Introduction

We live in a world surrounded by ethnic conflict. Since the 1960s, ethnic resurgences have occurred between Walloons and Flemings in Belgium; Serbs, Croats and Muslims in Bosnia; Hutu and Tutsi in Burundi and Rwanda; Greeks and Turks in Cyprus; Sikhs, Hindus and Muslims in India; Catholics and Protestants in Ireland; Chinese and Malay in Malaysia; Ibo, Hausa and Yoruba in Nigeria; English and French in Québec; Christian Armenians and Muslim Azerbaijanis in the south of the former Soviet Union; and Sinhs and Tamils in Sri Lanka, to name just a few. At first sight, the appearance of a book on ancient ethnicity might seem like a gratuitous and anachronistic exercise, attempting to impose upon antiquity a subject whose true relevance is more topical. Nothing could be further from the truth. Quite apart from the fact that the separation of past and present tends to be dissolved in the proclamation of ethnic claims and counterclaims (consider the dispute that arose between Greece and the Former Yugoslav Republic of Macedonia over the so-called ‘Star of Vergina’),the study of ethnic identity in antiquity is nothing new as the remainder of this chapter will demonstrate.

Indeed, from as early as the eighteenth century, classical scholars were interested in examining the fields of art, architecture, music, dress, philosophy, customs and political forms in order to identify the specific ‘character’ of the various ethnic groups which inhabited Greece in antiquity.