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Published online by Cambridge University Press: 16 May 2025
This article investigates honour and recognition dynamics involving babies. By drawing on modern theories and experimental studies of infants’ psychology, selected case studies from Classical Greek literature and philosophical accounts will be interpreted in terms of basic intersubjective mechanisms. Case studies from Herodotus and Menander show that babies were intuitively perceived as agents capable of putting forth implicit demands to recognition and respect. Passages from Plato reveal that babies were regarded as possessing embryonic forms of a sense of dignity and entitlement. The article thus demonstrates that babies were involved in basic dynamics of honour and recognition. Overall, these mechanisms can be seen as the psychological and social foundation of the fully fledged version of timê, the Greek notion that captures the range of bidirectional dynamics of honour, recognition and respect which stand at the basis of human interaction and sociality.
This article is based on my research for the ERC Advanced Grant project ‘Honour in Classical Greece’ (The University of Edinburgh); funding from Fondazione 1563 per l’Arte e la Cultura has allowed me to complete it. I thank Douglas Cairns, Mirko Canevaro, Kleanthis Mantzouranis, Alberto Esu, Linda Rocchi and Matteo Zaccarini for their valuable feedback. Valuable insights were also provided by Richard Rawles, Ruth Scodel and the audience of the final symposium of the HCG project. I want to thank also CQ’s reader and editor for their helpful suggestions.
1 See M. Golden, Children and Childhood in Classical Athens (Baltimore, 1990; second edition Baltimore and London, 2015); J. Evans-Grubbs, T.G. Parkin and R. Bell (edd.), The Oxford Handbook of Childhood and Education in the Classical World (Oxford, 2013); R. Aasgaard and C. Horn (edd.), Childhood in History: Perceptions of Children in the Ancient and Medieval Worlds (Routledge, 2018). For iconographical and archaeological accounts, see M.-C. Crelier, Kinder in Athen im gesellschaftlichen Wandel des 5. Jahrhunderts v. Chr.: eine archäologische Annäherung (Basel, 2008); L.A. Beaumont, Childhood in Ancient Athens: Iconography and Social History (New York and London, 2013); M. Sommer and D. Sommer, Care, Socialization, and Play in Ancient Attica: A Developmental Childhood Archaeological Approach (Aarhus, 2015); L.A. Beaumont, M. Dillon and N. Harrington, Children in Antiquity. Perspectives and Experiences of Childhood in the Ancient Mediterranean (New York and London, 2021). On children in literature, see W.B. Ingalls, ‘Attitudes towards children in the Iliad’, EMC 42 (1998), 13–34; E.M. Griffiths, Children in Greek Tragedy: Pathos and Potential (Oxford, 2020).
2 An early acknowledgment of this can be found in J.-C. Riedinger, ‘Remarques sur la τιμή chez Homère’, REG 89 (1976), 244–64; J.-C. Riedinger, ‘Les deux αἰδώς chez Homère’, RPh 54 (1980), 62–79. The turning point is represented by D.L. Cairns, Aidōs: The Psychology and Ethics of Honour and Shame in Ancient Greek Literature (Oxford, 1993). For further contributions to this trend see Ø. Rabbås, ‘Virtue, respect, and morality in Aristotle’, The Journal of Value Inquiry 49 (2015), 619–43; M. Canevaro, ‘The public charge for hubris against slaves: the honour of the victim and the honour of the hubristēs’, JHS 138 (2018), 100–26; D.L. Cairns, M. Canevaro and K. Mantzouranis, ‘Aristotle on the causes of civil strife: subjective dispositions, proportional justice and the occasions of stasis’, Maia 62 (2020), 551–70; D.L. Cairns, M. Canevaro and K. Mantzouranis, ‘Recognition and redistribution in Aristotle’s account of stasis’, Polis 39 (2022), 1–34; L. Rocchi, ‘From (apt) contempt to (legal) dishonor: two kinds of contempt and the penalty of atimia’, Emotion Review 15 (2023), 200–6.
