Untangling Blackness in Greek Antiquity

A bold and brilliant new treatment of blackness in ancient Greek literature and visual culture as well as modern reception.

Sarah F. Derbew (Author)

9781108817912, Cambridge University Press

Paperback / softback, published 8 February 2024

272 pages
22.9 x 15.2 x 1.6 cm, 0.41 kg

'This is the first book-length study on Black people in the Greco-Roman world since Frank Snowden's works, which makes it a critical addition to the growing discourse on those racial dynamics.' Talawa Adodo, International Journal of the Classical Tradition

How should articulations of blackness from the fifth century BCE to the twenty-first century be properly read and interpreted? This important and timely new book is the first concerted treatment of black skin color in the Greek literature and visual culture of antiquity. In charting representations in the Hellenic world of black Egyptians, Aithiopians, Indians, and Greeks, Sarah Derbew dexterously disentangles the complex and varied ways in which blackness has been co-produced by ancient authors and artists; their readers, audiences, and viewers; and contemporary scholars. Exploring the precarious hold that race has on skin coloration, the author uncovers the many silences, suppressions, and misappropriations of blackness within modern studies of Greek antiquity. Shaped by performance studies and critical race theory alike, her book maps out an authoritative archaeology of blackness that reappraises its significance. It offers a committedly anti-racist approach to depictions of black people while rejecting simplistic conflations or explanations.

Introduction: The metatheater of blackness
1. Masks of blackness: Reading the iconography of black people in ancient Greece
2. Masks of difference in Aeschylus's suppliants
3. Beyond blackness: Reorienting Greek geography
4. From Greek scythians to black Greeks: Spectrum of foreignness in Lucian's satires
5. Black disguises in an aithiopian novel
Conclusion: (re)placing blackness
Appendix 1
Appendix 2
Bibliography
Recommended translations of primary Greek texts
Index.

Subject Areas: History: earliest times to present day [HBL], Literary studies: classical, early & medieval [DSBB], History of architecture [AMX]