Aidōs is one of the most capacious words of Greek ethics: at once "shame" (externally — at being seen doing wrong), "reverence" (internally — before something worthy), and "self-respect" (the disposition that holds one to one's own dignity). The Homeric aidōs is in the first place a restraining force in the social fabric (shame before heroes, before parents, before oneself as a warrior). In Plato and the Stoics the meaning shifts inward: aidōs is respect for one's own rational nature, for the TERMruling part as something not to be debased. Epictetus offers a quasi-genealogical formula: aidōs is "the daughter of προαίρεσις"; so long as the faculty of choice survives, the duty of self-respect survives with it; the loss of aidōs is the loss of one's human status.

Hom. Il. 13.121–124 (aidōs as a martial force); Plat. Prot. 322c (the myth of Prometheus: aidōs and δίκη are Zeus' gifts, without which there is no political life); Aristot. Eth. Nic. IV 9, 1128b10 — aidōs as a pre-virtue; Stoic texts — SVF III 432; Epict. Disc. 1.5; 2.2.1–8; 3.7.27; 4.5.21; Ench. 24, 33. In Marcus: Med. 1.16; 2.6; 3.4; 4.30; 5.5; 6.20; 8.13; 10.34; 11.36.

In 02-06 aidōs is the central concept of the passage: μὴ αἰδουμένῃ σεαυτήν — "[a soul that] has no self-respect." The logic of self-reproach: I am not offended by anything external — I offend myself by the very absence of aidōs, by placing my εὐμοιρία "in the souls of others." Link with dichotomy-of-control: aidōs is the inner correlate of a properly drawn distinction "mine / not mine"; so long as self-respect is in place, it naturally refuses any attempt to locate one's own worth in the external. In Epictetus (Disc. 1.5) we find a characteristic diagnosis: "if a person has lost aidōs, you have nothing to say to him — he is philosophically dead."

In the same passage Marcus pairs aidōs with TERMτιμή (τιμᾶν ἑαυτήν — "to honour oneself"). They are not lexical synonyms (the roots are different, αἰδ- vs τιμ-) but complement each other in meaning: aidōs is an inner disposition, τιμή its outward expression. The loss of aidōs leads a person no longer to be capable of τιμᾶν ἑαυτόν: he no longer has within him an instance that could evaluate himself as worthy.