The Age of Grace : Princeton University Press : 9780691600963 : 0691600961 : 01 Jul 2014 : Although "grace" in today's secular usage often connotes beauty or good manners, to the ancient Greeks it was both an aesthetic and a moral concept central to social order--a transformative power grounded in favor, thanks, repayment, delight, pleasure, and, above all, reciprocity. Here Bonnie MacLachlan explores the Greek concept of grace, or charis, as depicted in poetic works from Homer to Aeschylus, to tap into the essential meaning behind the manifold uses of the term. She also relates it to other important concepts in the moral language of the eighth century \B.C.E. Examining epic, lyric, erotic, epinician, and tragic poetry, and the cult of the Charites themselves, MacLachlan shows how charis governed human relations of all sorts, from the battlefield to bed: Achilles sulks, and jeopardizes the Greek victory in the Trojan War, because there was no charis in Agamemnon's gesture of reconcili