Tuesday, January 28

The plan bit.ly/224questions

● Greek political history
● Race thinking in ancient
Greece
A brief introduction to ancient Greece
Predict: which of these events happened first?
a. Death of Alexander the Great
b. Collapse of palace cultures
c. Roman conquest of Greece
d. Wars between Greece and Persia
Timeline of ancient Greek political history
● 1200 BCE: Palace cultures collapse–memory of the Trojan war?
● 750 BCE: city states form & colonization begins
○ 499-449 BCE: Greco-Persian Wars
○ 431-404 BCE: Wars between Athens and Sparta
● 338 BCE: Philip of Macedon conquers mainland Greece
● 335-323 BCE: Alexander the Great conquers most of the known world
○ Empire ruled by successors (Seleucids, Antigonids, Ptolemies)
● 146 BCE: Rome conquers mainland Greece
● 395 CE: Rise of the Eastern/Byzantine empire
○ Ottoman Turks conquer Constantinople in 1453 CE
​
Greek and Roman slavery
● Widespread (numbers unknown)
● Every kind of work, including
intellectual
● Foreigners especially vulnerable,
but never based on race or
religion “Hold me, lest I flee,
● Emancipation (freedom) more and return me to my
common than in the U.S. master Viventius on the
● …but the experience was just as estate of Callistus”
brutal
Emancipation was strategic, not moral
“[Greek and] Roman slaves, frequently, even customarily in
my view, paid substantial sums for their freedom. The
prospect of becoming free kept a slave under control and
hard at work, while the exaction of a market price as the
cost of liberty enabled the master to buy a younger
replacement.” –Keith Hopkins (1978, 118)
Emancipation was conditional, not absolute
The enfranchised slave could have had the obligation to remain in
the house or city of his former master, to accomplish numerous
tasks, to follow him, to take care of him, pay him an agreed sum of
money, or even provide him with children. In case he/she failed to
accomplish these duties, he/she ran the risk of being beaten up,
whipped, put in irons and lent to a third party; he/she even ran the
risk of having the act of enfranchisement annulled” –Olivier
Pétré-Grenouilleau (2008, 237-238).
 *Race thinking in ancient Greece:
Categories

*Following Valentin Mudimbe

Cultural and environmental differences between
(imagined) peoples in Homer (8c BCE)
But Poseidon was visiting the Ethiopians, who live far away. Indeed
the Ethiopians, who are the most far-off of men, are divided in two. Some
live where the sun sets, and some dwell where it rises. Poseidon went to
accept a hecatomb [sacrifice of a hundred] of bulls and sheep. And while
there he enjoyed the feast (Od. 1.22-26).
Odysseus: “I reached the Ethiopians and the Sidonians and the Erembi
and Libya, where the lambs grow a full set of horns quickly. The ewes
there bear lambs three separate times in a full year. There neither lord
nor shepherd lacks cheese or meat or sweet milk, but always the
ewes give enough milk to drink”(Od. 4.84-89).
When does “Greekness” develop?
● 8-7c BCE: “Greece” is a collection of independent city-
states united by some shared culture, including the
Homeric epics. Cultural memory of conflict with Troy
● 5c BCE: Greek city-states come together to defeat
Persia. Writers (like Herodotus) describe “Greeks” vs.
“non-Greeks”
Herodotus on Greeks and barbarians (5c BCE)
Here are presented the results of the enquiry carried out by
Herodotus of Halicarnassus. The purpose is to prevent the
traces of human events from being erased by time, and to
preserve the fame of the important and remarkable
achievements produced by both Greeks [Hellenes] and
non-Greeks [barbaroi]; among the matters covered is, in
particular, the cause of the hostilities between Greeks and
non-Greeks (1.1).
Greek identity & its fluidity: what’s different from
the modern concept of race?
So far has [Athens] distanced the rest of
● Descent
mankind in thought and in speech that
● Language her pupils have become the teachers of
● Education the rest of the world; and she has
● Religion brought it about that the name Hellenes
suggests no longer a genos [tribe,
● Diet nation] but an intelligence, and that the
● Clothing title Hellenes is applied rather to
● Hair style those who share our culture than to
those who share a common blood. –
● Sport
Isocrates, Pan. 50 (380 BCE)
● Customs and values
Greek fighting a Persian, c. 450 BCE
 How is the
Persian
figure
different
from the
Greek?
Make a list

Greek fighting a Persian, c. 450 BCE

 Race thinking in ancient Greece:
Using environment to explain difference
 & Hippocratic writers

