Ancient Greek and Roman emotions have become a field of increasing academic interest over the last few decades. We can particularly refer to such formative scholars in the field as David Konstan, Douglas Cairns, Robert Kaster, and more recently Angelos Chaniotis – though the cast list goes much wider. Early interest in emotions prevalent across classical genres, such as shame, anger, pity, envy/jealousy, and erôs (erotic love, desire), has more recently expanded to include more peripheral emotions such as forgiveness, remorse, and disgust. A number of studies, too, have focused on specific genres. This research has been conducted against a background of much wider interest in emotion studies in fields as diverse as neuroscience, cognitive psychology, anthropology, medicine, philosophy, jurisprudence, history, literary studies, and the performing arts. Many publications by Classicists have demonstrated awareness of this wider body of research, and some of them directly incorporate theoretical findings – particularly from cognitive psychology, but from other disciplines too – into exploration of classical texts and other media.

Medea's emotions loom large in a wide range of dramatic, literary, and philosophical sources from Euripides onwards. In focusing on aspects of the emotional texture of the original Euripidean play, all one can do is scratch the surface of an enormous subject, both in that play and in its reception in ancient literature and thought. Fortunately, we have the other articles in this issue of Greece & Rome to supplement this inevitably limited perspective. My procedure in this short paper is simply to highlight certain aspects of the dramatization of emotion in Euripides’ Medea that strike me as especially worthy of analysis in terms of ancient or modern emotion theory.

The topic of ‘virtuous emotions’ might not seem the most obvious choice for a play featuring an unfaithful husband and a child-killing mother. Nonetheless, what I intend to consider here is how the emotional responses of various characters in the Medea shape our view of their moral character. The moral role of the emotions was clear to the ancient Greeks and, after a long interlude largely dominated by the idea that, as Kant claimed in The Metaphysics of Morals, ‘no moral principle is based…on any feeling whatsoever’, moral philosophy of the past half-century or so has returned to seeing the emotions as a central part of human experience and ethical evaluation.

In its justly celebrated Book 3, the fast pace of action elsewhere in Apollonius’ Argonautica slows dramatically, such that Medea's erotic infatuation with Jason, and the consequent effects of this infatuation, become the central episode of the entire epic. Indeed, the role that Medea's erôs (erotic love, desire) plays in Book 3 is so great that one scholar has opined that ‘It is not the heroic as such but rather the erotic that becomes the real theme.’ However, it is not just erôs that shapes this book, but also Medea's internal battle with a number of other emotions that erôs engenders: principally grief, fear, and shame. Assessing the impact of each and understanding their interplay is complicated, however, because the text frequently presents them as occurring multifariously, or in quick succession – for example switching from erôs to grief, back to erôs, to fear, back to grief, to pity, and to grief again, all within a few lines (443–71). Accordingly I propose to disaggregate her emotions, looking at each in turn wherever it occurs, before considering how Apollonius presents them as interconnecting, and what such interconnections add to his overall presentation of Medea – especially by contrast to that of Euripides, from an emotional perspective the most important precursor.

Medea fascinated Ovid more than any other female mythical figure. She features in the Ars Amatoria (1.336; 2.381–2), the Heroides (6.75, 127–8, 151; 12 passim; 17.229, 233), the Metamorphoses (7.1–424), and the Tristia (3.9). Ovid also composed a tragedy called Medea (Am. 2.18.13–16; Tr. 2.553–4), which unfortunately has not survived.1 In the Remedia amoris Medea is mentioned in a list of mythical men and women who would have been cured of their torturing love passion, if Ovid had been their praeceptor. Medea is not named, but the identification is obvious (Rem. am. 59–60): nec dolor armasset contra sua viscera matrem, / quae socii damno sanguinis ulta virum est (‘Nor would a mother's vengeance on her husband / have steeled her heart to slay their progeny’).

