The Ancient Emotion of Disgust (Emotions of the Past)

The study of emotions and emotional displays has achieved a deserved prominence in recent classical scholarship. The emotions of the classical world can be plumbed to provide a valuable heuristic tool. Emotions can help us understand key issues of ancient ethics, ideological assumptions, and normative behaviors, but, more frequently than not, classical scholars have turned their attention to "social emotions" requiring practical decisions and ethical judgments in public and private gatherings. The emotion of disgust has been unwarrantedly neglected, even though it figures saliently in many literary genres, such as iambic poetry and comedy, historiography, and even tragedy and philosophy. This collection of seventeen essays by fifteen authors features the emotion of disgust as one cutting edge of the study of Greek and Roman antiquity. Individual contributions explore a wide range of topics. These include the semantics of the emotion both in Greek and Latin literature, its social uses as a means of marginalizing individuals or groups of individuals, such as politicians judged deviant or witches, its role in determining aesthetic judgments, and its potentialities as an elicitor of aesthetic pleasure. The papers also discuss the vocabulary and uses of disgust in life (Galli, actors, witches, homosexuals) and in many literary genres: ancient theater, oratory, satire, poetry, medicine, historiography, Hellenistic didactic and fable, and the Roman novel. The Introduction addresses key methodological issues concerning the nature of the emotion, its cognitive structure, and modern approaches to it. It also outlines the differences between ancient and modern disgust and emphasizes the appropriateness of "projective or second-level disgust" (vilification) as a means of marginalizing unwanted types of behavior and stigmatizing morally condemnable categories of individuals. The volume is addressed first to scholars who work in the field of classics, but, since texts involving disgust also exhibit significant cultural variation, the essays will attract the attention of scholars who work in a wide spectrum of disciplines, including history, social psychology, philosophy, anthropology, comparative literature, and cross-cultural studies. Introductory: theory and practice of an ambivalent emotion -- Introduction: ancient and modern modes of understanding and manipulating disgust / Donald Lateiner ; Dimos Spatharas -- Part I. Hellenic -- Empathy and the limits of disgust in the Hippocratic corpus / George Kazantzidis -- Moral disgust in Sophocles' Philoctetes / Emily Allen-Hornblower -- Disgust and delight: the polysemous exclamation aiboi in Attic Comedy / Daniel Levine -- Demosthenes and the use of disgust / Nick Fisher -- Sex, politics and disgust in Aeschines' Against Timarchus / Dimos Spatharas -- Beauty in suffering: disgust in Nicander's Theriaca / Floris Overduin -- Part II. Roman and Greek Imperial -- Not tonight, dear, I'm feeling a little /pig/ / Robert Kaster -- Beyond disgust: the politics of fastidium in Livy's AUC / Alison Haimson-Lushkov -- Witches, disgust, and anti-abortion propaganda in Imperial Rome / Debbie Felton -- Evoking disgust in the Latin novels of Petronius and Apuleius / Donald Lateiner -- Obscena galli praesentia: dehumanizing Cybele's eunuch priests through disgust / Marika Rauhala -- Monstrum in fronte, monstrum in animo?: sublate disgust and pharmakos logic in the Aesopic vitae / Tom Hawkins -- Smelly bodies on stage: disgusting actors of the Roman imperial period / Mali Skotheim Cover 1 Series 3 The Ancient Emotion of Disgust 4 Copyright 5 Dedication 6 Contents 8 Preface 10 Contributors 12 Introduction: Ancient and Modern Modes of Understanding and Manipulating Disgust 18 Part I Hellenic 60 1. Empathy and the Limits of Disgust in the Hippocratic Corpus 62 2. Moral Disgust in Sophocles’ Philoctetes 86 3. Disgust and Delight: The Polysemous Exclamation αἰβοῖ in Attic Comedy 104 4. Demosthenes and the Use of Disgust 120 5. Sex, Politics, and Disgust in Aeschines’ Against Timarchus 142 6. Beauty in Suffering: Disgust in Nicander’s Theriaca 158 Part II Roman and Greek Imperial 174 7. Not Tonight, Dear, I’m Feeling a Little pig-​ 176 8. Beyond Disgust: The Politics of Fastidium in Livy’s Ab Urbe Condita 192 9. Witches, Disgust, and Anti-Abortion Propaganda in Imperial Rome 206 10. Evoking Disgust in the Latin Novels of Petronius and Apuleius 220 11. Obscena Galli Praesentia: Dehumanizing Cybele’s Eunuch-Priests through Disgust 252 12. Monstrum in Fronte, Monstrum in Animo? Sublate Disgust and Pharmakos Logic in the Aesopic Vitae 270 13. Smelly Bodies on Stage: Disgusting Actors of the Roman Imperial Period 284 Bibliography 294 Index Rerum et Nominum 318 Index Auctorum Antiquorum et Locorum 322 This collection of 17 essays by 15 authors features the emotion of disgust as one cutting edge of the study of Greek and Roman antiquity. Individual contributions explore a wide range of topics including the semantics of the emotion both in Greek and Latin literature, its social uses as a means of marginalising individuals or groups of individuals, its role in determining aesthetic judgments and its potentialities as an elicitor of aesthetic pleasure "Disgust is an essential human emotion, relatively neglected even in recent scholarship taking the "emotional turn." Fifteen essays by historians and literary scholars examine disgust in theory and practice. Topics range from medicine, drama, oratory, historiography, fiction, biography, to the status of witches, eunuch priests, and theatrical professionals."-- Site de l'éditeur