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The Invention of Racism in Classical Antiquity
By Benjamin Isaac
Princeton University Press
Princeton University Press
All right reserved. ISBN: 0-691-12598-8
Introduction
LESS THAN A CENTURY AGO nobody would write or wish to read a book about racism. Indeed nobody was aware that such a thing existed, for the word does not appear in the
Oxford English Dictionary (O
ED) of 1910. The term
racialism has been around a little longer: It first appeared in print in 1907. Does this mean that racism did not exist before the twentieth century? In fact there is a consensus that it originated in the nineteenth century and has its intellectual roots in that century, although some scholars give it a somewhat longer history. Most of those who have expressed an opinion on the subject claim that racism, more precisely described as "scientific racism," was an offshoot of the ideas about evolution that developed in the nineteenth century. Since racism is thought not to be attested earlier, conventional wisdom usually denies that there was any race hatred in the ancient world. The prejudices that existed, so it is believed, were ethnic or cultural, not racial. In this book I shall argue that early forms of racism, to be called proto-racism, were common in the Graeco-Roman world. My second point in this connection is that those early forms served as prototype for modern racism which developed in the eighteenth century.
Since racism, ethnicprejudice, and xenophobia are so widespread in our times and have played such a dominant role in recent history, it is obviously important to understand how these phenomena developed, as attitudes of mind and intellectual concepts. Group hatred and bigotry are found in many forms throughout human history, but I shall attempt to show that there is a red thread, or rather, that there are a number of red threads that can be followed from the fifth century B.C. onward. Racism, properly understood, can be claimed to represent sets of ideas, the roots of which may be found in Greek and Roman society. On the other hand, I certainly do not claim that we are dealing here with the specific form of scientific racism which was a product of the nineteenth century.
There are several recent, useful studies of ancient ethnicity and of early processes of ethnic integration, topics that attract much attention these days, but this book is not one of those. Here the aim is to offer a systematic study of the forms of proto-racism, ethnic prejudice, and xenophobia that are encountered in the ancient literature in Greece and Rome from the fifth century B.C. till late antiquity. The book analyzes patterns of thinking, intellectual and emotional concepts as well as attitudes towards select specific peoples as encountered in Greek and Latin literature of the period concerned. It focuses on bigotry and social hatred in antiquity. This may not be an appealing subject, but its importance cannot be denied. This work is not concerned with the actual treatment of foreigners in Greece and Rome, but with opinions and concepts encountered in the literature. It traces the history of discriminatory ideas rather than acts, although the next theme traces the impact such ideas may have had in the sphere of action.
The third major theme in this work is the relationship between such ideas and patterns of thinking and ancient imperialism. I shall argue that there is a demonstrable connection between the views Greeks and Romans held of foreign peoples and their ideology of imperial expansion. I do not discuss the mechanisms of ancient imperialism, but, again, the attitudes of mind that created an atmosphere in which wars of expansion were undertaken-or not undertaken. This will lead to the conclusion that decisions about war and peace were determined, at least in part, by commonplaces and vague ideas currently accepted, and to a lesser degree than might seem reasonable by well-informed assessments.
For this study I shall use all the available literary sources in Greek and Latin of the period concerned, while taking due account of the peculiarities of each literary genre. The visual arts undoubtedly might make a contribution, but this type of evidence is so different in kind that it is best reserved for a separate study by an individual with the necessary qualifications. I have included some illustrations to provide an example of what such material may add to the literary sources that form the basis of this study.
The structure of this book follows from the aims described above. It is divided into two parts. The first discusses general concepts and their development, and the second deals with specific peoples as presented in the literature of the periods considered. I shall discuss opinions about foreign nations, such as Greek ideas of Persia, and opinions about peoples incorporated into the Roman Empire, such as Roman ideas about Greeks. This is all the more necessary because so many foreign nations were incorporated into the Roman Empire at some stage.