This article explores the phenomenon of the monstrous in Seneca's Medea by focusing on the emotions of its main character, in particular demonstrating that they are not merely an expression of Medea's inner psychological sphere but are intrinsically connected with her existential search for recognition in her surrounding world, a world especially marked by its social, cosmic, and mythical dimensions. The monstrous nature of Medea's emotions should be understood in the light of the wider phenomenon of the monstrous in this play, where it is a pervasive phenomenon, in the sense that it transcends the emotions of the main character and is present throughout the play as a tragic, mythically encoded enactment of the dissolution of social, religious, and cosmic boundaries. Other manifestations of the monstrous will be referred to in passing.

It may be agreed that the character of Medea, one of the most intertextual heroines of the Graeco-Roman literary tradition, is a veritable crucible of the most disparate emotions, as the articles gathered in this issue aim to show. In Seneca's Medea, readers encounter a murderous mother who kills her own children, giving in to destructive anger or, rather, fury. This emotion has been widely and extensively studied both in relation to its Greek model, Euripides’ Medea, and in the light of the Stoic view on passions, so that it can be acknowledged as one of the most salient features of the Roman character's emotional profile from a literary and philosophical standpoint. Although both Medeas, while struggling within themselves in their famous monologues, debate whether they should or should not kill their children, Euripides’ heroine does not seem to murder them out of anger: she repeatedly claims that a pressing necessity urges her to do so; by contrast, the Senecan Medea lets her anger literally lead the way (ira, qua ducis, sequor; 953). They both describe the filicide they are about to commit as a sacrificial act (compare Eur. Med. 1053‒4: ὅτῳ δὲ μὴ / θέμις παρεῖναι τοῖς ἐμοῖσι θύμασιν, ‘whoever is not permitted to attend my sacrifice’ and Sen. Med. 970‒1: uictima manes tuos / placamus ista, ‘with this victim we placate / your spirit’), but Seneca's character is pushed towards it by the dreadful hallucinations of the Furies and the shadow of her brother approaching (958‒66), which certainly contributes to heightening the disquieting atmosphere of the play: his Medea ultimately appears as a much ‘darker’ and bleaker version of the Euripidean counterpart, also emerging as a full-blown villain, by whom readers are both repelled and fascinated. In addition to this, the vocabulary of extreme passions recurring throughout the play and the heights of anger that the Senecan Medea reaches represent some of the most noticeable variations on the Greek model, not to mention a famous portrait of the heroine by the Nurse (382‒96), which strikingly resembles that of the angry man depicted by Seneca in De ira 1.1.3‒5. In these pages, however, instead of focusing on the notorious ira and furor of Seneca's Medea, I intend to concentrate on another and yet quite strongly related emotion: joy. In general, it may be noted that the bodily felt responses brought about by both anger and joy have in common the category of expansion, unlike fear and sadness (or grief), in which there is a tendency towards contraction. To my knowledge, the emotion of joy in Seneca's play has not received much attention thus far, owing perhaps to the fact that, as mentioned, anger literally steals the limelight. Therefore, I will here attempt to delve into this emotion, which appears to characterize Medea's criminal deeds, especially towards the end of the play, with a view to bringing to the fore its nuances and function. Although joy, at first glance, may seem to be extraneous to a tragic plot staging a filicide, since it is usually associated with good or positive events, it will be argued that this emotion (also verging on pleasure) is particularly fitting for the Senecan character, in that it takes a ‘perverted’ and monstrous form in the play, even coming to distort some concepts central to the Stoic doctrine.

Our hopes, expressed in the previous issue (G&R 67.2, 254), that this issue will go into production in better circumstances, regrettably went unfulfilled. Hence, we are forced to repeat our apology to the readers regarding the Review sections: some are missing (reassuringly, however, fewer than in the previous issue), for the same reasons – some colleagues still have only a limited access to their books and offices, or no access whatsoever. The university libraries in many places, if they are open at all, are able to provide the books only with glacial speed. In addition, the job of our reviewers has been hampered by the decision of some major publishers to stop sending out physical copies of books and deliver them only in digital formats (more on this below, p. 168). Therefore, we repeat our thanks to the readers, reviewers, and authors for their continuing support, and would like to express our sincerest gratitude for the encouraging messages we received from our readers.

