Daniela Dueck
Hermippus in his Lives refers to Thales the story which is told by some of Socrates,
namely, that he used to say there were three blessings for which he was grateful to Fortune:
“first, that I was born a human being and not a beast;
next, a man and not a woman;
thirdly, a Greek and not a barbarian”(Diog. Laer. 1.33)1
Every text has a context. This context relies on the time and place in which the text is shaped, and specifically on the personality of its author. Literature is thus an expression of human “self,” its author’s “self.” Even when a literary work does not refer to any personal experience of its author and avoids using the grammatical first person, that is, even when the author’s presence is seemingly missing, still, no literary composition is completely objective or sterile of its author’s metaphoric fingerprints. Choice of theme and genre, vocabulary, inclusion and exclusion of certain details – all these components reveal the personality of the author. Literature, then, may function as a primary vehicle to mold a concept of self-awareness both for the author and for his audience.
Literature is essentially exclusive: the very existence of literary texts defines a borderline between readers and the analphabetic. In the Greek world this borderline corresponded with other social distinctions because generally only free wealthy males, a minority, could afford to be fully educated.2 Greek literature was thus created in a society which communicated mainly orally, but some works, known today as written texts, were still available to illiterate persons. Dramatic plays – tragedies and comedies; political and forensic speeches delivered in popular assemblies and law courts; and even the stories of the Homeric epics, could reach the masses orally and through visual channels such as vase paintings. Therefore, explicit or implicit messages related to an individual or a collective “self ” could theoretically reach a wide public.
Identity is significantly shaped through encounters between the “self ” and the “other,” whether individuals or communities. The definition of one’s “self,” in all its levels, is often based on a simple, sensual perception. Distinctions may be based on sight (size, shape, color), hearing (language, intonation, song), touch (softness, roughness), smell and taste. Initial impressions and basic dichotomies are sometimes supplemented by imagination to add details which are not grasped by the senses; thus stereotypes emerge. Self-definition of nations and communities (and perhaps also of individuals) is based on a comparison or contrast with other groups and, through these mental activities, a clearer and more solid social cohesion is created. Along the positive definition of “who we are” there is often the negative one of “who we are not.” The Greeks often used analogy and polarity in their intellectual perception of the universe.3 Accordingly, humans were deemed different from gods but also from animals; men were different from women; adults were unlike children; and Greeks were different from non-Greeks. Common to all definitions was their constant measuring rod: adult free male human. Limited space and thematic considerations cannot allow here a full discussion of each level in the Greek definition of “self.” Therefore, this chapter expands on Greek self definition in opposition to foreign identities, but first offers a brief outline of other aspects of the theme.
The Greeks commonly grasped their gods as anthropomorphic, looking like humans and behaving like them. Gods were old (Zeus) or young (Hermes), smart (Athena) or silly (Dionysus), beautiful (Aphrodite) or crippled (Hephaestus), just like humans, and they quarreled, loved, got jealous and drunk like men. Homeric polytheism portrayed a family of individual deities which reflected the basic social unit and implied an inner hierarchy: Zeus the father, Hera his wife, and his sons and daughters, sometimes obedient, more often rebellious and deceitful.
Xenophanes, the Presocratic philosopher (c. 570–474 BCE), realized the cultural relativism of the image of the gods as a reflector of “self ” and commented that these gods were created by humans mirroring themselves:5
“If cows and horses or lions had hands or could draw with their hands and make things as men can, horses would have drawn horse-like gods, cows cow-like gods and each species would have made the gods’ bodies just like their own. Ethiopians say that their gods are flat-nosed and black, and Thracians that theirs have blue eyes and red hair.”
(Xenophanes DK 21 B 15–16)6
Boundaries between humans and gods were defined through several constant and essential differences: humans ate bread and drank wine but gods ate ambrosia and drank nectar; humans had blood flowing in their veins, gods had ichor; humans held incest taboos, gods did not; humans aged and weakened, gods were ever-young and strong; humans eventually died, gods were immortal.7
Occasionally, humans were presented as overshadowing gods. Prometheus, a hero acting on behalf of humans, tricked Zeus to choose attractive but inedible sacrificial meat and stole fire to hand it over to mankind. These actions required strengthening of the borderline between man and god, between ruler and subject: men thus earned troublesome women, personified in Pandora, and Prometheus was chained to a remote rock, where an eagle devoured his liver.8 The Greek idea of “hybris” – extreme pride and arrogance causing men to overestimate their capabilities and forget their human limitations – suggested that humans trying to act like gods should be treated as sinners, and tradition promised that they were bound to fall:9 “for the god suffers pride in none but himself ” (Hdt. 7.10ε).
