Aristotle, Rhetoric
J. H. Freese, Ed.

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] 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. [9] Things distressing and destructive are various kinds of death, personal ill-treatment and injuries, old age, disease, and lack of food. [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; [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.

These and the like things, then, excite pity. [12] The persons men pity are those whom they know, provided they are not too closely connected with them for if they are, they feel the same as if they themselves were likely
to suffer. This is why Amasis¹ is said not to have wept when his son was led to execution, but did weep at the sight of a friend reduced to beggary, for the latter excited pity, the former terror. The terrible is different from the pitiable, for it drives out pity, and often serves to produce the opposite feeling. [13] Further, the nearness of the terrible makes men pity.² Men also pity those who resemble them in age, character, habits, position, or family; for all such relations make a man more likely to think that their misfortune may befall him as well. For, in general, here also we may conclude that all that men fear in regard to themselves excites their pity when others are the victims. [14] And since sufferings are pitiable when they appear close at hand, while those that are past or future, ten thousand years backwards or forwards, either do not excite pity at all or only in a less degree, because men neither expect the one nor remember the other, it follows that those who contribute to the effect by gestures, voice, dress, and dramatic action generally, are more pitiable; for they make the evil appear close at hand, setting it before our eyes as either future or past.