I begin with a warm welcome for Evangelos Alexiou's Greek Rhetoric of the 4th Century bc, a ‘revised and slightly abbreviated’ version of the modern Greek edition published in 2016 (ix). Though the volume's title points to a primary focus on the fourth century, sufficient attention is given to the late fifth and early third centuries to provide context. As ‘rhetoric’ in the title indicates, the book's scope is not limited to oratory: Chapter 1 outlines the development of a rhetorical culture; Chapter 2 introduces theoretical debates about rhetoric (Plato, Isocrates, Alcidamas); and Chapter 3 deals with rhetorical handbooks (Anaximenes, Aristotle, and the theoretical precepts embedded in Isocrates). Oratory comes to the fore in Chapter 4, which introduces the ‘canon’ of ten Attic orators: in keeping with the fourth-century focus, Antiphon, Andocides, and Lysias receive no more than sporadic attention; conversely, extra-canonical fourth-century orators (Apollodorus, the author of Against Neaera, Hegesippus, and Demades) receive limited coverage. The remaining chapters deal with the seven major canonical orators: Isocrates, Demosthenes, Aeschines, Isaeus, Lycurgus, Hyperides, and Dinarchus. Each chapter follows the same basic pattern: life, work, speeches, style, transmission of text and reception. Isocrates and Demosthenes have additional sections on research trends and on, respectively, Isocratean ideology and issues of authenticity in the Demosthenic corpus. In the case of Isaeus, there is a brief discussion of contract oratory; Lycurgus is introduced as ‘the relentless prosecutor’. Generous extracts from primary sources are provided, in Greek and in English translation; small-type sections signal a level of detail that some readers may wish to pass over. The footnotes provide extensive references to older as well as more recent scholarship. The thirty-page bibliography is organized by chapter (a helpful arrangement in a book of this kind, despite the resulting repetition); the footnotes supply some additional references. Bibliographical supplements to the original edition have been supplied ‘only in isolated cases’ (ix). In short, this volume is a thorough, well-conceived, and organized synthesis that will be recognized, without doubt, as a landmark contribution. There are, inevitably, potential points of contention. The volume's subtitle, ‘the elixir of democracy and individuality’, ties rhetoric more closely to democracy and to Athens than is warranted: the precarious balancing act which acknowledges that rhetoric ‘has never been divorced from human activity’ while insisting that ‘its vital political space was the democracy of city-states’ (ix–x) seems to me untenable. Alexiou acknowledges that ‘the gift of speaking well, natural eloquence, was considered a virtue already by Homer's era’ (ix), and that ‘the natural gift of speaking well was considered a virtue’ (1). But the repeated insistence on natural eloquence is perplexing. Phoenix, in the embassy scene in Iliad 9, makes it clear that his remit included the teaching of eloquence (Il. 9.442, διδασκέμεναι): Alexiou only quotes the following line, which he mistakenly assigns to Book 10. (The only other typo that I noticed was ‘Aritsotle’ [97]. I, too, have a tendency to mistype the Stagirite's name, though my own automatic transposition is, alas, embarrassingly scatological.) Alexiou provides examples of later Greek assessments of fourth-century orators, including (for example) Dionysius of Halicarnassus, Hermogenes, and the author of On Sublimity (the reluctance to commit to the ‘pseudo’ prefix is my, not Alexiou's, reservation). He observes cryptically that ‘we are aware of Didymus’ commentary’ (245); but the extensive late ancient scholia, which contain material from Menander's Demosthenic commentaries, disappointingly evoke no sign of awareness.

