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One way Ancient Athenians resembled modern Americans was 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 often acted tyrannically. 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 chapters 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.

Scenes from Euripidean tragedy can lead us to imagine that sick-nursing was women's work in ancient Greece. In the Hippolytus, a matronly Nurse attends the fretfully ill Phaedra; in the Orestes, Electra cares for her brother. Several prose sources, moreover, seem to corroborate this view of gender roles. We learn in Xenophon's Oeconomicus (7. 37) that the mistress of the household was expected to nurse sick slaves. Demosthenes, in a letter (3. 30), mentions two courtesans who are caring for the consumptive Pytheas. And the speaker in Against Neairanotes explicitly ‘how much a woman is worth during illnesses, when she is there for a man who is suffering’ (Dem. 59. 56).

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