The Ancients and Moderns series seeks ‘to engage, provoke, and stimulate’ students and general readers and to highlight the continued relevance of Greco-Roman antiquity while challenging the idea of a direct line of continuity from the past to the present, an ambitious project that McC.'s book goes a long way towards accomplishing. For an educated reader, this book, especially Chapters 1, 3 and 4, provides a thought-provoking example of how pondering antiquity can expand one's understanding of the concept of race. My biggest reservation is that there is too much emphasis on modern theoretical and scholarly ideas and too little quotation and discussion of the primary source materials, upon which these ideas are based. Too often, the ancient sources are only employed when filtered through scholars. It is all the more frustrating because where McC. does undertake close readings, she is invariably thought-provoking and engaging.
The book comprises an introduction and four chapters: ‘Racial Theory’, ‘Race as Social Practice’, ‘Racial Representations’ and ‘Whose History’. There is also a short foreword by series editor P. Vasunia, an afterword, 779 endnotes, a ‘Further Readings’ section and an index.
The introduction establishes the parameters of the study. McC. explains the choice of terminology and makes explicit her methodology using the figure of Cleopatra to demonstrate the differences in approach between Ancients and Moderns for understanding race. While Bernal and the Afrocentrists focus on the question of Cleopatra's skin colour as racial identity, neither Cleopatra nor any other ancient would understand such a focus when seeking to understand her ‘race’; either her Greek-ness or Egyptian-ness could be summoned up in different contexts for different purposes. McC. attempts to find an evolution in racial thinking that moves from a focus on origins and ‘blood descent’ to cultural distinctions. The ancient sources, however, do not support such an evolutionary model. Homer emphasises cultural distinctions in the Odyssey far more than blood descent, while theories like Athenian autochthony or environmental determinism coexisted even within a single text with theories that emphasised language, religious and social practices as creating identity (e.g. the Hippocratic Airs, Waters, Places).
McC.'s decision to use the word ‘race’ with all its accompanying modern baggage instead of ‘ethnicity’ is an intentional provocation, ‘a way of acknowledging a particular set of processes that have traditionally been associated with race’ (p. 31). She aims to force readers ‘to confront the frequent idealization of classical antiquity, and to view more critically a variety of Greek and Roman ideologies and practices, violent facets of the ancient world that can seem sanitized when called something else’ (p. 31). The provocation, though, is not without consequence as throughout the book the modern language of race sits uncomfortably beside the ancient sources.
Chapter 1 focusses on Greek and Roman ethnography. Although there is little new here for scholars of race and ethnicity in antiquity, the chapter provides a strong synthesis of the status quaestionis concerning theories of identity and identity formation processes in antiquity. The chapter is long and complex, but it is broken up into smaller sections that focus on key aspects of ancient thought, including geography, environmental theories, ‘hellenicity’, ‘romanness’ and the links between racial thinking and imperialism. The complexity of the material leads to a number of potential confusions despite the clear writing and structure. For a general reader or student, the relationship between Greeks and Romans may not be clear, especially when and where the two cultures meet and intersect. McC. also makes a number of generalisations that she later undermines. For example, in her discussion of the barbarian/Greek dichotomy, McC. emphasises the widely accepted view that the division was sharp and uncontested in antiquity (p. 56), a point she acknowledges later (pp. 60–1) does not hold up when particular texts such as Herodotus are examined closely.
Chapter 2, which discusses Ptolemaic and Roman Egypt, is difficult to read and somewhat disappointing as it does not achieve the promise it offers. After a distracting series of critiques of other methodologies and attempts at modern analogies, McC. introduces the Foucauldian idea of ‘racial governmentality’ as a path to understanding racial identity processes in Ptolemaic and Roman Egypt (p. 96). This chapter follows McC.'s article, ‘Race Before “Whiteness”: Studying Identity in Ptolemaic Egypt’ (Critical Sociology 28 [2002], 13–39), in which she argues that approaching Ptolemaic Egypt through modern theories of race can help scholars see behind the sources and gaze upon the structural aspects of identity formation. However, the theoretical apparatus is often in contradiction with the sources themselves. Recent scholarship, like that of I. Moyer (Egypt and the Limits of Hellenism [2011]) offers an alternative approach that aligns more clearly with the ancient structures and sources. In addition, there is frustratingly little direct citation of the ancient papyri under discussion. The chapter relies, instead, on secondary scholarship and theoretical positioning. A number of intriguing papyrus fragments are mentioned that could support some of McC.'s claims, but they are not examined, quoted or cited directly.
Chapter 3 addresses racial representations from antiquity. McC. includes a vast range of materials, but seems to assume, despite the audience of the book, that the reader knows the texts well enough that general references are sufficient. It is, perhaps, an issue of trying to cover too wide a range of material in too little space. The discussion of Ovid's Tristia is a refreshing exception. Here the anxieties of a Roman out in a ‘barbarian’ world are vividly portrayed through Ovid's own words. McC. should be commended as well for more extended discussion of material remains like the famous Dying Gaul statue from Pergamum, Trajan's Column and representations of Amazons in Classical art. The lack of images, however, makes engaging with these materials difficult.
The final chapter addresses the reception of, or rather, fight over the legacy of ancient Greece and Rome. She begins with Virginia Woolf's brilliant ‘A Dialogue upon Mount Pentelicus’ to introduce the issue of Greece's contested meaning in the modern world. From there she moves very briefly through the reception of environmental theory in the eighteenth century followed by its ‘surrender’ to biological theories in the nineteenth. McC. next goes from Bernal back to ancient Egypt, on to Germany and Tacitus' Germania and then Rome's conquests and British imperialism. The chapter functions as a catch-all for numerous ‘moments of reception’ typically linked to colonialism or imperialism. While the chapter lacks a coherent thread, each of the ‘moments’ is inherently interesting on its own and offers a variety of avenues for further discussion.
One comment on the structure of the notes and bibliography: this book is aimed at non-specialists, thus the lack of a full bibliography and the decision to cite sources fully only in the initial footnote are distressing. The book has nearly 800 endnotes with references to dozens of scholars, far more than appear in the ‘Suggested Readings’. Such an arrangement limits the functionality of the book for classroom use and for the general or expert reader alike.
McC. provides a stimulating review of current scholarship on ancient racial ideas and some of their modern uses that will find an audience with experts and general, educated readers alike. She also introduces to students and general readers a wide range of ancient sources that one hopes they will pursue reading on their own. Despite some reservations, this book is well worth the read.