Narrower circles, specifically philosophers, challenged the anthropomorphic notion and offered an alternative, rationalistic concept of gods.10 The Presocratics were first to emphasize both the physical and the intellectual differences between gods and humans:
He [god] is not equipped with a human head on a body, nor from his back do two arms grow like branches. He has no feet, no swift knees, no hairy genital organs. He is mind, holy and ineffable, and only mind, which drafts through the universe with its swift thoughts.
(Empedocles, DK 31 B 134).11
The philosophers tried to explain the world in terms of intelligible principles and therefore depersonalized gods but did not reject divinity altogether. The philosophic distinction between humans and gods suggested a spiritual god and not an anthropomorphic king with his family. The earlier conceptual hierarchy within the assembly of gods reduced to a specification of one god who towers above the others. These theoretical trends paved the road for eventual monotheism.12 Even in such more spiritual concepts of the divine, kinship between men and deities was implied: “Man is the only one of the animals known to us who has something of the divine in him, or if there are others, he has most” (Arist. Part. an. 656 a 8–9),13 and parallel to this, the concept of man “in the image of God (κατ’ εἴκονα θεοῦ)” (Gen. 1.27) became prevalent. Stoic teachings, which prevailed throughout Roman antiquity, developed the biological conception of God as a kind of heat or seed from which things grow and identified Him with pneuma or breath. In this way they in fact further separated the realms of humans and gods by grasping God as more akin to natural elements than to man.14
Living closely with animals, both domestic and wild, the Greeks realized that beasts had a personality. Through personification, they attributed stereotypic character traits to specific animals. In Aesop’s fables, for instance, the borderline between humans and animals was blurred: animals spoke, thought, competed, and laughed.16 At the same time, humans were sometimes compared to animals, as Aristotle shows: “There was a physiognomist who in his lectures used to show how all people’s faces could be reduced to those of two or three animals” (Arist. Gen. An. 769b21–2).
In real life the basic distinction between animals and men was language, and deeper differences were associated with reason, understanding and rationality:17
“[Alcmaeon] says that man differs from the other creatures in that he alone has understanding, while the other creatures have perception but do not have understanding.”
(DK 24 B 1a).
Later, Aristotle emphasized the reason–emotion dichotomy as a measure of distinction between men and beasts:
Being alive seems to be shared even by plants, but we are seeking that which is unique [to man]. Now, we must put aside life functions of nutrition and growth. Some sort of sentient life would follow next. This too seems to be common to a horse and to a cow and to every beast. There remains, then, one practical life of him who possesses reason.
(Arist. NE 1097b33–1098a4; cf. Arist. Pol. 1254a)
The Greek concept of animals was thus anthropocentric: animals were constantly compared to men, who were in turn defined as animals but such that think, laugh and feel.18 The Stoics grasped this mental hierarchy as a scale in which humans held an intermediate status between beasts and gods.19
Monsters in Greek mythology, and specifically hybrid creatures that were half human, half animal – centaurs, the Minotaur, Medusa – were usually described as supernatural creatures friendly, or, more often, hostile, to humans. They appeared in literature as deformed not only in body but also in soul and behaving wildly and “unsociably”: the Centaurs were traditionally the savage element as opposed to the cultured Lapiths; the Minotaur was a cannibal who devoured Athenian young people; and Medusa gazed at creatures and turned them into stone. Aristotle explained monsters as failures of nature:21
There are failures even in the arts… so that analogous failures in nature may evidently be anticipated as possible… monstrosities will be like failures of purpose in nature.
