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Ethnography and the Colonial World in Theocritus and Lucian

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Ethnography and the Colonial World in Theocritus and Lucian ETHNOGRAPHY AND THE COLONIAL WORLD IN THEOCRITUS AND LUCIAN by CHRISTOPHER S. PARMENTER A THESIS Presented to the Department of Classics and the Graduate School of the University of Oregon in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Master of Arts June 2013 THESIS APPROVAL PAGE Student: Christopher S. Parmenter Title: Ethnography and the Colonial World in Theocritus and Lucian This thesis has been accepted and approved in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the Master of Arts degree in the Department of Classics by: P. Lowell Bowditch Chair Christopher Eckerman Member and Kimberly Andrews Espy Vice President of Research and Innovation; Dean of the Graduate School Original approval signatures are on file with the University of Oregon Graduate School. Degree awarded June 2013 ii © 2013 Christopher S. Parmenter iii THESIS ABSTRACT Christopher S. Parmenter Master of Arts Department of Classics June 2013 Title: Ethnography and the Colonial World in Theocritus and Lucian Scholars of migration, colonization, and cultural interaction in antiquity have increasingly turned towards a variety of concepts (such as hybridity, negotiations, and middle grounds) developed by postcolonial theorists to describe the dynamics of ancient civilizations beyond the major centers of Athens and Rome. Whereas older models of identity saw the ancient world as a series of geographically distinct cultural units with attendant language, religion, and practices—that is to say, a model of identity rooted in the modern concept of the nation state— recently classicists have come to see ancient identities as abstractions of a series of individual choices that take place over long periods of time and that are always mediated by contact with different groups. Focusing on two authors from what I shall define as the ‘colonial worlds’ of antiquity (Theocritus from Sicily and Lucian from Syria) this study will explore how representations of physical difference and cultural practice negotiate the presence of non-Greek peoples into Greek literary culture. iv CURRICULUM VITAE NAME OF AUTHOR: Christopher S. Parmenter GRADUATE AND UNDERGRADUATE SCHOOLS ATTENDED: University of Oregon, Eugene, Oregon University of Pennsylvania, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania Hamilton College, Clinton, New York Intercollegiate Center for Classical Studies, Catania, Italy DEGREES AWARDED: Master of Arts, Classics, University of Oregon, 2013 Artium Baccalaureus, Classical studies and English, Hamilton College, 2010 AREAS OF SPECIAL INTEREST: Greek historiography Greek ethnography Social identity in antiquity Second Sophistic Postcolonialism PROFESSIONAL EXPERIENCE: Graduate Teaching Fellow, University of Oregon, 2011-2013 State Development Office Intern, Pennsylvania Small Business Development Centers, Philadelphia, PA, 2010-2011 GRANTS, AWARDS, AND HONORS: Henry H. MacCracken Fellowship (New York University, 2013-2017) John Winkler Prize, runner up (Oberlin, 2013) Sean Kelley Memorial Fund (Oregon, 2012) Eta Sigma Phi (Hamilton, 2010) The Winchell Prize in Greek (Hamilton, 2010) The Franklin D. Locke Fellowship in Greek (Hamilton, 2010) Emerson Fellowship (Hamilton, 2009) v ACKNOWLEDGMENTS I would like to thank my committee members Professors P. Lowell Bowditch and Chris Eckerman for helping to develop what began as a number of smaller papers into a coherent whole. The rest of the Classics faculty here—Professors Mary Jaeger and Malcolm Wilson as well as Doctors Cristina Calhoon and David Chamberlain—have offered me more useful questions and suggestions than I could possibly credit here. The first seeds of this project took root during my time at the Intercollegiate Center for Classical Studies in Catania, Sicily (ave atque vale) in 2009, where I studied under Nigel Nicholson. Over the course of this project, my colleagues in Eugene, Sam Toman, Ryan Franklin, Jim Klein, and Bess Myers, have provided invaluable feedback for my ideas. Earlier versions of chapters III and IV were presented at conferences at Willamette University (2012) and the University of Oregon (2013) as well as at CAPN (2013), also at the University of Oregon. Over the course of this project I received assistance from the Sean Kelley memorial fund administered through the Department of Classics. And, as always, my thanks to Antonia Noori Farzan (ingenium nobis ipsa puella facit). vi TABLE OF CONTENTS Chapter Page I. INTRODUCTION: ANCIENT COLONIALISM AND COLONIAL NARRATIVE 1 Trojans in the Wilderness 2 Ancient Colonial Narrative 7 Ethnography and Stereotypes 10 The Question of Terminology 13 Review of Chapters 14 II. POSTCOLONIALISM AND THE CLASSICS: TOWARDS A NEW POETICS OF CULTURE 18 Cultural