Han Baltussen: Roman Perspectives on Grief and Loss: self‑address and/or ‑consolation in Cicero and Marcus Aurelius

The very notion of self-consolation is problematic, since the traditional act of consolation is between (at least) two individuals. Here I present work in progress, in which I explore some issues related to grief, self, consolation and literary constructs from an interdisciplinary perspective. In the case of Cicero it involves limited evidence and a persistently misguided approach to his grief experience, for Marcus Aurelius I propose to use Frankfurt’s idea of secondary motivation as a possible key to the purpose of the text. I end with some thoughts on the question whether these works constitute a new Roman genre.

Han Baltussen is Associate Professor of Classics/Ancient Philosophy at the University of Adelaide, Australia. He was born in Maastricht (the Netherlands), where he was educated at the Henric van Veldeke College (incl. Greek and Latin), going on to study Classics and Ancient Philosophy at the University of Utrecht. His doctoral thesis, written under the supervision of Jaap Mansfeld (Utrecht) and Hans B. Gottschalk (Leeds), dealt with the dialectical methodology in Theophrastus’ De sensu, a short work which surveys and criticises early theories of perception (revised version published in 2000 by E. J. Brill, Leiden). In 1993–6 he was research associate to the Early Stoics Project in Utrecht, from 1997–2002 with the international translation project of the Neoplatonic Commentators and a temporary lecturer and tutor in ancient Greek philosophy at King’s College London.