(Phys. 2.8, 199a33–b5)
A constant element in the literary depiction of some monsters was their location outside or far from the known, almost domestic sphere.22 Thus, centaurs and satyrs lived in the wild forests; the Gorgons lived by the edges of the known world; Triton and the Nereids lived in the sea. In this way they were also geographically tagged as outsiders and the normal, standard, tamed “self ” remained unthreatened.
Although there were exceptions, such as the poems of Sappho of Lesbos, the female voice was practically unheard in Greek antiquity. Teiresias, the mythic prophet, was according to tradition the only man who turned into a woman and therefore could report his experience, but this myth was also created, delivered and written by male authors.24 Women characters in Greek literature thus reflected male misunderstandings and prejudices. It is, therefore, almost impossible to reconstruct Greek female definition of “self ”; we may rather discuss masculine ideas of women which shed light on the self-definition of their male authors.
Greek texts noted the natural and physical differences between men and women: the male body was the model of perfection whereas women were inherently weaker and psychologically frail. The Aristotelian definition clearly suggests that the male is the standard for the essence of human beings: “A woman is, as it were, an infertile male. She is female, in fact, on account of a kind of inadequacy” (Arist. Gen. An. 728a). At the same time, some authors proposed the “one-sex” model of the human body. Menstrual blood, for instance, was deemed the same sort of substance as semen, but less pure and concentrated. Accordingly, women were no different from men physically, but were constitutionally inferior and excluded from any form of economic and political power.
Women were associated with danger, strangeness and inferiority, both mental and physical. Laws and customs were meant to curtail their freedom and men acted as guardians of women’s chastity. Athenian women, for instance, were associated with hidden interiors while male citizens were associated with the outdoor world (Xen. Oec. 7.30). Adolescent girls were “fillies” who needed to be tamed or yoked by marriage (Anacreon F 417 PMG). Once women were married, their assigned role was to give birth to legitimate heirs. The social role of the sexes was clear cut, as Euripides noted: “I would rather stand three times in the line of battle than give birth to a single child” (Eur. Med. 250–51).
The definition of the orthodox social “self ” of women, that is, of “ordinary” as opposed to “anomalous” women, was frequently expressed in Greek literature in the negative. Strong, active, brave and eloquent women represented exceptional and frequently threatening situations. Goddesses, for instance, were strong, wise, beautiful females who enchanted men, or were portrayed as gender bending characters. Athena blended in her literary character masculine and feminine attributes: she was a virgin, a warrior maiden, not dominated by a male other than her father; Artemis was also a virgin engaged in the traditionally masculine hunting; Hera, who represented the stereotype of a married woman, was portrayed as a typical nagging and jealous wife. The behavior of the goddesses was however unthreatening because the clear boundary between humans and gods (above) hindered women from any attempt at imitating a goddess. Similarly, Aristophanes in his Ecclesiazusae and Lysistrata portrayed rebellious women, smarter than men, who initiated social and political changes in the Athenian polis. But both he and his theater audience knew that this was a joke, thus unthreatening to traditional order.
The Amazons were another literary motif which portrayed strong and independent women who lived in an autonomous and self-governed society.25 This myth involved in some of its versions details which blurred the supposed similarity between Amazons and ordinary women and turned them into freaks: according to one line of tradition, in order to facilitate the use of bows and arrows the Amazons cut their right breast – a symbol of femininity – and thus became, in Greek male eyes, mutilated women and, in fact, unreal ones. Moreover, in Greek literary tradition, Amazons were usually located in the fringes of the known world together with other oddities and monstrosities (see above).
All three examples – goddesses, Amazons, women in comedy – were super-natural, extraordinary, outside the usual social and geographical framework. In this sense it was easier for a male audience to deal with these phenomena; the message in these images strengthened the boundaries between what was appropriate and what was not.
