Racism in Greece and Rome

I didn’t actually watch Jade Goody and friends attack Shilpa Shetty. But it’s been impossible to avoid the endless follow-up wrangling about what was really going on. Was this appalling racism? An episode in the class war? Brutal bullying? Or just plain hatred of foreigners (which, though unpleasant enough, is not necessarily racist)?

It all reminded me uncannily of the debates about whether racism existed in Greek and Roman world.

There is no doubt at all that they often treated outsiders badly. The idea of the ‘barbarian’ (someone whose speech is just an incomprehensible “ba ba”) is a well known Greek invention. But the cultural identity of both societies was even more pervasively based on what we would now see as an unhealthy distrust of anyone different from themselves. Xenophobia in other words.

The list of unnatural things that foreigners were supposed to get up to is a long one. It ranged from peculiar eating habits (not just frogs legs or poppadoms, but at its worst cannibalism) to strange regimes of hygiene (women standing up to piss was a notable source of wonderment and/or disdain) and topsy-turvy ideas of sex and gender (women in charge).

The Greeks painted a contemptuous picture of the Persians as trousered, decadent softies who wore far too much perfume. Then the Romans came along and, minus the trousers, said much the same about the Greeks: a nice example of being given a taste of your own medicine.

But, strikingly, it’s usually claimed that neither Greeks nor Romans bothered very much about skin colour. This was a time ‘before colour prejudice’.

It’s certainly the case that there seems to have been no general idea of social, cultural or intellectual inferiority based on the colour of a person’s skin. There was no homogeneous slave class, of a different race and colour from their masters. And, in fact, exactly what skin colours were represented, and in what numbers, in the multi-cultural population of the Roman empire is something of puzzle. The second century AD emperor, Septimius Severus who came from modern Libya definitely wasn’t black (even though that’s sometimes asserted); but then he probably wasn’t as white as some of his marble busts make him seem either.

Ancient stories too suggest a very different set of assumptions about blackness and whiteness. There is marvellous episode which touches just this subject in the Aethiopica (Ethiopian Story), a novel by Heliodorus, a third-century AD Greek writer from Syria. Persinna, the black queen of Ethiopia, with a black husband, gave birth to a white daughter. How did she explain it? She had been looking at a picture of (white) Andromeda at the time of the girl’s conception.

But is it all quite so simple? Probably not. There’s a recent book by Ben Isaac, The Invention of Racism in Classical Antiquity, which claims to have identified if not racism, then at least “proto-racism” in the ancient world. Isaac insists (as do most serious analysts) that racism goes beyond casual xenophobia. It is a deterministic ideology, which sees some groups as unalterably inferior, thanks to natural or inherited characteristics. In modern society, the key natural characteristic has been skin colour.

Not so in the ancient world. But Isaac thinks he can identify something similarly deterministic (and so racist) in other, quite different, natural factors. For him, the ancients were not colour-prejudiced; instead they were geographical and environmental determinists. To over-simplify a bit, he charges the Greeks and Romans with being  “proto-racists” in the sense that they believed that the characteristics which certain races derived from their (inferior) environment and from the climate in which they lived – the rain and fog of Northern Europe, for example -- were fixed and irreversibly inferior.

I’m not sure I wholly buy this line. But if just some of the sophistication of these debates about the ancient world, and about what racism might be, had been in evidence in all the huffing and puffing about Jade Goody and her faults, more sense might have been spoken.

Comments

[Matti]

Age-olg thread but I just cannot resist the temptation...

"how can the old people only be imprecisely talking out of their arse, and the new ones scientifically so?"

So, Mr.Drace-Francis ... let's take a look at the green movement of today. So far as I have seen, most greens prefer commando economiy instead of market economy. Actually so much so that they more or less ignore the technology and concentrate on socialism instead. "It's all capitalism's fault." This is the tendency among the red flank of the red-green alliance.

So, if we apply your note on "the unscientific old crap versus the new scientific crap", we get ....

"Environment would be just fine if we replace the unscientific capitalistic coal power plant with a communistic coal power plant."

[curt steinmetz]

One would never guess from reading any of this that the Greeks coined the very word "Cosmopolitan", that Plato states in his "Timaeus" that the Greeks are mere "children" compared to the Egyptians, or that Hellenistic Civilization hardly existed in Europe at all (and never really caught on there) - but was mostly located in Africa and Asia, where it endured for century after century.

Plotinus, the most famous "Greek" philosopher of the late Roman Empire was born in Egypt (the cultural and economic center of gravity of Hellenism), and his most famous student, Porphyry, was a semite from Tyre. Not to mention Iamblichus, Proclus, Damascius & Co.

