Laudator Temporis Acti

David Kovacs, The Heroic Muse: Studies in the Hippolytus and Hecuba of Euripides (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1987), p. 24, with note on p. 125:

Consider the implications of the words "smug" and "self-satisfied." Their presuppositions are thoroughly Christian. We have no right to be satisfied with ourselves, Christian moralists tell us, since we are fallen and sinful creatures. Such meritorious actions as we perform are deeply flawed, as we see when we examine our motivations. And even if we possess genuine virtues, to think about them with satisfaction is to incur the sin of pride. Merely to state these presuppositions is to show how un-Greek they are. What Greek in classical literature ever expresses hesitancy about taking pleasure in good qualities he actually possesses or feels obliged to meditate on his shortcomings? This is not a question that admits very easily of a detailed philological study, and the rhetorical question above is an appeal to intuition. But how many words would it take to translate "smug" into classical Greek? Could it even be done?<sup>4

4</sup> S.C. Woodhouse, An English-Greek Dictionary (London 1910), gives for 'self-complacent' χαῦνος, which means 'foolish', 'mistaken about one's merits' (cf. Aristotle EN 1123b8), a rather different idea. Nor will σεμνός translate 'smug', as one reader suggested.