Rethinking the Other in Antiquity

Prevalent among classicists today is the notion that Greeks, Romans, and Jews enhanced their own self-perception by contrasting themselves with the so-called Other - Egyptians, Phoenicians, Ethiopians, Gauls, and other foreigners - frequently through hostile stereotypes, distortions, and caricature. In this provocative book, Erich Gruen demonstrates how the ancients found connections rather than contrasts, how they expressed admiration for the achievements and principles of other societies, and how they discerned - and even invented - kinship relations and shared roots with diverse peoples. Gruen shows how the ancients incorporated the traditions of foreign nations, and imagined blood ties and associations with distant cultures through myth, legend, and fictive histories. He looks at a host of creative tales, including those describing the founding of Thebes by the Phoenician Cadmus, Rome's embrace of Trojan and Arcadian origins, and Abraham as ancestor to the Spartans. Gruen gives in-depth readings of major texts by Aeschylus, Herodotus, Xenophon, Plutarch, Julius Caesar, Tacitus, and others, in addition to portions of the Hebrew Bible, revealing how they offer richly nuanced portraits of the alien that go well beyond stereotypes and caricature. Providing extraordinary insight into the ancient world, this controversial book explores how ancient attitudes toward the Other often expressed mutuality and connection, and not simply contrast and alienation.

ISBN 069114852X   Pages 416 ISBN13 9780691148526 (What's this?)   Weight (grammes) 714 Publisher Princeton University Press   Published in New Jersey Imprint Princeton University Press   Series title Martin Classical Lectures Format Hardback   Height (mm) 229 Publication date 01 Nov 2010   Width (mm) 152 DEWEY 930.1   Spine width (mm) 36 DEWEY edition DC22   Academic level Undergraduate, Postgraduate

		List of Illustrations
		Acknowledgments
		Introduction		1
		Part I. Impressions Of The "Other"
Chapter One		Persia in the Greek Perception: Aeschylus and Herodotus		9
		Aeschylus' Persae		9
		Herodotus		21
		Some Visual Representations		40
Chapter Two		Persia in the Greek Perception: Xenophon and Alexander		53
		Xenophon's Cyropaedia		53
		Alexander and the Persians		65
Chapter Three		Egypt in the Classical Imagination		76
		Herodotus		76
		Diodorus		90
		Assorted Assessments		99
		Plutarch		111
Chapter Four		Punica Fides		115
		The Hellenic Backdrop		116
		In the Shadow of the Punic Wars		122
		The Manipulation of the Image		132
		The Enhancement of the Image		137
Chapter Five		Caesar on the Gauls		141
		Prior Portraits		141
		The Caesarian Rendering		147
Chapter Six		Tacitus on the Germans		159
		Germans and Romans		159
		Interpretatio Romans?		169
Chapter Seven		Tacitus and the Defamation of the Jews		179
		The Question		180
		Tacitean Irony		187
		More...

[Gruen] is at his best when he dissects Greco-Roman perceptions of the Jews and the Jewish reception of Greco-Roman culture and accommodation with the world of the goyim. -- "Choice Rethinking the Other in Antiquity, by Erich S. Gruen, out this month from Princeton University Press, like all excellent scholarship massages the mind in useful new directions... Gruen's mission ... is to unpack the contrary story, far less told: 'that Greeks, Romans, and Jews (who provide us with almost all the relevant extant texts) had far more mixed, nuanced, and complex opinions about other peoples.' In the main text and many useful footnotes of this info-packed but never boring study, Gruen accomplishes that. -- Carlin Romano, Chronicle Review Anthropologists should seriously consider Gruen's case, and it would be wonderful if this appreciation of and openness to different peoples and cultures could somehow enter into contemporary politics and culture. -- Jack David Eller, Anthropology Review Database

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