Ancient Anger Perspectives from Homer to Galen

Brings together significant studies on literary, philosophical, medical and political aspects of ancient anger.

Anger is found everywhere in the ancient world, starting with the very first word of the Iliad and continuing through all literary genres and every aspect of public and private life. Yet it is only recently, as a variety of disciplines start to devote attention to the history and nature of the emotions, that Classicists, ancient historians and ancient philosophers have begun to study anger in antiquity with the seriousness and attention it deserves. This volume brings together a number of significant studies by authors from different disciplines and countries, on literary, philosophical, medical and political aspects of ancient anger from Homer until the Roman Imperial Period. It studies some of the most important ancient sources and provides a paradigmatic selection of approaches to them, and should stimulate further research on this important subject in a number of fields.

Notes on contributors; Acknowledgements; List of abbreviations; Introduction Susanna Braund and Glenn W. Most; 1. Ethics, ethology, terminology: Iliadic anger and the cross-cultural study of emotion D. L. Cairns; 2. Anger and pity in Homer's Iliad Glenn W. Most; 3. Angry bees, wasps and jurors: the symbolic politics of orge in Athens D. S. Allen; 4. Aristotle on anger and the emotions: the strategies of status David Konstan; 5. The rage of women W. V. Harris; 6. Thumos as masculine ideal and social pathology in ancient Greek magical spells Christopher A. Faraone; 7. Anger and gender in Chariton's Chaereas and Callirhoe J. H. D. Scourfield; 8. 'Your mother nursed you with bile': anger in babies and small children Ann Ellis Hanson; 9. Reactive and objective attitudes: anger in Virgil's Aeneid and Hellenistic philosophy Christopher Gill; 10. The angry poet and the angry gods: problems of theodicy in Lucan's epic of defeat Elaine Fantham; 11. An ABC of epic ira: anger, beasts and cannibalism Susanna Braund and Giles Gilbert; References; Index of passages cited; Index of proper names; Index of topics.

Anger is found everywhere in the ancient world, starting with the very first word of the Iliad and continuing through all literary genres and every aspect of public and private life. This volume brings together several significant studies on literary, philosophical, medical and political aspects of ancient anger.

Susanna Morton Braund is Professor of Classics at Yale University. She has authored books and articles on Roman satire, Roman epic and other aspects of Roman literature, including Beyond Anger: A Study of Juvenal's Third Book of Satires (1988) and Latin Literature (2002). With Christopher Gill, she co-edited The Passions in Roman Thought and Literature (1997). Her current major ongoing project is a commentary on Seneca's De Clementia.
Glenn W. Most is Professor of Greek Philology at the Scuola Normale Superiore di Pisa, and Professor in the Committee on Social Thought, University of Chicago. He is the author of The Measures of Praise: Structure and Function in Pindar's Second Pythian and Seventh Nemean Odes (1985) and editor and co-editor of numerous books on classical studies, literary theory and philosophy.