Herodotus and Other Greek Thinkers on Cultural Difference

Positive Analogies

And

Polar Oppositions

Herodotus (Possibly a Copy of Portrait of the Historian)

Plato and the Barbarian Stereotype

Plato, Republic, 435e

“It would be ridiculous for anyone to think that spiritedness didn’t come to be in cities from such individuals as the Thracians, Scythians and others who live to the north of us who are held to possess spirit, or that the same isn’t true of the love of learning, which is mostly associated with our part of the world, or of the love of money, which one might say is conspicuously displayed by the Phoenicians and Egyptians.”

Stereotypes and Stereotyping

Stereotypes and Stereotyping According to Leyens, Yzerbyt, and Schadron (1994)

Stereotype: “stereotypes are shared beliefs about personal attributes, usually personality habits but also often behaviors of a group of people”

Stereotyping: “the process of stereotyping individuals is the process of applying a stereotypical judgment such as rendering these individuals interchangeable with other members of the category”

Classical Greek Collective Stereotypes

The Barbarian

Barbarians in Greek Thought

Polarity and Analogy Greek Opposition Tables “[I]t was certain [Greek] philosophers who first

explicitly formulated the distinction in value between the opposite terms of certain pairs, and who extended and developed this use into comprehensive systems” G.E.R. Lloyd, Polarity and Analogy

Ancient Greek Opposition Table

Positive Greeks Men Gods Commander Peace (?) Acquisition Nature (?)

Negative Barbarians Women Men Common Soldier War (?) Loss (Zero-Sum) Culture (?)

Ancient Greek Causal Explanations for Human Differences and Cultural Stereotypes

Nature (Physis): Racial? See Aristotle, Politics, 1.6, 1255a28-38 on the natural slave

Geographical/Climatic (Airs, Waters, Places, 12) Institutional (Plato’s Laws and Republic, Aristotle’s

Politics, Polybius, Histories, Book 6)

Pragmatics of Barbarian Category

Aristotle, Politics, 7.7, 1327b23-33

(Geographical/Climatic Determinism)

“The peoples that live in cold regions and those of Europe are full of courage and passion but somewhat lacking in brain power; for this reason, while remaining generally independent, they lack political cohesion and the ability to rule over others. On the other hand the Asiatic peoples have both brains and skill but are lacking in courage and will power; so they remain enslaved and subject. The Greeks, occupying a mid-position geographically, have a measure of both. Therefore they continue to be free, to have the best political institutions, and to be capable of ruling over all others.”

Herodotus: Deconstructing the Barbarian

The Question of Intentionality (Quentin Skinner and Contextual Hermeneutics)

Biographical Data (Halicarnassian Exile and Athenian Citizenship Quest)

Herodotean Didacticism Mirrors of inversion and reversal (2.35) Disintegration of Greek/Barbarian Bipolarity(1.58;

1.136) Cultural Relativity (3.36) Admonition: Athenians Become

Persians/Barbarians? (9.120)

Herodotus (2.35) on Egyptian Reversals

“Not only is the climate different from that of the rest of the world, and the rivers unlike any other rivers, but the people also, in most of their manners and customs, exactly reverse the common practice of mankind. The women attend the markets and trade, while the men sit at home at the loom; and here, while the rest of the world works the woof up the warp, the Egyptians work it down; the women likewise carry burdens upon their shoulders, while the men carry them upon their heads. Women stand up to urinate, men sit down. They eat their food out of doors in the streets, but relieve themselves in their houses…A woman cannot serve the priestly office, either for god or goddess, but men are priests to both; sons need not support their parents unless they choose, but daughters must, whether they want to or not.”

Herodotus (3.38) on Cultural Relativity

“Darius, after he acquired power, called to his presence certain Greeks who were at hand, and asked them what they would take to eat the bodies of their fathers when they died. They answered that nothing could make them do such a thing. He then sent for certain Indians called Callatians, who do eat their dead fathers, and asked them… what they would take to burn their fathers’ bodies when they died. The Indians were horrified at the thought. Such is men’s custom; and Pindar was right, in my judgment, when he said, ‘Custom is the King of All’ .”

Compare Plato, Laws, 637C

“There is one answer which seems to resolve the question, so that the behavior is not wrong but right. For anyone will say in answer to the wondering stranger who looks upon something contrary to his habits: ‘Do not wonder, stranger. This is our nomos; perhaps you in such matters have a different one’.”

Herodotus (9.120) on Athenian Behavior

“So they led Artayctes to the tongue of land where Xerxes’ bridge had been fixed—or, according to others, to the knoll above the town of Madytus; and, after having nailed him to a board, they left him to hang there. As for Artayctes’ son, they stoned him to death before his father’s eyes .”

Resistance Literature?

“But what is surprising is that, more often than not, the first-person plural, we, is replaced by the third-person plural: not we, but the Greeks…the ‘others’ and the Greeks, the barbarians and the Greeks, them and they.”

Francois Hartog, The Mirror of Herodotus