The quote that prefaces this review was read out by Margo Hendricks, academic, novelist and contributor/co-founder of the group Raceb4race, at the opening lecture at the 2019 ‘Race and Periodization’ symposium at the Folger Shakespeare Library (‘Coloring the Past, Rewriting Our Future: Raceb4race’ [2019]). Hendricks uses this quote to motivate what a critical study of race in the pre-modern world should be about: not just a gaze that seeks to define or pinpoint a particular starting point, but a means to go from being merely an academic to being an activist. Hendricks’s remarks remind us that the study of race is not just a question Classics has a uniquely difficult time grappling with, but that its invocation in the pre-modern world deserves serious attention. Her emphasis that this attention to race requires a critical gaze also means paying critical attention to our methods and modes of analysis. Both works under review, Parmenter’s Racialized Commodities and Classics and Race: A Historical Reader , co-edited by Derbew, Orrells and Vasunia, demonstrate commitment to critical reflection on race.

These shared commitments are not primarily because both works happen to include the word ‘race’ in the title. Rather, what makes putting them in conversation so difficult is that they represent entirely different approaches. This is to be expected, since, as both works take pains to point out, the discussion of race in Classics has been ongoing since, at the very least, W.E.B. Du Bois’s invocation of the classical world, G.H. Beardsley’s assertion of racialised and racist views on Black people in ancient Egypt, and the ensuing attempts to dismantle those views by F.M. Snowden, M. Bernal and L. Thompson (Parmenter, p. 15; Derbew, Orrells, Vasunia, p. 2). Ever since, discourses on race have developed from merely transplanting stagnant and transhistorical views of race to nuanced, fluid, discussions. In this way one similarity between these two books is that they offer the opportunity to see how far the field has come in its discussion of race, as well as multiple theories, methodologies and interdisciplinary approaches that can be invoked in this discussion. Both works introduce their discussions of race and racism through the invocation of K. Fields and B. Fields’s racecraft, continuing the tradition of applying the seminal work Racecraft (2014) to the ancient world and its impact on the present (Parmenter, p. 12; Derbew, Orrells, Vasunia, p. 3).

I emphasise the similarities before turning to the differences because both books showcase, in distinct ways, what viewing the ancient world through the lens of race can offer. Some of why these differences are so important is due to the form of each work. Parmenter’s book is written as a monograph and, as such, seeks to unpack race through the lens of commodities, which is informed by Black Atlantic studies. This project necessitates reading the ancient material with a view to showing how and where racialising processes begin in Athens, and how those processes became enmeshed in the practice of enslavement. Classics and Race: A Historical Reader is a sourcebook that offers a wide breadth of receptions of the Classical world and showcases where those receptions intertwine or coordinate with race.

Further, both works place different emphasis on geographical and temporal markers as entry points for their discussion of race. Parmenter’s book, due to the focus on commodities, is largely geographically organised. Parmenter begins the search for racialised commodities in Egypt, tracing the substance and production of natron to Athens. He then turns his attention from the South to the North, where he assesses Athenian enslavement practices of the region. To not make the dissimilarities seem too vast, the Reader, while being primarily chronological, also has elements of geographical organising. For the most part, the Reader has sources from the Global North; however, these sources touch on racialising practices globally. This way of organising allows for a clear and steady picture of the progression of empire, race and its entangled relationship with and use of Classics. In the introduction the editors write that the Reader ‘provides coordinates for thinking about the relationship between the study of the ancient Greek and Roman worlds and constructions of race, racism and anti-racism from the late medieval period until the middle of the twentieth century’ (p. 11). From these coordinates the globalised forces that seek to use the classical world are sometimes augmented or subverted by local voices; as demonstrated by Vasunia, J. McConnell, K. Nguyen and M. Quest’s chapters. As the Reader moves through time, these engagements provide genealogies of both violence and subversion. Likewise, the primarily geographical organisation of Parmenter’s work serves to untangle the complicated networks of traders and merchants that imported racialised views.

