Ab imo pectore brings together papers focused on the study of emotions in the Ancient World from various perspectives through an interdisciplinary approach. The aim is to explore the complex network of emotional states (happiness, fear, anger, love...) based on contributions from, mainly, Ancient History, Classical Philology and Archaeology.
Each chapter studies a specific emotion, in a place and in a particular period of Antiquity, from ancient Greece to imperial Rome, and through Egypt and the Ancient Near East. However, we must not lose sight of a fundamental fact: the history of emotions - within which this monograph is embedded - does not pursue the study of a particular emotion but rather the way in which they were experienced by society: in other words, the factors that led to experiencing certain emotional states and the effects they produced on the individual and the community. Only by adopting this approach we will be able to distinguish between the emotion itself and its representation in various historical processes.