Hope in Ancient Literature, History, and Art: Ancient Emotions I (Trends in Classics - Supplementary Volumes, 63)

Although ancient hope has attracted much scholarly attention in the past, this is the first book-length discussion of the topic. The introduction offers a systematic discussion of the semantics of Greek __elpis__ and Latin __spes__ and addresses the difficult question of whether hope -ancient and modern- is an emotion. On the other hand, the 16 contributions deal with specific aspects of hope in Greek and Latin literature, history and art, including Pindar's poetry, Greek tragedy, Thucydides, Virgil's epic and Tacitus' __Historiae__. The volume also explores from a historical perspective the hopes of slaves in antiquity, the importance of hope for the enhancement of stereotypes about the barbarians, and the depiction of hope in visual culture, providing thereby a useful tool not only for classicist but also for philosophers, cultural historians and political scientists. Preface 5 Contents 7 Ιntroductory: ‘Hope’, elpis, spes: Affective and Non-affective Expectancy 9 Part I: Elpis. ‘Hope’ in Greek Literature 43 “Poet of Hope”: Elpis in Pindar 43 Hope and Hopelessness in Euripides 61 Up from Tragicomedy: The Growth of Hope in Greek Comedy 93 The Politics of Hopelessness: Thucydides and Aristophanes’ Knights 119 Elpis as Emotion and Reason (Hope and Expectation) in Fifth-century Greek Historians 139 Part II: Spes. ‘Hope’ in Latin Literature 161 Deos speravi (Miles 1209): Hope and the Gods in Roman Comedy 161 uestras spes uritis: Hope and Empire in Virgil’s Aeneid 179 Hope Dies Last at Tomis 191 ‘A Historian Utterly Without Hope’: Literary Artistry and Narratives of Decline in Tacitus’ Historiae I 221 Part III: Scripts of ‘Hope’ in History, Art, and Inscriptions 243 Hope and Slavery 243 Velleius Paterculus, the Adoptions of 4 CE, and the Spes Race 267 Against Hope? The Untimely elpis of Northern Barbarians 283 The Face of Hope: Isolated Heads in South Italian Visual Culture 305 Hope and the Sub-adult 337 Elpis in the Greek Epigraphic Evidence, from Rational Expectation to Dependence from Authority 359 List of Contributors 373 Index Rerum et Nominum 377 Index Auctorum Antiquorum et Locorum 381 Epigraphic and papyrological sources 403