Eleos
The Greek concept of mercy and compassion, personified as a god and central to Athenian civic identity.
The Meaning of Eleos
Athens had an altar that no other Greek city possessed: the Altar of Eleos, the Altar of Pity, standing in the agora. Pausanias reports that suppliants and refugees came there seeking protection, and the Athenians prided themselves on honouring it. Eleos was the civic virtue that tempered Athenian power with compassion. In tragedy, eleos was one of the two emotions — alongside phobos (fear) — that Aristotle said tragedy must arouse to achieve catharsis. The audience watching Oedipus must feel pity for his suffering and fear that similar fate could befall them. Without eleos, tragedy is merely spectacle. The concept had legal force. Athenian defendants routinely appealed to the jury's eleos, bringing their weeping children into court. Aristotle analyzed the tactic in the Rhetoric: pity requires believing the sufferer does not deserve their fate, and that a similar fate could happen to you or yours. Distant or deserved suffering does not produce eleos. The Romans translated it as misericordia and built it into their legal system. Christianity elevated mercy to a cardinal virtue, but the Athenians had already given it an altar.
Parents
Greek civic tradition
Symbols
Fun Fact
The English word "alms" descends through Latin and Greek from eleos — charity is literally "mercy-money."
Words We Inherited
English words and phrases that trace back to this myth. See our full guide to English words from Greek mythology.
Explore Further
Catharsis
💭 conceptEmotional purification through art
Aristotle's concept that tragedy purifies the audience by arousing and then releasing pity and fear.
Aidos
💭 conceptShame, modesty, and reverence
Aidos was the Greek concept of shame, reverence, and the inner sense of propriety that restrained people from acting dishonourably — the opposite of hubris.
Divine Justice
💭 conceptEthics
The principle that the gods punish wrongdoing and uphold moral order in the cosmos
Pathos
💭 conceptRhetoric and Emotion
The Greek rhetorical appeal to emotion, one of Aristotle's three modes of persuasion.
Apatheia
💭 conceptStoic Philosophy
The Stoic ideal of freedom from destructive passions, achieved through rational discipline.
Catharsis
💭 conceptRitual and Drama
The concept of emotional purification through experiencing pity and fear in Greek tragedy.
Metamorphoses
💭 conceptTransformation, punishment, mercy
Stories of mortals and gods reshaped into new forms — by love, divine punishment, or compassion — central to how Greeks explained the natural world.
Hubris
💭 conceptThe cardinal sin of Greek ethics
Hubris was the gravest moral offence — arrogance of overstepping human boundaries or defying the gods.
Dikē
💭 conceptreligion, ethics, law
Justice, right order, or the way things ought to be — both the divine personification of justice and the principle of cosmic and social rightness.
Apotheosis
💭 conceptDivine Transformation
The elevation of a mortal to divine status, a concept central to Greek hero cult and Roman imperial religion.
Heroic Ideal
💭 conceptEthics
The Greek conception of the exemplary human who transcends ordinary limits through excellence and suffering
Enthousiasmos
💭 conceptReligion and Inspiration
The state of being possessed by a god, the original meaning of divine inspiration in Greek religion.