The aim of this study was to demonstrate the complexity of the economy that lay behind the rise of Rome and the importance of archaeological evidence as a historical source. As a matter of fact, no history of early Rome can now be written without a full and up-to-date knowledge of the archaeological evidence, and the more this evidence increases, the less credible the romantic and primitivist image of a pastoral archaic Latium will become.

This chapter examines further changes in elite honor and shame in the Eastern Han. First, it traces the elevation of writing, earlier treated as consolation for a failed political career or entertainment that demeaned the author. During the late Western and Eastern Han, several writers invoked the ideal of the hermit to justify a life of retirement devoted to study and writing. Historical figures such as Confucius or the Duke of Zhou were portrayed as writers, as were the hidden sages of the Zhuangzi. This facilitated new genres—funeral inscription, critical essay, and shorter verse forms for self-expression—where the late Han sought honor through writing. Second, it examines the emergence in the late Han of “factions (dang ?)” defined in part through the practice of “pure discussion (qing yi ??).” These groups, like the newly celebrated writers, cited the ideal of “social eremitism” to justify refusing government offices. They criticized eunuchs and imperial affines, as well as leading officials and scholars who still served the state.

The Old Kingdom covers roughly the period 2682–2060 BCE and comprises primarily the Third to Sixth Dynasties. Technically, the rule of a single king at Memphis continued into the Eighth Dynasty (Papazian 2015), but because little evidence outside of the names of kings, particularly in the Abydos King List, is preserved, the Old Kingdom after the Sixth Dynasty is not included in this study. The Old Kingdom begins with the Third Dynasty, for which the Turin King List gives the names of five kings and a total number of seventy-four years for their reigns. Five Horus names of kings are known from inscriptional evidence dating to this dynasty, but there are difficulties matching these Horus names with the nsw-bit (nsw bit), or “King of Upper and Lower Egypt,” crown names used in the Turin List.

This chapter examines the role of honor and shame in defining the warrior nobility that dominated the valleys of the Yellow and Yangzi Rivers in the early Eastern Zhou (770 - ca. 500 BCE). In this society honor reflected one’s hereditary place in the hierarchy of nobility, and also one’s heroism or success in battle. Shame was primarily a matter of failing to exhibit such heroism. Such honor was entirely masculine, and its two aspects were frequently in conflict, as ascribed status was established by seniority, while the heroism was often a hallmark of youth. This personal honor gained through heroism, which often figured in overthrowing a ruler or destroying a state, is our earliest example of constituting a public order separate from the formal political realm, and how such alternate honor helped to transform the social order.

This monograph has traced how the changing language of honor and shame helped to articulate and justify the transformations of Chinese society between the Warring States and the end of the Han dynasty. This role was made possible by the fact, demonstrated by previous studies, that the honor–shame discourse justified the actions of diverse and potentially rival groups, that groups thus formed often furthered significant social changes, and that honor was particularly important to motivate actions for a public good by people who are not formally part of the state. Over the centuries of early China, the formally recognized political order was intertwined with groups articulating alternative models of honor, groups who both participated in the existing order (without formal recognition) and whose visions of what was truly glorious facilitated the transition to subsequent political structures.

This study covers approximately 1,000 years, centering on two broad periods of pharaonic civilization referred to by scholars as kingdoms: the Old Kingdom and the earlier part of the Middle Kingdom, when the state is reunified and reformed. Later there would be changes in the New Kingdom that follows. These, in large part, were brought about by external forces and foreign peoples, but, for the most part, New Kingdom kingship, state administration, and, in the early New Kingdom, royal marriage patterns, were based on Middle Kingdom practice developed from that of the Old Kingdom. The Old Kingdom lasted roughly from 2686 to 2181 BCE, and the Middle Kingdom from 2055 to 1650 BCE (Shaw 2004, 184).

Kingship and ancient Egyptian civilization are virtually synonymous. Rule by a single king over the land of Egypt began in around 3300 BCE and was intrinsic to the country thereafter: pharaoh was Egypt. When central control came undone, as it did at the end of the Old Kingdom, the state was reunited and re-formed by a king claiming divine birth and authority, returning to the basic tenets of kingship developed early on in the first few dynasties and cemented in place by the beginning of the Old Kingdom. As seen in late Predynastic Hierakonpolis, the power of the king was symbolized quite physically not only in the strength of wild animals but in the ability to defeat them. The king’s control of chaos, in the form of hunting animals and defeating foreigners, was depicted in art for the rest of pharaonic history.

This chapter examines the impact of the emergence of a unified empire on the ideas about honor and shame that defined the social elite that filled state offices, and distinguished them from elite competitors. First, scholars redefined the relation between the ruler and his officials, trying to forge them into a united body where the honor of each party depended on the honor of the other. Second, people increasingly granted status to several forms of intellectual expertise. Masters of the classical language received positions and increasing prestige for their skills. Similarly, titularly low officials who mastered legal texts secured considerable power, and claimed a higher status. Finally, Sima Qian claimed the right, patterned on Confucius, to pass judgments that honored or shamed those about whom he wrote. This developed the tension between scholars and the ruler that had emerged in the Warring States. The chapter also examines how the increasing merger of intellectuals and powerful families was reflected in tensions between the claims of scholarship and careers, and devotion to the family. Han authors carried forward the Warring States discourse distinguishing a true elite that worked for honor or morality, while rejecting conventional devotion to material wealth.

This chapter examines other aspects of the shifting structure of honor that defined Han society. First, it traces the evolution of the bravo (xia) associations in local communities. In the Western Han these were defined by killing or dying for one’s fellows, insisting on honoring one’s word, and devotion to duty. In the Eastern Han, the xia were increasingly defined through forming social networks—often including officials and nobles—in place of the violence that had been central. The chapter also examines how the family was increasingly declared to be both honorable and politically significant. Locally powerful families increasingly claimed the status of scholar or “man of service (shi),” and secured recognition as authorities in their communities. Thus kin-based elements of local society that were not formally part of the state became crucial to its functioning, and remained so in all later empires in continental East Asia. The importance of honor to these families was articulated in the emergent genre of the funerary inscription, which claimed to bestow immortal fame and celebrated the new ideal type of the retired social hermit who served and morally transformed his local community.

Traditionally, the beginning of the Fifth Dynasty has been tied to a story in the Westcar Papyrus, in which the wife of a priest of the sun god gives birth to triplets. Goddesses appeared to help with the birth, and, as each male child was born, Meskhenet, the divine midwife, said: “A king who will assume the kingship in this whole land” (Lichtheim 1973, 220). Many books about the history of ancient Egypt interpret this story quite literally, stating that the first three kings of the Fifth Dynasty, Userkaf, Sahura, and Neferirkara, were brothers who were born as triplets. This situation is no longer accepted as history, although it is possible that the story may reflect the situation of Queen Khentkaues I, who appears to have been the mother of two kings.

A literary text, The Prophecy of Neferti, is used to shed light on the beginning of the reign of Amenemhat I (Berman 1985, 19). The text, written in the Eighteenth Dynasty of the New Kingdom but set in the Fourth Dynasty reign of King Sneferu, describes a future in which the situation in Egypt will be a time of civil strife, disorder, and foreign invasion. “Then a king will come from the South, Ameny, the justified, by name, son of a woman of Ta-seti, child of Upper Egypt” (Lichtheim 1973, 143). The name Ameny is short for Amenemhat (Posener 1956, 22–23).