Being Moved: Motion and Emotion in Classical Antiquity and Today

In an influential article published in 2014, Florian Cova and Julien Deonna observed that:

although the expression “being moved” is occasionally used to refer to distinct affective phenomena that are related to each other only by phenomenological and physiological commonalities, it is prototypically used to refer to a single distinct emotion that has currently no description or label more appropriate than that of “being moved”. (Cova & Deonna, 2014, p. 449)

In this paper, I wish to interrogate—not necessarily challenge—the existence of such emotion from two angles. First, I explore its associations with so-called affect theory, with its emphasis, at least in certain versions, on the non- or pre-cognitive nature of emotion and a quasi-materialist conception of emotional stimuli. The expression “being moved” suggests a physical impulse, and would appear to be an exceptionally transparent example of a conceptual metaphor, that is, a case in which the vocabulary for mental and other abstract events is transferred from descriptions of the perceptible world. Affect theory, moreover, has tended to privilege music as a source of emotion, which moves us wordlessly, and indeed may be thought of as arousing feelings even in non-human animals that do not possess speech. Second, I examine the relationship between motion and emotion in ancient Greek and Latin (with a side glance at classical Chinese), where it seems that “being moved” did not identify a particular emotion. This is of particular interest because in all three cultures music, and also dance, played an exceptionally important role in theories of education, and we might expect that this would have given rise to a conception of “being moved” as a distinct emotional response. In the natural world, animals too, and especially birds, were thought to be physically responsive to music, “moved” in the most literal sense; even the cosmos was subject to its influence. Clearly, the comparison between the modern and the ancient vocabularies is not a data-driven exercise, based on laboratory experiments or questionnaires; who knows what such surveys might have revealed about popular emotional concepts in antiquity? In juxtaposing evidence of Greek and Latin linguistic usage in respect to being moved with classical views of the role of music in pedagogy and in nature, I am assembling a picture, or perhaps collage is a better word, of how motion and emotion were conceived in ancient Greece and Rome. The hope is that this historical, cross-cultural contribution may offer an instructive perspective on the idea of being moved today.

Various conceptualizations of “being moved” had been offered previous to Cova and Deonna’s article, but these two investigators went on to identify the formal object, or eliciting trigger, of this emotion in a novel way. As they wrote, being moved involves “sensitivity to the fact that certain important positive values manage to emerge from the midst of, and vanquish (or resist, at least temporarily), negative values” (p. 451). More recently, Eric Cullhed has sought to refine the eliciting conditions to being moved, arguing that the stimulus is rather “the apprehension of something—be it concrete living beings, objects and places, or abstract ideas—as inestimably dear to the subject in the sense that he or she has a particular kind of attachment to it” (Cullhed, 2020, p. 4). In a careful review of the relevant literature on being moved, Janis Zickfeld, Thomas W. Schubert, Beate Seibt, and Alan Fiske conclude that “There is an emotion that English speakers may label being moved—but there is no consensus on what causes it, what its valence is, or how to measure it” (Zickfeld et al., 2019, p. 134). Equivalent expressions to being moved are found in other languages as well, though whether they connote quite the same feeling as that evoked by the English phrase requires further investigation. Under the circumstances, it may seem premature to elevate “being moved” to the status of emotion, on a par with such acknowledged emotions as anger, love, and fear.

One reason why “being moved” might nevertheless have a special appeal to emotion theorists is its implicitly embodied status. Recent theories in philosophy and cognitive science, under labels such as distributed cognition and enactivism, have stressed the indispensable role of the body in cognition generally (for a recent survey, see Gallagher, 2017). These approaches have come on the heels of, and partly in response to, a marked cognitive turn in the study of emotion. Richard Lazarus, one of the founders of the approach that nowadays goes under the name of appraisal theory, has stated: “cognition is both a necessary and sufficient condition of emotion” (Lazarus, 2001, p. 40). Robert Solomon, another of the leading figures in the discipline, puts it succinctly: “emotions are judgments” (Solomon, 1993, p. viii; italics in the original). Interestingly, Lazarus traces the genealogy of this method straight back to Aristotle: “those who favor a cognitive-mediational approach must also recognize that Aristotle’s Rhetoric more than two thousand years ago applied this kind of approach to a number of emotions in terms that seem remarkably modern” (Lazarus, 2001, p. 40). To be sure, investigators never lost sight entirely of the physiological aspects of emotion: anger might be associated with a more rapid heartbeat or a clenching of the fists that reflects an action tendency to seek revenge. But the core element in anger remained the judgment that one has been treated in an offensive or disrespectful manner—an intellectual appraisal without which the physiological symptoms are psychologically meaningless. Thus, the renewed emphasis on the corporeal dimension of thinking as such has to a certain extent prepared the ground for recognizing as an emotion an experience described as a kind of motion, the more so since this physical phenomenon is encoded in the very word “emotion.” Efforts to identify a uniquely esthetic emotional response, which has enjoyed a resurgence in recent years, especially in connection with music (cf. Konecni, 2005; Levinson, 2006), have also contributed to the sense that “being moved” constitutes a distinct emotion. Finally, a certain postmodern (or posthuman) suspicion of language, which has taken a special interest in nonverbal experience, has looked to music as a source of a unique emotional experience. This current has sometimes worked in combination with a recent and highly controversial approach to emotions, especially notable in literary criticism, that goes under the name of affect theory. ¹

