Ethnicity and Greek History: Re‐examining Our Assumptions

Abstract

The study of ethnic identity in antiquity is by no means novel. In fact, one could argue that its study goes at least as far back as 1824, when K. O. Müller published his pioneering Die Dorier. 1 It could plausibly be argued that in the century that elapsed between the publication of Die Dorier and World War II two large topics dominated scholarly discussion. The first was the struggle for national unity: for many scholars during this period, Greek history should be written as the narrative of the attempts, failures, and successes that the divided Greek communities faced in the process of achieving national unification. 2 This was perceived as a struggle to overcome the particularism of the poleis, in order to achieve unity in the face of barbarian enemies. The term Panhellenism was invented to describe how Greek intellectuals came to think of this process of national unification and how Greek individuals and communities attempted to put it into practice. 3 The second topic concerned the role of national character and race within Greek history: it concerned the nature and features of groups like the Dorians and the Ionians and their role within Greek history, as well as defining the origins and innate features of the Greek race. 4 After more than a century of heated debate, these two topics became abruptly redundant in post-World War II scholarship. It is no accident that two works published in the 1950s questioned the utility and validity of further pursuing such questions. In a seminal article first published in 1951 Frank Walbank questioned the utility of making the struggle for national unity the central narrative of Greek history. 5 The Greeks never attempted to create a national state; it was rather the polis which dominated their world and which should play a central role in the writing of Greek history. The post-war domination of the polis as a central analytical category in the writing of Greek history goes a long way towards explaining why the issue of Panhellenism and the struggle for national unity largely disappeared from contemporary narratives of Greek history. 6 On the other hand, the defeat of Nazism and the 1 K. O. Müller, Die Dorier (Breslau 1824). See A. Wittenburg, 'I Dori di K. O. Müller', Annali della Scuola Normale Superiore di Pisa 14 (1984) 1031-44. 2 P. Funke, 'Η αρχαία Ελλάδα: ένα αποτυχημένο έθνος; Ζητήματα πρόσληψης και ερμηνείας της αρχαίας ελληνικής ιστορίας στην γερμανική ιστοριογραφία του 19ου αιώνα' in Ένας νέος κόσμος γεννιέται. Η εικόνα του ελληνικού πολιτισμού στη γερμανική επιστήμη κατά τον 19ο αιώνα, ed. E. Chrysos (Athens 1996) 83-105. 3 L. G. Mitchell, Panhellenism and the barbarian in archaic and classical Greece (Oxford 2007) xv-xvi. 4 See, e.g., J. L. Myres, Who were the Greeks? (Berkeley 1930); J. M. Hall, Ethnic identity in Greek antiquity (Cambridge 1997) 4-16. 5 F. W. Walbank, 'The problem of Greek nationality', Phoenix 5 (1951) 41-60. 6 K. Vlassopoulos, Unthinking the Greek polis: ancient Greek history beyond Eurocentrism (Cambridge 2007) 52-67.

Re-thinking communities: Collective identity and social experience in Iron-Age western Anatolia

“…Mediterranean scholarship hosts a thriving debate over ancient ethnicity: which aspects of a person's affiliation and identity might be classified as 'ethnic' and why (e.g. Hall, 2002Hall, , 2015Vlassopoulos, 2015). The thorniest kinds of ethnicity, however, are the far-ranging categories used to classify and connect people beyond their home cities or regions.…”

Sui «Cari barbarofoni» di Il. II 867

“…Vlassopoulos 2015, 1-13. 2 Vlassopoulos 2015 Cf., tra altri,Hall 1989, 6; Hornblower 1991, 11; Cartledge 2002, 53; Hall 2002, 44-45; Schultze 2007, 355-379.…”