7 - Hubris and the legal regulation of sexual violence

Summary

Hubris has recurred as a theme throughout the past three chapters. Its employment in orations like Against Meidias and Against Conon has indicated its intimate connection to the nexus of honor, insult, humiliation, and revenge. Although we do not know how often cases for hubris were brought, the wealth of rhetorical uses to which speakers put this emotionally laden concept indicates that it loomed large in the Athenian consciousness. Offenses against honor are no longer an important part of modern legal culture, but in agonistic societies like Greece or Rome honor was the basis of social identity, and hubris and iniuria were important legal categories. Indeed, Aristotle (Pol. 1267b39) reports that Hippodamus' theory of law embraced only three categories, death, damage, and hubris, because he considered these the only three things about which men litigate. In the cases discussed in Chapter 6, hubris chiefly occurred in contexts of insults involving physical violence and verbal abuse, though in a number of cases it appeared to be aimed at sexual honor as well. This was the case with violent intrusions into the house and into the presence of the female members of the family (Against Meidias, Against Simon), with sexual insults against female family members (Against Teisis), with coercive sexual intercourse (Against Simon), and with physical violence involving a degradation of the sexual integrity appropriate to a citizen (Against Conon).