Although most studies of being moved have taken their start from the English language expression, similar phrases in other languages may encourage the sense that the concept has a broad, if not universal, extension. No doubt a tendency to apply the language of motion to emotion, or to feeling more generally, is widespread, although the notion of touch is also used in this connection, if only because motion is commonly induced by some form of contact: hence expressions such as, “I was touched by your thoughtfulness.” In conversational English, the expression, “I was moved,” connotes a vaguely sentimental response, often to a rather maudlin or soppy stimulus. Thus, the Merriam-Webster Dictionary online offers the following definitions: 5a:

“to stir the emotions, feelings, or passions,” and gives an example: “deeply moved by such kindness”;

b:

“to affect in such a way as to lead to an indicated show of emotion,” with the example: “the story moved her to tears.”

For the adjectival form, “moving,” the MacMillan Dictionary online offers as its first definition: “making you feel emotional,” and gives as examples: “His letter was deeply moving” and “The movie tells the moving story of a doomed love affair.” ²

Classical Latin made use of similar expressions. Cicero, for example, in his speech, Divinatio in Q. Caecilium, in which he sought to prove that he was best suited to carry out the prosecution of Verres, affirmed that even though he was an experienced orator, nevertheless, “whenever I think of the day on which the defendant has been summoned and I have to speak, I am not only agitated in my mind but I shudder in my whole body” (non solum commoveor animo, sed etiam toto corpore perhorresco, 41). The verb rendered as “agitated” is commoveor, a compound based on moveri, “to be moved,” with the prefix com-; the English “commotion” is a direct derivative, as is the Spanish verb, conmover. There are a great many other examples, which can easily be collected (several are cited below). ³ I wish nevertheless to argue that the current attention to the notion of “being moved” is historically specific and that it is a mistake simply to assume that the association between motion and emotion, in particular, is a transcultural constant.

As I have noted, the idea of motion suggests corporeal entities, physical things that move in space. Since motion is thus taken to pertain fundamentally to matter, its use to describe mental or emotional changes is regarded as metaphorical. The notion that abstract concepts originally developed by way of transference from the concrete are firmly rooted in modern theories of language and cognition, whether or not there is a sound basis for the view in the actual evolution of language. ⁴ However that may be, the idea of “being moved” may be regarded as an effort to restore materiality to the emotional lexicon. It permits us to leave aside the complex cognitive operations that are characteristic of emotions, at least as they are often conceived, and think rather of bodily processes, movements of and around the body. The urge to effect this kind of reduction is evident in certain strands of postmodern critical theory.

We may take as a recent example the inaugural volume of a new Cambridge University Press series of short books devoted to the emotions, under the general editorship of Jan Plamper. The author is Donovan O. Schaefer, and the book bears the title, The Evolution of Affect Theory: The Humanities, the Sciences, and the Study of Power (Schaefer, 2019). The epigraph to the Introduction, which is subtitled “Music without Words,” is a quotation from the book Rootprints, by Hélène Cixous and Mireille Calle-Gruber; it asks, “Why do we love music that is without words?” (Cixous & Calle-Gruber, 1997). Schaefer repeats the question a little later (p. 21): “Why do we love music without words?” He goes on to cite a recent book by Brian Massumi, titled, What Animals Teach Us about Politics (Massumi, 2014), and he comments: “Massumi offers a vision of affect theory as a theory of the ways we are moved without words—even without concepts—a theory of where bodies go, and so a theory of power.” Music is exemplary here of the kind of thing that moves us. Schaefer himself affirms that

the model of power that focuses exclusively on discourse as the medium for the transmission of power succumbs to the linguistic fallacy: the fiction advanced by some critical strands in the humanities that humans are fundamentally linguistic-cognitive beings and that the things that move us must also be fundamentally linguistic-cognitive.

