No student of the history of ancient medicine and philosophy can escape an encounter with phrenitis. Galen mentions the disease innumerable times, patristic authors take it as a favourite allegory of human flaw, and no ancient doctor fails to diagnose it and attempt its cure. Yet the nature of this once famous disease has failed to be considered or understood properly by scholars. This book provides the first full history of phrenitis. In doing so, it surveys ancient ideas about the interactions between body and soul both in health and in disease. It also addresses ancient ideas about bodily health, mental soundness and moral 'goodness' and their heritage in contemporary psychiatric ideas. Readers will encounter an exciting narrative about health, illness and care as embedded in ancient 'life' but will also be forced to reflect critically on our contemporary ideas of what it means to be 'insane'.

The Hippocratic texts and other contemporary medical sources have often been overlooked in discussions of ancient psychology. They have been considered to be more mechanical and less detailed than poetic and philosophical representations, as well as later medical texts such as those of Galen. This book does justice to these early medical accounts by demonstrating their richness and sophistication, their many connections with other contemporary cultural products and the indebtedness of later medicine to their observations. In addition, it reads these sources not only as archaeological documents but also in the light of methodological discussions that are fundamental to the histories of psychiatry and psychology. As a result of this approach, the book will be important for scholars of these disciplines as well as those of Greek literature and philosophy, strongly advocating the relevance of ancient ideas to modern debates.

This edited volume brings together eighteen articles which examine the role of eros as an emotion in ancient Greek culture. Arising out of a conference held at University College London in 2009, the volume ranges from Archaic epic and lyric poetry, through tragedy and comedy, to philosophical and technical treatises and more, and includes contributions from a variety of international scholars well published in the field of ancient Greek emotions. Taking into account all important thinking about the nature of eros from the eighth century BCE to the third century CE, and covering a very broad range of sources and theoretical approaches, both in the chronological and the generic sense, it considers the phenomenology, psychology, and physiology of eros; its associated language, metaphors, and imagery; the overlap of eros with other emotions (jealousy, madness, philia, pothos); its role in political society; and the relationship between the human emotion and Eros the god. These topics build on recent advances in the understanding of ancient Greek homo- and heterosexual customs and practices, visual and textual erotica, and philosophical approaches to eros as manageable appetite or passion. However, the principal aim of the volume is to apply to the study of eros the theoretical insights offered by the rapidly expanding field of emotion studies, both in ancient cultures and elsewhere in the humanities and social sciences, thus maintaining throughout the focus on eros as emotion.

This volume includes "Iliad" 4.384 "Tude," "Iliad" 15.339 "Mekiste," and Odyssey 19.136 "Odyse" by Jeremy Rau; "Craft Similes and the Construction of Heroes in the "Iliad"" by Naomi Rood; "The Tragic Pattern of the "Iliad"" by Yoav Rinon; "Herodotus and His Descendants: Numbers in Ancient and Modern Narratives of Xerxes' Campaigns" by Catherine Rubincam; "Personal Pronouns as Identity Terms in Ancient Greek: The Surviving Tragedies and Euripides' "Bacchae"" by Chiara Thumiger; "Epicurus' Letter to "Herodotus": Some Textual Notes" by Luis Andres Bredlow Wenda; "Cultural Differences and Cross-Cultural Contact: Greek and Roman Concepts of 'Power'" by Ulrich Gotter; ""Hebescere virtus" (Sallust bc 12.1): Metaphorical Ambiguity" by Christopher Krebs; "Aeneas' Generic Wandering and the Construction of the Latin Literary Past: Ennian Epic vs. Ennian Tragedy in the Language of the "Aeneid"" by Jackie Elliott; "Virgil "Aeneid" 6.445-446: A Critical Note" by Luis Rivero Garcia; "The Poet's Mirror: Horace's "Carmen" 4.10" by Monika Asztalos; "The City and Its Territory in the Province of Achaea and 'Roman Greece'" by Denis Rousset; "Further to Ps.-Quintilian's Longer Declamations" by D. R. Shackleton Bailey; and "Satire, Propaganda, and the Pleasure of Reading: Apuleius' Stories of Curiosity in Context" by Alexander Kirichenko.