Home
So long as the great majority of men are not deprived
of either property or honour, they are satisfied.
Machiavelli, The Prince (1513), ch. 19
Honour in Classical Greece: esteem, status, identity, and society in ancient Greek literature, life, and thought is a Horizon 2020-EU.1.1 Excellent Science project funded by the European Research Council under the ERC-ADG – Advanced Grant scheme.
This project has received funding from the European Union’s Horizon 2020 research and innovation programme under grant agreement No 741084.
The project will run from 2018 to 2023.
The host institution is the University of Edinburgh, School of History, Classics and Archaeology.
Using the findings of contemporary sociology and philosophy, with contributions from other disciplines from economics to literary studies, cognitive linguistics, and psychology, Honour in Classical Greece will lead to a root and branch transformation of the idées fixes that still mould the understanding of honour (Greek timê) in our ancient Greek sources.
This project will write its history.
The project will show that, far from being a single value among many, timê is a pluralist, inclusive, and flexible notion, as important to ancient values of justice, friendship, and social solidarity as it is to the violence of heroic self-assertion and the pursuit of vengeance. It pervades ancient Greek literature, thought, and society.
Featured images:
Aristotle, Nicomachean Ethics 1095b 22-25, particular from British Library MS 6790, f.5r (colourized)
T. Cole, The Course of Empire III, The Consummation of Empire (detail), 1833-36 (New-York Historical Society)
