Beyond Hellenes And Barbarians

Forty years ago, German historian Reinhart Koselleck coined the notion of ‘asymmetrical concepts’, pointing at the asymmetry between standard self-ascriptions, such as ‘Hellenes’ or ‘Christians’, and pejorative other-references (‘Barbarians’ or ‘Pagans’) as a powerful weapon of cultural and political domination. Advancing and refining Koselleck’s approach, Beyond ‘Hellenes’ and ‘Barbarians’ explores the use of significant conceptual asymmetries such as ‘civilization’ vs. ‘barbarity’, ‘liberalism’ vs. ‘servility’, ‘order’ vs. ‘chaos’ or even ‘masters’ vs. ‘slaves’ in political, scientific and fictional discourses of Europe from the Middle Ages to the present day. Using an interdisciplinary set of approaches, the scholars in political history, cultural sociology, intellectual history and literary criticism bolster and extend our understanding of this ever-growing area of conceptual history.

How did the Greeks view foreign peoples? This book considers what the Greeks thought of foreigners and their religions, cultures and politics, and what these beliefs and opinions reveal about the Greeks. The Greeks were occasionally intrigued by the customs and religions of the many different peoples with whom they came into contact; more often they were disdainful or dismissive, tending to regard non-Greeks as at best inferior, and at worst as candidates for conquest and enslavement. Facing up to this less attractive aspect of the classical tradition is vital, Thomas Harrison argues, to seeing both what the ancient world was really like and the full nature of its legacy in the modern. In this book he brings together outstanding European and American scholarship to show the difference and complexity of Greek representations of foreign peoples - or barbarians, as the Greeks called them - and how these representations changed over time.The book looks first at the main sources: the Histories of Herodotus, Greek tragedy, and Athenian art. Part II examines how the Greeks distinguished themselves from barbarians through myth, language and religion. Part III considers Greek representations of two different barbarian peoples - the allegedly decadent and effeminate Persians, and the Egyptians, proverbial for their religious wisdom. In part IV three chapters trace the development of the Greek-barbarian antithesis in later history: in nineteenth-century scholarship, in Byzantine and modern Greece, and in western intellectual history.Of the twelve chapters six are published in English for the first time. The editor has provided an extensive general introduction, as well as introductions to the parts. The book contains two maps, a guide to further reading and an intellectual chronology. All passages of ancient languages are translated, and difficult terms are explained.

This is the first book in English to provide a systematic treatment of Panhellenism. The author argues that in archaic and classical Greece Panhellenism defined the community of the Hellenes and gave it political substance. Panhellenism also responded to other needs of the community, in particular serving to locate the Hellenes in time and space. One of the chief Panhellenic narratives, the war against the barbarian, provided the conceptual framework in which Alexander the Great could imagine his Asian campaign.

This book is a fascinating attempt to elucidate what and who barbarians were from the perspective of the Ancient Greeks. During that period, the Greeks used the term not only towards those who did not speak Greek and follow classical Greek customs, but also towards Greek populations on the fringe of the Greek world with peculiar dialects.

This volume focuses on the interplay between Josephus’ Judean identity and his Roman context. After treating historiographical and literary issues, it addresses Josephus’ presentation of Judaism and of historical “facts”. A final section deals with the transmission of his works.

What did the ancient Greeks and Romans think of the peoples they referred to as barbari? Did they share the modern Western conception—popularized in modern fantasy literature and role-playing games—of "barbarians" as brutish, unwashed enemies of civilization? Or our related notion of "the noble savage?" Was the category fixed or fluid? How did it contrast with the Greeks and Romans' conception of their own cultural identity? Was it based on race? In accessible, jargon-free prose, Erik Jensen addresses these and other questions through a copiously illustrated introduction to the varied and evolving ways in which the ancient Greeks and Romans engaged with, and thought about, foreign peoples—and to the recent historical and archaeological scholarship that has overturned received understandings of the relationship of Classical civilization to its "others."

Excerpt from Greeks and Barbarians There have been many explanations of ancient Greece and its peculiar spirit. If I may say so, the only original thing about the explanation offered in this book is its want of originality; for it is the explanation of the Greeks themselves. They believed that Hellenism was born of the con ict between the Greeks and the Barbarians. As Thucydides puts it (i. Greek and Barbarian are correlative terms and Herodotus wrote his great book, seek ing, as he says, digressions of set purpose, to illustrate just that. About such an explanation there is obviously nothing startling at all. It is indeed (at first sight) so colourless and negative, that it must be dissatisfaction with it which has provoked all the other explanations. Scholars must have said to themselves, What is the use of repeat ing that Hellenism is the opposite of Barbarism? We know that already. But they knew it only in a formal or abstract way. It is but the other day that classical scholars have begun to study the Barbarian and to work out the contrast which alone can give us the material for a rich understanding of the Greek himself. Without this study one's ideas of the Greek could not fail to be somewhat empty and colourless. But any one who cares to read even the meagre outline which these essays supply will hardly complain that there is a lack of colour. The subject indeed is so vast that one is compelled to be selective and illustrative. Even to be this is far from easy. For instance, it seems extraordinary to write upon the meaning of Hellenism without a chapter on Greek art. Such a chapter, however, is excluded by the design of this book, which must dispense with illustrations whereas in dealing with literature I could always drive home my point by simple quotation. Then again it may appear a little old-fashioned and arbitrary that I confine myself to the centuries before Alexander. But after all it was, in these centuries that Hellenism rose into its most characteristic form - and in any case a man must stop somewhere. About the Publisher Forgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at www.forgottenbooks.com This book is a reproduction of an important historical work. Forgotten Books uses state-of-the-art technology to digitally reconstruct the work, preserving the original format whilst repairing imperfections present in the aged copy. In rare cases, an imperfection in the original, such as a blemish or missing page, may be replicated in our edition. We do, however, repair the vast majority of imperfections successfully; any imperfections that remain are intentionally left to preserve the state of such historical works."

This book is an ambitious synthesis of the social, economic, political and cultural interactions between Greeks and non-Greeks in the Mediterranean world during the Archaic, Classical and Hellenistic periods. Instead of traditional and static distinctions between Greeks and Others, Professor Vlassopoulos explores the diversity of interactions between Greeks and non-Greeks in four parallel but interconnected worlds: the world of networks, the world of apoikiai ('colonies'), the Panhellenic world and the world of empires. These diverse interactions set into motion processes of globalisation; but the emergence of a shared material and cultural koine across the Mediterranean was accompanied by the diverse ways in which Greek and non-Greek cultures adopted and adapted elements of this global koine. The book explores the paradoxical role of Greek culture in the processes of ancient globalisation, as well as the peculiar way in which Greek culture was shaped by its interaction with non-Greek cultures.