Depictions of Pain in the Roman Empire

This dissertation explores the depictions of pain in the Greco-Roman world and focuses on the 1st and 2nd centuries CE. It concentrates on medical and tragic texts, as well as on visual arts. I will argue that while there are universal ways of expressing pain, there is a proliferation of interest in pain during the early Roman Empire. The texts and images used in this thesis are exemplary of this verbal and visual proliferation of the expression of pain. My project compares the descriptions of pain in two ancient patient narratives, the Sacred Tales of Aelius Aristides and the letters of Marcus Cornelius Fronto, with analysis of pain provided in the contemporaneous medical treatises of Galen and Aretaeus of Cappadocia, both of whom were influenced by the Hippocratic Corpus. Galen's treatise, On the Affected Parts, is the closest to an actual treatise on pain that survives from the Roman Empire. It reveals the importance of qualifiers for pain as a diagnostic tool. These descriptors are used not only by the physician, but also by the patient. They also appear in the depictions of pain in ancient tragedy, so Sophocles' Philoctetes and Trachiniae; Euripides' Hippolytus; Seneca's Oedipus, Phaedra, and Hercules Oetaeus. This dissertation approaches such depictions of pain by removing the symbolism from pain and focusing on the realistic portrayal of pain on stage and in the visual arts. Finally, this thesis analyzes the visual representations of pain, most notably the sculptures of the Hanging Marsyas and the Vatican Museums' Laocoon and his Sons. Systematized programs for categorizing the bodily and facial expressions of pain allow suffering to be identified in this ancient art. Tense, twisted muscles and furrowed brows are some examples of physical indicators of pain. The mosaics of arena games, and the frescoes of mythological punishments, reveal the violence and fear of the circumstances, but it is sculpture where pain is expressed explicitly. All of these elements combine to present a depiction of pain that is realistic and universal.