The Ancient Art of Emotions

‘This Greek stuff does not move me one bit.’ So confesses a young man in front of the Parthenon sculptures to the scholar E. R. Dodds in the opening anecdote of Dodds’ ‘Greeks and the Irrational’. Why is the art in Greco-Roman galleries often perceived as cold and emotionless? Is a lack of emotional expression a marked feature of Greek art or is this impression due to the fact that, in our world of cinematic close-ups and emojis, we are not attuned to ancient ways of communicating emotions? The central thesis of this seminar is that there was a sophisticated ancient ‘art’ (in the ancient sense of ‘craft’) of creating feelings through non-verbal means, one shared across different visual media from sculpture and painting to theatrical and oratorical performances. Our main sources to uncover this craft will be visual representations in ancient art, from Archaic Greek art to Roman Imperial art. We will bring artistic representations into dialogue with textual sources, such ancient plays often hinting at non-verbal means of communication or rhetorical handbooks teaching how to move the audience during a political speech.