Nonverbal Behaviour in Ancient Literature

“Τhe language of ‘silent language’” is a reference to nonverbal behaviour and how this reflects upon and is informed by ancient Greco-Roman cultural systems. Nonverbal behaviour, i.e. intentional vocal signals (silence, shouts, cries, pauses), unintended “leakage” (tears, grimaces, stutters), kinesics, proxemics, and chronemics, suffuses all human social and cultural experience from antiquity to the present day. This volume falls within and builds upon the well-established area in classical scholarship of studies that read and discuss ancient texts to unearth information that can give us a fuller, deeper, and better understanding of the functions of important, yet under-researched, aspects of nonverbal behaviour, specifically: music, vocalics, masks, and dance in dramatic texts; aspects of nonverbal behaviour that serve deception; gestures and body stature as used in oratorical texts and contexts; nonverbal ways of exerting power statuses, social norms, and ethnicity; and the nonverbal ways physical nature is expressed and described in texts. Chapters in this volume capitalize on the exploitation of both literary and material evidence that has come down to us from Greco-Roman antiquity.