Objects of Pity: Art and Emotion in Archaic and Classical Greece by Seth Nathaniel Estrin A dissertation submitted in partial satisfaction of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy in Classical Archaeology in the Graduate Division of the University of California, Berkeley Committee in Charge: Professor Andrew Stewart, Chair Professor Whitney Davis Professor Christopher Hallett Professor Leslie Kurke Fall 2016 Objects of Pity: Art and Emotion in Archaic and Classical Greece © Copyright Seth Nathaniel Estrin, 2016. All rights reserved. ! ! ! 1 ABSTRACT Objects of Pity: Art and Emotion in Archaic and Classical Greece by Seth Nathaniel Estrin Doctor of Philosophy in Classical Archaeology University of California, Berkeley Professor Andrew Stewart, Chair This dissertation investigates the relationship between art and emotion in Archaic and Classical Greece, particularly the relationship between changes in the cultural values attached to oiktos or “pity” and simultaneous changes in the formal appearance of Greek art. Whereas traditional histories assume that emotional engagement was only made possible with stylistic developments in the fifth century, I argue that a cultural mode of viewing works of art through an emotional lens was cultivated already in the sixth century. By promoting encounters with art objects as emotionally similar to real life experiences, this mode of viewing made art look more real by compelling viewers to treat works of art as having intellectual and psychological agency. I understand emotion as a form of subjective experience cultivated through cultural practices, one of which was art making and viewing. In order to recover pity in ancient Greece as a cultural practice deployed through works of art, I examine a broad range of sources. These include not only surviving works of art but inscriptions— especially those that accompanied sculptures—and ancient literature, including both poetry (especially epic and tragic) and prose (especially philosophical texts). Pity, in my account, provides a structural framework through which not only different works of art but different forms of cultural expression can be linked together at the level of their affective content. The Introduction serves to outline traditional approaches to the relationship between art and emotion in ancient Greece and to highlight the contribution of this dissertation. In many accounts, the possibility of emotional engagement on the part of a viewer is measured according to the apparent realism of the art object as a stylistic feature, the assumption being that only when a work of art offers a convincingly mimetic copy of its depictive subject matter can a viewer approach it with real emotional interest. In contrast, I understand emotion not as a byproduct of style but as something experienced through the very formal structure of the work of art, and I use ancient understandings of emotion as a physiological experience to highlight its role in the viewing of art. Chapter 1 reveals the structural nature of the relationship between emotion and the work of art through a case study of a single funerary stele. I use the interplay between carved relief and inscribed epigram on this stele to outline how the two elements work together to compel the viewer to engage on an emotionally subjective level. Chapter 2 ! ! ! ! 2 associates the effects of this interplay with ancient understandings of the emotion of pity, and uses inscriptions and literature to explore how a viewer’s pity configures their experience of Archaic funerary sculpture. An Interlude between the main narrative of the dissertation considers how an understanding of the emotional work of the funerary monument might help us account for the break in the production of funerary monuments in Athens for several decades following the end of the Archaic period. The third and fourth chapters examine Classical funerary monuments. In Chapter 3, I investigate the ways in which ancient viewers interacted physically and emotionally with these monuments, paying close attention to different modes of optic and haptic engagement. Chapter 4 directly confronts the formulaic nature of the Classical funerary monument. Working through a variety of theoretical approaches that explore how emotion is related artistic form, I argue that, rather than reduce an individual monument to a mere instantiation of a type, the use of repetitive formulas enabled ancient individuals to inscribe their personal grief within broader forms of cultural practice. This interpretive move allows me to treat configurative details of different funerary reliefs as embedding emotional meaning in their very form—form that was itself conditioned by standardized artistic practice. The result is a model for understanding how the perceived emotional subjectivity of an individual viewer might be developed and expressed within a broader cultural system. The Epilogue pursues the historical and political implications of this model by examining works of art that demanded pity from beyond