4 adults, the elderly). It is, therefore, timeless, in more than one sense. It portrays the extreme fragility of the human condition. 14. In the instant case, as in so many others, the feeling of tragedy has invaded and has become embedded in- the lives of the survivors. Only one who has experienced tragedy knows what this means. And over the centuries (from the 5th century B.C. to the 21st century) this feeling has been present in all sorts of human thinking. It has been noted that the feeling of tragedy: "envahit la littérature et la philosophie, il infeste le subconscient. (...) La tragédie, c'est le récit d'une expiation (...). La figure tragique représente l'expiation du péché originel, (...) le péché d'être né. (...) Si vraiment une culpabilité pèse sur nous, (...) si vraiment il n'y a point de rédemption, alors ce n'est pas la mort, c'est la vie qui est l'expiation"12. 15. In the subject matter of Greek tragedy itself there is a special identification of an as yet indeterminate juridical thinking, still in the process of elaboration, and the coming together of human acts and the designs of divine powers, also known as destiny.13 Despite lacking autonomy and control over his own life, the individual was already affirmed as a legal person in the 5th century B.C., the age of classic tragedies.14 16. In the midst of the violence portrayed in the tragedies of the 5th century B.C., there was a noteworthy concern over justice and the law, precisely to end violence. The message was clear, and it remains current at the start of the 21st century: we must reject violence and tyranny, and we must practice justice15 (cf. infra). It is part of human nature –warned Sophocles in his Filoctetes- to “always be subject to threat and danger.”16 The extreme vulnerability and inevitable fragility of human beings must awaken feelings of solidarity in everyone.17 II. From Fragility to Human Solidarity. 17. The Ancient Greeks were able to transform this enormous fragility of human nature into a source for the moral grandeur of human solidarity; their humanism was constructed precisely on the basis of recognition of the extreme fragility of human 12 . J.-M. Domenach, Le retour du tragique, Paris, Éd. du Seuil, 1967, p. 279. 13 . J.-P. Vernant and P. Vidal-Naquet, Mito e Tragédia na Grécia Antiga, São Paulo, Edit. Perspectiva, 1999, pp. 3-4, 21 and 47. 14 . Ibid., p. 51. 15 . J. De Romilly, La Grèce antique contre la violence, Paris, Éd. de Fallois, 2000, pp. 18-19, 25, 33, 5051, 55, 63-64, 74-75 y 161-163; and cf. S. Goldhill, Reading Greek Tragedy, Cambridge, University Press, 1999 [reprint], pp. 28-31, 34, 37 and 39-40. 16 . Verse 503. – In a similar vein, Euripides, in turn, confessed, in his Hipollytus, that he did not know who, “among mortals,” he could sall “happy” (verse 981); and, also as a warning, he added that “painful is life of mortals and their suffering never ends” (verse 190). 17 . J. De Romilly, La Grèce antique..., op. cit. supra n. (15), pp. 61-62 and 115-116.