Classical literature abounds with descriptions of foreign nations and strange people. This is hardly surprising: any society relates, in one way or another, to encounters with other societies. But the specific way in which any culture refers to “others” is bound to reveal much of its own idea of a collective “self.” Greek allusions to foreigners appear in various literary genres and contexts: poetry, philosophy, historiography, oratory and geography. These ethnographic discussions could be short allusions within a broader context, extensive digressions, or entire works – all devoted to the presentation of foreign nations and regions. Greek literature did not include ethnography or geography as a well-defined intellectual field with literary or scientific conventions. However, descriptions of previously unknown people were typically constructed and included usual topics such as character traits, physical appearance, dress and eating customs, sexual behavior, marriage norms, attitude towards the dead and other social rules.27
In the Odyssey Odysseus lands on the island of the one-eyed Cyclopes:
Thence we sailed on, grieved at heart, and we came
to the land of the Cyclopes, an overweening and lawless folk,
who, trusting in the immortal gods,
plant nothing with their hands nor plow;
but all these things spring up for them without sowing or plowing,
wheat, and barley, and vines, which bear the rich clusters of wine,
and the rain of Zeus gives them increase.
Neither assemblies for council have they, nor appointed laws,
but they dwell on the peaks of lofty mountains
in hollow caves, and each one is lawgiver
to his children and his wives, and they reck nothing one of another.(Od. 9.105–15)
A significant part of the characterization of the Cyclopes is presented in the negative: they do not cultivate the land, they do not apply laws and justice, and they do not care about anyone but themselves. Their dwelling is distant and inaccessible and they behave antisocially and selfishly. The description thus reflects a clear dichotomy between a political community united within a polis, and an apolitical or prepolitical group, i.e. one that has not adopted social norms related to the Greek polis such as organized institutions and a well-ordered juristic system.28
This political gap featured also in descriptions of prepolitical, tribal communities both in earlier periods and in secluded regions in Greece.29 A mental opposition thus suggested that there were within the Greek world and simultaneously poleis running a typical agricultural way of life and nomadic, non agricultural communities. In the Homeric epic this opposition is one of the earliest measures to assess savagery vs. culture, insiders vs. outsiders, self vs. other.
The massive Mediterranean colonization, beginning in the eighth century BCE, caused the Greeks to first encounter “others.” These interactions raised an awareness of the primary difference between the two groups, i.e. language, and the Greek need for self-definition produced the term “barbaroi” as opposed to “Hellenes.” Thucydides (1.3) specifically indicates that earlier there was no awareness, and therefore no definition, of a collective “self ” manifested in generalizing denominations. He supports this claim by the absence of the name barbaroi from the Homeric epics and by the limited ethnic application of Hellenes by the poet. Already in Antiquity it was suggested that the origin of the word barbaros and its derivatives was onomatopoeic because the Greeks heard in foreign languages mostly “bar-bar-bar.” The word and its derivatives were applied to all non-Greek humans, near or far, civilized or savage.
Solon’s reform in Athens (594 BCE), which prohibited the enslavement of Athenian citizens, caused relatively large numbers of non-Greek, foreign slaves to arrive at the polis. This situation increased the mental difference between Greek–Athenian–free persons and foreign–barbaros–enslaved ones. About a century later, the Persian threat to invade the Greek world resulted in the formation of a Greek coalition of defensive forces to protect the Greek homeland. This unity produced all-Greek awareness and sharpened up the distinction between Greek inherent freedom and the “barbarian” tendency to slavery:
It is right, mother, that Hellenes should rule barbarians, but not barbarians Hellenes,
those being slaves, while these are free(Eur. Iph. Aul. 1400–1401).
The Hellene–barbaros opposition functioned as a deliberate strategy to perpetuate the distinction between the two groups. The Greeks entrenched within the walls of these characterizations as part of a conscious wish to separate themselves from others and to nurture pride in their origins and customs. In this mental dichotomy the Greeks placed themselves in a superior position.30 They emphasized their common language despite the fact that there were various dialects; their common ancestry despite the political division; and their unique religious rites. These unique traits were demonstrated in Panhellenic gatherings such as the Olympic Games, which were exclusively Greek:
When Alexander chose to contend and entered the lists for that purpose, the Greeks who were to run against him wanted to bar him from the race, saying that the contest should be for Greeks and not for foreigners. Alexander, however, proving himself to be an Argive, was judged to be a Greek. He accordingly competed in the furlong race and tied for first place.
(Hdt. 5.22).
The clear opposition within the Greek mind between Hellenes and “barbarians” produced also a concept of an inherent and constant confrontation between the two groups. Plato said the Greek race (Hellenikon genos) was by nature an enemy of the barbarians (Rep. 5, 470C) and the Athenian orator, Isocrates, reinforced the dichotomy by expressing a total hatred towards barbarians and declaring that they deserve to be mere house-slaves (Or. 4.157–9; 181).
