Volume XIV (2003) Frogs around the Pond:
Cultural Diversity in the Ancient World
Sarah P. Morris, “Frogs around the Pond? Cultural Diversity in the Ancient World and the New Millennium” Abstract: This essay examines relations between Greeks and non-Greeks in the eastern Mediterranean in three case studies. A Geometric clay pyxis from Athens is compared to an older Egyptian granary, to consider how shapes, images, and beliefs might travel across time and place. In the second case, a famous image of Artemis from Ephesus is traced to Antaolian traditions of the second millennium. Finally, the role of myth, or the narrative behind such images, is examined in the figure of Midas, whose asses’ ears could harbor royal Anatolian attributes. Details of these connections are explored elsewhere; this essay asks how and why we pursue them in classical art and myth, and what the results accomplish for our purposes as teachers and scholars of classical antiquity.
John Michael Kearns, “Greek and Lydian Evidence of Diversity, Erasure, and Convergence in Western Asia Minor” Abstract: After the Persian, Greek, and Roman conquests of Lydia, a separate Lydian culture and language gradually disappeared under the influence of the kind of socioeconomic and sociolinguistic forces that have more recently reduced the diversity of the world’s cultures and languages. There is evidence, however, that a convergence between Greek and Anatolian (particularly Lydian) cultures stretched back into the Bronze Age. This kind of convergence would explain Herodotus’ remarkable statement that Greeks and Lydians follow much the same customs.
Monica Florence, "Wild Neighbors: Perceptions of Megarian Ethic Identity in Fifth-Century Athenian Comedy" Abstract: This paper breaks down the putative “Panhellenic ideal” assumed by many scholars of Old Comedy and evaluates the comic references to one group, the Megarians, to discover an even greater complexity of intra-Hellenic relationships. The author aims to develop the notion of ancient ethnicity by showing that the fifth-century Athenian comic poets present substantial differences between the Megarians and other Greek groups, and to consider the function of the portrayal of the Megarians in the context of Athenian imperialism.
Craig Cooper, “‘Worst of All He’s an Egyptian’” Abstract: In this paper, the author seeks to show that the ambivalent feelings that Athenians had toward foreigners at all periods of the Athenian democracy became even more pronounced in the decades between 350 and 330, as on the one hand the Athenians liberalized their legal system to encourage trade and give freer legal access to foreigners, but on the other hand tightened up the laws punishing foreigners for usurping citizenship. It was in this same period that we find some of the most blatant prejudices expressed in the courtroom against foreigners.
Eleanor Irwin, “Venturing Where Vine and Olive Do Not Grow: Diet and Cultural Diversity” Abstract: Unfamiliar food and drink encountered outside the Greek world was sometimes distasteful to Greeks and could have unpleasant side-effects on them, though the local population was obviously unaffected. When Greek travelers encountered oils other than the familiar olive, drinks other than wine, and breads not made with barley or wheat, they not only described them but also reported adverse reactions, though the local inhabitants ate and drank with relish and impunity. Cultures could thus be defined by climate and crops because these determined what people ate and drank.
Max Nelson, “The Cultural Construction of Beer among the Greeks and Romans" Abstract: This paper explores motives underlying rejection of beer from Greek and Roman diets despite considerable explosure to and even considerable praise of it. The author contends that the fundamental reason for beer’s general exclusion from the Greek and Roman diet was primarily ideological. The very fact that beer was the drink of others was enough to condemn it, and the actual intrinsic merits of the beverage probably had little influence on verdicts against it.
Michele George, “Race, Racism, and Status: Images of Black Slaves in the Roman Empire” Abstract: Although not an operative principle in Roman slavery, race did have consequences for the tasks of black slaves and for their representation in Roman art. Although they developed from varied Greek artistic precedents, Blacks occur most often in Roman art as slaves. As signs of their masters’ wealth and status, images of black slaves evoked exotic locales and were invested with apotropaic powers. The somatic differences of Blacks reinforced their visible difference from Italian aesthetic norms and facilitated a connection with slaves, the proverbial aliens in Roman thought. Thus, although their numbers among the slave population were relatively small, the presence of Blacks in Roman art is dominated by the slave context.
Linda W. Gillison, “Agrippina laborum periculorum socia” Abstract: Tacitus’ characterization of the elder Agrippina in his Annales is one of the richest in his entire corpus. This paper argues that Tacitus employed “self-quotation” in his depiction of this complex character, using German women from his own Germania as a source. In the Annales, the character of Thusnelda, wife and then widow of Arminius, also offers parallels, as do selected Roman coins which depict conquered provinces.
Barbara Burrell, “Strangers in Their Own Land: Greeks and the Roman God-Emperor” Abstract: This paper views the operation of the imperial cult in the Roman East as a dialogue, in which the initial offer of worship could be either accepted outright or modified by the recipient to his own purposes; and that response could affect how future petitions were presented. Roman judgements of which cities were most suitable to host their province’s imperial temples often led to rivalry among the cities. Hellenic orators and Roman rulers both disparaged this rivalry, but their own evaluations of the relative worth of cities in fact encouraged it.
Kathryn Chew, “The Chaste and the Chased: Swfrosuvnh, Female Martyrs, and Novel Heroines” Abstract: This article focuses on the concept, valuation, and practice of chastity by the heroines of Greek novelistic heroines and early Christian female martyrs. For this study, the martyr accounts function not as historical texts but as analogues to fiction, literary creations expressing the attitudes and ideals of their society. Exploitation of the capacity of the “pagan” novel genre to represent spectacle allows writers of martyr accounts to market their faith through words as vividly as if their reader were present at the event itself. As a “literary companion” to these visually compelling spectacles, then, the martyr accounts are graphic testimony to Christianity’s expanding power.
Michael Dewar, “We’re All Romans Now (Except for the Foreigners): Multi-Ethnic Armies and the Ideology of Romanitas in the Poetry of Claudian.” Abstract: At In Rufinum 2.101-19, Claudian presents Stilicho as leading a multi-ethnic army that unites in perfect harmony the troops of the two previously divided halves of the Empire. Much of the power of the propaganda comes from a skilful combination of two earlier epic models, Virgil and Lucan. In Virgil, however, the diverse nations presented as showing allegiance to Augustus are conquered peoples, whereas Stilicho commands an army in which nationalities are subsumed within the wider loyalty of Roman citizens. And whereas Lucan’s two armies are opposing sides in a destructive civil war, Stilicho’s army is one that is harmoniously reunited after a similar war has reached a happy conclusion.