Readers may wonder who this book might interest besides, obviously, ancient historians and classicists. It is my hope that all those who care about the antecedents of the problems we have faced over the past century and are still facing would find it instructive. These, I hope, will include some modern and early modern historians. It is my ambition to advance our understanding of the essence of racism and ethnic prejudice in all periods and societies in some respects. Consequently, I hope the book will also be of use to those interested in contemporary manifestations of discrimination, anti-semitism, and group hatred. The basis for this claim is my contention that racism is a phenomenon that can assume many apparently different shapes and forms while preserving a remarkable element of continuity which is undeniable, once it is traced over the centuries. Racism has been with us for a long time and in various cultures, adopting various different shapes. It continues and will continue to be with us. If we recognize only one variety that belongs to a restricted period, we may fail to recognize it as it emerges in an altered guise.
THE BACKGROUND
Ethnic and racial prejudice and xenophobia are forms of hostility towards strangers and foreigners, at home or abroad. They occur in every society, but in widely differing degrees, social settings, and moral environments. They are the result of the human tendency to generalize and simplify, so that whole nations are treated as a single individual with a single personality. Contemporary western society is marked by a substantial degree of sensitivity to such attitudes, although, at the same time, the symptoms are widespread, even where there is no public or official approval. One of the peculiar legacies of the Greek language and Greek society is the word "barbarian," still used today in English and other modern languages. This concept has been studied extensively, as it says so much about Greek and Roman culture in general. However, what has been lacking up to now is a general study aimed at tracing the development of the prevalent negative attitudes towards immigrants and foreigners in Greek and Roman society, and towards other peoples. The subject is an important one, as already observed. It is also an extremely delicate topic because of the current sensitivity to all forms of discrimination: any consideration of ancient preconceptions is in danger of hurting modern sensibilities. Moreover, there is a long tradition of seeing Greece and Rome, especially Greece, as the origin of liberty, spiritual and otherwise, and of constitutionalism. A systematic consideration of what we would regard as ancient forms of bigotry may not appeal to some scholars. The study of ancient ethnicity is far more popular at present than that of social hatred, but it is the latter which I have undertaken. In other words, it is not a study of self-definition and self-perception, but of views of others, primarily negative views held by Greek and Roman authors. In this work I shall not use the term "Others" frequently, because "the Other" has in recent decades acquired quite a broad meaning: "Others" include women, slaves, children, the elderly, or disfigured people. It refers to any group that is not part of the establishment, but is placed on the margin or periphery of society, or does not belong to it at all.
This work, then, is concerned with ambivalence and hostility towards foreigners, strangers, and immigrant minorities, rather than internal marginal groups. Such an attempt is as justified as any historical study of racism or social conflict and stress in later periods. Indeed it is the aim of this work to contribute to an understanding of the intellectual origins of racism and xenophobia. As will be seen, some of the patterns visible in the ancient world continued to exist or have re-appeared and are still with us. Others are not. As has already been noted, it is usually considered unjustifiable to speak of ancient racism. None of the works on racism and ethnic prejudice which I have seen and cited assert that it precedes Columbus and European colonialism. This is also the contemporary popular perception. Obviously, it did not exist in the modern form of a biological determinism which represents a distortion of Darwin's ideas, nor was there systematic persecution of any ethnic group by another. However, I shall argue that it is justified to speak of "proto-racism." Modern racism has, by now, quite a long history of development. In its early stages in the eighteenth century, there was nothing like the state-imposed set of theories and applications developed later in Nazi Germany. There were various authors in search of concepts who did not necessarily agree with one another and developed different and often contradictory ideas. In this stage racism remained a fairly moderate doctrine, based on environmentalism and preoccupied with various evaluations of the relationship between the non-Europeans and their European masters. Yet no recent discussion of racism and xenophobia can ignore the many relevant works written in the period of the Enlightenment, for twentieth-century racism could not have existed without these predecessors. Indeed, many of the ideas published in the eighteenth century became part of later racism. In this connection it has been emphasized, however, that the authors of the Enlightenment constantly employ Graeco-Roman concepts and ideas, as will be discussed below. Thus one of the aims of this book is to show that some essential elements of later racism have their roots in Greek and Roman thinking.