Herodotus offered a milder view in his open-mindedness towards life-styles of foreigners. Despite the sharp distinctions he draws between Greek and barbaric customs,31 he demonstrated an unprejudiced and genuine interest in other ways of life, and recognized, after Pindar, that “custom is lord of all” (3.38), emphasizing that all think their own customs are the best. The attitude of Antiphon the sophist (480–411 BCE) to this issue was even more inclusive and cosmopolitan. He, too, lived at a time when the sharp contrast between Greeks and barbarians took shape, but he maintained that:
By nature we all equally, both barbarians and Greeks, have an entirely similar origin: for it is fitting to fulfill the natural satisfactions which are necessary to all men … and in all this none of us is different either as barbarian or as Greek; for we all breathe into the air with mouth and nostrils ….
(DK 87 B 44 b col. 2)
In 323 BCE, upon his sudden death, Alexander the Great left his successors a world wider than ever, geographically and culturally. The new horizons confronted the Greeks, both physically and through written impressions, with foreign nations previously unknown to them (cf. Mori, ch. 6 in this volume); with exotic and remote landscapes; with rare animals and strange plants. But Hellenistic literature, as opposed to earlier literary expressions, suggested more complex cultural situations in which the traditional dichotomy between Greeks and barbarians was less distinct.32
Milder notions appear already in Aristotle’s comments on the complex human nature. He based his ideas on the dichotomy between nature (physis) and law (nomos):
In some cases things are marked out from the moment of birth to rule or to be ruled… It is manifest therefore that there are cases of people of whom some are freemen and the others slaves by nature, and for these slavery is an institution both expedient and just. But at the same time it is not difficult to see that those who assert the opposite are also right in a manner. The fact is that the terms “slavery” and “slave” are ambiguous; for there is also such a thing as a slave or a man that is in slavery by law, for the law is a sort of agreement under which the things conquered in war are said to belong to their conquerors. Now this conventional right is arraigned by many jurists… for they are compelled to say that there exist certain persons who are essentially slaves everywhere and certain others who are so nowhere. And the same applies also about nobility: our nobles consider themselves noble not only in their own country but everywhere, but they think that barbarian noblemen are only noble in their own country – which implies that there are two kinds of nobility and of freedom, one absolute and the other relative.
(Pol. 1254a – 1255a)
Aristotle suggests here that some people are enslaved by nature and some by consent, that is by law. He also raises the idea of the ethnic superiority and high descent (eugeneia) of the Greeks, which is inherent in any Greek anywhere, whereas among “barbarians” it depends on their location. Essential is, first, the insinuation that the right to enslave is not absolute or universal, and, second, the Greek concept of relative pedigree and freedom, i.e., such that it may be rated on a mental scale.
One of the most detailed expressions of the Hellenistic attitude towards the complexity of human culture is the Geography, Strabo of Amasia’s comprehensive work.33 Born in 64 BCE at Pontus, Asia Minor, Strabo was educated in Hellenistic values in a world in which Rome became the dominant power. After engaging in historiographical writing, he wrote, in the first century CE, a work aimed at surveying all that was known at the time about the inhabited world. According to the best tradition of Greek descriptive geography and by summarizing earlier geographical traditions, Strabo included in this survey numerous details from a variety of fields related to the diverse regions of the world: botany, zoology, topography, as well as history, mythology, and ethnography. The Geography is thus abundant with numerous details taken from tens of sources, partly lost, and it offers not only its author’s views but also notions which prevailed through generations of Greek geographical writing. As we shall see, Strabo specifically reflects the Hellenistic scholarly and political atmosphere, by frequently citing central authorities of the age, such as Ephorus, Eratosthenes, Polybius, Posidonius, and the Homeric commentators.
