Table of Contents

List of Illustrations ix List of Abbreviations xi Acknowledgments xiii INTRODUCTION Gesture as a Cultural System 1 CHAPTER 1 Participatory Gestures in Roman Religious Ritual and Medicine 12 Physicality of Words 15 Hands 20 Romans and Earth 24 Physicality of Prayer 26 Physicality of Cures 33 Conclusion 37 CHAPTER 2 The Power of Thumbs 41 Textual Appearances 42 Visual Representations 51 The Sign for the Deathblow in the Arena 62 A Riddle 64 Conclusion 65 CHAPTER 3 Blood, Milk, and Tears: The Gestures of Mourning Women 67 Gendered Funerals 68 Gendered Gestures 70 Greekand Etruscan Mourning Gestures 72 Legal Evidence 75 Roman Mourning Gestures 77 Women as Scapegoats 84 Woman's Work 85 Roman Death Ritual as Double-Birth 89 First Funeral 90 Second Funeral 95 Milkas Nurture for an Adult 100 Conclusion 105 CHAPTER 4 Political Movement: Walking and Ideology in Republican Rome 107 Philosophy in Action 108 Body Movement and Political Competition 111 Movement in Oratory and Philosophy 114 Movement in Daily Life 117 Incessus in Cicero 118 Cinaedi and Elite Politicians 120 Enforcement 124 Conclusion 137 CHAPTER 5 Face Facts: Facial Expression and the New Political Order in Tacitus 140 Gesture as Metaphor 140 The Politics of the Face 144 Eye-Movement in Roman Antiquity 146 Aspectus in Republican Tradition 147 The Decline of Rhetoric as the Decline of Physical Representation 151 Aspectus as Appearance 157 Conclusion: Tiberius and the New World Order 165 Bibliography 169 Index Locorum 187 General Index 198

Promotional Information

Showing exemplary control of his Latin sources, Corbeill alerts readers to Roman feelings about certain formal and ritual gestures, about stance and gait, and about facial expressions. He makes a significant contribution to Roman history and historiography--and to our understanding of the Roman soul. -- Alan L. Boegehold, Brown University, author of "When a Gesture was Expected" This is an important successor to the author's well received and frequently cited Controlling Laughter. Corbeill argues that gesture responds to nature as man's instinct for harmonizing bodily existence with the power of the earth but, with increased social complexity, becomes systematized and studied. In contrast to other treatments, Corbeill's range of gesture includes not merely what is done with the hands or prescribed in rhetorical treatises but all aspects of bodily movement, facial expression, dress, posture. -- Eleanor Winsor Leach, Indiana University, author of "The Rhetoric of Space"

About the Author

Anthony Corbeill is Associate Professor of Classics at the University of Kansas. He is the author of Controlling Laughter (Princeton) and the editor of Memoirs of the American Academy in Rome.

Reviews

"In this widely accessible study Anthony Corbeill applies anthropological and sociological approaches to aspects of gesture and body language in ancient Rome... Corbeill examines textual and verbal evidence ... to offer innovative and often bold interpretations."--Philip Hardie, Religious Studies Review