Mind and Body in Ancient Greece and Rome: Selected Essays from the Eighth Interdisciplinary Symposium on the Hellenic Heritage of Sicily and Southern Italy.

The bodies of ancient Greek and Roman people were essentially the same as ours, but the way they thought and talked about them was different. It wasn’t until the Classical period that the soma (body) emerged as an object of care and responsibility. Meanwhile, psyche (soul, mind) went from referring to the breath that leaves the body at death to the central concern of a philosophical life and the religious promise of an afterlife. This volume collects ancient perspectives ranging from Pythagoras to Plotinus on the nature of and relationship between soma and psyche, with attention to such topics as health, beauty, exercise, gender, sexuality, aging, and spirituality.