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
Results 1-5 of 79
... Rome , the present work will concentrate more on the negative or ambivalent attitudes Rome showed towards Greeks and F. I. Zeitlin , Playing the Other : Gender and Society in Classical Greek Literature ( Chicago and London , 1996 ) ...
... Rome the son of free - born parents has to give the wall to some rich man's slave . " 113 This is not meant as a literal description of the movements of slaves and free men in Rome , but it definitely expresses a feeling , held by many ...
... Rome and the Barbarian because its conclusions are the opposite of those reached in the pres- ent work . Four pages out of a total of 859 set forth the author's conviction that there was a total absence of racism in Rome . His view is that ...
... Rome , however , is central to the topic of this study . As will be seen , the belief in the opposition of East and West , or Asia and Europe was in Rome replaced , to some extent , or expanded , with the concept of an opposition be ...
... Rome in particular . It will be seen how there was a tendency to expel such peoples frequently from the city of Rome , even though they seemed to have made their way back fairly quickly . An intellectual response characteristic of both ...