488 Kathryn Lomas
Roman authors to entire ethnic groups, for both positive and negative effects. The
Celts and the Samnites, for instance, are described as having stereotypically masculine
qualities, such as being endowed with a strong warrior ethos, and being brave and
hardy, although also rough and lacking in many aspects of civilized life (Livy 9.13.8,
Pliny Natural History, 29.14, Aulus GelliusNoctes Atticae 13.9, StraboGeography
5.4.2). Celts are described in similar terms: brave warriors who lived in unsophisticated
and non-urban settlements, although Cato adds that they were also highly industrious
and prized eloquence as well as military prowess (Polybios 2.17, Cato,Origines2.3,
Strabo, Geography4.1–3; Williams 2001: 68–99). Although this may sound like a
case of damning with faint praise, Romans admired courage and military prowess and
other attributes, such as industry, which they associated with manly virtue (Williams
2001: 79–81).
Other ethnic groups, in contrast, have female characteristics attributed to them, with
pejorative intent. Roman views of the Greeks, for instance, were notoriously complex.
Despite an admiration for many aspects of Greek art and intellectual culture, and
the increasing adoption of some aspects of Hellenism (Wardman 1976; Gruen 1992;
Wallace-Hadrill 2009: 3–37), Romans also associated the Greeks with negative, and
gendered, stereotypes, and they are variously described by Roman authors as being soft,
unwarlike, fickle, and untrustworthy (Horace,Epistles1.7.45,Satires2.4.34; Seneca,
Epistles68.5, Livy 24.1.7). Negative stereotypes are prominent in accounts of the
Roman conquest of Magna Graecia, in which the Neapolitans are described as inclined
to be more valiant in word than deed (Livy 8.22.8), and the Tarentines are said to
have declared war on Rome and then requested help from Pyrrhus of Epirus in 281BC
from a mixture of arrogance and hubris, followed by cowardice when faced with the
consequences of their actions (Plutarch,Pyrrhus13.2–5; Dio 9.39.2–10; Dionysios
of HalicarnassusAnt. Rom. 19.5.1–7.3; Appian,Samnite wars. 7.1–3; Zonaras 8.2;
Athenaeus,Deipnosohistai, 4.166e-f; Lomas 1997).
Needless to say, this sort of ethnic stereotyping is designed to belittle and delegit-
imize its objects, and bears little relation to reality. Despite the characterization of the
Greeks of Italy as lightweight and decadent cowards, both Naples and Tarentum were
powerful cities in the fourth–third centuries. The use of pejoratively gendered charac-
teristics such as softness, cowardice, decadence, and effeminacy as a way of undermining
the credibility of ethnic groups has a well-documented history in both the ancient world
and in more modern times. One function of the more unflattering Roman descriptions
of the Greeks and some eastern peoples is to render them not only “other” in ways
that suggest inferiority to the Romans, but also unsuited to rule themselves, thereby
legitimizing Roman imperialism (Petrochilos 1974; Alcock 1993: 24–32; Lomas 1997).
This is strikingly similar to the way in which nineteenth-century Orientalism ascribed
particularly female characteristics to some ethnic groups in the eastern Mediterranean
and Middle East, as a way of legitimizing French and British imperialism in the region
(Said 1978: 31–44).
Differences in the role and status of women between different ethnic groups was,
in itself, a powerful contributor to a sense of otherness. The Etruscans, for instance,
were regarded as very different both by Greeks and by Romans, and one of the con-
tributing factors—particularly for the Greeks—was the status of women in Etruscan
society (for a full discussion of sources on Etruscan women, see Rallo 1989). The Greek