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Critics often link yet distinguish between ‘moving’ and ‘touching’ characters, scenes and artworks. It has been argued that being moved is a specific emotion, that its formal object is the thin goodness of exemplified final, important and impersonal thick values, and that being touched is an attenuated form of that phenomenon. First, I dispute that the values that move us must be impersonal, since we can be moved by the personal goodness of being loved, free or healthy. Second, I argue that being touched should be considered a distinct emotion type. To support this claim, I refer to apparent differences between the formal objects that the two affective phenomena relate to as well as to dissimilarities in cognitive sophistication and phenomenology. I suggest that we are touched by that which invites love. Vulnerable, innocently suffering and affectionate beings are touching insofar as they need and will be responsive to love. 

In this series, Eric Cullhed (University of Uppsala) and S. Douglas Olson (University of Minnesota) combine to provide the reader with a new critical edition of the Greek text of Byzantine scholar and rhetorician Eustathius of Thessalonica’s Commentary on the Odyssey, composed during the latter half of the twelfth century CE. A much desired facing English translation of the commentary is included as well. Eustathius’ commentary collects material from a wide range of sources which explain or expand on words, phrases and ideas in the Homeric epic. His original comments are blended with extracts from earlier commentators, especially the Homeric scholia. The text is also an important source for fragments of lost works of ancient literature, for the history of exegesis and lexicography, and for Byzantine cultural history. Full critical, citation and source apparatuses are included. This first volume includes a full critical text and translation of Eustathius' Commentary on Rhapsodies 1–4 of the Odyssey, which include the poet's initial account of the situation on Ithaca and Telemachus' journey to Pylos and Sparta. 

This note analyzes Ausonius’ Bissula 5 and 6. Three basic interpretative alternatives are discerned and explored: (1) “Bissula cannot be represented,” (2) “Bissula can be represented but only by a poet,” and (3) “Bissula can be represented after all.” It is argued that we cannot reduce the poems’ meaning to any of these alternatives, but the poet exploits polysemy, allusions and prosodic patterning to encourage each of them. The ruse lives up to Ausonius’ promise of an annoying, intoxicated, and dreamlike game for this ambigua puella.