The invention of racism in classical antiquity
"This book refutes the common belief that the ancient Greeks and Romans harbored "ethnic and cultural," but not racial, prejudice. It does so by comprehensively tracing the intellectual origins of racism back to classical antiquity. Benjamin Isaac's systematic analysis of ancient social prejudices and stereotypes reveals that some of those represent prototypes of racism - or proto-racism - which in turn inspired the early modern authors who developed the more familiar racist ideas. He considers the literature from classical Greece to late antiquity in a quest for the various forms of the discriminatory stereotypes and social hatred that have played such an important role in recent history and continue to do so in modern society." "The Invention of Racism in Classical Antiquity further suggests that an understanding of ancient attitudes toward other peoples shed light not only on Greco-Roman imperialism and the ideology of enslavement of foreigners in those societies (and on foreigners concomitant integration or non-integration), but also on the disintegration of the Roman Empire and on more recent imperialism as well."--Jacket
Print Book, English, ©2004
Princeton University Press, Princeton, N.J., ©2004
History
xiv, 563 pages : illustrations ; 24 cm
9780691116914, 9780691125985, 9781306063494, 0691116911, 1306063493, 0691125988
51942570
Superior and inferior peoples
Conquest and imperialism
Fears and suppression
Greeks and the East
Roman imperialism and the conquest of the East
Phoenicians, Carthaginians, Syrians
Egyptians
Parthia/Persia
Roman views of Greeks
Mountaineers and plainsmen
Gauls
Germans
Jews
Ethnic prejudice, proto-racism, and imperialism in antiquity