Friday, June 02, 2023
Greeks and Barbarians
Dionysius of Halicarnassus, Roman Antiquities 14.6.5 (tr. Earnest Cary):
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For I would distinguish Greeks from barbarians, not by their name nor on the basis of their speech, but by their intelligence and their predilection for decent behaviour, and particularly by their indulging in no inhuman treatment of one another. All in whose nature these qualities predominated I believe ought to be called Greeks, but those of whom the opposite was true, barbarians.See Nicolas Wiater, "Getting Over Athens: Re-Writing Hellenicity in the Early Roman History of Dionysius of Halicarnassus," in Mirko Canevaro and Benjamin Gray, edd., The Hellenistic Reception of Classical Athenian Democracy and Political Thought (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2018), pp. 209–236 (at 228-230).
τὸ γὰρ Ἑλληνικὸν οὐκ ὀνόματι διαφέρειν τοῦ βαρβάρου ἠξίουν οὐδὲ διαλέκτου χάριν, ἀλλὰ συνέσει καὶ χρηστῶν ἐπιτηδευμάτων προαιρέσει, μάλιστα δὲ τῷ μηδὲν τῶν ὑπὲρ τὴν ἀνθρωπίνην φύσιν εἰς ἀλλήλους παρανομεῖν. ὅσοις μὲν οὖν ταῦτα ἐπὶ πλεῖον ὑπῆρξεν ἐν τῇ φύσει, τούτους οἶμαι δεῖν λέγειν Ἕλληνας, ὅσοις δὲ τἀναντία βαρβάρους.
