ABSTRACT
Hybris (as I and others have been arguing for some years)3 is essentially the deliberate infliction of serious insult on another human being. At the heart of the concept lies the idea of the personal honour (time) of the individual, and to treat someone hybristically is to behave to them as if they were of lesser status-timethan they can legitimately lay claim to. As Aristotle said, in what is by far the best ancient discussion of hybris, ‘dishonour (atimia) is characteristic of hybris’ (Rhet. 1378b23-35). In a society whose members greatly value honour, and strongly fear shame and dishonour, such insults might be deeply felt, and gravely affect the standing of individual victims in their communities. Hybris appears consistently as the most resonant term to apply to cases of serious insult, often, but not necessarily, involving physical force, violence or restraint. More ‘traditional’ interpretations of hybris, still commonly found in scholarly discourse and perhaps even more commonly among
the ‘chattering classes’, see it as human arrogance, over-confidence or unawareness of the reasons for one’s own good fortune. These are misconceptions of the last two centuries, whose prevalence reflects more general, and damaging, tendencies to see the nature of Greek religion through Christian eyes, and to interpret Greek tragedy through reliance on over-simplified formulae (e.g. in terms of the hybris of heroes provoking the nemesis of the gods).4
