature, such as tragedy and the novel, that exhibits the emotions in action. This has prompted the rapid development of the field. This article begins, accordingly, with a brief overview of modern theories of emotions, and then proceeds to overviews and more detailed studies of emotions in classical antiquity.