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. |
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... mentioned . A further and significant contribution to be made by such an examination is a better insight why certain attempts were not made . After Germanicus's cam- paigns in Germany the only serious war effort made there was by ...
... mentioned here are those who demonstrably passed on Graeco - Roman ideas and made them an integral part of their theories . There is therefore no reason to describe the views of authors such as Renan . Le Bon , Taine , and Gobineau ...
... mentioned at the outset because they involve essential matters of method , and the introduction is the proper place to discuss some aspects of these : A. N. Sherwin - White , Racial Prejudice in Imperial Rome ( Cambridge , 1967 ) ...
... mention here Dauge's massive book about Rome and the Barbarian because its conclusions are the opposite of those ... mentioned in any review of the book , which shows how vague contemporary thinking often is about racism . A third ...
... mentioned , which was also considered significant in determining human nature . It was thought that the characteristics which were acquired from the outside , through climate or other external factors , were transmitted to posterity ...