Tales of the Barbarians (eBook)

Greg Woolf is Professor of Ancient History at the University of St. Andrews. He is the author of Becoming Roman: The Origins of Provincial Civilization in Gaul (1998) and Rome: An Empire's Story (2012) as well as the co-editor of Literacy and Power in the Ancient World (with A. K. Bowman, 1994), Rome the Cosmopolis (with C. Edwards, 2003) and Ancient Libraries (with J.König, 2013).

Translations Used vii

Introduction 1

Chapter 1: Telling Tales on the Middle Ground 8

Chapter 2: Explaining the Barbarians 32

Chapter 3: Ethnography and Empire 59

Chapter 4: Enduring Fictions? 89

Notes 119

References 146

General Index 164

Index of Main Passages Discussed 168

"A work of fundamental importance for students of ancient
ethnography. Summing Up: Essential. All levels/libraries."
(Choice, 1 November 2011)

"Woolf has rendered the topic in crisp and elegant prose. This
reviewer suspects that, like good ancient ethnography, Woolf's
contribution will very soon take on a life of its own." (Bryn
Mawr Classical Review, 25 July 2011)

"W. provides new insights into ancient texts, and
stimulating new ways of looking at these ancient views of
barbarians -- chasing his 'middle ground' provides
an exciting challenge for Romanists working with other fields of
evidence." (Britannia, May 2013)

"With Greg Woolf's brief Tales of the Barbarians we
are at peace, but constantly made to sit up, not only by single
opinions but by the overall ways in which Woolf asks us to read the
material, in particular by his convincing stress on 'the
middle ground' where explorers and natives have met, in
western Europe and America." (Greece & Rome, April
2013)

"Greg Woolf's wide-ranging and engaging study of ethnographic
traditions about the "barbarian" west exposes the complex mixture
of myth, stereotype, and information deriving from the interplay
between inquirers and inhabitants and from the shifting
circumstances that generated their creation and their
transformation."

Erich Gruen, University of California, Berkeley

"Woolf dissects Greek and Roman ethnological accounts to give
a voice to the otherwise silent people Rome conquered and analyses
the role of myths in empire building."

David Breeze, The University of Edinburgh