Barbarian Asia and the Greek Experience: From the Archaic Period to the Age of Xenophon

by Professor Pericles Georges

"From the beginning of Persian rule in Ionia," writes Pericles Georges, "the Greeks noted the public facts--things that could be seen and talked about, and become the common report. But the Persians for the most part remained a tabula rasa upon which the Greeks drew a portrait in their own idiom that answered to their own imaginative purposes. This portrait was the more easily drawn because the Persians projected themselves to the Greeks largely in Greek terms. As they conquered the various peoples of their empire, the Persians uniformly defined themselves and their motives in the language and imagery of their subjects." In Barbarian Asia and the Greek Experience Pericles Georges explores the ways ancient Greeks viewed and interacted with non-Greeks during the classical period. Through the works of Aeschylus, Herodotus, and Xenophon, Georges examines critical episodes in the formation of Greek ideas and attitudes concerning those foreigners of Asia with whom they came into close historical contact and against whom they defined themselves--especially the "barbarians" of Persia and Lydia. He focuses on the Greeks' intramural debates about their own identity--or identities--as people who shared a common language, religious tradition, and way of life, but who differed over issues of origin, custom, culture, and notions of the barbarian "other." "Pericles Georges has written an original and perceptive treatment of an important the place of the `barbarian,' specifically the Asiatic barbarian, in Greek thought from the archaic period to the fourth century B.C. Particularly excellent are chapters on Aeschylus and Xenophon--and the interpretation of Herodotus as philo-Spartan is original, well argued, and extremely interesting."--Stanley Burstein, California State University, Los Angeles

Genres: History

384 pages, Hardcover

First published September 1, 1994

Reviews

[Midori · Rating 4 out of 5]

A rare masterpiece deluged with original and daring ideas that compose a diacronic picture of the Greek perception of the Barbarian Other. From the very first encounter of the Greeks with their eastern neighbours when those were merged into the Greek mythology down to the cosmopolitan age of Xenophon when the Athenian nobleman prefered the company of the Barbarian monarch than that of his morally and politically unstable kinsmen and passing through the propaganda of the Persian wars, this study recounts the hidden attraction and the politically correct hate that the Greeks felt for the peoples whose life was so exotically rich than theirs.

[Bryn Hammond · Rating 4 out of 5]

I did binge-read or gallop through this and I'll come back to it; but I know how to rate it. Quite original, and well worth inclusion in your books on the Greek construction of the barbarian.

I'll note that he seems to have a coordinated idea of Iranian cultural motifs as misunderstood in Greek sources -- where he got his concepts I don't know, but I think he grasped them himself.

Takes a dim view of both Aeschylus' Persians and poor old Herodotus.