Strabo raises again the discussion about the early Greek distinction between Greeks and Barbarians:
Those, therefore, they called barbarians in the special sense of the term, at first derisively, meaning that they pronounced words thickly or harshly; and then we misused the word as a general ethnic term, thus making a logical distinction between the Greeks and all other races. The fact is, however, that through our long acquaintance and intercourse with the barbarians this effect was at last seen to be the result, not of a thick pronunciation or any natural defect in the vocal organs, but of the peculiarities of their several languages. And there appeared another faulty and barbarian-like pronunciation in our language, whenever any person speaking Greek did not pronounce it correctly, but pronounced the words like barbarians who are only beginning to learn Greek and are unable to speak it accurately, as is also the case with us in speaking their languages.
(Geog. 14.2.28).
Accordingly, the term “barbaros” stemmed from linguistic distinction of the clumsy pronunciation of Greek by non-Greeks. Strabo’s words, however, are sympathetic with the “barbarians’: he emphasizes that their failure to speak Greek did not originate in a physical or cognitive deficiency. Moreover, he introduces cultural relativism: according to the same criterion, Greeks are also speaking “barbarian” when they pronounce foreign languages.34
While the term “barbaros” emerged from a linguistic criterion for cultural definition, Greek literature offered additional criteria which were based on other cultural attributes such as lifestyle, customs, and temperament. A close tie between cultural traits and geographical position was expressed through the Hippocratic notion of the influence of environmental and climatic conditions on the character and appearance of human beings:35
The nations inhabiting the cold places and those of Europe are full of spirit but somewhat deficient in intelligence and skill, so that they continue comparatively free, but lacking in political organization and capacity to rule their neighbors. The peoples of Asia on the other hand are intelligent and skillful in temperament, but lack spirit, so that they are in continuous subjection and slavery. But the Greek race participates in both characters, just as it occupies the middle position geographically, for it is both spirited and intelligent; hence it continues to be free and to have very good political institutions, and to be capable of ruling all mankind if it attains constitutional unity.
(Arist. Pol. 1327b)
The link between location and character suggests environmental determinism. Accordingly, specific dwelling places would necessarily grow people with determined cultural tendencies such as the ability to rule. Significant is the status of the Greeks within this idea: their personality is also an outcome of their geographical location; because they dwell in the center of the world, they have the best character traits and are therefore superior human beings.
Strabo incorporated in his survey a similar idea suggesting that the world divided into parts not only geographically (i.e. the then-known three continents, Europe, Asia and Africa), but also according to an implied scale of human existence:
We will commence with Europe, both because its figure is more varied, and also because it is the quarter most favorable to the mental and social ennoblement of man, and produces a greater portion of comforts than the other continents… the whole of Europe is habitable with the exception of a small part, which cannot be dwelt in, on account of the severity of the cold …. The wintry and mountainous parts of the habitable earth would seem to afford by nature but a miserable means of existence; nevertheless, by good management, places scarcely inhabited by any but robbers, may be got into condition. Thus the Greeks, though dwelling amidst rocks and mountains, live in comfort, owing to their economy in government and the arts, and all the other appliances of life. Thus, too, the Romans, after subduing numerous nations who were leading a savage life, either induced by the rockiness of their countries, or want of ports, or severity of the cold, or for other reasons scarcely habitable, have taught the arts of commerce to many who were formerly in total ignorance, and spread civilization amongst the most savage.
(Geog. 2.5.26)
Strabo here suggests topographical and physical causes for human savagery: mountains, rocks and cold climate hinder habitation and therefore create sparse and secluded communities. The emergence of savage societies is thus based in environmental conditions. It is implied, however, that this environmental determinism is not absolute and hermetic: it is possible to break it with well-established legal and political systems. The case of the Greeks proves this assumption: they succeeded in overcoming rough physical conditions and developing admirable culture and government. Since Strabo lived in an age when the Roman state became the largest and most powerful ever, he also emphasizes the civilizing ramifications of Roman conquest: wild nations became civilized.36 The basic dichotomy between Greeks vs. Barbarians was thus modified and moderated.
When discussing the meaning of the term “barbaros” Strabo goes back to an earlier notion of Eratosthenes:
He [Eratosthenes] says that it would be better to make such divisions according to good qualities and bad qualities; for not only are many of the Greeks bad, but many of the Barbarians are refined – Indians and Arians, for example, and, further, Romans and Carthaginians, who carry on their governments so admirably.
