| This dissertation explores the operation of cultural and ethnic stereotypes in Greek interactions with non-Greeks in the Late Classical period. Recent studies on the Greeks and the "barbarian other," concentrating predominantly on literary evidence, suggest that the oppositional mode of ethnic self-definition in Classical Greece had a dramatic and largely negative impact on the forms of cross-cultural contacts. By expanding the source material to include epigraphical evidence for the methods of state-level interchanges between Athens and non-Greek communities of the North Aegean, Black Sea, and Eastern Mediterranean regions, as well as archaeological evidence for the adoption of non-Greek elements in the iconography of Attic funerary monuments and in the weaponry and tactics used by late fifth- and fourth-century Greek armies, this study demonstrates that negative stereotypes, when read as expressions of broad social attitudes, failed to influence the sphere of praxis , whether it be considered on the level of state, society, or individual. The content of ethnocentric rhetoric prevalent in the oratorical and historical literature of the period, despite its apparent consistency in hostile representations of the "barbarians," was also influenced by the more complex reality of positive and mutually advantageous cross-cultural contacts. Diachronic change in the ideological definition of the main boundaries between Greeks and non-Greeks is shown in the study of Isocrates' construction of Panhellenic homonoia, analyzed in the context of other Classical authors and demonstrably destabilizing the dichotomy between Greek political freedom and "barbarian" despotic tyranny. This dissertation, therefore, challenges not only the applicability of the "barbarian stereotype" to the interpretation of Greek interactions with peoples of other cultures, but also the notion of uniformity in the Greeks' perception of themselves and others. From hostility, through neutrality, to open admiration for things "barbarian," the range of attitudes to ethnicity among fourth-century Greeks reflects the complexities inherent in their own social structures and methods of self-definition. |