The variances between emphasising the geographical and the temporal in organising discussions of race leads me to another shared set of similarities: the focus of gazing and see(k)ing race in the ancient world. Parmenter frequently returns to gazing and mirror metaphors throughout the work (pp. 13, 21, 93, 196, 210). In the introduction he provides Margo Hendricks’s reflections on bell hooks to note that the study of race in the ancient world requires a bi-directional gaze, both on the material and on the meta-questions we ask ourselves as scholars. This leads Parmenter to ask what methods and disciplines can help us ‘see’ race in the ancient world (p. 13). The reflection is driven by the methodological inspiration behind the work – Blackness studies in the eighteenth century and how it has illuminated the machinations of slavery and anti-Blackness through metaphors like ‘the mirror of the consumer’. In the same way the editors of the Reader are reflexive and ask us to explore the initial ‘mapping’ that is provided by the sources.

Even with the shared similarities and topics, the differences in materials and audiences makes the gap feel wider and wider between the two works. In what follows I will discuss the works individually. Beginning with Parmenter’s Racialized Commodities, which is concerned with developing an account of what racialising practices were in play or being developed that makes fifth-century sources feel so innately racialised, despite the fact that there seems to be a lack of evidence for race as we know it during the time period (p. 8).

Parmenter identifies the inklings of these racialising processes in Part 1, which, using archaeological evidence, traces the commodification of ‘natron’, a substance similar to sodium bicarbonate (pp. 28–30), by providing a ‘commodity biography’, another methodological move borrowed from outside of Classics (p. 53). Understudied yet ubiquitous in the ancient world, the substance was used for everything from making faience materials (discussed by Parmenter in Chapter 2) to fabric dying, and health and medical uses. The first two chapters track the importation and uses of natron in Egypt into the Greek world, which Parmenter argues functions in a similar way to sugar and sugar plantations in the eighteenth-century Atlantic world. Just as sugar, a white substance, was planted, harvested and produced by enslaved peoples, natron becomes a force to think through hierarchies and human difference. Parmenter weaves together its uses as commodity, its presence in archaeological materials like the Naucratis scarab heads that are often ‘racialized’, and the likely local groups of elite merchants and producers who are benefitting from this trade (p. 86).

His conclusions about natron culminate in Chapter 3, a highlight of the book. Parmenter argues that natron and the products it was used in showcase early Greek interest in otherising but does not go so far as to call the sixth-century material analyses as definitely within a racialised lens. The chapter presents a disciplinary intervention in how to read the ensuing debates between Beardsley and Snowden: work that Parmenter has published before, but in the context and overwhelming evidence from the previous chapters it provides unique insights into a debate that has become a keystone for those wanting to talk about Classics and race (pp. 89–93).

Part 2 moves away from Egypt and the North to the Pontus. While these chapters, again, draw on diverse archaeological, epigraphic and textual sources, the primary innovations are not in the treatment of sources, although those are interesting, but again in the careful applications and reflections on methods and cases in Black Atlantic studies. Chapter 4 begins by putting both fields into conversation with each other. Parmenter presents a fragment naming the enslaved person Phaylles, to reflect on the different evidentiary conditions between the two fields (p. 125). As Parmenter begins the discussion of Athenian enslavement practices, he acknowledges that he is faced with a lack of evidence, the fragment being one of the sources that allows us access to even basics like the name of those who were enslaved (p. 126). For those studying the trans-Atlantic slave trade, the amount of evidence available is mounting, the banality and sheer quantity of records that testify to the human lives that were commodified, exchanged and violated creating a separate set of issues for scholars attempting reparative work. The dialogue and the meditation on these differences are continued as Parmenter introduces Chapter 5 with the narrative of the ship Lion, which set sail from Liverpool to Calabar, in modern-day Nigeria (p. 152). The expedition, which resulted in a cargo of enslaved people, elephant tusks and more, was taken at great risk to the crew, many dying as the ship attempted to negotiate for additional enslaved people. This framing leads to a discussion of the shipping, cargo and merchant negotiations that occurred between Athens and the Black seas (p. 153). In essence, these two chapters function as the final argument of the beginnings of commodifying practices identified in Egypt and their ultimate form in enslavement of the Black Sea region. Through paying close attention to trade networks, Parmenter is able to offer new insights into the racialisation of slavery.

