Citation with stable link: Philip A. Harland, 'Finnish Institute at Athens presentation – ‘You are the bandit!’: Criminalizing Conquered Peoples, and Some Retorts,' Ethnic Relations and Migration in the Ancient World, last modified December 6, 2022, https://philipharland.com/Blog/?p=11354.

Sketch of the presentation and some sources for the “Northernness in Greek Ethnography” conference (Sunday Dec 11):

• Intro: Criminalization of “barbarians” and the Scythian elder’s retort to Alexander the bandit (in Rufus) as a starting-point (link)
• Early theorizing about the shift from barbarian banditry to settled civilization in Thucydides, ca. 411 BCE (link)
• Pairings of banditry with conquest and control: Athenian (ca. 424 BCE), Rhodian (ca. 200 BCE), and Roman (100 BCE) examples – inscriptions (link)
• Roman imperial apex of “bandit peoples”: Strabo and Livy (early first century)
  • Mountain peoples and the Bessians (link)
  • Itureans (link)
  • Judeans (link)
• Roman imperial propaganda in practice: Northern peoples on the Danube and Rhine as “bandits” (inscriptions, second-third centuries CE) (link)
• Responses from another “bandit” people: Judeans