[Michael]

Ah, yes, it is indeed most tragic that not everyone has the sophistication of Oxbridge classics professors, whose superiority, whether from nature or environment, provides them with the clarity to judge not the problem at hand, but the commonness of the huffing and puffing around it.

[Alex Drace-Francis]

@LT: Slaves may have been identity-neutral in the ancient world but some time later they got an ethnic name as one group was preferred: Slav(e)s.
@xjy: thanks for the comments. I agree with you but I'm not sure linguistics is more 'scientific' - certainly the distinctions it patrols are pretty mutable.

[Mary]

I've just had a chance to look up the site recommended by postblogger...and am considerabley the wiser on the genes at work in skin colour. I fear Heliodorus would still stick by his story....in which, let me now add, there are some curious aspects. For Andromeda is one of the mythical characters in the Greco-Roman world who is sometimes seen as dark (at least) -- though, admittedly, in (say) Roman painting, not usually shown that way.

[Lord Truth]

First-the Jade Goody business had absolutely nothing to do with racism however interpreted (unless one accepts the Norman Mailer idea-which I do -that class in Britain is merely a form of racism
Essentially it was a superb classic example of pure British bullying produced by a tragic sense of low physical,intellectual and class esteem(irrespective of personal riches)in the bullier.Indeed this was so clear that the "racism"outcry was essentially an attempt by an embarrassed nation to divert this painful social fact of British life into the safer limited world of race
These matters can be disected with as much skill as a surgeons knife though there is no space here.
The entire multicultural nonsense Britain is famous for merely reflects the fact that the mass of class imprisoned British people find in blacks and Asians groups they can feel superior to-and thus relax with and generally welcome."British"Asians are particularly welcome as the superiority is reinforced- as the idea of these people being "really British " is -of course-patently absurd.....
Ms Shetty was a high class educated well spoken Indian Indian who undoubtedly knew all about British culture who blew this flimsy symbiotic relationship apart.The blacks in the programme were significantly ignored-their position offered no threat...
Ms Shetty could have tried speaking with a cockney accent-indeed in a clip she actually burst into several obscenities to lower herself to the level of her companions but it was not enough-class always tells...
It would have been more interesting if instead of an Indian a pretty slim young blonde educated Polish girl had been used.I suspect exactly the same outbursts would have occurred-as indeed have occurred in parts of the country -and for the same reasons...

Prof Beards remarks concerning race in the ancient world are interesting yet one immediately notices-in her detailed listings of the awareness of different societies habits-eating ,dressing etc-a complete ignoring of the word "beauty"
Now come on please-we have the Greeks and their pupils the Romans-for whom the idea of physical beauty was directly connected with morality and religion-yet we are told racism-or do we simply mean awareness of race-did not exist?
Beauty is of course the forbidden word in this discourse....
Certainly in every statue I have ever seen from the ancient world I have never seen Negro Arab Jew or Asian features-most seem to bear a remarkable resemblance to Richard Burton and Deborah Kerr....
Slaves were of course merely machines and just as one might prefer a Japanese car over a nice English one so it would be with slaves...if the nimble fingers of ones Nubian were more skilful than that pasty faced British thing one would choose the Nubian-in this sense race was immaterial
One must also surely accept that in a non-technological society,individuals (of tribes or states) related to each other "face to face" -in terms of their intelligence,personalities or capabilities as citizens, rulers or administrators.They carried no "baggage"with them concerning the technological inferiority or social messes of their nations.
An Indian today may be respected for his nations rising technological achievements yet we still look over his shoulder at the appalling poverty in his country.
An Indian in the ancient world would have no such problem-the rulers administration would be firm(cruel?) enough to keep the people in ordered strata-there would be no huge technological gap while religions were essentially merely extensions of the rulers supreme power.The ancient Indian could face a Roman with confidence and be accepted as an equal (within the same social strata)
It is interesting how quickly the West has shed its racist attitudes towards the Japanese and Chinese as those nations have shed their technological and poverty stricken inferiorities
This suggests there is a direct link between racism and a sense of technological and social superiority-concepts relating to "beauty "can be left out.
(but people do like Chinese and Japanese girls...The question of beauty does remain tantalising...perhaps Ill send for that incompetent pasty faced British thing after all.....

[Kat O.]

