Abstract This book is an essay in cultural psychology. By examining the ways the ways in which emotion and talk about emotions reinforce cultural norms, it aims to understand the interplay between the emotions and the ethics of the Roman upper classes in late Republic and early Empire. The questions it addresses include the following: How (in the Roman view) is virtuous behavior shaped by the emotions? How do various Roman forms of fear, dismay, indignation, and revulsion support or constrain ethically significant behavior? How do the domains of these emotions — what they are “about” — intersect, overlap, or complement each other? How does their intersection create an economy of displeasure that aims to shape society in constructive ways? And, since the Romans’ language of emotions is not our own, how can we answer any of these questions without imposing upon the Romans our own notions of what a given emotion is? To approach these questions, the book explores the Roman counterparts to “modesty” and “shame” (verecundia, pudor), “disgust” (fastidium), “envy” (invidia), and “regret” (paenitentia) by considering the array of narratives or “scripts” to which each emotion term can refer.
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