Ethnicity and Identity

In Book 2 of Heliodorus’ Aethiopica, the Delphic priest Charicles provides a detailed account of the ethnic affiliation and genealogical self-presentation of Theagenes, the male protagonist of the novel. This young man, Charicles reports, belongs to the ethnos of the Aenianians, who are the most noble inhabitants of Thessaly and can be said to be Greek in the truest sense of the word (akribōs Hellēnikon, 2.34.2) since they descend from Hellen, the son of Deucalion.

It was a commonplace in scholarship of an earlier generation to assert that Flavius Josephus was not a particularly competent Hellenist (Laqueur 1920 and Thackeray 1929).

The Anthesteria was a curious three-day festival held in early spring in Athens and greater Ionia to celebrate the uncorking of the new wine, which was marked by an amalgamation of traditions and odd events. For example, young children received wreaths, drinking parties were conducted in silence, a hieros gamos was performed between the wife of the archon basileos and Dionysos, there was swinging by young girls, new wine was brought and presented to Dionysus of the Marshes, and a meal was offered to Hermes of the Underworld (Parker).

Amidst the standard ethnographic and epic topoi employed in his catalogue of Scythian enemies (Argonautica 6), Valerius Flaccus provides some unexpected contemporary details on Sarmatian arms and tactics (6.162, 231-238). This paper considers how Romans processed new information about barbarian peoples within a conceptual system where established stereotypes and traditional topoi held primacy of place.

In recent years, scholarship on Statius’ Thebaid has emphasized the complexities and nuances of Theban identity, whether in relationship to the enemy Argives (Augoustakis 2010) or anachronistically to Statius’ contemporary Rome and its mytho-historical past (Braund and Cowan). Such analyses accept that Statius promotes the idea of a unified Theban identity, an assumption which needs to be challenged. Beginning with Lovatt’s observation that Statius prefers to mark Theban identity with epithets recalling its exilic roots (e.g.

In Herodotus 2.152, the exiled Psammetichus, erstwhile warlord in the Nile Delta, receives a prophecy from the oracle at Buto: “vengeance would come from the sea, whence bronze men would appear.” Shortly thereafter, Psammetichus recruits a crew of shipwrecked Ionian and Carian pirates to help retake his kingdom. The tradition of raiders in the Delta is well established by the time of Herodotus.