You know it seems as if Issac's theory, going off your analysis as I haven't read the book yet (however I fully intend to pick it up now it sounds fascinating) could actually have a basis in Heroditous. Heroditous doesn't necessarily describe people based on the color of thier skin but on their habits and dress and location. Such as with the Egyptians he describes their hair, their worship of cats, and their odd obsession for going after said cats when they're being burned alive. He may mention skin pigmentation briefly but it really is not a overall defining characteristic of the Egyptian people to him. So I can see some truth in Issac's words however, I do believe I will hold out full fledged flag waving support until I read his book.

[Xjy]

@Alex D-F: This sounds like the beginning of a great evening's discussion at the pub - let's hope the fire's roaring...
The first principles concerned weren't about "racism" but the factors leading to it in society - differentiation plus discrimination and dehumanization. "Racism" is just one of the phenomena embodying these factors. Basically, what forces in society drive us to acknowledge all other humans as our equals in potential and rights and as much actuality as can be attained at any given time, and what forces drive us to categorize others as non-human, sub-human, less human, human but lacking in rights etc etc?

How fundamentally human do our social roles allow us to be, and why?

Now the parallel you give to languages is almost perfect. When did Middle English creolize out of pidgin Norman French/Old English enough to attain language status? How pure did it have to be? How much purity was needed where on the continuum between extreme Franglais and archaic AlfredSpeak? Same with the transitions from Latin to Romanian etc.

But there is more science and less ideology (unbelievable but true) in linguistics than in anthropology, so we still have the idiocy of "pure" English breed with us, and lots of reference to the wonderfully pure pure folk strains on the edges of civilization, like the Swedes or Icelanders etc (E V Lucas saying eg "Such a pity to dilute the breed" about some blonde Swede marrying some dark stranger).

Ah, the battle between principles and pragmatics! But it's the everyday renewals that count, and what keeps them coming. Why we recreate our world the way we do, and how great our own input is. We're not as passive as we think. The interesting thing about Jade G right now is that she seems to have been hit by some kind of realization of this - as may some of Borat's "victims" in the film. Mouthing off is sometimes more than just letting out hot air. They feel (from the pain of the whip) that they have done something to get up some whip-bearer's nose, and the shock might just crack their bubble and let in some reality.

[Mary]

wonderful thought about the goody family, jack and jade; we must ask sir jack...

[Alex Drace-Francis]

I read Isaac’s book last year & liked it. Unlike other attempts at precis in this field, time spent on detail actually saves time in the long run. I teach it with 2 other long-but-rewarding books: Clarence Glacken’s Traces on the Rhodian Shore (1967) and Antonello Gerbi’s The dispute of the New World (1955, Eng. trans. 1973) a fantastic book on climatological theories of America, an ‘Occidentalism’ to predate Said’s Orientalism but miles more jokes and learning. Shame it isn’t better known.
@ xjy: natural to try & go back to first principles but of course in this instance there aren’t any. People think it’s a normal history of ideas where you say e.g. we couldn’t figure out how to harness steam power or measure longitude or how man is related to animals until this clever James Watt or Charles Darwin came along and showed up all the other charlatans, and the punchline is the specific novelties that JW or CD came up with. So with histories of racism: you are given the ‘precursors’ (Aristotle, some quotes from the tragedies, whatever), and then you get the ‘moderns’. And people say the moderns is ‘scientific’ compared to the imprecise, intuitive, older lot, forgetting that this is the history of a Crap Idea, & should work rather differently: how can the old people only be imprecisely talking out of their arse, and the new ones scientifically so? Ah, you complain, ‘of course there is a fundamental distinction between a useless quinquereme and a useless hovercraft, one fails to work with the aid of slave/oar power and other fails to function by means of a big farty rubberized cushion’. The exegetes don’t realise they are supposed to be writing a slightly tricky book about why this idea is actually shit, & wind up doing a Campaign for Real Racism (be more ideological, be less xenophobic, spend money on proper equipment).
Trap two is pretty trappy too: when race becomes A Bad Thing, it becomes impossible to observe in conversation that X’s hair is thicker, thinner, lighter, darker than Y’s and that Y’s eyes are bigger but his knees knobblier, even though this is apparent and requires accounting for precisely so that unwarranted significance is unattached to it. But the accounting is consigned to Scientific Non-Racists & (pace postblogger’s laudable attempts to vault the Two Cultures divide) enacted behind the rood screen in non-vernacular tongue. Because some false accounts of difference were legitimized, and this was seen to have horrible consequences, any discussion of physical difference true or false was anathematized in the humanities. As a linguist, by contrast, I’m not just allowed but practically obliged to provide explanations of difference, that Romanian is a Latin language and not Slavic or Greek or Hungarian or Turkish & time spent erecting walls of difference is not merely not frowned upon but encouraged, even though it is based on the same false logic because really there is no such thing as a purely Latin language. So it’s obligatory to be different in some ways, but illegal in others. No wonder Jade Goody is confused by the way is she related to Jack Goody the Cambridge anthropologist? I’ve always wondered.

