Le dernier des hommes

This study looks at the figure of the beggar in classical Greek thought. For the Greeks, the beggar was the antithesis of the ideal man, whose status was defined by his role as a land-owner, as the head of a family, and as a citizen. At the same time, however, the beggar was seen as the mirror of society, reflecting both its values and its faults. Through the study of five literary and philosophical representations of the beggar--in Homer, Sophocles, Aristophanes, Plato, and the Cynics--the author shows how this character, the object of contempt and suspicion, is at the same time presented as the representative of truth, whether ethical, political, metaphysical, or anthropological.