The Role Of Racism In The Ancient Greco-Roman World

Racism as an ideology dates as far back as antiquity. Exemplified through various outlets such as literature, conquests, forced labor, rhetoric, racism’s presence has plagued humanity for centuries. Modern day expressions are but the blossoming of seeds planted long ago. To understand race, racism, and all things related, one is invited to study ancient history – in this case, the ancient Greco-Roman world.
Under the title “Racism in Western Civilization before 1700”, the essays presented in this volume were delivered at the Howard Gilman International Conference at the Tel Aviv University in December 2005. Covering antiquity, the middle ages, and the early-modern period, the essays offer a historical development of racism and its entry into
In their offering of a definition to the term “racist” – “an ideology which claims to be based on scientific truth” – they declare that one of the difficulties in the study of the history of racism is when it is “compounded by profound differences in the perception of the phenomenon, determined as they are by specific historical experiences and social realities.” They are clear in making the distinction between ethnic identity and racism. The former includes “how a person, or group of persons, thinks about her/himself or themselves, how others see him/her or them, how this affects the person or persons.” The latter involves the disallowance by European society of “race” as a “respectable concept after World War II” while “the term never died out in the US and is still used there widely.” Yet, the reader should not be under the impression that the book’s aim is to address societal racism; on the contraire, its aim is to address the history of racism as an ideology in the
Bartlett addresses how ethnic differences were illustrated during this era. The illustrations and the accompanying discussions therein make the compelling assessment that “if one is looking for ‘the origins of racism in the West’, such visual imagery must surely have a part to play.” Biller shows the way “proto-racial” thought made its way into the faculties of the Arts – i.e., natural science – and Medicine during the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries. De Miramon gives a historical presentation of the “invention of the concept of race in the late Middle Ages.” On its own merits, the essay is worth perusing, Nirenberg closes the Middle Ages asking, “Was there race before modernity?” His essay discusses how medieval Spain stigmatized the Jews with the terms such as “raza” and “casta” – terms “which emerged in the 1430s in discussions on animal breeding and