Category Archives: ancient ethnography / ethnographic culture
Sarmatians, Marcomannians, Quadians, and Iazygians: Reliefs on Marcus Aurelius’ column including women and children (176-193 CE)
Sarmatians: Tacitus on ferocity and laziness in military situations (early second century CE)
Scholarly articles on ethnic relations and migration
Scythian and Thracian diasporas: Inscriptional evidence
Scythian wisdom: Letters of Anacharsis (mid-third century BCE)
Scythians and barbarians: Colossians and others on ritual recitations (late first or early second century CE)
Scythians and Ethiopians: Agatharchides and Diodoros theorize about the effects of climate (second-first centuries CE)
Scythians and Getians: Dio of Prusa on inter-ethnic encounters at Olbia and on Getian Matters (late first century CE)
Scythians and other northern peoples: Ephoros (mid-fourth century BCE)
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)
Scythians, Germans, and others: Pliny the Elder on peoples on the western and northern coasts of the Black Sea (first century CE)
Scythians: Adventures of Andrew and Matthias among the Man-eaters as ethnographic fiction (third-fifth centuries CE)
Scythians: Aischines’ ethnic invective against Demosthenes (mid-fourth century BCE)
Scythians: Greek depictions of Scythian archers on Attic pottery (sixth century BCE)
Scythians: Klearchos of Soloi (fourth century BCE)
Scythians: Lucian on Toxaris’ and Anacharsis’ differing encounters with Greeks (late second century CE)
Scythians: Trogus on Scythian superiority (first century BCE)
Sicilians and other Greeks: Cicero’s praise for Sicilians in the prosecution of Verres (mid-first century BCE)
Syrian and Phoenician diasporas: Inscriptional and archeological evidence
Syrian perspectives: Lucian of Samosata on The Syrian Goddess in full (mid-second century CE)
Syrian perspectives: Lucian self-identifies as “barbarian” and “Assyrian” (mid-second century CE)
Thracians and Odrysians: Thucydides on Thracians, power, and violence (late fifth century BCE)
Thracians and other Black Sea peoples: Ammianus Marcellinus on their “savage” character and on Roman control (late fourth century CE)
Thracians: Attic vase paintings depicting Thracian women with tattoos, warriors, and Orpheus (sixth-fifth centuries BCE)
Thracians: Tacitus on their uncivilized and wild nature (early second century CE)
Troglodytes: Graffiti and inscriptions from the Red Sea area thanking Pan / Min for rescue from Cave-dwellers (second century BCE)
Welcome to Ethnic Relations and Migration in the Ancient World (edited by Kotrosits and Harland)
[For Phil’s other websites or courses, please navigate using the main menu at the top.]
Highlighted contributors: > Maia Kotrosits > Daniel Mitchell > Justin Nadeau
The purpose of this website (now with over 400 posts) 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 (fifth century BCE-sixth century CE). Please use the accordion-style arrows and categories in the right sidebar to navigate the site.
“Ethnographic culture,” as we intend it, moves beyond the idea of “ethnography” (literally “representing peoples” or “writing about peoples”) 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 imagination, classification, description, and representation of “other peoples” actively played out in large-scale and small-scale ways across societies and among many different peoples. This is especially the case in connection with conquest and colonization, but also in local social interactions and within diasporic communities of immigrants. Judeans (Jews) and Jesus adherents (Christians) were very much a part of this larger sphere of ethnic encounters, so they have a place here too (see especially category five to your right).
This website, then, combines literary, papyrological, epigraphic, numismatic, and other visual data in order to aid students and researchers in a fuller understanding of ethnographic culture and interactions between peoples. It also facilitates the reconstruction of minoritized ethnic groups spread across time (from the fifth century BCE to the sixth century CE) and geography (across the Mediterranean and near east).
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 people were working.
Who did it?: This website reflects the ongoing work of Maia Kotrosits and Phil Harland (along with voluntary scholarly contributors) 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 helped with inputting or checking translations: Amy House (Strabo), Victoria Muccilli (Diodoros), Daniel Mitchell (Herodotos, Lucian), Justin Nadeau (Persian related items and others), and Rosalie Reis (detailed proof-reading). Special thanks also go out to several websites that have already taken the time to clean up and convert to html public domain sources, including Lacus Curtius (led by Bill Thayer), Attalus (led by Andrew Smith), and Topostext (led by Brady Kiesling).
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).
Who is the cowering figure? This is a somewhat disturbing depiction of a soon-to-be subjugated, defeated and killed Persian, likely originally depicted in a monument set up by king Attalos of Pergamon, on which go to this link (now in the Louvre; photo by Harland).
How to cite this website: Maia Kotrosits and Philip A. Harland, eds., Ethnic Relations and Migration in the Ancient World, accessed 2023, https://philipharland.com. For citing individual posts, see the short link citation at the top of each post.