The Truth about Hubris

Hubris is one of the most misunderstood concepts in Ancient Greek mythology and religion, and that starts to become a real problem when Hellenic pagans start throwing the word “hubris” at people.

One of the things we all learned in Mythology 101 is that hubris is the greatest sin against the gods, and it usually consists of saying that you’re better than a god at a certain thing (like Arachne claiming she’s better at weaving than Athena, Marsayas claiming to be a better musician than Apollo, Niobe mocking Leto for having only two children instead of fourteen, and Cassiopeia for saying she was prettier than the sea nymphs). The god will promptly throw a hissy fit, cause a lot of damage, and maybe torture you for all eternity in Tartarus. Right? No. As is typical of concepts in Greek mythology, it’s more nuanced than that.

In English, the word “hubris” means “excessive pride or self-confidence.” Under that definition, it seems intuitive that hubris would describe “being so arrogant that you compare yourself to the gods.” But that’s not actually what hubris is. Or… it is, but pride alone is not the reason why it’s hubris. In Greek, ῠ̔́βρις or hybris has a specifically violent connotation. There’s no exact translation for it. Hybris is a deliberate, spiteful, audacious act of violence, often motivated by one’s own arrogance and the desire to dishonor someone else. In Rhetoric, Aristotle defines hybris as “…a form of slighting, since it consists in doing and saying things that cause shame to the victim, not in order that anything may happen to yourself, or because anything has happened to yourself, but simply for the pleasure involved.” In short, hybris is being an asshole to someone else for the sake of your own satisfaction. It’s not a momentary lapse in judgement, it’s not a result of “passion” (strong emotion), it’s not simply arrogance, and it’s not perfectly analogous to blasphemy.

Hybris is:

So, all three (well, four) of the named mortal souls who are punished in Tartarus were guilty of hybris of the highest order. One of them (Sisyphus) tried to escape death, which is self-explanatory. Two of them (Pirithous and Ixion) tried to rape goddesses — it takes a special kind of arrogance to attempt to violently drag a divine being down to the level of a social inferior. The last one (Tantalus) either tried to steal immortality (self-explanatory) or fed his own son to the Olympians in an attempt to make a fool of them (yikes). I think it’s unlikely that a modern person in real life would be guilty of any of those things.

Bellerophon often gets brought up as the go-to example of hubris, and while his downfall is a good example, it also leads to misunderstandings about what exactly hubris is in the context of Ancient Greece. Bellerophon is guilty of hybris not just because he’s proud, but because he tries to personally lay siege to the gods’ palace until they let him in. It’s a violation of the natural order, and a result of that special kind of arrogance, to think you are entitled to a place among the gods. Heroes can achieve apotheosis and end up on Olympus, but that only happens through having been granted immortality by the gods themselves. By jumping the gun, Bellerophon ruined his chance of that ever happening. There’s a big difference between coming to someone’s house because you’ve been invited, and breaking down the door claiming that you deserve to be there.

The example of hybris that I was given in a class on Greek drama was that of the House of Atreus. Atreus and his brother Thyestes murdered their own brother, Khrysippos, usually out of petty jealousy for his beauty or a succession-related dispute. Kinslaying is considered a special kind of evil in Ancient Greece, and killing Khrysippos for the sake of their own power makes this an act of hybris. Atreus’ entire line is cursed as a result of this. (Poor Khrysippos was also kidnapped and raped by Laius — yes, that one — making him the unwitting cause of more than one family curse.) In some stories, Atreus repeats the act of hybris that sent his grandfather Tantalus to Tartarus by killing Thyestes’ sons and then serving them to him. Atreus’ son, Agamemnon, commits an act of hybris against Achilles by denying him his due honors at the beginning of the Iliad. He takes Bresias just because he can, for the express purpose of slighting Achilles. Achilles is justafiably pissed off about this, but Athena stops Achilles from murdering Agamemnon outright. After the war, Agamemnon is literally stabbed in the back by his wife Clytemnestra, and Clytemnestra is killed in retribution by her son Orestes. Orestes finally breaks this vicious cycle by submitting to the will of the gods in The Oresteia.

So you see, hybris is usually violent, always motivated by spite or cruelty in addition to pride, and it’s kind of hard to commit by accident. The particular type of pride that it concerns also isn’t genuine confidence, or legitimate pride in one’s achievements. It’s believing that you are above consequences. That’s why the gods themselves so often have to intervene to punish those who are guilty of hybris. Such a person deserves divine retribution for having the audacity to think they can get away with their act of violence or dishonor.

The way “hubris” is treated among modern Hellenic pagans is often analogous to the Christian concept of blasphemy, or even heresy. “Hubris” gets thrown at people with different theological interpretations, people who don’t show an “appropriate” amount of reverence and/or submissiveness towards the gods, people who relate to the gods on their own terms instead of using traditional methods, sometimes even people who are proud of their own accomplishments. Because pride is a particularly grievous sin in Christianity, and most neopagans come from Christian backgrounds, the “pride” aspect of hybris gets emphasized over the aspects relating to violence or degradation.

Considering oneself equal to the gods, or viewing the gods as archetypes rather than as individuals, might have been hybris from the perspective of an Ancient Greek. But I completely understand that some people, especially people who have experienced religious trauma related to Christianity, need to distance themselves from the idea of the Divine being superior to oneself in order to have any interaction with them at all. The gods haven’t blamed me for my need to paint myself as their equal when I was a teenager, because that was my adolescent rebelliousness talking and not a personal slight against them. (Also, looking back, I’ve always had a great deal of reverence for the gods since I was very little, which is why inaccurate or unflattering portrayals of them in media anger me so much. I loved The Song of Achilles, but I do not plan on reading Circe.) It’s a simple fact that different people relate to the gods in different ways, and whether or not the gods are insulted by any particular approach is ultimately their call. Shaming a person for hubris might be an act of hybris itself, if you’re motivated by a need to feel superior to them.

To avoid hybris, all one needs to do is be cognizant of one’s place in the world, not in the sense of “know your place, slave!” but in the sense of acknowledging your relationship to other people and to the wider Kosmos. You are part of and connected to everything, so acting like you are somehow inherently better than or categorically separate from the rest of humanity (let alone the gods) is an affront, and enables acts of violence. A person who’s hubristic is too arrogant to genuinely learn anything or improve as a person. Realizing that you are but a small human, no different from anyone else, is an important step towards genuinely and healthily recognizing one’s own divinity.

If you want to know more about this subject, I recommend Aliakai’s video on it. I found very useful in composing this essay.

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