Character, Inwardness and Identity in Antique Literature: a very Brief Survey

The author traces the presence of a concept of the individual self on the one hand, and a discourse of reflection on the other in classical Greek and Latin literature. The tendency of modern scholarship to deny the latter is confirmed. Yet even without an ‘Augustinian’ discourse of the self, antique literature questions and analyses the role of the self to an astonishing degree. In this light especially the conceptual frame of tragedy and Plato’s philosophy are analysed. The increasing tendencies towards interiority that are traceable in Roman culture, finally, seem to make the eventual development of interior discourse in Augustine almost an inevitable step.