the funerary realm in Classical Athens. While the focus of this dissertation is an historical account of how emotions affected the production and viewing of funerary monuments in Archaic and Classical Greece, the structural model it develops for studying the relationship between art and emotion has broader applications. At the heart of this project lies the question of how an individual’s sense of emotional subjectivity is inscribed within artistic and cultural practice, and how works of art themselves constitute a form of emotional practice that can shape that sense of subjectivity. Confronting Greek art through questions of emotional engagement allows me to reframe standard narratives and open up new ways of thinking about the cultural work of sculpture, and art more generally, in Archaic and Classical Greece. ! ! ! ! ! i Table of Contents ! Abstract 1 Table of Contents i Acknowledgements ii List of Figures iii Introduction: Art and Emotion in Ancient Greece 1 Chapter 1: The Function of the Archaic Funerary Monument 13 Chapter 2: Archaic Funerary Monuments as Objects of Pity 39 Interlude: The Persian Invasion and the End of the Archaic Funerary Monument 60 Chapter 3: Engaging the Classical Funerary Monument 69 Chapter 4: Forms of Grief in Classical Funerary Sculpture 96 Epilogue: Failures of Sculpture and the Work of Pity 115 Bibliography 136 Figures 147 ! ! ! ! ! ! ii Acknowledgements Many individuals, from the scholarly community and beyond, have supported me in writing this dissertation. Above all, I thank Andrew Stewart, from whom I learned how to look at Greek sculpture, and Leslie Kurke, from whom I learned how to read Greek literature. Their comments and insights have informed every page of this dissertation, and each has served as an ideal reader and a model scholar. Chris Hallett and Whiney Davis—the two other members of my committee—have consistently helped me better understand ancient art in their comments on my writing, in conversation, and through their own work. I first explored the topic of this dissertation in a paper for a graduate seminar taught by Tonio Hölscher’s, and it is thanks to his encouragement that I thought of pursuing it as a bigger project. He is one of many, many others members of the Berkeley community—faculty, visiting scholars, and fellow graduate students; in Classics, in History of Art and in other departments; through seminars and talks and over dinner—who have helped me open my eyes and deepen my scholarship. I single out for particular thanks those who read and commented on drafts of chapters: Guillaume Beaudin, Joseph Day, Hilary Lehmann, Erika Weiberg, Laure Marest-Caffey, and Angele Rosenberg-Dimitracopoulou. A previous version of Chapter 1 was presented at The American School of Classical Studies in Athens, and a version of Chapter 3 was presented in Berkeley and in Chicago. The comments and suggestions of various members of each audience have improved my text, and I would like to thank especially Beate Fricke, Andrew Griebeler, Aden Kumler, Kailani Polzak, and Richard Neer. Much of the research for this dissertation was undertaken during a year spent at the American School of Classical Studies. I am grateful for the collegiality of the community there and for the opportunity to have visited so many sites and museums Greece with members of the School. With the kind permission of Yiannis Fappas at the Thebes Archaeological Museum, Leonidas Bournias at the Kerameikos Museum, and Despina Ignatiadou at the National Archaeological Museum, I was able to study and photograph objects that are not normally on display. Ioanna Damanaki was invaluable in helping me gain the necessary permits. I am grateful to the Social Science Research Council for providing funding for my year in Athens in the form of an International Dissertation Research Fellowship. The generosity of a Paul Mellon Fellowship from the Center for Advanced Study in the Visual Arts not only supported my time in Athens but also two more years of research and writing, one in Rome (under the auspices of the American Academy in Rome) and one in Washington DC, where I am fortunate now to be part of another invigorating scholarly community at the Center. I thank as well the Department of Classics at Berkeley for covering my tuition for my final semester at the last minute and so enabling me to maintain my visa status for my year in DC. Finally, I owe gratitude of a different kind to my family, especially my parents David Estrin and Pamela Margles, for their love and support, and to Guillaume Beaudin, my constant companion over the course of the peripatetic years that brought this dissertation to fruition. ! ! ! ! iii List of Figures Figure 1. Kouros of Kroisos, from Anavysos, Attica. Ca. 520 BCE. Athens, NM 3851. Figure 2. Statue of a young man, known as the Kritios youth. 480-70 BCE. Athens, Acropolis Museum 698. Figure 3. Stele of Mnasitheos. From Akraiphia, Boeotia. Ca. 520-515 BCE. Thebes, Archaeological Museum 28200. Figure 4. Base of Xenokles, front side with inscription (CEG 19).