Category Archives: Persians / Iranians / Magians

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

Assyrians, Chaldeans, Egyptians, Celts, and others: The Cicero brothers on the nature and effectiveness of divination (mid-first century BCE)

Assyrians, Medes and Persians: Ktesias on Persian Matters via Diodoros and Photios (early fourth century BCE)

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

Barbarian and Scythian wisdom: Diogenes of Laertes (early third century CE)

Barbarian peoples: Nymphodoros, Nikolaos, and others with collections of paradoxical customs (third century BCE on)

Barbarian wisdom: Clement of Alexandria [VI] on barbarian and Hebrew philosophy (late 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)

Eastern and northern peoples: Bardaisan of Edessa and Philippos’ Book of the Laws of Countries (second-third centuries CE)

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

Ethnic diversity in Alexandria: Dio of Prusa on the cross-roads of the world (late first century CE)

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

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

Judeans: Poseidonios (?) and Strabo on decline after Moses (first century CE)

Kimmerians and Kolchians: Herodotos on other Pontic peoples (mid-fifth century BCE)

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

Mediterranean peoples: Pausanias, ethnographic interests, and local traditions (mid-second century CE)

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

Parthians and Scythians: Julius Africanus on barbarian military techniques (early third century CE)

Persian wisdom: Lactantius and others on the Oracles of Hystaspes the Mede (third century CE)

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

Persians: Acts of Archelaos on Mani’s foreignness (early fourth century CE)

Persians: Matthew and Luke-Acts on two contrasting approaches to Magians (late first century CE)

Phoenician, Egyptian and Babylonian wisdom: Porphyry of Tyre and Antonius Diogenes on Pythagoras (third century CE)

Romans, Egyptians, Persians, and others: Minucius Felix’s ethnographic defence of the Christian people (early third century CE)

Romans: Dionysios on Roman origins and legends of Greek and Pelasgian migrations to Italy (late first century BCE)

Scythians and Getians: Dio of Prusa on inter-ethnic encounters at Olbia and on Getian Matters (late first century CE)

Scythians and other Pontic peoples: Herodotos on the “most ignorant peoples of all” (fifth century BCE)

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

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

Thracians, Getians, Paionians, and others: Herodotos (mid-fifth century BCE)

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