Glory & prestige

If honor really amounts to the defense against dishonor, then glory is in fact the positive side of honor, which redounds to the accomplishment of something creative that endures beyond the mortal person of the one who engendered the creative act. 

Honor is more manageable than glory because fortune intrudes in the gaining of glory in a way that it does not in the prosecution of honor. Glory requires success whereas honor requires only earnestness. Honor also has an element of prestige in it, of relative station, which glory does not signify. We do not speak of someone being more glorious than another the way we speak of someone having a higher honor than another. 

WWI was a war fought over national prestige (among the great European powers – England, Germany, France) or the fear of losing that prestige (the Autro-Hungarian, Ottoman and Russian empires). It is because honor has that element of prestige in it that honor is subject to the dictates of retaliation against dishonor. 

Dishonor is the loss of prestige in an environment where prestige is a shield against attack. So we can divide the notion of honor between prestige on the one hand and glory on the other. Prestige has about it the whiff of celebrity whereas glory comes with the exercise of legitimate power. 

The difference between advanced civilizations and backward ones is that advanced civilizations have armies driven by glory whereas backward militias are driven by prestige.