Pity And Power In Ancient Athens

by Edited by Rachel Hall Sternberg

• ISBN13: 9780521845526
• ISBN10: 0521845521
• Format: Hardcover
• Copyright: 2005-07-25
• Publisher: Cambridge University Press

Summary

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 analyzing evidence from tragedy, philosophy, historiography, epic, oratory, vase painting, sculpture, and medical writings.

Table of Contents

List of Illustrations	vii
List of Contributors	ix
Acknowledgments	xi
Introduction	1	(14)
The Nature of Pity	15	(33)
Rachel Hall Sternberg
Pity and Politics	48	(19)
David Konstan
The Pitiers and the Pitied in Herodotus and Thucydides	67	(31)
Donald Lateiner
A Generous City: Pity in Athenian Oratory and Tragedy	98	(25)
Angeliki Tzanetou
Athenian Tragedy: An Education in Pity	123	(70)
James F. Johnson
Douglas C. Clapp
Engendering the Tragic Theates: Pity, Power, and Spectacle in Sophocles' Trachiniae
Thomas M. Falkner
Pity in Classical Athenian Vase Painting	193	(30)
John H. Oakley
The Civic Art of Pity	223	(30)
Aileen Ajootian
A Crying Shame: Pitying the Sick in the Hippocratic Corpus and Greek Tragedy	253	(24)
Jennifer Clarke Kosak
Pity in Plutarch	277	(36)
Christopher Pelling
Works Cited	313	(24)
Index of Ancient Passages	337	(8)
Subject Index	345