Herodotus, Histories 1.8.3 · 1.8.3

Gyges' objection turns on one word, aidōs. English has to choose between "modesty," "shame," and "reverence," and the Greek means all three. Aidōs is the feeling of being seen by people whose regard matters: what keeps a warrior in the line, a guest from overstepping, a woman covered. Gyges says a woman lays it aside with her clothes. He does not mean she becomes shameless. He means that nakedness before an eye that has no right to see her strips her of the one protection she has.

The verbs make the point by doubling. Ekduomenōi and synekduetai, "being stripped off" and "strips off along with it," are the same verb twice, the second with syn, "together." Tunic and honour come away in a single motion. Plutarch, writing about marriage centuries later, disagreed: a good woman, he said, puts on modesty in place of her dress. The sentence was quoted and argued with for as long as Greeks read Herodotus.

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