Ethnic Identities, Borderlands, and Hybridity 123No doubt, the underlying motivation behind the dispute flowed from long-standing
regional rivalry between the two neighbors, but it is telling that the argument of the
Kyrenians carried enough weight with Hadrian to scuttle a claim for equal standing for
Ptolemais-Barke in the Panhellenion.
Where does this leave us? I would draw I think three broad inferences from the ground
we have explored. First, hybrid ethnic identities did indeed exist in the Greco-Roman
world. They seem, at least in some cases, to emerge not from a process controlled
largely by the pre-existing ethnicities, but rather driven by interests of a greater,
often imperial, power. At least one of the clearer cases, that of the Batavians, seems
to point in this direction. Second, multiple identities deployed at different times for
different purposes seem quite common, again especially in colonial situations, in which
subordinated populations must find ways to accommodate the ruling power. Third,
we must be alive to the powers of the metaphors we use. Hybridity carries baggage
that may distort the ways we think about amalgamated ethnicities. The middle ground
may not be the space where amalgamation takes place. In any case, we need to be alert
to instances of multiple or confected identities actuated by specific circumstances as
opposed to hybrid ethnicities actually taken on as a basic identity by actual people. This
returns us to one of the persistent problems of the study of the Greco-Roman world:
getting at the personal attitudes of ordinary people. For a hybrid ethnicity to take hold,
people must feel it to be “true.” Since virtually every occasion in which an ethnicity is
deployed may be seen as a display, a performance, it is a real challenge to get down to
these attitudes.
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