Isocrates and the paideia of the Lucanians

Culture and race in the fourth century BC

Bibliographic Data

ID11400397
AuthorsGabriel Zuchtriegel (0000-0001-8629-7383, Instytut Archeologii i Etnologii, corresponding author)
Year2020
Volume132-2
Pages383-401
Publication date2020-01-01
Peer ReviewedYes
Open AccessYes
TypeARTICLE
VenueMélanges de l École française de Rome Antiquité (JOURNAL)
Journal identifiersISSN: 0223-5102 • E-ISSN: 1724-2134
PublisherOpenEdition (PUBLISHER)
DOI10.4000/mefra.10327
OpenAlexW3135013141
LanguageEN
Citations received1
References cited20

Building on studies emphasizing the discursive nature of ethnicity and culture in ancient Greece, the paper argues that culture and ethnicity were closely linked from the Classical period onward. In particular, the author aims to demonstrate that at the time when Isocrates conceptualized for the first time something that resembles the modern notion of “culture” (which he calls paideusis or paideia), the idea of an ethnic dimension of culture was already virulent. Moreover, the link between culture and race was present not only in Isocrates’ writings, but also in the world in which he lived. The analysis of so-called Lucanian tomb paintings from Paestum, southern Italy, suggests that Hellenicity as a concept embracing ethnical, cultural, and political values was spreading beyond Athens and Greece as early as the fourth century BC. In the same period, the figure of the Barbarian as culturally and ethnically inferior also began to spread in non-Greek communities – well before it was adopted by the Roman imperial ideology and iconography

Aesthetics · Ancient history · Archaeology · Archaic period · Art · Barbarian · Ethnic group · Iconography · Ideology · Literature · Paideia · Political science · Politics · Sociology · Ancient Mediterranean Archaeology and History · Anthropology · Byzantine Studies and History · Classical Antiquity Studies · Classics · History · Law

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Open DOIOpen Access