Hubris was the central moral concept of Greek culture, the excessive pride or arrogance that brought down even the greatest heroes. The word “hubris” comes from the Greek hybris, meaning excessive pride, insolence, or violence, particularly toward the gods. The opposite of hubris was sophrosyne, self-control, moderation, and humility. The Greeks believed that hubris inevitably led to nemesis, divine retribution, and that those who committed hubris would be punished by the gods, often in this life rather than the next. The theme of hubris runs through Greek tragedy, history, and philosophy, and it remains a powerful moral concept in Western thought.
The Concept of Hubris
Hubris was not simply pride or self-confidence. It was a specific kind of arrogance, the kind that insulted the gods, that violated the natural order, or that was excessive in some other way. The Greeks defined hubris as the act of going beyond one’s limits, of overstepping the boundaries set by the gods.
The most common forms of hubris were:
- Hubris toward the gods: boasting that one is equal to or greater than the gods, refusing to acknowledge their power, or violating their temples and rites.
- Hubris toward other humans: treating other humans with excessive cruelty, especially toward those who are weaker, poorer, or in some other way vulnerable.
- Hubris in one’s own success: becoming so arrogant in success that one forgets the gods’ role in it, or that the gods can take it away.
- Hubris in violence: using violence in a way that is excessive, cruel, or that violates the laws of hospitality.
The punishment for hubris was nemesis, divine retribution, which often came in the form of a reversal of fortune, a tragic downfall, or a death that came just as the hubristic person was about to achieve their goal.
The Examples of Hubris in Greek Myth
The myths of Greek culture are full of examples of hubris and its consequences. Here are some of the most famous.
Arachne
Arachne was a mortal weaver who boasted that her weaving was superior to that of Athena. She challenged the goddess to a contest, and Athena, in disguise, accepted. Arachne wove a beautiful tapestry depicting the loves of the gods, including their many infidelities. Athena, enraged, tore the tapestry and struck Arachne, who hanged herself in despair. Athena, relenting, turned her into a spider, condemned to weave forever.
Icarus
Icarus was the son of Daedalus, the great craftsman. Daedalus made wings of feathers and wax for himself and his son, and they escaped from Crete by flying. Icarus, ignoring his father’s warning, flew too close to the sun, and the wax of his wings melted. He fell into the sea and drowned.
Ajax
Ajax the Greater was a great Greek warrior at Troy. After the death of Achilles, Ajax competed with Odysseus for the armor of the hero. When the armor was awarded to Odysseus, Ajax, in a rage, planned to kill the Greek leaders. The goddess Athena drove him mad, and he slaughtered a flock of sheep, thinking they were the Greek leaders. When he came to his senses, he was so ashamed that he fell on his sword and died.
Niobe
Niobe was the queen of Thebes, the wife of King Amphion. She boasted that she was superior to Leto because she had fourteen children while Leto had only two. Leto’s children, Apollo and Artemis, shot all of Niobe’s children with their arrows. Niobe wept until she was turned to stone.
Bellerophon
Bellerophon, the hero who tamed Pegasus and killed the Chimera, eventually became so arrogant that he decided to fly to Olympus to claim a place among the gods. Zeus, angered by his hubris, sent a gadfly to sting Pegasus, and Bellerophon was thrown from the horse and fell back to earth, where he wandered alone and blind until he died.
Achilles
Even Achilles, the greatest of Greek heroes, was guilty of hubris. After killing Hector, he dragged the Trojan hero’s body behind his chariot, in violation of the Greek custom of treating the dead with respect. The gods, angered, sent Apollo to guide Paris’s arrow that killed Achilles.
Hubris in Greek Tragedy
The theme of hubris was central to Greek tragedy. The great tragic playwrights, including Aeschylus, Sophocles, and Euripides, used hubris as the central conflict of their plays, with the hubristic hero or ruler being brought down by their own arrogance.
The most famous example is the Oedipus Rex of Sophocles, in which Oedipus, the king of Thebes, refuses to acknowledge the possibility of his own guilt in the murder of King Laius. His refusal to acknowledge the truth, his certainty that he is right and everyone else is wrong, is the hubris that brings about his downfall. The play ends with Oedipus blinding himself, having realized that the truth is more terrible than he could have imagined.
The Agamemnon of Aeschylus, the first play of the Oresteia, tells the story of Agamemnon’s return from Troy, only to be murdered by his wife Clytemnestra. Agamemnon’s hubris, his insistence on walking on the purple tapestries that Clytemnestra has laid out for him, is the act that seals his fate.
The Prometheus Bound of Aeschylus, attributed to Aeschylus but possibly by another author, tells the story of Prometheus, who is punished by Zeus for giving fire to humanity. Prometheus’s crime is not hubris in the usual sense, but the play has been interpreted as a meditation on the relationship between the gods and humanity, and on the dangers of challenging divine power.
Hubris in Greek Philosophy
The Greek philosophers also grappled with the concept of hubris. Plato, in his dialogues, discussed hubris as one of the greatest threats to the ideal state. He argued that the just man must avoid hubris, and that the unjust man is inevitably hubristic. The Republic is structured around the idea that the just city is the one in which each citizen performs his own function without overreaching.
Aristotle, in his Nicomachean Ethics, discussed the concept of the “golden mean,” the idea that virtue lies between two extremes. Hubris is the extreme of excess, the opposite of which is servility. The virtuous man avoids both extremes.
The Greek historians, including Herodotus and Thucydides, also used the concept of hubris to explain the rise and fall of empires. Herodotus, in his Histories, told the story of the Persian Wars as a tale of hubris and nemesis, with the Persian king Xerxes being brought low by his own arrogance. Thucydides, in his History of the Peloponnesian War, used the concept to explain the Athenian expedition to Sicily, which ended in disaster.
The Modern Legacy of Hubris
The concept of hubris has had a powerful influence on Western thought. The English word “hubris” has been borrowed directly from the Greek, and it is used to describe excessive pride or arrogance, particularly in the context of politics, business, or war. The phrase “hubris syndrome” has been used by psychologists to describe the excessive confidence of leaders who have been in power too long.
The hubris of Icarus has been a popular subject in modern art, including the famous Brueghel painting Landscape with the Fall of Icarus, which is also the subject of W.H. Auden’s poem “Musée des Beaux Arts.” The hubris of Oedipus is the central theme of Sophocles’s play, and it has been the subject of countless modern adaptations, including the Oedipus Rex of Stravinsky and Cocteau, and the various films and novels of the 20th and 21st centuries.
The hubris of Prometheus, in particular, has been a central theme in modern literature. Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein is subtitled “The Modern Prometheus,” and it tells the story of a scientist whose hubris in creating life leads to his downfall. The theme of the scientist whose discoveries lead to disaster is in modern literature, and it is a direct descendant of the Greek myth of hubris.
For more on the cultural legacy, see our guide to Greek mythology in modern culture, and our profiles of Oedipus, Prometheus, and Icarus.