We want to be great. For a long time, history was all about the study of great men, and it was common to call people the great, although these days historians are less likely to do that because they recognize that one man's great is generally another man's terrible. And also the great has some misogynistic implications. Like it's almost always men who are called the great. You never hear of Cleopatra the Great or Elizabeth the Great. Sure, there's Catherine the Great of Russia, but for her masculine greatness, she was saddled with the completely untrue rumor that she died trying to scootily poop with a horse. Saddled.