Book 2
8.7
And men feel pity if they think that some persons are virtuous; for he who thinks that no one is will think that all deserve misfortune. And, generally speaking, a man is moved to pity when he is so affected that he remembers that such evils have happened, or expects that they may happen, either to himself or to one of his friends.
8.8
We have stated the frame of mind which leads men to pity; and the things which arouse this feeling are clearly shown by the definition. They are all painful and distressing things that are also destructive, and all that are ruinous; and all evils of which fortune is the cause, if they are great.
8.9
Things distressing and destructive are various kinds of death, personal ill-treatment and injuries, old age, disease, and lack of food.
8.10
The evils for which fortune is responsible are lack of friends, or few friends (wherefore it is pitiable to be torn away from friends and intimates), ugliness, weakness, mutilation; if some misfortune comes to pass from a quarter whence one might have reasonably expected something good;
8.11
and if this happens often; and if good fortune does not come until a man has already suffered, as when the presents from the Great King were not dispatched to Diopithes until he was dead. Those also are to be pitied to whom no good has ever accrued, or who are unable to enjoy it when it has.
8.11
These and the like things, then, excite pity.
