Greek colonization used to be viewed primarily as a process of Hellenization, or the adoption of Greek culture by the natives, with Hellenism trickling down from the elite to lower social strata. Implicit in this paradigm was a colonialist assumption that indigenous culture would naturally be submerged in a superior Greek civilization (Shepherd 1999: 267, 271-4).
Nowadays some ancient historians are moving away from a vision of history centered on a glorified image of classical democracy, and looking at a broader picture that includes people on the fringes of the Greek world. In some areas contacts with Greeks produced a fusion of Greek and native elements, elsewhere they remained distinct. Although substantial ancient evidence exists for the agency of women in producing or resisting these changes, most of the recently published scholarly work on ethnic identity focuses on men (e. g., Hall 2002; Malkin 2001). Yet, as Aristotle (Politics 1269b14-19) recognized in his critique of Spartan society, women constitute half the community; therefore it should be obvious that views of women and their roles and status are undeniably a part of any ethnic identity.
By ‘‘ethnic identity’’ we mean inherited cultural traits that are often observable only by comparison with people who do not exhibit these traits. Ethnic identities can be carved out by members of the group being defined, or conferred by outsiders. The sources for historians exploring gender and ethnicity are archaeological and textual. Chief among Greek authors is Herodotos. Like many Greeks of his time, Herodotos tended to organize knowledge according to polar opposites, in sharply contrasted distinctions (Hartog 1988). From Herodotos’ description of women in various barbarian societies, we may deduce the Greek norm for women, which was (simply put) the opposite (Dewald 1981).
World History
