Longe vehementissimus… adfectus: l’esperienza del pianto nell’eloquenza latina tra parola e immagine

Ever since Aristotle, emotions have been inserted within the cause of rhetoric, determining a line that will lead the way for subsequent experiences, from Greece to Rome. Precisely within a more general interest in the relationship between emotions and rhetoric on the one hand, between word and image on the other, there is crying, an object of considerable consideration in Rome. Tears are in fact a crucial element of Latin eloquence: the power of crying appears constantly sought after, pursued with care, but also, conversely, feared, and therefore put to the sedan, demonized. Precisely this relationship, which allows, among other things, to measure the distance between ancient and modern culture, deserves to be explored in light of the involvement of several sensory levels:the tears must be suggested, evoked, made concrete through the medium of the word and through it their multiple potentials must be transferred to the written page. A tour de force that tests the Roman orator, according to a perspective of which one is surprised to grasp modernity.