Ethnic Relations and Migration in the Ancient World: The Websites of Philip A. Harland

Portal to my podcast, websites, blog, and publications, providing an entryway into social and cultural life anong Greeks, Romans, Judeans, Christians, and others in ancient Mediterranean. Ethnicity, Diaspora, and relations among ethnic and minority groups is a focus.

Welcome to Ethnic Relations and Migration in the Ancient World!

[For Phil’s other websites or courses, please navigate using the main menu at the top.]

The purpose of this website is to collect, organize, and make public resources for the reconstruction of ethnic relations and ethnographic culture in the ancient Mediterranean and near eastern worlds. (Please use the accordion-style arrows and categories in the right sidebar to navigate the site; on some phones without a sidebar you may need to use search). “Ethnographic culture,” as we intend it, moves beyond the idea of “ethnography” as a Greek and Roman literary genre describing non-Greek and non-Roman peoples (“barbarians”). Instead, ethnographic culture refers to the ways in which the classification and description of “other peoples” was an active imagination that played out in large-scale and small-scale ways across societies, in local social interactions, and in connection with diasporic communities of immigrants. Judeans (Jews) and Jesus adherents (Christians) were very much a part of this larger sphere of ethnographic discourses and culture, so they have a place here too as instances of minorities (see especially categories 1 and 5).

This website then combines literary, epigraphic, and visual data in order to aid students and researchers in a fuller understanding of ethnographic culture. It also facilitates the reconstruction of minoritized ethnic groups spread across time and geography.

There are times when the organization of material mimics or uses terms from the ancient material. This is not to naturalize those categories or terms, but rather to more clearly demonstrate the categories with which ancient writers were working.

Who did it?: This website reflects the ongoing work of Maia Kotrosits and Phil Harland supported by a grant from the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada (SSHRC) under the rubric of “Ethnicity, Diaspora, and Ethnographic Culture in the Greco-Roman World.” Many thanks to the Research Assistants from York University who have made important contributions: Amy House, Victoria Muccilli, Daniel Mitchell, and Rosalie Reis.

Who are those guys shaking hands at the top?: Aglibol and Malakbel. The monument is from Rome and is a dedication to the Palmyrene gods Aglibol (Moon) and Malakbel (Sun) by Iahari son of Haliphi from Palmyra in Syria (IGUR I 119-120; 236 CE). The inscription is bilingual, in both Greek and Palmyrene. That is not a giant asparagus in the middle. (Currently in the basement of the Capitoline museum in Rome; photo by Harland).

What about the people traveling in the wagon? This is a depiction of a family of northern peoples (Sarmatians or Dacians) pictured as nomads by the creators of “Trajan’s trophy” (link to discussion; photo by Cristian Chirita, licensed under CC BY-SA 3.0).

Egyptians and Canaanites: Wisdom of Solomon on worship of animals and images (first century BCE)

Judeans, Syrians, Indians, and others: Porphyry of Tyre on abstinence from meat (third century CE)

Barbarian wisdom: Porphyry of Tyre’s Neoplatonic perspective (third century CE)

Phoenicians: Gospel of Mark on Jesus and a Syro-Phoenician woman (late first century CE)

Kretans: Stereotypes in the letter to Titus (early second century CE)

Parthians, Libyans, Egyptians and others: Acts of the Apostles on legends of Judean migration (early second century CE)

Scythians and barbarians: Colossians and others on ritual recitations (late first or early second century CE)

Britons, Armenians, Bessians, and others: Reliefs of subjugated peoples at Aphrodisias (first century CE)

Indian wisdom: Nearchos, Megasthenes, and Arrian on the sages Dandamis and Kalanos (fourth century BCE-second century CE)

Judean, Indian, Babylonian, and Egyptian wisdom: Numenius the Platonic philosopher (mid-second century CE)

Illyrians, Pannonians, and other peoples: Strabo (early first century CE)

Getians, Dacians, and Scythians: Strabo (early first century CE)

Persians and Medes: Herodotos (mid-fifth century BCE)

