A subtext of this engaging study is that John Chrysostom owes his reputation for eloquence to his artistry in using the power of storytelling to exploit the transformative potential of emotion. A comprehensive introduction explains how his homilies aimed at the ethical formation of his congregants with a view to their welfare in the next life, to which end John sought to regulate their emotions by identifying and discouraging those arising from faulty beliefs while encouraging and strengthening those conducive to virtue. While he sometimes recommends techniques of behavioural modification drawn from pagan philosophical therapeutics, he relies primarily on rational argument based on elaborations of biblical narratives in which he assigns centrality to the protagonists’ emotions. As a consummate storyteller he sometimes adopts a strikingly novel perspective, as when he focuses on how Noah must have felt when God ‘shut the ark from outside’ (pp. 5–7, 13–16; Gen. 7:16).

The main part of the book comprises four chapters, each focusing on a particular emotion and concluding with an extended discussion of a story used by John in connection with it. Chapter 1, ‘Anger’, notes that, while he largely follows Aristotle in his understanding of the nature and causes of anger, he takes a ‘strongly negative view’ of anger as a ‘response to an undeserved slight’ (p. 31) and aims to convince his listeners that, far from being necessary to maintain honour, it is often both shameful and counterproductive. In place of the traditional image of the heroic lion he adopts the Platonic image of the dog who, if kept under control, is a valuable servant and ally, but, if allowed to run riot, reverts to savagery. Anger is compatible with virtue only when it motivates the defence or correction of others or is deployed against demons. The chapter concludes by showing how John uses the contrast between the story of David and Saul and that of Achilles and Agamemnon to ‘[overwrite] a traditional narrative and with it an entrenched system of beliefs and values’ (p. 59).

Chapter 2, ‘Grief’, explains that John's attitude towards this emotion reflects the fact that it reveals a person's deepest commitments. Where these are well founded, grief is appropriate, but where they are not, he seeks to change that person's thinking. Grief is frequently occasioned by the loss of possessions and in such cases reflects the false belief that material goods are necessary for happiness. To counter this belief, John details the cares that wealth brings, and to shift the entrenched habit of greed he seeks to redirect desire. Grief underlies envy, malice and indignation, which, in contrast to Aristotle, John tends on the basis of his experience to elide. Against the widespread view that envy can be good he emphasises its moral gravity and injuriousness to the agent and those around them. Grief is appropriate when occasioned by bereavement, but should not be allowed to become excessive and for Christians should be tempered by faith in the resurrection. The grief of parents over a child's illness must likewise be moderated, not least in case it leads them to rail against God or resort to traditional healing practices, regarded by John as illegitimate. By comparing their anguish to the sufferings of martyrs he ‘forcefully acknowledges parental agony’ and ‘recasts their suffering as a contest of faith’ (p. 84). He is unusually sensitive to the pain caused by miscarriage or infertility. Sadness can both arise from, and cause, sickness, reflecting the fact that athymia, John's preferred term for it, can also mean ‘lack of vital energy’. He attributes such lack to ‘our own contempt and indifference’ (p. 91) and regards it as a cognitive error. Grief for one's sins is an unequivocal good and a potent stimulus to virtue. The chapter concludes with a discussion of John's use of the story of Job.

Chapter 3, ‘Fear’, notes that, while John sometimes seeks to assuage fear, he more often cultivates it for its value both in contributing to discipline and in promoting diligence by countering the human tendency to rhathymia, ‘a kind of pervasive indolence’ (p. 118). Among the social benefits of fear are its power to arouse compassion. The rich man in Luke's parable behaved callously towards Lazarus because he believed that his wealth made him invulnerable; had he reflected upon its transience, he would have shown consideration to Lazarus. John's descriptions of the latter's sufferings testify to his ‘clear-sighted perception of the multidimensional impact of poverty’ (p. 122). Fear is also valuable because it fosters deliberation, in the first instance, an assessment of the nature and proximity of the threat. L. notes John's sensitivity to its ‘revelatory function’ in virtue of providing ‘a clear index of what a person deems to be important’ (p. 128). As with grief, where fear involves misevaluations, John seeks to allay it by exposing their falsehood. While he strongly opposes domestic violence, he believes wives should fear their husbands, since, as long as fear does not become excessive (in which case the relationship would become one of servitude rather than marriage), fear instils restraint and promotes cohesiveness and strengthens love. The chapter's final section focuses on John's efforts to rouse his listeners to fear of posthumous condemnation and eternal torment to move them to penitence and the pursuit of virtue, and the chapter concludes by studying his use of the story of Cain.

With Chapter 4, ‘Chrysostom's Goal: Stimulating Zeal’, we come to the overarching goal of John's project of emotional formation. With echoes of Evagrius he identifies the most basic sin afflicting humankind as rhathymia, a ‘fundamental slackness of will or general carelessness’ (p. 151), that enabled the fall and finds reflection in every area of human life. It is this pervasive indifference and inertia that he most fundamentally seeks to address, and in this chapter L. examines how to that end he seeks to stimulate aversion, awe, shame and disgust, and to inspire emulation. The chapter concludes by considering his use of the story of the Samaritan woman in the fourth chapter of John's gospel. His ‘case for the Samaritan woman as an inimitable model of zeal’ (p. 176) is a strikingly original and perceptive exegesis and as such forms a fitting conclusion to this fine book.

My one criticism concerns L.'s two references to apatheia, although she does not use that term. In the first, she states that ‘Unlike the Stoics, [John] did not aim at the eradication of emotion’ (p. 3). The erroneousness of this view of Stoic apatheia has been ably demonstrated by M. Graver in her monograph Stoicism and Emotion (2007). Later we read that for John Job's words can take away despondency, ‘not by conveying an impassivity to sorrow, but by evoking a story of someone who suffered unimaginable grief, and did so without blaspheming’ (p. 103). ‘Impassivity’ conventionally translates apatheia, yet neither for the Stoics nor for Evagrius is apatheia referred to all feelings but only to those that accompany (or as the Stoics would have it, are) false evaluations. Evagrius regards Job as an exemplar of apatheia precisely because, as L. continues, he ‘maintained the right values in the most trying of circumstances’ (ibid.). What she calls impassivity Evagrius would associate with the demonic thought of insensibility (anaisthêsia). John's concern to diagnose and to correct the erroneous beliefs underlying many of our emotions aligns with the monastic pursuit of apatheia, as we would expect from his own commitment to asceticism. This criticism is, however, peripheral to L.'s topic, and in all other respects I have nothing but praise for this well-written, well-produced, informative and enjoyable book. It should be read by anyone interested in the history of the emotions, the power of storytelling, the history of biblical exegesis, the history of Christian spirituality, church history or the world of late antique Byzantium.