The final chapter assesses the literary evidence and the sources that the book began with as seeming to be so clearly about race. By analysing the progress of physiognomy as creating a visual language for the double standard of ancestry to argue for enslavement, the processes of racialising the body become clear. These markers of race that Parmenter draws attention to are ‘paleness’ and ‘ruddiness’, which are often appealed to in visual culture, as well as textual sources (pp. 173; 182). It is this final chapter that sits slightly apart from the rest of the book: while Parmenter still discusses various forms of evidence, the assessment of the literature from Plato to Aristotle and Demosthenes leaves the doors open for further research. While this may frustrate some, these doors are wide-reaching and will surely inspire new readings of race in these sources. Overall, the work makes an excellent case for taking inspiration outside of Classics for assessing ancient material. Parmenter’s ability to identify convincingly the ancient counterparts from the Atlantic world material is commendable.

In the same way Classics and Race deserves commendation. Not only because the work brings together scholars like S. Halley, P. Rankine, E. Greenwood and Nguyen, as well as the editors, who all have been working towards theorisations of race and Classics throughout their careers. The Reader also includes contributions from people outside of the field of Classics, leading to an enriching assortment of literature, sources and commentaries. Quest, N.A. Spigner, D. Tavárez, T. Walters and O. Zhiri, coming in from the fields of Literature, African American Studies and Anthropology showcase the importance of looking beyond Classics and the inter-disciplinary nature that can flourish. Finally, the book’s open-access nature means that its use is not limited to the classroom. Instead, it is very easy to see how a course in any of the fields listed could assign an assortment of sources and commentaries from the Reader and be all the better for it.

It is on the use of the Reader that I will focus my individual review. The volume comprises 24 sources with accompanying ‘commentaries’ and is organised chronologically beginning with Kebra Nagast’s Glory of the King’s in the fourteenth century and ending with Martin Luther King Jr’s ‘Letter from a Birmingham Jail’ in 1963. For copyright reasons, this last entry does not include selections of King’s ‘Letter’ in the sourcebook, but Rankine directs to various editions and printings. The commentaries, like the sources, provide textual analysis and biography, meditations on racial formations or a combination. Derbew’s commentary for the selections from Nagast showcases how powerful the contribution is: Derbew pays special attention to taking this ancient Ethiopian text and making it applicable to modern conversations by drawing on the friendship between Nigerian author Chinua Achebe and American author James Baldwin. These two men, who came to view each other as brothers, allow Derbew to draw on conceptions of identity and Blackness across different times and space. Orrells’s chapter is similarly rich in the invocation of modern material, providing a reading of Robin Coste Lewis’s ‘Voyage of the Sable Venus’ against J.J. Winckelmann’s racialised views.

For the most part, the commentaries succeed in the same vein as Derbew, often drawing on modern formulations of race to approach the text. This includes invoking Gloria Anzaldúa (Tavárez), Saidiya Hartman (Walters), Edward Said (R. Armstrong, M. Leonard, Orrells) and Stuart Hall (McConnell), ensuring students have a broad range of methods and theories to draw on. In other commentaries the theorisation of race highlights the violence that becomes distinct in its localised setting: M. Cazeaux shows how racial categories can move beyond the body to comment on temperament, M. Williamson tracks the sinister naming practices of British elites in Jamaica, A. Kouklanakis writes on how racialised meanings shift in the face of colonial contact, as analysed through the term ‘mulatto’, and D.E. McCoskey reminds readers of the scientific furnishings that undergird modern conceptions of race, via the field of eugenics.