This world is a mix of fact and

fiction (creative extrapolation)
Asia vs. Europe in Airs, Waters, Places (5c BCE)
I assert that Asia varies most from Europe in the nature of
its plant life and inhabitants. Everything grows more
beautifully and larger by far in Asia. The land there is
less wild than Europe, and the people are also gentler and
more even-tempered. The reason for this is a temperate
climate … The men are also well-nourished and their
physiques very noble … Courage, endurance, and
industriousness would not be able to arise in such a
climate (12).
Climate vs. culture in AWP (5c BCE)
Asians are less warlike than the peoples of our part of the
world. The reason is, of course, the climate. There are
no great shifts in the weather … Therefore, they
experience no mental anxiety and no physical shocks …
Their laws [nomoi] only add to this condition. Asians
live mostly under kings … The result is that anyone born
with a courageous and bold nature is changed by the laws
of the land. I have proof of this: All the Greeks and barbaroi
in Asia who are not ruled by a despot … are the most
warlike men of all (16).
Dark vs. light skin in AWP (5c BCE)
Whoever dwells in a mountainous region, a region rugged, high,
and damp, and where changes in season are dramatic, they likely
have large physiques and have become acclimatized to endurance
and courage … Whoever dwells in valleys, regions with meadows,
stifling heats, winds that tend to be hot instead of cold, and where
they use hot water, these people would not be large nor would they
be models of physical perfection. Instead they would be naturally
wide, fleshy, dark-haired, and swarthy rather than fair-skinned …
They would likewise not be by nature courageous or enduring but
with laws and reinforcements of such qualities, they could
become so (24).
Race thinking in ancient Greece:
Cultural empathy
Herodotus’ cultural empathy (5c BCE)
If someone should put laws/customs [nomoi] before all
men and order all men to choose the most beautiful of all
the laws/customs, upon examination each would choose
his own laws/customs (3.38.1).
Herodotus relates Darius’ experiment (5c BCE)
During his reign, [the Persian king] Darius called some of
the Greeks who were present and asked them what he
could pay them to eat their fathers who had died. The
Greeks replied that they would not do this for any amount
of money. Then Darius called some of the Indians who are
called Calliatae, who eat their parents, and asked them
while the Greeks were present (he learned their response
from an interpreter) what amount he could pay them to
burn their dead fathers on a pyre. The Indians let out a
great cry and begged him to say something more
auspicious. These practices have become customary
among them, and it seems to me that Pindar [a Greek
poet] rightly said that custom [nomos] is king of all.
Herodotus deconstructs barbarity (5c BCE)
The Egyptians refer to anyone who does not speak the
same language as them as a barbarian [barbaros] (2.158).
Ancient Greek race thinking so far
● Greek writers from the beginning show great interest in
the differences between people
● Greeks vs. non-Greeks (barbarians) is the primary
distinction from 5c. BCE on
● Greekness is more cultural than biological; it’s possible
to become Greek (or non-Greek)
● Many different theories to explain difference, including
essentializing environmental theory
● Some writers have a high degree of cultural empathy
and are aware that “barbarian” is a relative term
Race thinking in ancient Greece:
Discrimination
Interpersonal prejudice in Isocrates (4c BCE)
It is impossible for people raised and governed as [the
Persians] are to have any virtue … How could there exist a
competent commander or a courageous soldier with the habits
of these people, of whom the majority is a crowd without
discipline or experience of danger, which has lost its
motivation for war and is better educated for slavery than our
servants? … They indulge their bodies in the luxury of their
riches. They have souls humiliated and terrified by the
monarchy (Pan. 150–151).
Metics = resident foreigners in Athens
● Immigrants, formerly enslaved, or children of metics
○ Many are Greeks from other cities
● Paid a tax
● Generally barred from citizenship
● Unable to represent oneself legally
● Subject to legal penalties (death, enslavement) for not
paying the tax
→ Evidence for discrimination at the state level, but based
on citizenship rather than Greekness
[[Melitta]] daughter of the
*isotelês Apollodoros, Melitta the
nurse. In this place the earth
covers over the deserving nurse
of Hippostratē, and even now
she misses you. I held you dear
while you lived, nurse, and still
now honor you although you are
beneath the earth, and will honor
you as long as I live. I know that
even in Hades, if there is any
reward for the deserving, the
foremost honors rest with you,
nurse, in the house of
Persephone and Pluto (4c BCE).

*freed from the metic tax

Discrimination in Ptolemaic Egypt (305-30 BCE)
● Egyptians paid a special (small) tax
● Over time, cultural Greekness became more important
than descent. Tax exemptions for:
○ Teachers
○ Coaches
○ Artists of Dionysus
○ Athletic victors
The archive of Zenon,
256-255 BCE
… Well, they have treated me with
scorn because I am a "barbarian." I
beg you therefore, if it seems good to
you, to give them orders that I am to
obtain what is owing and that in future
they pay me in full, in order that I may
not perish of hunger because I do not
know how to act the Hellene [Greek].
You, therefore, kindly cause a change
in attitude toward me. I pray to all the
gods and to the guardian divinity of the
King that you remain well and come to
us soon so that you may yourself see
that I am blameless.
Farewell. –P. Col. Zen. 2.66
bit.ly/224questionsFall24
HW preview
● Ancient Roman sources
● Read the context!
● Take it slow and reread
Based on what you have learned, would you say
that ancient Greeks had a concept of “race”?
a. Yes
b. No
c. Kind of