Emotional Persuasion: Communicating Pain in Seneca the Elder's Controversiae

Modern studies have consistently shown that witnesses' perception of the pain of others is moderated by a range of factors, including group membership, status, and 'race'. This subjectivity has clear consequences for the effective depiction of pain by artists and the ability of that pain to evoke empathy in observers. Roman declamation, particularly controversiae, provides a rich source for examining this problem, given that emotional persuasion was one of the central techniques used by successful speakers, and that speeches were unconstrained by the need to accurately represent political or historical elements. Using two case studies (10.4 and 2.5) from Seneca the Elder's collection, this chapter demonstrates that a largely common group of speakers uses quite different approaches to convey deliberately inflicted physical pain depending on the status of the victims in relation to that of the declamatory audience. This suggests that Roman declaimers were well aware of the subjectivity of pain as an experience and the vital role of audience empathy in communicating pain.