Konstan’s analysis centers on the concept of genocide, often said to be a quintessentially modern form of violence. Mass exterminations of entire populations were certainly not unknown in classical antiquity, Konstan points out, but are they comparable to modern genocide? Today we conceive of genocide as the intentional elimination of a race or ethnic group, as such—where it is the supposedly inherent qualities of the group that render it obnoxious or pestilential in the minds of the perpetrators. Here the language of pollution and disgust often serves to dehumanize the victims. In antiquity, by contrast, the reason given for mass slaughter was more often treachery or crime on the part of the enemy, that is, specific acts of injustice rather than indelible racial or ethnic traits. These alleged acts by the targeted group were not primarily supposed to engender disgust, but were meant instead to inspire anger—an emotion in the full sense of the word (involving a cognitive appraisal) rather than instinctive revulsion. Konstan analyses ancient theories of emotion in a way that situates modern genocides in a larger history of massacres.