Barbarian wisdom: Cornutus on early humanity’s Stoic understanding of the cosmos (mid-first century CE)

Mediterranean peoples: Sextus Empiricus draws on ethnographic material for philosophical aims (second-third centuries CE)

Western peoples beyond the pillars of Herakles (and up): Lucian’s A True Story and ethnographic fiction (late second century CE)

Northern peoples: Antonios Diogenes’ Wonders Beyond Thule and ethnographic fiction (second century CE / ninth century CE)

Indians: Iamboulos and Diodoros on a utopian island beyond India (mid-first century BCE)

Arabians: Diodoros on Nabateans and other Arabian peoples (mid-first century BCE)

Judean and Israelite diasporas: Inscriptional evidence (second century BCE-third century CE)

Babylonians: Diodoros on Chaldeans’ astrology and divination (mid-first century BCE)

Parthians: Scenes from the Arch of Septimius Severus (early third century CE)

Scythians, Amazons, and Persians: Isokrates on the superiority of the Athenian people (early fourth century BCE)

Mossynoikians in Pontos: Xenophon and others on the “most barbarous” people (early fourth century BCE)

Persians: Xenophon and an anonymous author on royal customs and Cyrus (early fourth century BCE / second century BCE)

Celts and Germans: Plutarch’s ethnographic digressions in the Lives (early second century CE)

Scythians, Amazons, and Hyperboreans: Diodoros on some northerners (mid-first century BCE)

Indians: Diodoros on environment, customs and social organization (mid-first century BCE)

Scythians and other Pontic peoples: Herodotos (fifth century BCE)

Britons and Iernians (Irish): Julius Caesar, Pytheas, and Strabo on customs and cannibalism (early first century CE)

Celts and Ligurians: Strabo on peoples south of the Alps (early first century CE)

Indian wisdom: Philostratos on Apollonios of Tyana’s journeys to barbarian lands (early third century CE)

Mysians, Kilikians, Galatians, and Thracians: Polybios on the mixed composition of Antiochos IV Epiphanes’ army (second century BCE)

Egyptian diasporas: Legends of migration concerning Hyksos and Judeans (late fourth century BCE and on)

Ethnic diversity in Libya / Africa: Sallust on legends of migration (mid-first century BCE)

Phoenician diasporas: Ephoros on Kadmos and legends of migration to Boiotia (mid-fourth century BCE)

Celts: Strabo on peoples northwest of the Alps (early first century CE)

Ethiopians: Diodoros on their claims, appearance, and customs (mid-first century BCE)

Arabians: Herodotos (fifth century BCE)

Egyptians: Diodoros on the origins of civilization and on Egyptian views (mid-first century BCE)

Scythians: Greek depictions of Scythian archers on Attic pottery (sixth century BCE)

Parthians, Celts and Iberians or Germans: Scenes on the breastplate of the “Augustus of Prima Porta” (early first century CE)

Amazons: Greek artistic depictions of a female warrior people (fourth century BCE to second century CE)

Amazons: Strabo on their customs and northern location (first century CE)

Persians: God Mithras as a Roman representation of a Persian (second century CE)

Boiotians: Ephoros on the superiority of Boiotia and on a Phoenician connection (mid-fourth century BCE)

Pelasgian diasporas: Ephoros on legends of migration (mid-fourth century BCE)

Kretans: Ephoros on Kretan civic organization and customs (mid-fourth century BCE)

Various peoples: Herodotos on the mixed composition of the Persian army under Xerxes (fifth century BCE)

Libyans: Herodotos (fifth century BCE)

Aitolians: Ephoros on their origins and invincibility (mid-fourth century BCE)

Mediterranean peoples: Pseudo-Skymnos’ Voyage Around the Earth for Nikomedes in full (mid-second century BCE)

Kimbrians / Germans: Poseidonios and Strabo refute stories about the tides (first century BCE)

Judeans, Armenians, Dacians, Egyptians, and other peoples: Defeat, capture, and subjugation on Roman imperial coinage (first-fourth centuries CE)

