How do different cultures think about race? In the modern era, racial
distinctiveness has been assessed primarily in terms of a person's
physical appearance. But it was not always so. As Denise McCoskey shows,
the ancient Greeks and Romans did not use skin colour as the basis for
categorising ethnic disparity. The colour of one's skin lies at the
foundation of racial variability today because it was used during the
heyday of European exploration and colonialism to construct a hierarchy
of civilizations and then justify slavery and other forms of economic
exploitation. Assumptions about race thus have to take into account
factors other than mere physiognomy. This is particularly true in
relation to the classical world. In fifth century Athens, racial theory
during the Persian Wars produced the categories 'Greek' and 'Barbarian',
and set them in brutal opposition to one another: a process that could
be as intense and destructive as 'black and 'white' in our own age.
Ideas about race in antiquity were therefore completely distinct but as
closely bound to political and historical contexts as those that came
later.
This provocative book boldly explores the complex matrices of race - and
the differing interpretations of ancient and modern - across epic,
tragedy and the novel. Ranging from Theocritus to Toni Morrison, and
from Tacitus and Pliny to Bernal's seminal study Black Athena, this is a
powerful and original new assessment.