Hence the emphasis on music without words. Schaefer makes some grand claims for his own conception of affect:

Affect theory is an approach to history, politics, culture, and all other aspects of embodied life that emphasizes the role of nonlinguistic and non- or paracognitive forces. As a method, affect theory asks what bodies do—what they want, where they go, what they think, how they decide—and especially how bodies are impelled by forces other than language and reason. It is, therefore, also a theory of power. For affect theory, feelings, emotions, affects, moods, and sensations are not cosmetic but rather the substance of subjectivity. Unlike liberal approaches that see emotion as the antithesis of political reason, however, affect theory is designed to explain progressive, democratic, and even liberal movements themselves just as well as it explains the appeal of conservatism, reaction, and fascism.

One may recognize affinities with theories such as distributed cognition and enactivism, although neither of these goes so far in eliminating discourse altogether, and neither places the same emphasis on motion as such. ⁵ Although Schaefer does not make much music in his essay, the epigraph is telling. Music without words suggests a raw, non-conceptual stimulus, of the sort that moves us materially. ⁶

In an article called “When the Music Moves You: Revisiting the Classics in the Company of Neuroscience,” Susan Pashman asserts at the outset: “When the music moves you, you dance” (Pashman, 2014, p. 10). What is more, Pashman affirms: “To understand the dancing body as a response to heard music it is necessary to consider the key mediating phenomenon, emotion” (p. 11). Pashman observes further that, “As far back as Plato and Aristotle …, philosophers have understood music as possessing the power to move us.” She goes on to explain: “Both Plato and Aristotle—along with Nietzsche—understood emotion as the dynamo that generates overt bodily movement. But, as movement can only come from movement, emotion must itself turn out to be movement” (pp. 12–13). Pashman appeals to research, not all of it equally cogent in my view, in the neurosciences, especially the studies by Antonio Damasio, and concludes: “The familiar emotions of rage, fear, triumph, joy, disgust, etc. each correlate with distinct patterns of muscle tension, distinct kinesthetic patterns” (p. 15). The emotion itself includes our awareness of the pattern but requires no specific cognitive input. The emotional impact of music proves as much.

One can scarcely deny that there is an important correlation between bodily motion and various mental states and functions. In an intriguing study called “Mind and Movement: The Neuropsychiatry of Movement Disorders,” Belinda Lennox and Graham Lennox observe:

The irritating historical division between neurology and psychiatry is at its most arbitrary in the field of movement disorders. All of the major movement disorders (such as Parkinson’s disease, idiopathic dystonia, Huntington’s disease, and Gilles de la Tourette’s syndrome) have important psychiatric dimensions. … Similarly many of the major psychiatric disorders (such as schizophrenia and depression) involve abnormalities of movement, even though psychiatrists and neurologists have traditionally used different terms to describe them. Perhaps as a consequence of the historic division, these huge areas of neuropsychiatric overlap have not been studied as intensively as they deserve. (Lennox & Lennox, 2002, p. i28) ⁷

Kalman Katlowitz has noted that Obsessive Compulsive Disorder is common in patients with Tourette’s syndrome. “In fact,” he comments, “despite the separation at a clinical level (with neurologists taking care of movement disorders and psychiatrists taking care of mood disorders), there is tremendous overlap within the disease states. Movement disorders are associated with major psychiatric comorbidities.” Katlowitz concludes that “you cannot talk about movement without mood, and you cannot talk about emotions without motion.” ⁸

Plato and Aristotle were indeed interested in the moral and, we might say, the psychological effect of music, although neither employed the vocabulary of motion very much in this connection. In the Laws, Plato affirms: “Most people assert that the value of music consists in its power of affording pleasure to the soul. But such an assertion is quite intolerable, and it is blasphemy even to utter it” (2, 655C-D). The problem is that people may say that performance is pleasant but bad, “and be ashamed to move their bodies at such things [κινεῖσθαι τῷ σώματι τὰ τοιαῦτα], ashamed too to sing them as though they seriously considered them good,” though in fact they enjoy them (656A). The term for movement (kinein or kineisthai; cf. “kinetic”) is here applied strictly to physical motion.