3 The story is told by the Corinthian Socles, in the longest speech delivered by anyone in the Histories. For an analysis of the speech that accounts for its wider narrative functions see J.L. Moles, ‘“Saving” Greece from the “ignominy” of tyranny? The “famous” and “wonderful” speech of Socles (5.92)’, in E. Irwin and E. Greenwood (edd.), Reading Herodotus. A Study of the Logoi in Book 5 of Herodotus’ Histories (Cambridge, 2007), 245–68; see 258–61 specifically on the episode of baby Cypselus and the ironical twist that a baby saved by pity is destined to become a pitiless tyrant. The article is reprinted in J. Marincola (ed.), The Collected Papers of J.L. Moles, vol. 2 (Leiden, 2023), 462–89.
4 Transl. R. Waterfield, Herodotus: The Histories (Oxford, 2008), adapted.
5 Arist. Rh. 2.1385b13–14. Aristotle regularly uses axia for what common Greek language refers to as timê in the sense of claims, rights and entitlements; see Rabbås (n. 2) and D.L. Cairns, ‘Aristotle on hybris and injustice’, in C. Veillard, O. Renaut and D. El Murr (edd.), Les philosophes face au vice, de Socrate à Augustin (Leiden, 2020), 147–74.
6 See D. Konstan, Pity Transformed (London, 2004). For criticism, see D.L. Cairns, ‘Pity in the classical world. Review article’, Hermathena 176 (2004), 59–74.
7 According to the Oxford Dictionary of Social Sciences, intersubjectivity ‘concerns the relations between people, rather than within them (subjectivity) or beyond them (objectivity or transcendental reality). More generally, it describes a broad trend in twentieth-century philosophy and social science that privileges communication between people and shared understanding over individual consciousness and concepts of objective knowledge.’
8 The role of phantasia in Aristotle’s account of emotions can be taken as an example of the relevance of intersubjectivity in Greek thought. Clearly Aristotle is neither a subjectivist, nor an objectivist: in the way he frames his account of emotions, it is the way we construe a certain situation that determines our emotions, as well as our attitude and behaviour towards others, who likewise will react on the basis of their own construal of the situation. Thus, in Aristotle’s account people interact in fundamentally intersubjective ways. On phantasia (usually translated as imagination) see V. Caston, ‘Phantasia and thought’, in G. Anagnostopoulos (ed.), A Companion to Aristotle (Chichester, 2009), 322–34; J.D. Moss, Aristotle on the Apparent Good: Perception, Phantasia, Thought, and Desire (Oxford, 2012); E. Rabinoff, Perception in Aristotle’s Ethics (Evanston, IL, 2018).
9 J.G. Fichte, Grundlage des Naturrechts: nach Prinzipien der Wissenschaftslehre (Jena and Leipzig, 1796); also S. Gallagher, Action and Interaction (Oxford, 2020), 187–9. Fichte’s intersubjective understanding of reality can also be found, mutatis mutandis, in Hegel; see e.g. the dialectical relationship of master and slave.
10 A. Honneth, The Struggle for Recognition: The Moral Grammar of Social Conflicts (Cambridge, 1995).
11 The following overview of the main developmental stages relies on M. Tomasello, Becoming Human: A Theory of Ontogeny (Cambridge, MA, and London, 2019). On primary intersubjectivity see C. Trevarthen, ‘Communication and cooperation in early infancy: a description of primary intersubjectivity’, in M. Bullowa (ed.), Before Speech: The Beginning of Human Communication (Cambridge, 1979), 321–47; Gallagher (n. 9), 101–6 provides a short résumé of relevant studies and findings.
12 Around their ninth month, children also develop secondary intersubjectivity, that is a form of person-person-object awareness: nine-month-old babies can recognize an adult’s intentions with regard to an object and interact with the adult according to so-called shared intentionality. Around the baby’s third year, collective intentionality also emerges: children become able to understand objective and normative aspects of their cultural environment.
13 In a study, forty-two-minute-old children are examined: A.N. Meltzoff and M.K. Moore, ‘Newborn infants imitate adult facial gestures’, Child Development 54 (1983), 702–9. See also A.N. Meltzoff, ‘Foundations for developing a concept of self: the role of imitation in relating self to other and the value of social mirroring, social modeling, and self practice in infancy’, in D. Cicchetti and M. Beeghly (edd.), The Self in Transition: Infancy to Childhood (Chicago, 1990), 139–64.
