Introduction

As a result particularly of the reception of Herodotus’ Histories and Herodotean traditions, ethnographical material became by the Hellenistic period a more or less standard feature of ancient historical narratives. A modern reader might associate such material primarily with disciplines other than history, such as human geography or anthropology. However, when ancient historians engage in traditions of delineating the lands and customs of ‘‘other peoples,’’ they are drawn into rhetoric and practices that came to be regarded in antiquity as quintessentially historical. These include the assertion of the authority of the writer and his text, claims of veracity and the superiority of the account to that of predecessors. They also include interest in historical change, causation, and explanation (not least of imperial rule), patterns of the rise and fall of individuals and powers, and broadly didactic concerns such as the provision of vicarious experience and case studies of exemplary behavior.

The ethnographical gaze is, however, older than the traditional beginning of Greek historiography, the Histories of Herodotus. It is a feature of numerous ancient cultural media other than history writing, including the monuments of Near Eastern kings, epigraphy of the Hellenistic and Roman worlds, vase-painting, mosaics and statues, and numerous literary genres including epic, elegy, lyric, and the novel. The history of ways of characterizing ‘‘other peoples’’ and their customs in the ancient Mediterranean world suggests the importance of a sense of continuity, especially in the constant reception and manipulation of older traditions. However, there are also marked differences in ways of seeing that can sometimes be identified as specific not just to individual artistic or literary contexts but also more broadly to individual cultures and societies.

Perhaps most striking is the importance in Hellenistic and Roman societies of what Pratt, in her treatment of modern colonial discourse, has characterized as ‘‘autoethnography,’’ the process whereby African and South American peoples constructed accounts of themselves through engagement with European ethnographical traditions that depicted them as ‘‘other peoples’’ (Pratt 1992: 7-8). In classical antiquity, the practice of a kind of ‘‘autoethnography’’ is fundamental to the creation of ‘‘barbarian histories’’ that will include accounts of Egypt, Babylon, Rome, the Gauls, and the Jewish people. These accounts suggest the dominance of Greek world views in the Hellenistic and Roman reception of traditions about the past and the relative positions of‘‘other peoples.’’ However, an important aspect of Greek world views was the attribution to ‘‘other peoples’’ of, variously, greater antiquity, cultural primacy, the discovery of prized skills such as writing, and moral superiority (Hall 1992). ‘‘Other peoples’’ could also be called upon to comment on, correct, or give a new perspective on Greek morals, accounts, or world views. These aspects were particularly suggestive when ‘‘barbarians’’ were writing their distinctive pasts and places in the world.

Ethnography in the ancient Mediterranean world should not always be imagined as a purely academic exercise. There is occasional explicit ancient interest in the usefulness of ethnography, and in historical figures as acting as ethnographers. There is much more evidence, however, that implies the influence ofethnographical traditions on cultural practices (and vice versa), and even on what we might call ‘‘policy.’’