Sometimes the commentaries do not provide the clearest understandings of the sources. While the introduction emphasises that the Reader is meant to guide the beginnings of conversation and does so by providing suggested questions and thematic groupings of chapters, the Reader would have benefited from more conversation between chapters. For instance, C. Høgel’s chapter on Las Casas, while mentioning the Valladolid debates, focuses primarily on Las Casas’ reception of Cicero in guiding his questions of what counts as humane and just. It is not until G. Parker’s chapter on Capitein’s De Servitute that explicit connections are made about the importation of Aristotle’s theory of natural slavery, in relation to Las Casas’ adversary Juan Gínes de Sepúlveda, as a translator of Aristotle. Likewise, Walters’s, Halley’s and Greenwood’s chapters, all providing readings of early Black women Classicists and feminist pedagogy, might show the interconnections between each women’s contribution and views on the role of Classics in education, either by more cross-references between the chapters, or by a longer explanation of these texts in the introduction.

In the afterword Debrew writes that the Reader aimed to include Global North texts to show the varied voices speaking back to empire and asks readers to ‘consider pathways for future research projects that recognise plurality within unequal landscapes’ (p. 473). In the spirit of this call, I point to some of the limits in the Reader, through what is left out. One area that could be mapped further is the engagement of classical sources from the Arab world. While S. Agbamu, Zhiri and J.M. Seo all offer engagement with sources from the Arab world, North Africa and engagements with Europe, these are missing from later chapters of the Reader. What sort of sources would be relevant to include if one were interested in engaging with modern Arab voices? What would a Classics and race reader look like that was fully engaged in Critical Muslim Studies? (see Critical Muslim Studies ‘Manifesto’, https://criticalmuslimstudies.co.uk/about-us/). Similarly, Vasunia and Nguyen both provide entries into looking at Classics from non-Western perspectives in Asia, but it is worth thinking what additional sources and thinkers could be brought in.

Derbew sketches an answer to her own question by pointing towards African authors, artists and voices in the present that might shape a more specific view on race and Classics, but did not make it into this iteration of the Reader. While I have already pointed to expanding the possibilities of Classics and race in the Arab world, I have one more push for the Reader that is, again, present in the chapters, but under-contextualised. While references to indigenous peoples are present throughout the Reader, they do not appear except in passing in any of the chapters that lead into modernity. Halley includes a section of A Voice from the South entitled ‘the Woman versus the Indian’, but does not comment on the choice of contrasting women with the image of the ‘Indian’ (p. 263). Instead, the presence is in the more ‘ancient’ material, where indigenous peoples are discussed but their voices are missing or mediated through a colonial lens. The index does not include any mention of ‘indigenous’, ‘Indian (American)’ or ‘Native American’. Thinking through possibilities for further works, a Reader seeking to interrogate indigeneity and its relationship to race and colonial violence transforms critical approaches to pre-modern race, as Hendricks so powerfully argues, into ‘an intellectual, political, and public interrogation of capitalism’s capacious erasure of the sovereignty of Indigenous peoples, whether in the Americas, the Pacific islands, Asia, or the African continent’ (M. Hendricks, ‘Coloring the Past, Rewriting our Future: Raceb4race’ [2019]).

I end on this note because I feel very strongly that both works in this review, even where I have offered a push, demonstrate a willingness to reflect and gaze critically at Classics’ relationship with race. This is highlighted by Parmenter’s engagement with race in ancient Greece, not as an event, but as a means to think with critical innovations in the field of Black Atlantic Studies, and by Derbew, Orrells and Vasunia’s insistence on providing future readers with the tools ‘to resist inequalities in the discipline and to explore Classics and race anew’ (p. 475). These works are representative of a larger, burgeoning push to generate new and critical scholarship on Classics and race.Footnote ¹ If anything, any responses to and engagement with these works will only bring further critical and necessary interventions into and beyond the discipline.