When the Nobel Prizes are handed out each year, honorees each receive a medal and monetary prize. Even in the absence of these material goods, the honor of being a Nobel laureate persists as part of someone’s name or title, like a heroic epithet to recognize a life’s achievement.
I annually join my colleagues in the arts and sciences praising the winners and everything they have accomplished. As a scholar of classical studies, I also mull over the journey of that strange word, laureate, and how aptly it names those who receive it.