Aristotle, in the final book of the Politics, treats the role of music in education, and observes that rhythm works in the same way as the musical modes, “for some have a more static character and others a mobile [κινητικόν] one, and of these latter, some have motions [τὰς κινήσεις] that are coarser, others more befitting free persons” (Politics 8.5, 1340b7-10). The word “motions” here refers to the rhythms themselves (or the dances suited to these rhythms), and evidently means something like “liveliness.” Again, Aristotle objects to youths taking part in musical competitions, because the low character of the audience “tends to make the artists who perform it too of such a character and to make their bodies this way as well because of the motions” (8.6, 1341b17-18). The reference is to the physical motions of the dancers. Aristotle next avers that all the musical modes (ἁρμονίαι) are permitted, but not in the context of education, where only those most suited to forming good character (ταῖς ἠθικωτάταις) should be employed:

For a passion [or reaction: πάθος] that occurs powerfully in some souls exists in all, but less in one and more in another, for example pity and fear, but also exaltation [ἐνθουσιασμός]. For some are possessed [κατοκώχιμοί] by this latter motion [κινήσεως]—we see them this way after ritual melodies [ἐκ τῶν δ᾽ ἱερῶν μελῶν], when they use melodies that excite [ἐξοργιάζουσι] the soul, becoming as though they had chanced upon a medical treatment and purgation. Those disposed to pity and fear necessarily experience this same thing, as well as those who are susceptible to emotion generally [ὅλως παθητικούς], and others to the extent that it befalls each such type. All obtain a purging and are pleasurably relieved. (8.7, 1342a1-15)

Here, the motion associated with certain tunes, especially those that produce religious exaltation, can result in a kind of possession, though the mechanism by which this happens is unclear. Finally, at the very end of the treatise, Aristotle notes that

the Phrygian has the same power among modes as the flute does among instruments: both are exciting and emotional [ὀργιαστικὰ καὶ παθητικά]. Poetry proves this: for every Bacchic frenzy and every such motion [κίνησις] arises most with the flute among instruments, and among the modes it is in the Phrygian melodies that these find what is suitable. (8.7, 1342b1-7)

Aristotle associates motion here with certain kinds of extreme responses, such as inspired frenzy, but he may be thinking not of an inner psychological movement but of the visible shaking and quaking that accompanies such exaltation. In his note on the word “movement,” H. Rackham, the translator of the Loeb edition, remarks: “perhaps βακχεία and κίνησις denote bodily movement accompanying the song; or they may denote the emotional frenzy expressed and stimulated by it” (Rackham, 1944).

Aristotle offers no theory according to which movements in the soul correspond to those enacted by dancers or produced by musical modes, rhythms, or certain instruments, nor does he reduce emotional responses to corporeal motions. He clearly recognizes that music, like dance, has a powerful emotional effect, but this is not explained by material impact. Nor is this surprising, given the highly cognitive account of the emotions that Aristotle provides in his treatise on rhetoric. ⁹

The Greeks were not alone in insisting on the moral effects of music on the formation of character. A generation or two after Aristotle’s time, the Confucian thinker Xunzi (Hsün Tzu, c. 310–c. 220 B.C.) argued, according to Michael Nylan, that “taking pleasure in musical performances reinforces the profound truth that hierarchy and order, humility and restraint, are as fundamental to successful social interactions in civilized orders as an aptitude for empathy” (Nylan, 2018, p. 78). ¹⁰ Music is thus “the great arbiter of the world, the key to fitting harmonies, and a precondition for [properly aligned] human feelings” (Xunzi, trans. Nylan, p. 79). So too the tract called Shiji (first century B.C.), inspired largely by Xunzi in the sections on music, states: “The movement of a human heart is caused by things. Being moved by things, it moves, and therefore it takes shape in sound” (24.1177, cited by Nylan, n. 93). ¹¹ The Shiji further notes, according to Nylan, that different musical tones “incite the heart to feel pleasure, delight, anger, sorrow, plus incorruptibility (lian) and balance.” The Shiji explains that “These six predispositions are not part of the human nature. A person is moved by things and later is motivated to act. For this reason, the sage-kings are careful about the means by which one moves a person” (Shiji 24.1179). Nylan calls attention to the similarities between Xunzi’s view of music and that of Plato: “Plato, like Xunzi, says that ‘rhythm and harmony find their way to the inmost soul and take the strongest hold upon it, bringing with them and imparting grace’” (n. 103). So too, the entry on Xunzi in the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy notes:

The ancient Chinese believed that music was the most direct and effective way of influencing the emotions. Hence, only allowing the correct music to be played was crucial to governing the state. The right kinds of music, those attributed to the ancient sages, could both give people an outlet for emotions that could not be satisfied in other ways, like aggression, and channel their emotions and bring them in line with the Way. The wrong kind of music would instead encourage wanton, destructive behavior and cause a breakdown of social order. … Much as Plato suggested in the Republic, Xunzi believes regulating music is one of the duties of the state. (Goldin, 2018)

One can hardly overstate the impact that ancient Chinese and Greek ascribed to music, and its ability to arouse feelings, if not necessarily, at least in the Greek tradition, emotions (pathê) in the strict sense that Aristotle specifies in the Rhetoric. The physical effects of music are evident in the treatment of birdsong, for example in a Chinese work called the Bird Classic, known indirectly through a commentary dating to the third century A.D. Here we learn that

magpies impregnate each other through the influence of tunes and cranes through the crossing or joining of sounds. Other texts mention insects buzzing or birds calling above and females impregnated below. ¹² Thus, one promised effect of music is to bring things and people into closer contact (jiao 交), this being the natural sign or outcome of mutual resonance and sympathy. (Nylan, n. 9)

Music is part of nature, and even animals respond to it. In this connection, we may perhaps compare the first Pythian Ode by the Greek poet Pindar, roughly contemporary with Confucius (no cross-influence is suggested):

Golden lyre, rightful joint possession of Apollo and the violet-haired Muses, to which the dance-step listens, the beginning of splendid festivity; and singers obey your notes, whenever, with your quivering strings, you prepare to strike up chorus-leading preludes. You quench even the warlike thunderbolt of everlasting fire. And the eagle sleeps on the scepter of Zeus, relaxing his swift wings on either side, the king of birds; and you pour down a dark mist over his curved head, a sweet seal on his eyelids. Slumbering, he ripples his liquid back, under the spell of your pulsing notes. Even powerful Ares, setting aside the rough spear-point, warms his heart in repose; your shafts charm the minds even of the gods, by virtue of the skill of Leto’s son and the deep-bosomed Muses. But those whom Zeus does not love are stunned with terror when they hear the cry of the Pierian Muses, on earth or on the irresistible sea; among them is he who lies in dread Tartarus, that enemy of the gods, Typhon with his hundred heads. (trans. Svarlien, 1991)

Music unites those whom Zeus favors and terrifies his enemies, to whom it presumably sounds cacophonous.

For all the motive power of music in the human, animal, and even cosmic realms, there is in these ancient texts no catch-all conception of “being moved” as a special emotional effect, nor an effort to explain emotions simply by the mechanics of motion. The vocabulary of being moved was readily applied to emotions, especially in Latin, because the emotions were understood to be aroused by external stimuli. Precisely for this reason, actions deriving from one’s character were less likely to be described as resulting from an outside impact. In a paper in which I argued that the Roman idea of clementia was understood in antiquity as a virtue and was distinct from pity, which was rather an emotion, I wrote:

Latin usage confirms this distinction. Misericordia [that is, pity] is aroused (commovetur, Cic. De or. 2.195; movetur, ibid. 2.211, Livy 3.7.4, 23.20.6; orior, Livy 24.26.15, etc.) or elicited (elicere, Livy 8.26.2). … Clemency, on the contrary, is something one exercises or exhibits (utor, ostendere); one may experience it in another (experior), or commit oneself to it (se committere clementiae). One can have clemency as a trait (habere clementiam, Sen. Clem. 1.1.4, 1.2.5), though one does not normally grant, give, or bestow it. (Konstan, 2005, pp. 242–243)

Such usages serve to distinguish emotions from apparently related responses in many languages.

There is no question but that the Latin verbs moveo, “move,” and far more commonly the compound form commoveo, were employed in connection with a wide variety of mental and psychophysical responses to many kinds of stimulus. In a passage that recalls the examples offered by the dictionary definitions of “move” and “moving,” Cicero writes that “the crowded stalls in a theater, in which there are young women and children, are moved [movetur] when they hear such a grand recital” (Cicero, Tusculan Disputations, 1.16.37; there follow some verses uttered by a dead man in the underworld). Likewise, one may be moved upon seeing another person grieving (Cicero, De oratore 2.167), or by the departure of a loved one (Propertius 1.15.9), but also by danger (Livy 27.7.3) or a great noise (Quintus Curtius 8.14.10). Feelings themselves can be moved in the sense of being stirred up, for instance, wonder or admiration (Cicero De oratore 2.254), fear but also desire and joy (Cicero Tusculan Disputations 4.16), hatred (Virgil Aeneid 2.96), love (Seneca Epistles 115.14), indignation (Livy 4.50.1), anger (Cicero Tusculan Disputations 3.78), pain or grief (dolor, Statius Thebaid 9.824-25), but also sleep (Ovid Metamorphoses 11.307), warmth, and even vomit (Celsus On Medicine 1 proem 21 and 4.3.2, respectively). ¹³ In all these examples, it is the simple verb moveo that is employed.