(Geog. 1.4.9)
This is a new concept: no more distinction between Greeks and barbarians based on a cultural–linguistic criterion, but a division of mankind according to virtue (arete) or the lack of it. This idea implies that there are good and bad barbarians, and therefore, evidently, good and bad Greeks. The standard of evaluation is moral but closely relates to the application of law, government, education and oratory. Beside this model there is another tone within Strabo’s survey:
Our mode of life has spread its change for the worse to almost all peoples, introducing amongst them luxury and sensual pleasures and, to satisfy these vices, base artifices that lead to innumerable acts of greed. So then, much wickedness of this sort has fallen on the barbarian peoples also … as the result of taking up a seafaring life they not only have become morally worse, indulging in the practice of piracy and of slaying strangers, but also, because of their intercourse with many peoples, have partaken of the luxury and the peddling habits of those peoples.
(Geog. 7.3.7)
The barbarians then are not morally inferior; on the contrary: there are barbarians known in the Greek world for their integrity and innocence. But “our,” i.e. the Greeks’ and the Romans’, lifestyle has corrupted them and introduced to them, together with extended seamanship and better communication, bad moral traits. Another aspect which further modified the original dichotomy was the idea of progress which suggested that in earlier times the Greeks were also uncivilized, for instance in Thucydides:37
In ancient times all Hellenes carried weapons because their homes were undefended and intercourse was unsafe; like the Barbarians they went armed in their everyday life. And the continuance of the custom in certain parts of the country indicates that it once prevailed everywhere. The Athenians were the first who laid aside arms and adopted an easier and more luxurious way of life …. On the other hand, the simple dress which is now common was first worn at Sparta …. The Lacedaemonians too were the first who in their athletic exercises stripped naked … athletes formerly, even when they were contending at Olympia, wore girdles about their loins, a practice which lasted until quite lately, and still prevails among Barbarians, especially those of Asia …. And many other customs which are now confined to the Barbarians might be shown to have existed formerly in Hellas.
(Thuc. 1.6.1–6)
Thus, in the past the Greeks ran a lifestyle similar to the barbarian one, but they changed and, as hinted, progressed while the barbarians kept behaving in the same way up to Thucydides’ time. The Greeks were formerly “barbarians,” therefore the distinction between the two groups is a matter of nomos i.e. law or custom, and not of physis, i.e., not an inherent and deterministic issue. Such a notion, which enfolds an alternative of change, is certainly more open than the hermetic–dichotomic one, and allows the mental idea of a scale.
Strabo adds another civilizing criterion:
The Ethiopians at present lead for the most part a wandering life, and are destitute of the means of subsistence, on account of the barrenness of the soil, the disadvantages of climate, and their great distance from us. Now the contrary is the case with the Egyptians in all these respects. For they have lived from the first under a regular form of government, they were a people of civilized manners, and were settled in a well-known country.
(Geog. 17.1.3)
The civilizing criterion is thus the degree of physical proximity to civilization, represented in this excerpt in the word “us.” This word probably refers primarily to the Greeks who saw themselves culturally superior even in a world politically dominated by Rome. At the same time, it might indicate the Romans as well. Accordingly, the degree of civilization is directly correlated to the distance from or proximity to the cultural center. The Strabonian quotation offers a three-part division from center to periphery: “us,” the Egyptians, the Ethiopians.
Simultaneously, Strabo emphasizes in his Geography again and again the cultural superiority of the Greeks over the Romans. The Romans are indeed the unchallenged political rulers of the world but at the same time they are described as brutish and violent persons who do not have even minimal appreciation of art and science. Strabo alludes to their plunder of artifacts from the Greek world in the east, and does not mention Roman scholars and intellectuals, while there are numerous lists of Greek men of letters according to their places of activity.38 Accordingly, within the distinction between Greeks and barbarians and the Greek definition of “self,” the Romans are indeed closer to the Greeks but still stand one level beneath them.
But there were also changes:
Later on, beginning from the time of the Trojan War, the Greeks had taken away from the earlier inhabitants much of the interior country also, and indeed had increased in power to such an extent that they called this part of Italy, together with Sicily, Magna Graecia. But today all parts of it, except Taras, Rhegium, and Neapolis, have become completely barbarized.
