Barbarians in the Greek and Roman World

Erik Jensen

• Publisher: Hackett Publishing Company, Inc.
• Year: 2018
• Print ISBN: 9781624667121
• eBook ISBN: 9781624667640
• Topic: History
• Subtopic: Roman Ancient History
• Index: History

What did the ancient Greeks and Romans think of the peoples they referred to as barbari? Did they share the modern Western conception—popularized in modern fantasy literature and role-playing games—of "barbarians" as brutish, unwashed enemies of civilization? Or our related notion of "the noble savage?" Was the category fixed or fluid? How did it contrast with the Greeks and Romans' conception of their own cultural identity? Was it based on race? In accessible, jargon-free prose, Erik Jensen addresses these and other questions through a copiously illustrated introduction to the varied and evolving ways in which the ancient Greeks and Romans engaged with, and thought about, foreign peoples—and to the recent historical and archaeological scholarship that has overturned received understandings of the relationship of Classical civilization to its "others."

Table of contents

• Front Cover
• Half Title
• Title Page
• Copyright
• Title of Related Interest Available from Hackett Publishing
• Contents
• Acknowledgments
• Introduction
• Maps
• Chapter 1: Meeting the Barbarians
• Chapter 2: How the Greeks Became Greek
• Chapter 3: The Greeks Encounter the World
• Chapter 4: The Greco-Persian Wars
• Chapter 5: Greeks, Macedonians, and Persians
• Chapter 6: The Hellenistic Era
• Chapter 7: Rome and Italy
• Chapter 8: An Empire of Barbarians
• Chapter 9: Greek, Roman, and Greco-Roman
• Chapter 10: Being Roman
• Chapter 11: The Imperial Frontier
• Chapter 12: Invasions, Migrations, Transformations
• Chapter 13: Remembering the Barbarians
• Select Bibliography
• Image Credits
• Index
• Back Cover