Poetics at the Margins 20 Postcolonial Theory: Said and Bhabha 24 Postcolonial Approaches in Classical Studies 28 Reception 29 Discourse Analysis 32 Towards a New Poetics of Culture? Some Objections 36 III. IDENTITY AND HYBRIDITY IN THE HELLENISTIC MEDITERRANEAN: THE CASE OF THEOCRITUS’ CYCLOPS 39 Dark Skin and Snub Noses 43 Dark Skin 45 Snub Noses 48 Race, Ethnography, and Ancient Colonialism 52 Monstrosity and Race 57 Marrying the Cyclops 64 vii Chapter Page IV. ETHNOGRAPHY AND THE CRITIQUE OF HISTORIOGRAPHY IN LUCIAN’S VERAE HISTORIAE 68 Ethnography East and West 71 Being Ambivalent in the Second Sophistic 72 The Well and the Mirror 79 Ethnographic Knowledge in the Lucianic West 87 Precolonial Landscapes: phonê 88 Differentiating the Foreigner: phusis 91 Assimilating Foreignness: nomoi 93 Culture as Middle Ground 94 V. THE VOYAGE TO SICILY: COLONIAL FOUNDATION AND ETHNIC CLEANSING IN HERODOTUS AND LUCIAN 96 Native Peoples in Colonial Narrative 99 Lucian, Ethnography, and Colonial Narratives 104 Lucian’s Voyage to Sicily: VH 1.31-39 109 Ethnic Cleansing in Classical Sicily? Hdt. 7.153-56 114 VI. CONCLUSION 121 REFERENCES CITED 124 viii CHAPTER I INTRODUCTION: ANCIENT COLONIALISM AND COLONIAL NARRATIVE Postcoloniality, hybridity, negotiations, third spaces, middle grounds, networks— these are all increasingly programmatic terms in the study of migration, colonization, and cultural interaction in antiquity. Eschewing firm lines of periodization and specialty, classicists are increasingly paying attention not only to the links between the different linguistic, social, and economic cultures of antiquity, but also how they are formed, in awareness of each other, from the very beginning.1 Whereas older models of identity saw the ancient world as a series of geographically distinct cultural units with attendant language, religion, and practices—that is to say, a model of identity rooted in the modern concept of the nation state— recently classicists have come to see ancient identities as abstractions of a series of individual choices that take place over long periods of time and that are always mediated by contact with different groups. Focusing on two authors from what I shall define as the ‘colonial worlds’ of antiquity—Theocritus, from Sicily, and Lucian, from Syria—I will explore how representations of physical difference and cultural practice negotiate the presence of non-Greek peoples into Greek literary culture. Though these authors are removed from each other by several centuries, both spent their careers in regions where ethnic Greeks (that is to say, Greeks by ancestry) were in the minority, but where Greek cultural practices were relatively widespread. Theocritus’ shepherds in several of his pastoral Idylls (3, 6, 10, and 11) and Lucian’s imaginary foreigners in the True histories emerge out of a context of the copresence of Greek and non-Greek populations. Using the language of cultural poetics (identified with the work of Leslie Kurke and Carol Dougherty),2 I will investigate how Theocritus and Lucian situate their works within the class, status, ethnic, and possibly racial politics of the colonial city. Moreover, borrowing concepts of hybridity and ambivalence from the work of Homi Bhabha,3 I will make the case that the literary cultures of ancient colonial worlds can and should be interpreted in the comparative 1 Recent works include Malkin 2011, Gruen 2011, 2011b, Woolf 2011, Skinner 2012, McCoskey 2012. 2 Kurke and Dougherty 1993, 2003; Kurke 1999, 2007, 2011, Dougherty 1993, 2003. 3 Bhabha 1994. For a discussion of hybridity, see chapter II below. 1 context of nineteenth and twentieth century colonization. As Bhabha has explored, representations of colonial populations by colonists both draw lines between those represented and their viewers as well as serve as sites of negotiation and compromise between colonizer and colonized. Before discussing the overall framework of this study, however, I would like to begin with an example of the different strategies of colonial thought. As I will discuss to a larger extent in the first chapter of this study, though colonial contexts are historically bound—there can be no direct translation of the experience of ancient colonialism to that of the early modern period—strategies of representing colonial encounters in antiquity are strikingly similar to strategies used in early history of the United States. Rather than framing a contrast between the pious settler and the barbarous savage, early accounts of the settlement of New England bear a striking level of negotiation, or even accommodation, of native languages and culture. Though later events precluded the establishment of a hybrid colony, such an establishment was not far removed from the consciousness of some of Massachusetts’ original settlers. Trojans in the Wilderness In the summer of 1621, the separatist
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