Ancient Ethnicity and Modern Identity 73The Dynamics of Ancient Ethnicities
It was not until the mid-1990s that ancient ethnicities were conceptualized as dynamic
on a more general level in Classical Studies. In his groundbreaking publications,
Jonathan Hall established the view that ancient Greek ethnic identities were also
constructed within, and according to contextual discursive frameworks (Hall 1997,
2002). He resurrects Weber’s definition of ethnic groups that posits the notion of
fictive genealogies as the defining trait of ethnic discourses in ancient Greece (Hall
2002: 10; compare the section entitled Historical Constructions of Ethnicities; Hall’s
call for strong definitions is another legacy from Weber, see the section entitled A Note
on Terminology and Definitions). Typically, in the genealogies, a mythological hero
or demi-god was portrayed as the founding father of an ethnic group. Relationships
between groups, including those with non-Greeks, were articulated through the
construction of fictive kinships in the genealogical trees (Hall 2002: 24–9). Hall
also identifies a conceptual development in the Greek perceptions of ethnicity. Greek
ethnicity was initially aggregative, and changed into oppositional mode after the Persian
Wars in the early fifth centuryBC. In the oppositional discourse, the Greeks emphasized
the differences and divisions between ethnic groups (this argument was also put forward
by Edith Hall 1989). According to Jonathan Hall, a common Hellenic identity emerged
only after the Persian Wars (Hall 1997: 47; this part of his model has been debated, see
Hall 1998b; Sourvinou-Inwood 2005: 24–63).
Studies that consider ethnic identities in classical antiquity as mutable, and analyze an
ethnogenesis process, for instance, or explicate how cultural traits have been invested
with ethnic sentiments, or explore the subjective perceptions of identities and “Others,”
are by now common in Classical Studies (e.g., Malkin 2001; Luraghi 2008; Funke and
Luraghi 2009; Gruen 2010). The religious domain, in particular, is often thought of as a
part of ancient societies that was used to channel ethnic sentiments. In this respect, there
is no major difference between the essentializing and dynamic perspectives. Particularities
of specific cults, and/or mythological narratives, including the fictive genealogies, were
used to confirm the existence of ethnic groups in the essentializing perspective (e.g.,
Eder 1990; Strid 1999), whereas, in the dynamic perspective, they are considered as
social channels through which mutable identities were constructed and reaffirmed (Hall
1997; Malkin 1998; Sourvinou-Inwood 2005).
Another topic that has been explored from a dynamic perspective is the relationship
between different peoples around the Mediterranean on a more general level—that is,
Greek views on the Jews, Roman interactions with the Gauls, Germans, etc. These pub-
lications exhibit a sensitivity toward the development and changes of the perspectives,
as well as toward the dynamics of appropriations and constructions of ethnic stereo-
types (Hartog 1988). It is primarily the Greeks, the Romans, and the Jews who have
left us with a literary record containing relevant information, and, therefore, their point
of views are most frequently presented (Gruen 2005, 2010, 2011). Gruen’s emphasis is
on the connections and links between the ancient peoples, rather than on the distinc-
tiveness that is emphasized in the discourses of the “Other,” in his view (Gruen 2011:
352; see also Chapter 28 in this volume). Despite the comprehensive treatment of the
ancient sources and the detailed account of the literary records, I find Gruen’s dismissal
of the “Other” to be based on a misunderstanding of this foundational notion for identity