Category Archives: (08) Gender, sexuality, and ethnographic discourses

Amazons, Tibarenians, and Mossynoikians: Apollonios of Rhodes on a voyage to the Kolchians (third century BCE)

Amazons: Curtius Rufus on Alexander’s relationship with Thalestris (first century CE)

Arabians: Ammianus Marcellinus on the customs of Saracens (late fourth century CE)

Assyrian / Babylonian wisdom: Sibyl of Babylon on the superiority of the Judean people (second century BCE)

Assyrians: Trogus on the achievements of Ninos and Semiramis and on the extreme effeminacy of Sardanapalus (first century BCE)

Babylonians and Assyrians: Herodotos on legendary queens and outstanding customs (mid-fifth century BCE)

Baliaridians and other barbarian peoples off Iberia: Diodoros on their paradoxical customs (mid-first century BCE)

Barbarian peoples: Caesarius of Nazianzos’ and George the Monk’s collection of extraordinary customs (sixth / ninth centuries CE)

Barbarian peoples: Hellanikos, Nymphodoros, Nikolaos, and others with collections of “barbarian customs” (fifth century BCE on)

Celts: Anyte and Parthenios on wife abductions in the Galatian invasion (third-first century BCE)

Celts: Diodoros on Galatian origins and “savage” customs (mid-first century BCE)

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

Eastern and northern peoples: Bardaisan of Edessa’s Book of the Laws of Countries and the Pseudo-Clementines on astrology and peoples (second-third centuries CE)

Ethiopians: Agatharchides and Diodoros on lifestyles and diets in the extreme south (second-first centuries BCE)

Europeans and Asians: Pseudo-Hippokrates on humoural and environmental theories (fifth century BCE)

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

Illyrians: Theopompos on banquets (fourth century BCE)

Indians: Herodotos on eastern peoples at the ends of the earth (mid-fifth century BCE)

Libyans: Dionysios of Mytilene and Diodoros on Nasamonians, Marmaridians, and Libyan Amazons (third / mid-first century BCE)

Libyans: Herodotos on customs and colonization (fifth century BCE)

Ligurians: Diodoros on their harsh environment, hard work and noble spirit (mid-first century BCE)

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

Mediterranean peoples: Sextus Empiricus engages with ethnographic discourses for philosophical aims (second-third centuries CE)

Midianites and Moabites / Arabians: Josephos and Philo on intermixing and the dangers of acculturation (first century CE)

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

New scholarly article: Maia Kotrosits, “The Ethnography of Gender” (2023)

Persians: Plato on Persian decline into effeminacy and tyranny (early fourth century BCE)

Samaritans and Judeans: Belonging to Israel in the Gospels (first century CE)

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

Scythians: Trogus on Scythian superiority (first century BCE)

Sikanians, Sicilians, Sardinians and Iolaeians: Diodoros on ancient migrations and local customs on Sicily (mid-first century BCE)