The method applied here must also be somewhat different from the study of ethnicity, a subject which, like the consideration of individual identity, has to take into account self-perception, the views of others of oneself, and the perception of others' views of oneself. It will be understood that a consideration of hostility towards, say, Egyptians in Rome, has to leave out many of the positive aspects of Roman attitudes towards Egypt. Similarly, although Greek culture was admired, studied, and imitated in Rome, the present work will concentrate more on the negative or ambivalent attitudes Rome showed towards Greeks and Greece, although the former will certainly not be ignored. This will inevitably result in clarifying only part of the spectrum of attitudes, for the work cannot and should not provide all the favorable or neutral judgments made by Greeks and Romans of other peoples.
This study considers how Greeks and Romans thought and wrote about others, more than how they actually behaved towards them, although clearly there is a connection between the two. If we interpret them properly, we can understand what ancient authors meant to convey or conveyed, sometimes without meaning to do so, about other peoples and about foreigners living in their midst. It does not follow that we can deduce from their writings how the Greeks and Romans treated them in practice in day-to-day life. There are several reasons for this. First, and most obviously, the authors are all men belonging to the well-to-do or upper classes, which gives them a specific perspective. Second, it is not their ambition to provide us with insights on how the others saw their position vis-à-vis the Greeks and Romans. This book, therefore, aims in particular to elucidate the views encountered in Greek and Roman literature. These views pertain to various dimensions and features of social life and culture: religion, occupation, modes of life and conflict, and language. Emphasis and values may change over time, but we are always concerned with the ways one group saw another. It is not my intention to consider the economic, legal, and social realities of those concerned. This is necessarily a limited perspective, but it will be instructive all the same: we know that the Greeks in their classical age failed to build an integrated empire including non-Greeks, and we know that the Roman Empire was a multiethnic structure for centuries. This might have led us to suppose that the attitudes of Greek authors towards foreigners would have been more characterized by prejudice and hostility than the attitudes in Latin literature would have been. This appears not to be the case. It may be seen that there is not necessarily always a direct correspondence between social tensions, bigotry, or even hatred and the actual treatment of minorities as may be illustrated easily by a modern parallel. The Jews in mid-nineteenth-century Germany were more fully emancipated than those of any other European nation. Yet there was fierce anti-semitism at the time. Again, there was no sense then that this would lead where we now know it to have led. The existence of racism in the United States did not prevent the abolition of slavery and the gradual emancipation of the blacks in that country. I assume therefore that it is illuminating to study ideas and attitudes in their own right.
Here we touch upon a further major aim of this work. It is assumed here that an understanding of negative attitudes towards other peoples will clarify part of the underlying assumptions and attitudes of ancient imperialism. This should be true, first of all, for the stage where one nation or empire sets out to subjugate and annex or incorporate-"enslave" is the simple ancient term-another people or nation. It should clarify the Greek conquest of Persia by Alexander if we understand how fourth-century Greeks viewed Persians. The same should be true, ceteris paribus, for the Roman subjugation of Asia Minor. Furthermore, it is conceivable that we will be able to understand the functioning or disintegration of ancient empires better if we understand attitudes towards incorporated peoples. It is important to realize that the Roman Empire managed to become an integrated whole, in spite of Roman ambivalence towards the Greeks, and it is at least as interesting to see how it then split into two parts, a Latin- and a Greek-speaking empire, where westerners and easterners could exhibit fierce animosity towards one another. Again, the assumption is that Greek and Roman texts will convey mentalities and ideology. It is also assumed that the study of imperial attitudes towards the various peoples who inhabit an Empire will help in clarifying the underlying feelings, ambitions, and fears of those who maintain, expand, or lose an empire.
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