Emotion, Restraint, and Community in Ancient Rome

Classical Culture and Society

by Robert A. Kaster

Classical Culture and Society (Series Joseph A. Farrell, University of Pennsylvania, and Ian Morris, Stanford University) is a new series from Oxford that emphasizes innovative, imaginative scholarship by leading scholars in the field of ancient culture. Among the topics covered will be the historical and cultural background of Greek and Roman literary texts; the production and reception of cultural artifacts; the economic basis of culture; the history of ideas, values, and concepts; and the relationship between politics and/or social practice and ancient forms of symbolic expression (religion, art, language, and ritual, among others). Interdisciplinary approaches and original, broad-ranging research form the backbone of this series, which will serve classicists as well as appealing to scholars and educated readers in related fields.

Emotion, Restraint, and Community examines the ways in w hich emotions, and talk about emotions, interacted with the ethics of the Roman upper classes in the late Republic and early Empire. By considering how various Roman forms of fear, dismay, indignation, and revulsion created an economy of displeasure that shaped society in constructive ways, the book casts new light both on the Romans and on cross-cultural understanding of emotions.

Genres: History

264 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 2005

About the author

Robert A. Kaster is Professor of Classics and Kennedy Foundation Professor of Latin at Princeton University.

Reviews

[Eleanor · Rating 3 out of 5]

Thorough, interesting and clear! At times, however, the author's desire to be 'relatable' disrupted the flow of his analysis.

[Milo · Rating 4 out of 5]

A purely pleasurable read. As far as academic texts go, this one is in near-perfect form. Kaster writes with a tone inspired by his wife that, as if, he says, he were talking with "a generous, honest, and intelligent friend." This writing voice is very witty, lighthearted, and engaged. He presents his information, analysis, allusions, and jokes with a titillating amity. In addition, his actual analysis and mode of thought (emotions as script-like patterns) is incredibly thoughtful, compelling, and enlightening. He includes a multitude of examples in his linguistic and social dive into these emotion-word terms. It left me wanting a similar treatment for the numerous other Latin emotion words, to more fully understand and grasp the sense of the emotion as coined and understood in antiquity. I am very glad I picked up the book after reading the introduction and being swept away by the intrigue and Kaster's prose.

[Hannah Contreras · Rating 4 out of 5]

The idea of using scripts to map Roman emotional psychophysical responses is interesting. Yet we run into the problem of translation, which Kaster fairly neatly deals with in refusing to translate the terms and instead exploring all possible meanings as it relates to culture. Valuable work, but definitely just a starting point for analysis of Roman emotions.

[Les · Rating 4 out of 5]

Kaster is like an archaeologist of the emotional life of elite Romans. Based on his close reading of literature and documentation like Cicero's letters, Kaster explores what emotions we would label pride, disgust, envy, and integrity played in Roman life. One of Kaster's more interesting observations is how Roman attitudes to these emotions differ from our own and how our labels differ from the Romans. A unique and insightful work.