14 See L. Murray and C. Trevarthen, ‘Emotion regulation of interactions between two-month-old infants and their mothers’, in T.M. Field and N.A. Fox (edd.), Social Perception in Infants (Norwood, NJ, 1985), 177–97; Gallagher (n. 9), 104, 198–9, 240.
15 On babies’ sense of justice in interaction, see Gallagher (n. 9), 240.
16 Gallagher (n. 9), 190; Honneth (n. 10), 96–107.
17 See A.N. Meltzoff, ‘“Like me”: a foundation for social cognition’, Developmental Science 10 (2007), 126–34.
18 On infants’ anger, see M. von Salisch and C. Saarni, ‘The development and function of anger in childhood and adolescence’, in F. Pahlavan (ed.), Multiple Facets of Anger: Getting Mad or Restoring Justice? (New York, 2011), 81–101. For studies of cross-cultural differences in infants’ expression of anger, see L.A. Camras, H. Oster, R. Bakeman, Z. Meng, T. Ujiie and J.J. Campos, ‘Do infants show distinct negative facial expressions for fear and anger? Emotional expression in eleven-month-old European American, Chinese, and Japanese infants’, Infancy 11 (2007), 131–55. On shame, see S.V. Botto and P. Rochat, ‘Evaluative Audience Perception (EAP): how children come to care about reputation’, Child Development Perspectives 13 (2019), 180–5: they show that infants as young as fourteen months already assume that one’s own behaviour or appearance could be, or will be, evaluated by others either positively or negatively, and have a general preference towards eliciting positive as opposed to negative evaluations from others. Of particular interest is also C. Colonnesi, S.M. Bögels, W. de Vente and M. Majdandžić, ‘What coy smiles say about positive shyness in early infancy’, Infancy 18 (2013), 202–20: a coy smile in four-month-old babies is an early sign of social competence and sensitivity.
19 Transl. W.G. Arnott, Menander, vol. 3 (Cambridge, MA, and London, 2000), adapted.
20 The importance of gender should be acknowledged in these dynamics. In iconography (see n. 1 for references), while it is hard to find scenes of interaction with children, and even harder to infer much from them in terms of infants’ psychology, it is usually nurses who are depicted holding babies and interacting with them; even mothers are rarely portrayed holding their children. The most common depiction is the funerary theme of the mother holding her hands towards her child, held by a nurse, to express the severance of their tie. See S. Waite and E. Gooch, ‘Marginalising maternity: iconography as evidence for social ideologies in Classical Athens’, Childhood in the Past 16 (2023), 84–109. In general, it was a commonplace that women were more predisposed to take care of and cherish babies: e.g. Arist. Eth. Nic. 9.1168a24–7.
21 Admittedly, the nurse later tells the other servants to wash the baby (252–3), so it might be objected that the child was crying because of a physical discomfort, but the baby stops crying when the nurse cuddles him, meaning that emotional recognition is an essential aspect of the interaction.
22 See Trevarthen (n. 11) for studies on this mirroring effect from adults.
23 On the meanings and effects of gaze, looks and lack thereof, see D.L. Cairns, ‘Bullish looks and sidelong glances: social interaction and the eyes in ancient Greek culture’, in D.L. Cairns (ed.), Body Language in the Greek and Roman Worlds (Swansea, 2005), 123–55.
24 For the importance of honour in supplication, see J. Gould, ‘Hiketeia’, JHS 93 (1973), 74–103, reprinted with an addendum in J. Gould, Myth, Ritual, Memory, and Exchange: Essays in Greek Literature and Culture (Oxford, 2001), 22–77.
25 This scene also illustrates very well the embodied and intuitive nature of these dynamics; see Gallagher (n. 9) for the construal of other people’s emotional states and intentions as an embodied dynamic, embedded in interaction and perception.