These days Flavian epic and intertextuality go together like toast and butter, or a persistent cough and fever, depending on your taste. Either way, Intertextuality in Flavian Epic. Contemporary Approaches is not perhaps the most startling of titles. But the book within is an impressive collection, its four editors (Neil Coffee, Chris Forstall, Lavinia Galli Milić, and Damien Nelis) leading a star cast of Flavians in a wide-ranging and stimulating set of chapters.

This is the first review of books in Greek history after a year, as the Coronavirus crisis last spring made it impossible to submit a review for the G&R volume of autumn 2020. I apologize to readers and editors for the resulting delay in reviewing two books published in 2018. The multi-volume Lexicon of Greek Personal Names has been a tremendous tool of research that one day could hopefully revolutionize the study of Greek history. The volume under review is the eighth in the series; edited by Jean-Sébastien Balzat, Richard Catling, Édouard Chiricat, and Thomas Corsten, it is devoted to inland Asia Minor, covering Pisidia, Lycaonia, Phrygia, Galatia, Paphlagonia, Cappadocia, Pontus, and Armenia. The onomastics of these areas are complex owing to the various historical processes in which they were enmeshed: centuries of migration, conquest, and cultural change meant that, in addition to the ‘native’ cultural traditions of inland Asia Minor, the Persian, Hellenistic, and Roman empires, as well as migratory movements like that of the Celts, left a deep onomastic impact. The issue is further complicated because the majority of the evidence comes from the Roman Imperial period, making diachronic comparison more difficult. This excellent volume offers a new documentary basis for studying social, cultural, and economic processes of change in these important areas of the ancient world: the full collection of the evidence makes it easier to classify names into different linguistic groups, an issue that has bedevilled the study of onomastics in Asia Minor for a very long time; it will also be possible to study regional divergences in the onomastics of different areas.

A bumper edition this time, by way of apology for COVID-necessitated absenteeism in the autumn issue. The focus is on three pillars of social history – the economy (stupid), law, and religion. First up is Saskia Roselaar's second monograph, Italy's Economic Revolution. Roselaar sets out to trace the contribution made by economics to Italy's integration in the Roman Republic, focusing on the period after the ‘conquest’ of Italy (post 268 bce). Doing so necessitates two distinct steps: assessing, first, how economic contacts developed in this period, and second, whether and to what extent those contacts furthered the wider unification of Italy under Roman hegemony. Roselaar is influenced by New Institutional Economics (hereafter NIE), now ubiquitous in studies of the ancient economy. Her title may be an homage to Philip Kay's Rome's Economic Revolution, but the book itself is a challenge to that work, which in Roselaar's view neglects almost entirely the agency of the Italians in the period's economic transformation. For Roselaar, the Italians were as much the drivers of change as the Romans; indeed, it is this repeated conviction that unifies her chapters.

I am no doubt showing my prejudice, but I didn't expect a book on Greek acroteria to make for such exciting lockdown reading. Because of their position high up on temple buildings, extant sculpted materials tend to be fragmentary – and hence pushed to the literal and metaphorical corners of modern-day museums. Look to scholarly publications, moreover, and there is a tendency towards classificatory catalogues, markedly less in the way of theoretical discussion (whether about architectural and cultic framing, for example, historical aesthetics, or the intersection between ‘ornamental’ and ‘figurative’ representational modes).

