Pity and Power in Ancient Athens

Cambridge University Press
Edition: Reprint, 4/25/2012
EAN 9780521285629, ISBN10: 0521285623

Paperback, 370 pages, 22.9 x 15.2 x 2.1 cm
Language: English
Originally published in English

Ancient Athenians resemble modern Americans in their moral discomfort with empire. Athenians had power and used it ruthlessly, but the infliction of suffering did not mesh well with their civic self-image. Embracing the concepts of democracy and freedom, they proudly pitted themselves against tyranny and oppression, but in practice they were capable of being tyrannical. Pity and Power in Ancient Athens argues that the exercise of power in democratic Athens, especially during its brief fifth-century empire, raised troubling questions about the alleviation and infliction of suffering, and pity emerged as a topic in Athenian culture at this time. The ten essays collectively examine the role of pity in the literature, art, and society of classical Athens by analysing evidence from tragedy, philosophy, historiography, epic, oratory, vase painting, sculpture, and medical writings.

1. The nature of pity Rachel Hall Sternberg
2. Pity and politics David Konstan
3. The pitiers and the pitied in Herodotus and Thucydides Donald Lateiner
4. A generous city
pity in Athenian oratory and tragedy
5. Athenian tragedy
an education in pity James F. Johnson and Douglas C. Clapp
6. Engendering the tragic Theates
pity, power, and spectacle in Sophocles' Trachiniae Thomas M. Falkner
7. Pity in classical Athenian vase painting John H. Oakley
8. The civic art of pity Aileen Ajootian
9. A crying shame
pitying the sick in the Hippocratic corpus and Greek tragedy Jennifer Clarke Kosak
10. Pity in Plutarch Christopher Pelling.