An important aspect of Herodotus’ self-portrayal, as we have seen, is that he claims to enact travel and ethnographical inquiry, particularly in the case of Egypt. In recent years, scholars have suggested the importance of the figure and text of Herodotus, along with other examples of classical literature, as an influence on the patterns of travel and conquest of Alexander the Great. A note of caution is in order here: it can be very difficult to distinguish between Alexander the historical figure and the characterization of his life and the patterning of his expeditions in the extensive ancient reception of Alexander as an iconic traveler and conqueror. Nevertheless, the fact that Alexander was accompanied by Nearchus, Ptolemy, and Callisthenes takes the connection between writing and enacting ethnography to a new level of historical (as opposed to merely historiographical) importance. For these individuals were to write logoi concerning the lands visited, such as India, manifesting deep awareness of Herodotus (Murray 1972; Bowersock 1989; Vasunia 2001: 248 ff.).
It is in the late Roman republic, however, that the idea of enacting rather than merely writing ethnography becomes rather more explicit, even if this concept is rooted in some older traditions. For example, the ethnographical gaze was in classical times not infrequently ethical, and at least implicitly didactic, in its concerns: the noble and precorrupt barbarian, the utopian land, and the overtly moralizing treatise on the decline of Sparta or Persia are all familiar. On occasion, in Herodotus’ Histories, characters are made to give practical advice on managing peoples based on the theories of the connection of cultural and environmental change with the rise and fall of empires. Thus, Croesus advises Cyrus to manage the conquered Lydians by making them change their clothing, learn how to play the lyre, dance, and become shopkeepers, thus becoming more like women than men (1.155). The notion that history provides vicarious experience and lessons in how to bear the vicissitudes of fortune is explicit in Polybius (1.1.2).
However, Roman self-positioning, particularly in relation to Greek history and culture, places a new emphasis on the cultural importance of doing rather than merely writing, of action rather than mere knowledge. In addition, the self-consciously proactive and intrusive nature of Roman rule encourages the idea of putting ethnographical knowledge into practice. When Roman writers claimed that Caesar conquered peoples whose names were not known before, such statements are laden with implications: scientific knowledge, the province of the Greeks, is improved upon by Roman imperial activity (e. g., Cic. Q. fr. 3.6(8).2; Prov. Cons. 19-36; Pis. 81; Brunt 1990: 314; Nicolet 1991: 36-41). Notoriously, Cicero bases his advice to his brother Quintus on how to treat the provincials he will govern in Asia Minor on received knowledge of the characters of Rome’s subjects. Thus the inhabitants of Asia Minor, unlike Africans, Spaniards, or Gauls, are already civilized and in fact are thought to have civilized the Romans themselves. However, they fall far short of their ancient Greek ancestors because years of rule by Rome have encouraged the majority to become deceitful, unreliable, and sycophantic (Q. fr. 1.1; Woolf 1994). In Caesar’s Gallic War, writing and doing, knowledge and conquest, are intimately connected as
Caesar, representing himself as the textbook ‘‘good general,’’ writes and enacts ethnography. Caesar’s ethnography shapes the variegated Gauls and the degree of their involvement in the cultural trappings of the Roman empire in contrast to a considerably more monolithic German menace. In the process, the text is used to justify the extension of war beyond Caesar’s remit (e. g., BG 1.1-7, 31-3; 4.2; 6.24; Vasaly 1993: 148-152; Bell 1995; Rives 1999: 26-27; Dench 2005: 52-54). Altogether more poignant is the portrait of another ‘‘good general,’’ Agricola as characterized by Tacitus, implicated in the settlement of Britons by encouraging them to enjoy the pleasures of houses, temples, education, togas, and Roman luxuries, in reality an aspect of their ‘‘enslavement,’’ although ‘‘the ignorant called it ‘civilization’ ’’ (Tac. Agr. 21; Liebeschuetz 1966; Clarke 2001; Dench 2005: 83-91).
The most familiar example of Roman enactment of ethnography is the display of the defeated in the triumphal pageant, and in the triumphal art that monumentalizes these occasions. The triumph has often been considered by modern scholars to be a hoarily ‘‘native’’ aspect of Roman culture. With a significant difference of emphasis, ancient authors’ treatment of the triumph, a literary set-piece specific to Roman literature, suggests that it was believed to be quintessentially Roman and to reveal truths about the Roman character and the nature of Roman conquest and rule. But both artistic and literary representations of the triumph and other modes of displaying the defeated suggest the importance of engagement with, and of course reinterpretation of, traditions of ethnographical knowledge received from the classical Greek and Hellenistic worlds. Literary and artistic depictions of triumphal pageants suggest variously, for example, the importance of connecting peoples with their lands, of displaying representations of topographical features, of‘‘wonders,’’ and of cultural or religious symbols that seemed to encapsulate the character of peoples. They also suggest the informed choice of the ‘‘geographical’’ categories to which individual peoples were assigned (e. g., Prop. 3.4; Ov. AA 1.177-228; Jos. BJ7.133; Beard et al. 1998: 1, 223, fig. 5.2; cf. Smith 1988). Stories of Caligula’s notorious faking of a triumph over the Germans involve the emperor making active use of ethnographical ‘‘knowledge’’ of German appearance and language by selecting peculiarly tall Gauls, dyeing their hair red, and having them take on ‘‘German’’ names and speak ‘‘German’’ (Suet. Calig. 43-49; Dio 59.25.2-5; Beard 2003; Dench 2005: 37-41). Thus, in a story that is simply too good to be true, Roman authors reveal their assumptions about the interconnection of knowledge and action.
FURTHER READING
There are a number of excellent treatments in English of ethnographical material within the works of individual ancient authors. Herodotus is particularly well served by Thomas 2000, and Tacitus’ Germania by a commentary (Rives 1999) and suggestive essay (O’Gorman 1993). For broader treatments of ethnographical traditions and their cultural importance, Murray 1972, on the reception and historical significance of Herodotus, has far-reaching implications. Jacob 1991 is a useful overview of ethnographical as well as geographical
Themes in Greek literature into the Roman period. Clarke 1999a is on geography - rather than ethnography - and history, but remains highly relevant to the themes treated here. Hers is a highly persuasive study of the interconnection of time and space in the conceptualization of Roman imperial rule on the part of Greek authors of the Hellenistic period. Rawson’s chapter on ‘‘Geography and Ethnography’’ (1985: 250-266) provides a very useful and accessible guide to the often fragmentary Roman texts of the late republic. Finally, I have explored in much greater detail the interrelationship between textual ethnographies, other cultural forms, and practice, with particular reference to Roman self-positioning within older traditions (Dench 2005: ch. 1).
World History
