The Invention of Racism in Classical AntiquityThere was racism in the ancient world, after all. This groundbreaking 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. |
From inside the book
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... Italian fascist regime and accepted their ideologies , did not trace ancient predecessors of the racist , nationalist and imperialist ideas that they supported . They tended to write about the topics favored in the classical studies of ...
... Italian fascist literature for its methodological approach to racism . Yet I have not seen this mentioned in any review of the book , which shows how vague contemporary thinking often is about racism . A third important problem , apart ...
... Italy caused social tension in the local society , familiar from our own times , which is amply re- flected in the literature . The fear this influx engendered leads to regular at- tempts to regulate the foreign presence , through ...
... Italy , Greeks , var- ious peoples in Asia Minor , Syrians , Egyptians and others , always played a large role in the Roman perception of their empire because of their high cultural level and their ancient religious and political ...
... in some 122 See in general : Tim Cornell , The Beginnings of Rome : Italy and Rome from the Bronze Age to the Punic Wars ( London , 1995 ) . sources , but usually as representatives of peoples living near INTRODUCTION . 49.