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The Public Charge for Hubris Against Slaves: The Honour of the Victim and the Honour of the Hubristēs

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  28 November 2018

Mirko Canevaro
Mirko Canevaro*
Affiliation:
University of Edinburgh*
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Abstract

This article discusses the rationale and the implications of the inclusion of slaves as victims of punishable hubris in the law about the graphē hubreōs. It argues that hubris against slaves was a punishable offence in Athens not because slaves had institutionally and legally recognized rights or a modicum of honour, but rather because it was hubris, as a disposition to overstep and overestimate one's claims to honour (although manifested in concrete acts), that was deemed unacceptable. The article also investigates the implications of the law for our understanding of the connectedness of ‘legal’ and allegedly ‘extra-legal’ spaces, as well as advocating an understanding of honour that is not necessarily competitive and zero-sum, but also cooperative and aimed at securing smooth social interaction in all spheres of social life.

Keywords

hubrishonourslaveryAthenian law
Type
Research Article
Information
The Journal of Hellenic Studies , Volume 138 , 2018 , pp. 100 - 126
Copyright
Copyright © The Society for the Promotion of Hellenic Studies 2018 

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Footnotes

*

mirko.canevaro@ed.ac.uk. This article has benefitted from invaluable feedback from David Lewis, Edward Harris, Alberto Esu, Matteo Barbato, the two anonymous reviewers as well as the editor of JHS and audiences at the CA/CAS Annual Conference 2016, the University of Nottingham, Verona and Bowdoin College. The Leverhulme Trust has funded much of the time spent working on it with a Philip Leverhulme Prize.