Erich Gruen's Rethinking the Other in Antiquity is a book that, for one reason or another, desperately needed to be written, ideally by someone possessing G.'s authoritative command of the vast array of sources indicative of ancient knowledge of, and interest in, foreign peoples. It may not be a book with which everyone agrees given its overtly polemical stance; however, this may itself count as a virtue when dealing with a topic in which the default setting has all too often been a series of tired cliches. Conceived as a counterpoint to scholarly emphasis on negative stereotyping that followed in the wake of landmark works such as E. W. Said's Orientalism and Edith Hall's Inventing the Barbarian, Rethinking the Other highlights the prevalence of an alternative strand in ancient thought that was both affirmative and inclusive, whilst acknowledging that Greeks, Romans and Jews occasionally accentuated the differences between themselves and foreigners. The result is a provocative, wide-ranging and thoroughly engaging volume that is both beautifully produced — with copious footnotes, helpful indices and handsome book-jacket featuring a (highly apposite) janiform vase — and (very) reasonably priced. The latter is fortuitous since it will automatically become a set text for courses touching on ancient self-conception and relations with foreign peoples and mandatory reading for anyone researching these and cognate fields.

G.'s elegant rebuttal of the model of the Other begins with a bold statement of authorial intent: to bring about a sea-change in the way in which ancient attitudes towards foreigners are conceptualized. The book then divides into two parts. ‘Impressions of the “Other”’ undertakes a revisionist survey of the major categories of ‘foreigner’ known to Graeco-Roman antiquity encompassing Persians (chs 1–2), Egyptians, Phoenicians/Carthaginians, Gauls, Germans, Jews, and ‘People of Colour’. Although the focus is primarily on textual materials (e.g. Herodotus, Fabius Pictor, Caesar, Vergil), discussion of representations of Persians and Africans incorporates a range of iconographic evidence, including the oft-cited ‘Eurymedon Vase’ and a series of janiform vessels juxtaposing African and Caucasian physiognomies. The author's argument is consistent throughout: a more even-handed approach to ancient identity constructions can add a far more positive spin to material traditionally perceived as derogatory, defamatory and vitriolic. Tacitus' excursus on the Jews is just one case amongst many in which the prevailing scholarly consensus is turned on its head: whilst Tacitean antipathy is conceded, this acerbic ‘digression’ is reinterpreted as a characteristically playful and highly sardonic critique of popular myths and stereotypes relating to Jews by an historian equally preoccupied with deriding contemporary mores and skewering his contemporaries. Trenchant (if somewhat selective) critique of scholarship on representations of these various ‘Others’ undoubtedly exposes many flaws and weaknesses; however, the reader is left unsure as to whether this is enough to substantiate the somewhat rose-tinted picture of ancient mentalities/inter-group relations that emerges as G.'s argument develops apace.

Part Two is titled ‘Connections with the “Other”’ and consists of four chapters on foundation legends, fictitious kinship (‘Greeks and Others’ and ‘Jews and Others’) and ‘Cultural Interlockings and Overlappings’, followed by a conclusion. A veritable paean to ancient interconnectedness, it stresses the extent to which, amidst a ‘polyglot and tangled universe’ (253), Greeks, Romans and Jews consistently demonstrated a willingness to ‘reach out’ to others, exhibiting a hitherto unrecognized degree of openness towards people of different outlook, culture and physique. The reason for modernity's tendency to generate reductive and misleading analyses stressing ‘the stigmatization of “the Other” as a strategy of self-assertion and superiority’ (356) goes largely unexplored, a significant omission which threatens to diminish the impact of G.'s argument. Instead, the reader is presented with nuanced (if necessarily selective) discussion of key topics such as Roman self-conception and the extent to which various Latin authors subscribed to the unswervingly negative idea of Punica fides. There are some unlikely heroes: Cato the Elder ‘that self-professed champion of native chauvinists’ wins plaudits for embracing legends linking the Italian cities to foreign forebears (249) (such views are held to be symptomatic of Rome's wilful entanglement with Others) and one is left with nagging doubts as to the extent to which self-aggrandizement and cultural imperialism are downplayed (people claim kinship relations for reasons other than openness) and whether the sensitivity and insight attributed to just about everybody doesn't betray a degree of wishful thinking on G.'s behalf. Whereas the reader can perhaps look elsewhere for nuanced discussion of the traditions surrounding Rome's origins, the stance adopted is novel. The chapters dealing with Jewish perceptions of outsiders also represent a significant addition to scholarship by tracing the links between Jews, Greeks, Ishmaelites and Arabs at the expense of the traditional rhetoric of exclusivity — ancient or (one suspects) modern — and folding these into broader debates that have commonly been restricted to Greco-Roman culture. Instead, we are treated to a rich diet incorporating the writings of Aristobulus, Alexander Polyhistor, the ‘Letter of Aristeas’ and the Sibylline Oracles.

The whole is very much greater than the sum of its parts: an impassioned challenge to the lazy monologue of self/other which has cast such a long shadow over modern scholarship. No matter that the shift away from polarities has been underway for well over a decade as archaeologists and (some) historians have sought to highlight the manifest complexity of inter-group relations resulting from widespread mobility, trade and exchange. What has been lacking is an effective challenge to the scholarly mainstream's tendency to carry on regardless as if none of this mattered. Rethinking the Other provides both this and much more besides and for that reason it does not have to be ‘right’ in every respect. Its aim is to overturn traditional assumptions regarding the paradigmatic construction of polarities separating Greeks, Romans and Jews from barbarians, Gentiles and miscellaneous Others. It does so with magnificent erudition, gusto and panache.