This article is about the Greek term. For the rock album see Kleos (album).
Kleos (Greek: κλέος) is the Greek word often translated to "renown", or "glory". It is related to the word "to hear" and carries the implied meaning of "what others hear about you". A Greek hero earns kleos through accomplishing great deeds, often through his own death.
Kleos is invariably transferred from father to son; the son is responsible for carrying on and building upon the "glory" of the father. This is a reason for Penelope putting off her suitors for so long, and one justification for Medea's murder of her own children was to cut short Jason's Kleos.
Kleos is a common theme in Homer's epics, the Iliad and the Odyssey, [1] the main example in the latter being that of Odysseus and his son Telemachus, who is concerned that his father may have died a pathetic and pitiable death at sea rather than a reputable and gracious one in battle. The Iliad is about gaining ultimate kleos on the battlefields of Troy while the Odyssey is the ten-year quest of Odysseus' nostos (or return journey). Telemachus fears that he has been deprived of kleos. This links to hereditary kleos. Kleos is sometimes related to aidos - the sense of duty.
As the polis emerged during the classical period of Greek history after the so-called "Dark Age" of 1000-750 BC, the Homeric warrior ethic transformed into an ethos with the city-state replacing the individual at the top. Shifting emphasis away from individualism, the goal for a polis hoplite became to win kleos for his home city, reflecting honor onto his family in the process.
The Greek term kleos is derived from the Proto-Indo-European (PIE) term *ḱlewos, which expressed a similar concept in PIE society. As the PIE people had no concept of the continuation of the individual after life, one could only hope to achieve *ḱlewos *ndhgwhitom, or "the fame that does not decay".[1] As Bruce Lincoln notes, "In a universe where impersonal matter endured forever but the personal self was extinguished at death, the most which could survive of that self was a rumor, a reputation. For this, the person craving immortality--a condition proper only to the gods and antithetical to human existence--was totally reliant on poets and poetry."[2]
Cognates include Sanskrit, श्रवस् (śravas); Avestan, 𐬯𐬭𐬀𐬬𐬀𐬵; Armenian, լու (low); Old Church Slavonic, слово (slovo); and Old Irish, clú. Compare to the Greek: κλύω (kluō - I hear).