Sara Brill's new book develops her argument for understanding ‘shared life’ as central to Aristotle's ethics and politics. By focusing on this notion of shared life, she seeks to establish the connection between Aristotle's ethical, political, and zoological works in order to ground her emphasis on the essential animality of human society in Aristotle's conception. Her argument turns on a distinction between bios, a ‘way of life’ that we can choose or reject, and zoē, ‘life itself’ (3), and she is committed to establishing the generally unrecognized significance of the latter in Aristotle's ethical thought. The volume is divided into three parts. The first (‘Shared Life in Aristotle's Ethics and Politics’) concentrates on developing an account of Aristotle's concept of ‘shared life’ in the ethical and political works in such a way as to establish the importance of the zoological perspective. Here, Brill argues that shared life is at the heart of many of the central concerns of the Nicomachean Ethics, including his account of friendship. This is not simply sharing of goods or communal living: ‘Because living in its authoritative sense is perceiving and thinking, sharing one's life is sharing in perception and sharing in thinking’ (52). Brill finds a similar focus on shared zoē in the Eudemian Ethics, and the suggestion that our self-awareness and self-concern depend on the presence of others. She further develops her central claim: for all that Aristotle makes repeated assertions of human exceptionality, he also adopts a zoological framework of analysis that locates human friendship within the category of ‘animal attachment’, albeit as a special case. Human society is distinguished from animal society, but primarily as an intensification of the animal, rather than as a rejection of it. As Brill notes, setting up some of the critical analysis found in the third part of the book, her emphasis on community helps to highlight both its fragility and the consequences of exclusion. This is an idea she explains further in her analysis of shared life in the Politics: ‘if Aristotle's ethics show us the most vivid form of shared life, his Politics shows us the conditions of its destruction’ (92). Brill considers two extremes of shared life to be found in the Politics. Aristotle rejects communism for the sake of the philia that lies at the heart of a true community. His account of tyranny, meanwhile, can be understood as an analysis of a polis lacking a meaningful presence of shared life or the common good. The second part of the book concentrates on fleshing out the detail of the zoological perspective at the heart of Brill's argument by focusing on the zoological works in particular. She makes the sensible point that, while Aristotle's zoological works may be inaccurate in biological detail, they nevertheless help us to understand his own thinking about the nature and relationship of intelligence and life. Beginning with the History of Animals, Brill looks for the political in Aristotle's biological, and argues that he conceives of animal sociality in terms of its various manifestations of the political bond of a common task. It is within this context that we should situate even shared human life. This is not to say that humans are not to be distinguished from animals: what marks humans out is the fact that they can choose their way of life (bios). But this choice does not liberate them from the fact of their animality. For this reason, analysis of Aristotle's politics, and of the polis itself, should be informed by an awareness of his zoological sensibility. At times in the detail of Brill's own analysis, this zoological emphasis seems to fade into the background, but her central claim remains that human politics is an intensification of animal sociality, rather than a rejection of it. The third and final part presents an intriguing exploration of intersections between Brill's account of Aristotle's zoē-politics and modern critical theory (her volume is published in the interdisciplinary series Classics in Theory). She first addresses the connection between Aristotle's commitment to private ownership and his eugenics legislation, noting the double mean of tokos as both ‘interest’ and ‘child’. She is particularly interesting on Aristotle's concern with the threat of uncontrolled or excessive reproduction. She then turns to an analysis of Aristotle's account of – and ambivalence towards – the maternal bond as central to his understanding of human communities and, especially, friendship. The two chapters of Part III are particularly compelling; I look forward to seeing further approaches to Aristotle, and ancient philosophy in general, along these lines.

Materiality of ancient text – written, painted, scratched, or carved – is a topic dear to my heart, and I find the visual dimension of ancient writing fascinating for many reasons. Like many Classicists, I also find a great joy in puzzling out the meanings of the lettered lines, arched like dancing serpents, on archaic Greek vases. If one pauses in front of an interesting pot in a museum, it is very easy to forget the time and the rest of the exhibition, as the somersaulting shapes of the continuous script reveal first their letters, then words, rewarding the reader's patience with a short sentence or two: ‘Rejoice! Drink well!’ At times, we have to admit defeat and acknowledge that we are in front of a ‘nonsense’ inscription: that is, an inscription whose lettering creates meanings in a different way – such as a framing device for the visual narrative scene, or devices in the narrative itself, or mimicking foreign sounds or music. Then there is the endlessly amusing world of ancient graffiti – some with acute-angled, nervous letters written in haste; some curvy and elegant, worked out by a skilled and learned hand with plenty of time at its disposal; many accompanied by drawings, some innocuous, some coarse; and all of them, in some way, intent on defying human transience and ephemerality.