[Xjy]

Probably best to start from the principle of fundamental human equality, and ask how far this had got by the time society had developed into the slave-holding states of Greece and Rome (some with democratic political procedures, others not). The answer would seem to be "further in theory than in practice". There were many factors that could exclude you from the right to decide for yourself regarding your body and its journey through life. Many of them boiling down to not being a "free" "man" in a "free" "state". Some factors had greater elements of contempt attached to them than others - "ugliness", "incomprehensibility", social "strangeness". Being a woman, as ever, meant being tied up in a sackful of incompatible, contradictory, and aggressive factors and hopping around as best you could. (Go Medea ;-) )

It was a matter of course for clearly recognizable humans to be treated as chattels and domestic animals (enslaved as prisoners of war). "Aliens" got treated like vermin. So really it was remarkable that discussions tending towards a universal human soul/spirit, in a universally human body, were well under way (my favourite is the Demokritos, Epicurus, Lucretius line). The presence of a soul was rarely disputed in humans, but the degree of consciousness of it, or its relationship with a divinity took on a leading role in relation to how others should be treated.

Eventually Christianity/Neo-Platonism crystallized out the pie-in-the-sky we'll-all-be-equal-when-we're-dead notion of universal equality, borrowed from the universal equality of gold in Roman Law. And the lack of consciousness of this consigned you to Hell, or the unbeliever's bonfire.

So the place of "race" as a determinant factor in discrimination was rudimentary to say the least. But the elements of "strangeness", "incomprehensibility" and "ugliness" were easy to accrete to it.

All that was needed really, I suppose, was the need for complete public hypocrisy that came with state Christianity. All the old rational reasons for treating people like brutes and regarding them as having no rights to be violated - like "we beat them", and "we own them" - were no longer good form, so more and more irrational reasons were developed. Social and cultural dehumanization led to the stamping of heathens etc as soulless, ie non-human or subhuman, and from this to similar treatment of other rival groups. Including women and children. (Fairly recently, Strindberg and many of his contemporaries loved to go on about this, the species gap between intellectuals and peasants, say, or men, women and children...)

This is a whopping great philosophical, political and historical question, so it's terribly difficult to make any sense of individual cases in individual cultural contexts (like the Celebrity Big Brother brouhaha) without going straight to first principles.

Which is why I just tried... :-)

[Candadai Tirumalai]

There have been few more skilful and thorough-going haters than Juvenal. He excoriated the introduction of "oriental" luxury and softness into Rome and their enervating effect on its "manly" character. There is at least one denunciation linked to colour in the Satires, which I do not wish to reproduce. But I agree that colour does not play the role in Greece and Rome that it came to assume in later ages. And Epictetus the former slave could teach an emperor.

[postblogger]

Fiddlesticks. The first link in my first comment includes the parenthesis at the end, so redirects you to the home page. The link should be: http://www.gnxp.com/blog/2006/02/black-and-white-twins.php

and there are some more photos here:

http://www.snopes.com/photos/people/mixedtwins.asp

They're a very sweet pair and they do make rather a mockery of our ideas about how well skin colour reflects heritage...

[Resolute Reader]

What's key here, is what ideological benefits might have been gained from racism aimed at people of a different skin colour. Racism as we know it, stemmed very much from the need to justify the slave trade and slavery - if black people were "inferior" to white Europeans, then it was ok to force them to work for you.

Did those of the classical world need such racism? Perhaps not, there were of course prejudices and xenophobia, but surely things like slavery of other races didn't need crude colour racism - the Romans saw themselves as the superior culture, and anyone not Roman was the subject of disdain, ripe for slavery.

[postblogger]

I'm so boring these days. While the obvious explanation for Persinna's white child is, of course, that her husband was away once too often, skin colour is guided by a fairly large number of genes, and if they're shuffled just the right way during reproduction, there's a finite, 'though small, chance that two apparently 'black' parents will produce a white child (http://www.gnxp.com/blog/2006/02/black-and-white-twins.php).

In a shameless piece of self-promotion, there are some more links about this sort of thing in a post which I wrote a while back - http://postbloggery.blogspot.com/2006/10/its-wise-child-who-knows-his-own.html