Proto-racism in Graeco-Roman antiquity

Abstract

In spite of the usual assumption that racism is a form of prejudice which developed in recent history, it is argued here that prototypes of racism were prevalent in Greek and Roman thinking. Racism here is taken as representing a form of rationalizing and systematically justifying various forms of prejudice, a conceptual process which was part of the Greek intellectual development in general. The forms which this proto-racism took were different from those encountered in the twentieth century and they did not lead to systematic persecution, but they were influential at the time and deeply influenced later authors in the age of the Enlightenment and afterwards, who accepted these ideas together with others which they found in the Greek and Latin literature. The concepts discussed are: environmental determinism, the inheritance of acquired characteristics, a combination of these, and pure lineage. A related issue is the ancient view of slavery and the connection with concepts of empire in classical antiquity. Influential then, as in later times, was the sense that imperial expansion and migration inevitably lead to degeneration and collective deterioration both through the influence of debilitating climate and by contamination with the flaws of inferior peoples. Furthermore it is argued that the stereotypical views of foreign peoples may not have determined imperial policy, but nevertheless had their impact on the political and military decisions that were made.