We have already had occasion to consider the influence structuralist theories have had on the study of the ancient world in recent decades. One of the key tenets of structuralism is that meaning is created through difference rather than similarity. When applied to processes of identity formation, the principle is that self-consciousness is constructed through differentiation from outgroups or “others.” Nevertheless, while it is highly likely that Greek citizens of the Classical period grounded their sense of belonging to a male political collectivity in their cognizance that they were not foreigners, not slaves, and not women, the structuralist approach is less helpful when it comes to explaining how such identities arose in the first place. In Athens, at any rate, widespread chattel slavery seems to have been the response to, rather than the prerequisite for, the consolidation of the free citizen community and it is inherently unlikely that the exclusion of women from political deliberation was a constitutive moment in defining the citizen body (see pp. 219, 220-5). But what about ancient perceptions of Greek ethnicity? Thucydides (Document 11.1) seems to imply that the terms “Hellenes” (the Greek word for “Greeks”) and barbaroi (“barbarians”) presupposed, and took their meaning from, one another, and many modern scholars, drawing on anthropological studies of ethnicity, have followed suit. It is, then, worth considering what role - if any - non-Greek populations played in allowing the Greeks to think about their own identity.
There probably never was a time when Greek-speakers were not in contact with peoples whose language and way of life were different. In the Late Bronze Age, Mycenaean products were reaching Sardinia, Egypt, the Levant, and Cyprus and there are strong hints of a more permanent Greek presence in the Italian peninsula and on the coast of Asia Minor - particularly at Ephesus and Miletus. In the tenth and ninth centuries, intercommunication declined but did not dry up completely: it has been argued that Levantine craftsmen were resident at Athens, Cnossus on Crete, and perhaps Lefkandi, while North Syrian grave-goods in burials on Euboea and Crete and in Attica and the Dodecanese could suggest direct contacts and possibly even intermarriage. Greek - and Aramaic-speakers certainly lived side by side at Pithecusae and perhaps also at Al Mina. It is the last third of the eighth century, however, that sees an intensification of overseas contacts with the establishment of permanent settlements in Sicily and South Italy. For many students of antiquity, it was this confrontation with indigenous populations in the colonial orbit that first promoted a sense of Hellenic unity among settlers who had hitherto defined themselves in terms of their home cities and regions.
The establishment of these overseas settlements must frequently have involved violence, at least initially. According to tradition, Megara Hyblaea was founded
World History
