This thesis looks to re-evaluate the East Greek intellectual view of non-Greeks in
the middle to late fifth century. To do this I examine how ethnic difference is understood
in the Hippocratic treatise Airs, Waters, Places (as well as the rest of the fifth-century
Hippocratic corpus) and Herodotus' Histories, which together represent the new
ethnographic thought of the fifth century. I will argue that neither author understood there
to be any essential difference between Greeks and non-Greeks, nor represented non-
Greeks as anti-Greeks, as many scholars today hold. Furthermore, I will argue that the
idea of a Greek/barbarian dichotomy was to a considerable extent a construction of
Athenian ideology, which stood in contrast to an East Greek cosmopolitanism that
understood ethnic difference not in terms of differences in nature but of cultural variation
within a common human condition. / Thesis / Master of Arts (MA)
| Identifer | oai:union.ndltd.org:mcmaster.ca/oai:macsphere.mcmaster.ca:11375/16058 |
| Date | 11 1900 |
| Creators | McCallum, Jonathon D. C. |
| Contributors | Corner, Sean, Mattison, Kathryn, Eilers, Claude, Classics |
| Source Sets | McMaster University |
| Language | English |
| Detected Language | English |
| Type | Thesis |
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