The Classics and Early Anthropology

Colour terms in ancient Greek, specifically those used in Homer, have long played an integral part in the comparative work of linguistic anthropologists who study the words used for colours in living languages. Modern work on these terms began in the eighteenth century; Goethe, reacting to Sir Isaac Newton’s work on the spectrum, first postulated that the Greeks of Homer’s time had defective vision.

Anthropology influenced how classicists understood ancient culture contact long before it returned to do so in the last two decades (Dietler 2010). Recognizing earlier links between anthropology and classics allows us to understand how and why classical scholars in the century spanning 1850 to 1950 developed the core concepts and questions that they did in their studies of ancient culture contact. To make this argument, this paper will focus on two issues.

This paper explores how Edward Burnett Tylor (1832-1917), the first professor of anthropology in the English-speaking world, integrated classics into Primitive Culture (1871) and how his ideas about culture influenced early theories of Romanization. Although Tylor’s influence on Jane Harrison and studies of myth and ritual has been noted (e.g., Carpentier 1998, Ackerman 2008), his own use of classical evidence and his influence on early theories of Romanization have yet to be explored.