26 See Cairns (n. 6) for a discussion of Konstan’s ideas on pity and desert.
27 Transl. W.G. Arnott, Menander, vol. 1 (Cambridge, MA, and London, 1979), adapted.
28 For comments on the lexical choices in these lines, see W.D. Furley, Menander: Epitrepontes (London, 2009), and A.W. Gomme and F.H. Sandbach, Menander: A Commentary (Oxford, 1973). As Sandbach notes, sôma here signifies human being, person, a standard meaning of the word when it is not qualified. Until the fourth century at least, as reflected also in the Attic orators (cf. e.g. Dem. 20.77 αἰχμάλωτα σώματα; Aeschin. 1.16 οἰκϵτικὰ σώματα), sôma needs to go with specific attributes to identify slaves, whereas in Polybius it can refer to slaves without further qualifications (LSJ s.v. II 2; CGL s.v. 7).
29 In all our case studies, the baby is male. Evidence for respect towards female babies is harder to find; evidence for respect towards female and male small children might be found in Hyperides’ fragmentary speech Against Timandrus, where the speaker construes as deeply disrespectful the fact that Timandrus separated a young girl from her sister and brother, growing her up in his house and taking her to Lemnos when she was seven. The three siblings were all very young, since their eldest brother died at ten. See N. Tchernetska, E. Handley, C. Austin and L. Horváth, ‘New readings in the fragment of Hyperides’ “Against Timandros” from the Archimedes palimpsest’, ZPE 162 (2007), 1–4; K. Backler, ‘Sisterhood, affection and enslavement in Hyperides’ Against Timandrus’, CQ 72 (2022), 469–86.
30 On Plato’s views of children, see M. Grahn-Wilder, ‘Roots of character and flowers of virtues: a philosophy of childhood in Plato’s Republic’, in R. Aasgaard, C. Horn and O.M. Cojocaru (edd.), Childhood in History: Perceptions of Children in the Ancient and Medieval Worlds (New York and London, 2018), 19–36; on Aristotle’s, H.J. Fossheim, ‘Aristotle on children and childhood’, in R. Aasgaard, C. Horn and O.M. Cojocaru (edd.), Childhood in History: Perceptions of Children in the Ancient and Medieval Worlds (New York and London, 2018), 37–55.
31 For Plato, see A. Hobbs, Plato and the Hero: Courage, Manliness and the Impersonal Good (Cambridge, 2000); J. Frère, Ardeur et colère: le thumos platonicien (Paris, 2004); D.L. Cairns, ‘ψυχή, θυμός, and metaphor in Homer and Plato’, Études platoniciennes 11 (2014), 1–41; J. Wilburn, The Political Soul: Plato on Thumos, Spirited Motivation, and the City (Oxford, 2021). On thymos in Aristotle, see G. Pearson, Aristotle on Desire (Cambridge, 2012); V. Saenz, ‘Shame and honor: Aristotle’s thumos as a basic desire’, Apeiron 51 (2018), 73–95; M. Jimenez, Aristotle on Shame and Learning to Be Good (Oxford, 2020).
32 Transl. C.J. Emlyn-Jones and W. Preddy, Plato: Republic (Cambridge, MA, and London, 2013), adapted.
33 Transl. C.D.C. Reeve, Aristotle: Politics (Indianapolis, 1998), adapted.
34 Transl. R.G. Bury, Plato: Laws (Cambridge, MA, 1926).
35 Pl. Leg. 7.792e κυριώτατον γὰρ οὖν ἐμϕύϵται πᾶσι τότϵ τὸ πᾶν ἦθος διὰ ἔθος ‘For because of the force of habit, it is in infancy that the whole character is most effectually determined’, transl. Bury (n. 34). τότϵ must link back to τὸν ἀρτίως νϵογϵνῆ, ‘the new-born babe’, in the preceding sentence.
36 T. Griffith and M. Schofield, Plato: Laws (Cambridge, 2016), adapted.
37 A similar point was made centuries later by the author of the pseudo-Plutarchian treatise On the Education of Children (12), claiming that excessive praise would make children conceited and excessively proud. On the treatise and its authorship, see E.G. Berry, ‘The De Liberis Educandis of Pseudo-Plutarch’, HSPh 63 (1958), 387–99.
38 E. Goffman, ‘The nature of deference and demeanor’, American Anthropologist 58 (1956), 473–502; deference is the attitude of honour and recognition we bestow on others, whereas demeanour captures our projected social image and our demonstration of dignity and self-respect.