This article examines the two families of denominative verbs from the semantic field of atimia: atimaô/atimoô and atimazô. By analysing their use in the Attic orators and other major prose texts from the Classical period (Herodotus, Thucydides, Xenophon, Plato and Aristotle), the article shows that these verbs were consistently employed in differentiated, well-defined ways: atimaô/atimoô for ‘effecting an actual loss of status’, and most normally for ‘imposing the legal penalty of atimia’ (especially in the orators), and atimazô for extra-legal examples of ‘dishonour’. This distinction is in part reflected also in the ratios of verbal aspect for the two families, with atimaô/atimoô being used mostly in aorist and perfective forms and atimazô mostly in imperfective forms.

This article investigates honour and recognition dynamics involving babies. By drawing on modern theories and experimental studies of infants’ psychology, selected case studies from Classical Greek literature and philosophical accounts will be interpreted in terms of basic intersubjective mechanisms. Case studies from Herodotus and Menander show that babies were intuitively perceived as agents capable of putting forth implicit demands to recognition and respect. Passages from Plato reveal that babies were regarded as possessing embryonic forms of a sense of dignity and entitlement. The article thus demonstrates that babies were involved in basic dynamics of honour and recognition. Overall, these mechanisms can be seen as the psychological and social foundation of the fully fledged version of timê, the Greek notion that captures the range of bidirectional dynamics of honour, recognition and respect which stand at the basis of human interaction and sociality.