Tragedy and philanthropia in the Lives of Demosthenes and Cicero

Abstract

The concept of philanthropia is often associated with that of compassion and characterizes, ideally, the relations between the powerful and those who are found to be in a situation of fragility and impotence. The intention of this study is to show how, in the Lives of Demosthenes and Cicero, this notion of philanthropia takes on a tragic tone, one which is reinforced by the allusions to Sophocles’s Antigone, a play which seems to serve as an ethical frame of reference for the evaluation of the protagonists’ ethos in crucial moments of their lives.