(Geog. 6.1.2)
The change in southern Italy is viewed as a process of “barbarization” caused by Roman occupation, meaning that the Romans are “barbarians” compared with earlier Greek settlers. To emphasize this Strabo mentions three Greek enclaves – Taras, Rhegium and Neapolis – which did not experience this change and kept their traditions and cultural character.
Cultural relativism and specific worldviews determine another definition of savagery in Strabo:
Their [the Britons’] manners are in part like those of the Celts, though in part more simple and more barbarous; insomuch that some of them, though possessing plenty of milk, have not skill enough to make cheese, and are totally unacquainted with horticulture and other matters of husbandry.
(Geog. 4.5.2)
In the eyes of Strabo (or his source) the criterion for civilization is the ability, or lack of it, to make cheese and till the land. Important here is the use of the comparative mode: the manners of the Britons are more barbarous (barbarotera), and this hints at an idea of a scale of barbarism. Additionally, there is a terminology indicating “half-barbarian.” Demetrius of Scepsis (third century BCE) was a well-known Hellenistic commentator of the Homeric epics. He was a native of Scepsis, not far from the ancient site of Troy, and therefore added to his discussions geographical and topographical insights based on his personal experience. Strabo quotes his comments on one of the settlements in Asia Minor:
Gargara was founded by the Assians; but it was not well peopled, for the kings brought into it colonists from Miletopolis when they devastated that city, so that instead of Aeolians, according to Demetrius of Scepsis, the inhabitants of Gargara became semi-barbarians.
(Geog. 13.1.58 = Demetrius F 36 Gaede)
The settlers, who arrived from Miletopolis in western Asia Minor, were Greek and not barbarians, but their geographical position turned them into half-barbarians. Is it not then, at least theoretically, possible to be – almost quantitatively – more or less Greek or barbarian?
Finally, the complexity of the concept is again explained by Ephorus of Cyme (fourth century BCE) whose historiographical work survives only partially:
Ephorus said that this peninsula [the Troad] was inhabited by sixteen tribes, of which three were Hellenic and the rest barbarian, except those that were mixed …. And who are the “mixed” tribes? … even if they had become mixed, still the predominant element has made them either Hellenes or barbarians; and I know nothing of a third tribe of people that is “mixed.”
(Geog. 14.5.23, 25 = FGrHist 70 F 162)
Ephorus conceived of races mixed from Greeks and Barbarians, but Strabo did not recognize such a distinction and kept the traditional dichotomy: Greek or Barbarian. We may, however, safely assume that an alternative idea to the dichotomy barbaroi–Hellenes emerged and prevailed in the Hellenistic age. Even if we cannot, for lack of evidence, estimate how widespread these alternative suggestions were, Strabo being Strabo, represented a sort of mainstream or at least non-esoteric ideas. In later Greek texts, at the time of the Roman Empire, late antiquity and early Christianity, the terms related to barbarians straightforwardly implied their uncultured manners and their savagery.39
Greek literature was generally written by free, rich, educated males mostly for their peers. It therefore reflected their concepts and their identity. Engagements with any creature that was unlike them – beasts, women, foreigners – reinforced the image of their “self.” Specifically, in the Archaic Age the encounters of Greeks with foreign peoples produced a dichotomized and unequivocal definition of Hellenic vs. barbaric culture. The linguistic criterion, which was supposedly not judgmental, was the primary means to assess who was a “kin” and who was a “stranger.” This initial distinction crystallized into a more complex concept which included also lifestyle and customs. These components became part of somewhat stereotypical definitions of the “barbaric” person. In the Hellenistic Age, as a result of both philosophic discussions and closer interaction with others, it was realized that the situation was more complex. This process considerably weakened the hermetic ethnographic determinism, and created mental scales stretching between several pairs of ends: Greek–barbarian; civilized–savage; center–periphery; present–past; law, order, and government–political chaos; peace–war, robbery; abundance–poverty. In this way, a composite view of the world was created and global population was arranged within these frameworks.
For further reading see Cartledge 1993; Cohen 2000; Foxhall and Salmon 1998; Gruen 2011; Lape 2010; Lardinois and McClure 2001.