UNDERSTANDING THE 'OTHER' IN AN EAST GREEK CONTEXT UNDERSTANDING THE 'OTHER' IN AN EAST GREEK CONTEXT By JONATHON DOUGLAS CHRISTOPHER MC CALLUM, B.A. A Thesis Submitted to the School of Graduate Studies in Partial Fulfilment of the Requirements for the Degree Master of Arts McMaster University © Copyright by Jonathon Douglas Christopher McCallum, September 2014 M.A. Thesis – J. D. C. McCallum; McMaster University – Classics. McMaster University MASTER OF ARTS (2014) Hamilton, Ontario (Classics) TITLE: Understanding the 'Other' in an East Greek Context AUTHOR: Jonathon Douglas Christopher McCallum, B.A. (McMaster University) SUPERVISOR: Dr. Sean Corner NUMBER OF PAGES: (vi) (129) ii M.A. Thesis – J. D. C. McCallum; McMaster University – Classics. ABSTRACT This thesis looks to re-evaluate the East Greek intellectual view of non-Greeks in the middle to late fifth century. To do this I examine how ethnic difference is understood in the Hippocratic treatise Airs, Waters, Places (as well as the rest of the fifth-century Hippocratic corpus) and Herodotus' Histories, which together represent the new ethnographic thought of the fifth century. I will argue that neither author understood there to be any essential difference between Greeks and non-Greeks, nor represented non- Greeks as anti-Greeks, as many scholars today hold. Furthermore, I will argue that the idea of a Greek/barbarian dichotomy was to a considerable extent a construction of Athenian ideology, which stood in contrast to an East Greek cosmopolitanism that understood ethnic difference not in terms of differences in nature but of cultural variation within a common human condition. iii M.A. Thesis – J. D. C. McCallum; McMaster University – Classics. ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS First and foremost, I would like to thank Dr. Sean Corner, my thesis supervisor, for his guidance, advice, and insight, all of which were invaluable in the creation of this thesis. Similarly, I would like to thank the other members of my thesis committee, Dr. Claude Eilers and Dr. Kathryn Mattison, for their constructive criticism. I would also like to thank the rest of the McMaster Classics Department, who, as peers and mentors, created a wonderful environment to learn and work in. Lastly, I would like to thank my family and friends for their support throughout my academic career. iv M.A. Thesis – J. D. C. McCallum; McMaster University – Classics. TABLE OF CONTENTS Introduction........................................................................................................................1 Chapter 1: The Hippocratic View of Non-Greeks...........................................................7 Introduction..........................................................................................................................7 Section 1.1: The Theory of Ethnic Difference in Airs, Waters, Places................................7 Section 1.2: Airs, Waters, Places' Theory of Ethnic Difference in Fifth-Century Hippocratic Treatises..............................................................................................23 Section 1.3: The Fifth-Century Hippocratic View of Non-Greeks.....................................34 Chapter 2: The Herodotean View of Non-Greeks.........................................................43 Introduction........................................................................................................................43 Section 2.1: The Theory of Ethnic Difference in Herodotus' Histories.............................43 Section 2.2: The View of Non-Greeks in Herodotus' Histories.........................................48 Persians...............................................................................................................................50 Egyptians............................................................................................................................72 Scythians.............................................................................................................................83 Conclusion..........................................................................................................................92 Chapter 3: The East Greek Intellectual View of Non-Greeks.......................................93 Introduction.........................................................................................................................93 Section 3.1: Herodotus and the Hippocratics as East Greek Intellectuals..........................93 Similarities in Ethnography................................................................................................94 The Influence of Medicine on Herodotus.........................................................................104 Herodotus and the Hippocratics as East Greek Intellectuals............................................109 Section 3.2: The East Greek Intellectual View of Non-Greeks........................................114 Bibliography....................................................................................................................119 v M.A. Thesis – J. D. C. McCallum; McMaster University – Classics. DECLARATION OF ACADEMIC ACHIEVEMENT The author declares that the content of this research has been completed by Jonathon Douglas Christopher McCallum, with recognition of the contributions of the supervisory committee comprising of Dr. Sean Corner, Dr. Claude Eilers, and Dr. Kathryn Mattison during the research and writing process. vi M.A. Thesis – J. D. C. McCallum; McMaster University – Classics. Introduction It has become something of an orthodoxy that after the Persian Wars there was a stark change in how Greeks viewed non-Greeks and concomitantly in how the Greeks defined themselves. There arose, so it is claimed, a new Greek identity based on a simple dichotomy of Greek vs barbarian. Thus, in her influential 1989 book, Inventing the Barbarian, Edith Hall argues that whereas before the Persian Wars, Greek culture placed little emphasis on the difference between the Greeks and the peoples of the Near East, after the wars we witness a new strain in Greek thought in which Greekness is defined in stark contradistinction to the Eastern barbarian. Thus, for example, Homer's Trojans in the Iliad are not essentially different in nature than the Greeks, in contrast to Aeschylus' Persians, who are represented as the national enemy and antithesis of the Greeks. Similarly, in The Mirror of Herodotus – this bipolarity lending itself to structuralist approaches – François Hartog argues that Herodotus' ethnographies approach foreign cultures according to an ethnocentric standard that assumes Greekness as normative. For example, Egyptian culture is understood in terms of inversions of Greek norms, and Scythian funerary practices are seen as primitive for lacking features found in Greek funerals, which are taken as a normative standard. While there surely is an element of this dichotomy in Greek thought, there has been a push in recent years for a more nuanced evaluation of the Greeks' view of themselves and the other. Thus, for example, in Rethinking the Other in Antiquity, Erich 1 M.A. Thesis – J. D. C. McCallum; McMaster University – Classics. Gruen argues that the Greeks rather than always insisting on the distinctiveness of the other, were also concerned with links to, adaptation to, and even incorporation of the alien . For example, Herodotus' depiction of the Persians, who are the enemy of the Greeks in the main narrative of the History, is multi-layered and subtle, advancing a portrait of entanglement rather than enmity. Gruen argues that these subtle characterizations, rather than simplistic stereotypes, resist the reductive placement of the other into negative, or, for that matter, positive categories. Jonathan Hall's study of Greek notions of ethnicity significantly complicates the very terms in which the question can be addressed. Hall, in Ethnic Identity in Greek Antiquity and Hellenicity, argues first that in the case of Greek identity, it is important to distinguish between ethnic and cultural identities. That is to say, where Greeks ethnically identified as Dorian, Ionian, Achaean, or Aeolian, Greekness itself was conceived not in terms of common descent, but of certain common cultural traits. Hall argues that before the Persian Wars peer-polity rivalry between Greek poleis – rather than conflicts and comparisons with non-Greeks at margins of the Greek world – was the major condition for the emergence of a common Greek cultural identity. While he does accept that the Persian Wars were a watershed moment in the shaping of the common Greek identity, he argues that the ethnonym Hellene remained primarily a cultural distinction rather than an ethnic one. He argues that the notion of a diametric opposition of Greek and barbarian is too crude, as it does not allow for the crossover, multiplicity, and blurring of categories noted by himself and Gruen. In its place, he is 2 M.A. Thesis – J. D. C. McCallum; McMaster University – Classics. able to elucidate the richer and more complex set of terms by which the Greeks conceived of themselves and others. Building on this, I will in my thesis re-evaluate the view of non-Greeks in fifth century Greek prose writing, specifically investigating the Hippocratic and Herodotean views of the other. Together the Hippocratic treatise Airs, Waters, Places and Herodotus' Histories represent the new ethnographic thought of the fifth century. While Herodotean ethnography has been the subject of much attention and discussion,