Orientalizing the Galatae: Methods, Motives, Motifs (original) (raw)
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The Hellenistic Galatians: Representation and Self-Presentation
2017
This thesis explores Greek and Roman representations of the Hellenistic Galatians with a focus on how the concepts of the ‘barbarian’ and ‘Hellenisation’ influenced the creation, development and persistence of perceptions. Evidence for self-portrayals among the Galatian elite, and how an active approach to Hellenisation enabled greater integration into the political and cultural spheres of the Hellenistic and Roman worlds, are also addressed. Part One treats the place of the Galatians in previous scholarship and elucidates terminological issues related to their study. Part Two focuses on stereotypical responses to the Galatians in Greek and Roman sources and explores how the concept of the barbarian influenced the relationship between the Galatians and those behind the sources. Part Three explores evidence for more nuanced and less stereotypical perceptions of the Galatians in the sources and highlights the importance of the Hellenised Galatian elite in influencing these responses. Part Four puts the arguments and findings of the previous sections into practice to show how modern scholarship can be adversely affected when it fails to appreciate the intricacies behind the Galatians’ image. Underpinning each of these four sections is the argument that a new picture of the Galatians emerges from the sources when stereotypes are rejected and the complexity of Greek and Roman responses is acknowledged. Chapter 1 addresses the difficult question of ‘what is a Galatian?’ as well as other terminological issues. It provides a brief overview of the Celtic debate and locates the Galatians within this controversy. Chapter 2 explores the concepts of Hellenisation and ethnic identity and how these concepts will be employed throughout this present thesis. Chapters 3 and 4 focus on the image of barbarian that comes through in epigraphic and sculptural materials from the third century BC, while chapter 5 looks at how the Galatians have been presented in a stereotypical manner in textual sources from the first century BC onwards. Chapter 6 explores epigraphic, sculptural and textual sources that present a more complex view of the Galatians in a similar context to those sources discussed in Part Two. Chapters 7 and 8 then explore the characters of Deiotarus and Ortiagon; reveal how active Hellenisation enabled the Galatians to become more culturally and politically integrated into the Hellenistic and Roman worlds; and illustrate how the sources could be sensitive to such endeavours. Chapter 9 presents a case study which elucidates the issues discussed throughout this thesis. In modern scholarship, the Galatians have often been described as a nation of mercenaries due to a reliance on more stereotypical portrayals in select sources. Chapter 9 shows that when they are viewed as people with more agency, their activities can instead be interpreted as those of allies. It also addresses how approaches like this fit into current trends in ancient history, especially efforts to see peripheral and marginalised groups in a more sympathetic way.
The Persistence of Orientalising
Ancient West and East, 2022
'Orientalising' describes a style and period of Greek art and, by extension, Greek culture and society. This article describes problems with the terminology and argues that a paradigm of Orientalising endures largely because the process of periodisation and classification ossified and concealed frameworks and assumptions. Drawing attention to the intellectual context of the term's origins (particularly in relationship to vase-painting) and later redeployment can show how the paradigm has emerged. This article advocates for a return to questions of production and for the use of models encompassing a networked Mediterranean and underscoring human-object interaction.