Dacians: Reliefs on “Trajan’s Column” at Rome celebrating subjugation (early second century CE)

Celts, Persians, and Amazons: Smaller statues of fighting and dying “barbarians” associated with Attalos of Pergamon (third-second century BCE / second century CE)

Dacians and Sarmatians: Reliefs on “Trajan’s Trophy” at Adamclisi, Romania (early second century CE)

Sarmatians: Tacitus on ferocity and laziness in military situations (early second century CE)

Celts: Statues of dying Gauls / Galatians associated with Attalos I of Pergamon (late third century BCE / second century CE)

Scythians and other northern peoples: Ephoros (mid-fourth century BCE)

Celts: Ephoros (mid-fourth century BCE)

Indians, Ethiopians, Celts, and Scythians: Ephoros on a four-fold division of the known world (mid-fourth century BCE)

Barbarian wisdom: Ephoros on inventors (mid-fourth century BCE)

Kretans, Spartans, Carthaginians, and Romans: Polybios on superior and inferior societal organization (second century BCE)

Parthians: Poseidonios on royal banquets (first century BCE)

Arabians and Aramaians: Poseidonios on relations between eastern peoples (first century BCE)

Mysians / Moesians: Poseidonios on their identification and customs based on Homer (first century BCE)

Celts: Poseidonios and others on banqueting and violent customs (first century BCE)

Illyrians: Theopompos on banquets (fourth century BCE)

Carthaginians: Appian of Alexandria (mid-second century CE)

Iberians: Appian of Alexandria (mid-second century CE)

Illyrians: Appian of Alexandria (mid-second century CE)

Persians and Medes: Herakleides of Kyme, Klearchos of Soloi, and others on royal banquets (fourth century BCE)

Mediterranean peoples: Claudius Ptolemy on astrological effects on peoples (second century CE)

Mediterranean peoples: Vitruvius on the effects of climate (first century BCE)

Barbarian wisdom: Dio of Prusa on barbarians’ innate knowledge of god (late first century CE)

Germans and Scythians: Seneca on enduring hardships and on anger (first century CE)

Judeans: Pliny the Elder and Julius Solinus on the Essenes beside the Dead Sea (first / third centuries CE)

Judean wisdom: Philo on the Therapeutists’ lifestyle (first century CE)

Judean and Indian wisdom: Philo on the freedom of Essenes and Kalanos (early first century CE)

Thracians: Tacitus on their uncivilized and wild nature (early second century CE)

Ethnic diversity on Rhodes island: Inscriptional evidence

Ethnic diversity in Egypt: Inscriptional and papyrological evidence

Scythian and Thracian diasporas: Inscriptional evidence

Celts / Galatians: Polybios on the Celts’ encounter with Rome and on his method in dealing with distant peoples (second century BCE)

Egyptians: Herodotos (fifth century BCE)

Egyptian wisdom: Plato on Solon, the Egyptian priest, and Atlantis (mid-fourth century BCE)

Britons: Julius Caesar (mid-first century BCE)

Judean perspectives: Philo on the superiority of Moses and Judean ancestral customs (first century CE)

Britons: Tacitus (late first century CE)

Libyans / Africans: Sallust (mid-first century BCE)

Arkadians: Polybios on an environmental theory of peoplehood (second century BCE)

Pontic peoples: Tertullian on the Pontic “barbarian” Marcion (late second century CE)

Syrian perspectives: Lucian of Samosata on The Syrian Goddess in full (mid-second century CE)

Scythian wisdom: Letters of Anacharsis (mid-third century BCE)

Iapygians and Tarentinians: Klearchos of Soloi (fourth century BCE)

Lydians: Xanthos of Lydia and Klearchos of Soloi (fifth-fourth centuries BCE)

Scythians: Klearchos of Soloi (fourth century BCE)

Barbarian wisdom: Poseidonios on inventors of the golden age (first century BCE)

Egyptians: Josephos on animal worship (late first century CE)