The compound commoveo, in turn, occurs still more widely in the semantic sphere of the sentiments and the senses—there are hundreds of instances—although it too, like moveo, refers principally to physical motion. Cicero employs it as a synonym of perturbare, his favorite term for emotional response (Tusculan Disputations 4.82). There is neither space nor need for an extensive survey of uses. Rather, I may cite two striking examples. The first is a mere line (937) from Terence’s comedy, Andria, where a character states, “I am beside myself: my mind is moved [commotus] to that extent by fear, hope, joy.” ¹⁴ The second is drawn from Cicero’s Tusculan Disputations, his most extensive discussion of emotions. Cicero begins by noting that some people are naturally vulnerable to one or another vice, just as they may be to one or another disease (37.81). “But,” says Cicero:

as to those who are said to be vicious, not by nature, but their own fault [culpa], their vices arise from false opinions of good and bad things, so that one or another is more prone to these or those motions and emotions [motus perturbationesque]. (37.81)

We may note the juxtaposition of motus, “motion,” and perturbatio, Cicero’s term of art for “emotion.” Cicero goes on to affirm that, “as the cause of emotions [perturbationes] is now known, all of which arise from judgments based on opinions and from intentions [ex iudiciis opinionum et voluntatibus], let this be the limit of this discussion” (38.82). Cicero adds, however, that no evil is greater than the grief caused by another’s death.

For though every emotion [perturbatio] of the mind is grievous and is not much different from insanity, yet we usually say of others, when they are in the grip of some emotion [in aliqua perturbatione], whether of fear or joy or desire, that they are simply agitated and disturbed [or emotional: commotos modo et perturbatos]. But we say that those who have given themselves over to grief are miserable, afflicted, wretched, desolate. (38.82)

Many things are said to move us. When it comes to emotions, however, the effect, according to Cicero, is inseparable from our judgments. Our relation to our emotions is, in the final analysis, ethical. True, we may be moved spontaneously by music and even by birdsongs, without the same kind of cognitive operation that is part and parcel of emotions in the narrower sense. Such responses are more like exaltation, in the case of the Phrygian mode, or boldness, which, according to Plato and Aristotle, is produced by the Dorian mode. Just because these reactions are more instinctive, the use of music in education and in public events has to be carefully controlled, so that the effects are consistent with the welfare of the society as a whole. The modern corporeal “turn” in the study of emotions, as exemplified by affect theory and various other approaches, has a different ambition and a different sense of the political. To repeat the words of Schaefer:

As a method, affect theory asks what bodies do—what they want, where they go, what they think, how they decide—and especially how bodies are impelled by forces other than language and reason. It is, therefore, also a theory of power.

In the ancient Greek and Roman view, and perhaps the Chinese as well (here I am not qualified to offer an independent judgment), bodies on their own do not think or decide, and it is not the site where questions of power are negotiated. The abstract notion of “being moved,” with its sentimental overtones and somatic resonance, corresponds, perhaps, to a modern sense of the alienated self, deficient in feeling and longing to be stirred. For all that the vocabulary of motion, whether the Greek kinein or the Latin movere, was widely employed in relation to sensory and emotional responses, it never, I think, congealed as a distinct category of feeling. Certainly, it was never theorized as such, in part because of the cognitive orientation of ancient treatments of emotion. This is not to say that no such feelings were experienced: it is difficult to know, not least because definitions of “being moved” today vary and so, for the time being, it is unclear what exactly what kind of sentiment one would be looking for in the ancient sources. There may well be emotions that, although they are not included in the standard classical repertories, nevertheless emerge, on close inspection, in our texts, and they may even bear a name. A case in point is the Greek term athumia, which connotes a kind of despondency and has not, so far, received a dedicated analysis (some are in progress). In this respect, the effort to discover a new emotion, as designated by the expression “being moved,” may serve as a stimulus to look beyond native classifications, which are themselves historically conditioned, ¹⁵ and to construct the sentimental spectrum, then and now, in new ways.