Honor

Honor is the warrior's supreme good: the public recognition of worth that makes life meaningful and death bearable.

Honor is one of three causes of war — and the democratic polis makes it available to citizens, not only to heroes.

Honor is the proper reward of virtue — but the magnanimous person is not dependent on it.

Biography is moral instruction: the Lives show how honor and virtue track each other, and when they part.

The Romans' love of glory was real virtue — but it was pride, and pride is the root of all sin.

Honor is owed in justice to genuine excellence, but its supreme object is God — vainglory distorts by seeking it for oneself.

Fame is unreliable and perishable; honor worth having is a matter of private conscience, not public regard.

Honor is the social valuation of power — nothing more, and all the classical vocabulary of virtue is either confusion or self-flattery.

The honor that men kill and die for is a collective fiction — and the novels show, in detail, what it costs.