Roman Heart: Conceptualizations of Cor "Heart" in Early Latin

Abstract

The aim of this paper is to examine the conceptualisations of the heart (cor) in the corpus of Latin literary texts written in the period before 75 BC. Given the highest frequency of the noun cor in Plautus, most of the examples discussed in the paper are drawn from his plays. As evidenced by many cor-expressions in the selected corpus, the early Roman culture has been fundamentally cardio-centric: the heart was conceptualised as an embodied seat of both intellectual faculties and emotional life. The heart was primarily conceived as a container of anger, fear, hopes, concerns, love, courage, laziness, wit, thoughts, plans, ideas etc. The noun cor does not only refer to the heart as an organ of emotion and cognition. It is also used as a metaphor for an essence of something and as a metonymy for a person for whom the speaker feels affection. Both these uses are motivated by the conceptualisation of the heart as the most valuable organ in the human body.