Studying Contemporary Greek Neo-Orientalism: the Case of the 'Underdog Culture' Narrative
Horizons of Politics, 8(25), 125‑149. DOI: 10.17399/HP.2017.082508. RESEARCH OBJECTIVE: This paper studies the prevalence, pre-eminence, premises and political usage of the “cultural dualism” narrative in contemporary Greece, which is predominantly attributed to Nikiforos Diamandouros. THE RESEARCH PROBLEM AND METHODS: The “cultural dualism” (“underdog culture”) reading of Modern Greece divides Greek society and political life into an “underdog” Orthodox conservative culture and a “reformist” Western secular culture, thus forming a Neo-orientalist schematization. The paper traces and analyses instances of this dichotomy (particularly instances in which it is presented as self-evident, a given) in Greek academia, journalism and political discourse. THE PROCESS OF ARGUMENTATION: This “underdog culture” narrative, broadly understood, is here identified as the implicit hermeneutic approach almost universally employed when studying non-standard political and cultural thought in Greece: other forms thereof comprise the dichotomies of “normal/ non-biased” versus “anti-Western,” “European” versus “national-populist,” “secular” versus “religious/Byzantine/Orthodox” etc. I proceed to analyse those and propose the term “Greek Neo-orientalism” for their categorization. RESEARCH RESULTS: In the paper, the prevalence of Diamandourean “underdog culture” reading in the Greek public sphere – academic as well as political and journalistic – is demonstrated, concluding that a non-Neo-orientalist reading of contemporary Greek political thought and theory is yet to appear. CONCLUSIONS, INNOVATIONS AND RECOMMENDATIONS: The paper underscores the need for an alternative research agenda that would for the first time examine non-standard Greek political thought that affirms Greece’s Byzantine past and Orthodox culture not via the Neo-orientalist approach, but through a methodology suitable to that end.
This chapter considers one element in the problematic relationship between ancient artistic conventions and modern interpretations of them. The scholarly understanding of ethnicity has increasingly been framed in nuanced terms, yet historians still sometimes see ethnicity as fixed in relation to Greek art. I here survey several examples of the unstable nature of ethnicity and representation in Greek art, before turning to the so-called Alexander Sarcophagus to show how interpretation of that work's visual conventions in ethnic terms that are believed to be particular to Greek art and Hellenic audiences is problematic, in several respects that miss or misconstrue its expression of Sidonian identity. This chapter closes by underscoring the value of ethnic-ity as a heuristic tool that goes beyond identifying the costume or action of figures shown in ancient art. Ethnicity allows us to ask with sensitivity who is represented by a work of art. Revisiting the topic of representation and ethnicity in an expressly theoretical context has strengthened my conviction that art history has much to offer to the larger enterprise of interpreting classical antiquity. 1 It is with art historical methodologies in mind that I offer a necessarily brief reconsideration of ethnicity, naturalism, and representation, to help refine our expectations of what images can tell us and how imagery contributed to the expression and construction of identity. In juxtaposing representation and ethnicity, we gain valuable insights into the largest source of data that we possess, material culture. I believe that representational strategies in ancient art have striking
Beating the Galatians: Ideologies, Analogies and Allegories in Hellenistic Literature and Art
A. Coşkun (ed.) Galatian Victories and Other Studies into the Agency and Identity of the Galatians in the Hellenistic and Early Roman Periods. Colloquia Antiqua 33 (Leuven) 97-144, 2022
Hellenistic literature and art commemorated victories over the Galatians through a variety of analogies and allegories, ranging from the historical Persian Wars to the cosmic Gigantomachy: each individual victory was incorporated into a larger sequence in which order constantly quelled the forces of chaos. This paper explores this analogical phenomenon by setting it within a larger Hellenistic context. The first section analyses the various analogies and allegories employed by the Aetolians, Ptolemies and Attalids, comparing these with their fifth-century Athenian precedent and reassessing the case for a Galatian allegory in the Pergamene Great Altar’s Gigantomachy frieze; the second examines how Callimachus manipulated the common Greek-barbarian antithesis with possible intercultural and metapoetic elements; and the third asks how Seleucid ideology might relate to this larger pattern, focusing on Lucian’s account of Antiochus’ ‘Elephant Victory’ (Zeux. 8-11). Although Lucian’s account probably derives from a prose source and not directly from Simonides of Magnesia’s court epic on the subject, I contend that the Syrian writer is likely indebted to the Seleucids’ own self-presentation in portraying Antiochus as the heir of the Achaemenids through a distinctly orientalising motif: the deployment of an exotic secret weapon. The Greek-barbarian dichotomy so prominent elsewhere thus collapses: the Seleucid king was depicted as the ideal blend of East and West, a worthy successor of Alexander the Great.
Galata as a Multicultural Heritage Crossroad throughout the Ages
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