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1 - Ancient theories

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  05 November 2015

Barbara H. Rosenwein
Affiliation:
Loyola University, Chicago
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Summary

We begin with Cicero (d. 43 BCE). To be sure, long before his time many theories of the emotions had been elaborated, particularly within the Stoic and Epicurean philosophies of the Hellenistic era. Cicero drew on these traditions when he wrote on emotions for the Latinate audience of the Roman West. Medieval people inherited his writings. But they read them through Christian lenses. Christianity, which became the official religion of the Roman Empire in the 380s, radically transformed ancient ideas about the emotions. To get a clear idea of some of the most important of those changes, we will focus in the second part of this chapter on Saint Augustine's reconsideration of the Ciceronian canon. Augustine (d. 430), perhaps the most influential of the Western Church Fathers, read Cicero on the emotions and reoriented the discussion. Armed with the theories and the vocabularies of Augustine and Cicero, we will be ready to look at some early medieval emotional communities in Chapter 2. In addition, the writings of Cicero and Augustine discussed here exerted an enormous influence on later emotional communities, especially those of the twelfth century and beyond, as we shall see in Chapter 4 and those thereafter.

Cicero's somber, “Stoic” emotions

While Cicero expressed many emotions in his writings, we are here interested in his theoretical works on the topic, particularly the Tusculan Disputations and Laelius on Friendship. Both were written near the end of Cicero's life, the first in 45 and the second in 44 bce. This was a period of crisis for Cicero. Caesar was ready to end the Republic, and Cicero no longer had a role in the state, as he longed to have. Further, his beloved daughter had recently died. Retiring to his estate at Tusculum, just southeast of Rome, he intended the writing of his Disputations to be a kind of therapy. In the course of his wide-ranging discussion, he offered what amounted to a summary of Stoic theory (which had been elaborated in the course of the third and second centuries) and a list in Latin of the perturbationes animi that were equivalent to the Stoic pathé, or “emotions.” The Stoics intended to achieve apatheia, freedom from the effects of the pathé. Cicero wanted to demonstrate his “strength of mind” in the face of emotional turmoil.

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Generations of Feeling
A History of Emotions, 600–1700
, pp. 16 - 34
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Print publication year: 2015

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  • Ancient theories
  • Barbara H. Rosenwein, Loyola University, Chicago
  • Book: Generations of Feeling
  • Online publication: 05 November 2015
  • Chapter DOI: https://doi.org/10.1017/CBO9781316156780.003
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  • Ancient theories
  • Barbara H. Rosenwein, Loyola University, Chicago
  • Book: Generations of Feeling
  • Online publication: 05 November 2015
  • Chapter DOI: https://doi.org/10.1017/CBO9781316156780.003
Available formats
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To save content items to your account, please confirm that you agree to abide by our usage policies. If this is the first time you use this feature, you will be asked to authorise Cambridge Core to connect with your account. Find out more about saving content to Google Drive.

  • Ancient theories
  • Barbara H. Rosenwein, Loyola University, Chicago
  • Book: Generations of Feeling
  • Online publication: 05 November 2015
  • Chapter DOI: https://doi.org/10.1017/CBO9781316156780.003
Available formats
×