page_title: Pity
section_title: Psychological origins
hierarchical_section_title: Pity / Psychological origins
caption_attribution_description: Deutsch: Den Leichnam des Darius bedeckt Alexander mit seinem Mantel, Radierung von Bernhard Rode 1769/70. "Darius auf einem Wagen, in goldene Fesseln und mit einem Pfeile getodetet. Die Tiara ist ihm vom Haupte gefallen. Alexander vergießt Tränen über ihn, und bedeckt ihn mit seinem Purpurmantel. Der griechische Soldat, der ihm kurz vor seinem Tode mit einem Trunk Wasser erquickt und den Alexander zu ihm geführt hatte, sieht voll Mitleid, dass er schon gestorben ist." (Katalog der Berliner Akademie Ausstellung 1794: 3. In: Die Kataloge der Berliner Akademie-Ausstellungen 1786-1850, bearb. v. H. Börsch-Supan, Bd. 1, Berlin 1971.) Literarische Quelle: Quintus Rufus Curtius, Das Leben Alexanders des Großen, 5. Buch, 13, 25. English: Alexander Covers the Body of Darius with His Cloak, engraving by Bernhard Rode 1769-70. "Darius on a wagon, in golden shackles and killed by an arrow. His tiara has fallen from his head. Alexander spills tears over him and covers him with his purple cloak. The Greek soldier who succored him with a drink of water shortly before his death and led Alexander to him, sees with a look of pity that he has already died." (Catalog of the Exhibition of the Berlin Academy, 1794, 3, in Die Kataloge der Berliner Akademie-Ausstellungen 1786-1850, ed. by H. Börsch-Supan, vol. 1 [Berlin 1971].) Literary source: Quintus Rufus Curtius, The Life of Alexander the Great, Book 5, 13.
context_page_description: Pity is a sympathetic sorrow evoked by the suffering of others, and is used in a comparable sense to compassion, condolence or empathy - the word deriving from the Latin pietās. Self-pity is pity directed towards oneself.
  Two different kinds of pity can be distinguished, "benevolent pity" and "contemptuous pity", where, through insincere, pejorative usage, pity is used to connote feelings of superiority, condescension, or contempt.
context_section_description: Psychologists see pity arising in early childhood out of the infant's ability to identify with others.
  Psychoanalysis sees a more convoluted route to (at least some forms of) adult pity by way of the sublimation of aggression – pity serving as a kind of magic gesture intended to show how leniently one should oneself be treated by one's own conscience.
caption: Alexander sees with a look of pity that Darius has died from his wounds.
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