The Ancient Aesthetics of Deception

Jonas Grethlein is Professor of Greek in the Seminar für Klassische Philologie at the Ruprecht-Karls-Universität Heidelberg. His publications include The Greeks and their Past: Poetry, Oratory and History in the Fifth Century BCE (Cambridge, 2010), Experience and Teleology in Ancient Historiography: Futures Past from Herodotus to Augustine (Cambridge, 2013) and Aesthetic Experience and Classical Antiquity: The Significance of Form in Narratives and Pictures (Cambridge, 2017).

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• 1. Gorgias and the justice of tragic apatē; 2. The circulation and significance of apatē in the Classical era; 3. The dramatic entanglement of aesthetic illusion with deceit in Sophocles' Electra; 4. Immersion and corruption in Plato's Republic; 5. The void of Hellenistic criticism; 6. The appeal and challenge of apatē in Imperial criticism: Plutarch's De audiendis poetis; 7. Lucian and the spell of philosophy; 8. How to read ekphrasis: Tabula Cebetis; 9. Christian polemics against idolatry: Clement of Alexandria's Protrepticus; 10. The aesthetics of deception reconfigured in Heliodorus' Ethiopica; 11. From deep-fake to psychotherapy: The aesthetics of deception today.