Invention of the Barbarian scholars

Andrew Stewart

(The amazons) “Far from the demure virginity prescribed by law and custom”

Llewelyn-Jones

Herodotus was not writing so much a history as a lesson in morality

Edith hall

“Portrayal of the enemy has thus become self-definition and self praise

Skinner

“Some so called barbarians could be depicted behaving in ways that conformed with Greek norms”

Haywood

(Herodotus) “does exhibit preferences for Greek ideals”

Edith hall

All the characters in the play, except for Medea, are left either dead or bewildered

Edith Hall

Medea is not exactly a goddess, but neither is she vulnerable to the constraints of being human

Goldhill

(Medea) she is good at manipulating stereotypes against her enemies

Goldhill

(In Medea) Sympathy turns out to be a dangerously destructive weakness

Clifford

“In binary oppositions in the Ancient Greek world view, we often find that categories are messy”

P. Walcot

“equipped, as heavily armed infantrymen but fought as mounted archers”

Andrew Stewart

“The amazons are always young,slim and strikingly beautiful

Cartledge

“In cold historical fact the defeat had been effected by a shaky and improvised coalition of a mere 30 to 40 Greek states“

Cartledge

“The Athenian Alliance was not as Hellenic as Athenian Propaganda maintained”

Cartledge

“Greekness, had a least enough purchase on reality to allow of a definition that was not purely wishful thinking”

Dewald and Marincola

Herodotus is well aware of the irony of the Athenians Enthusiasm

Dewald and Marincola

”The speeches capture both the nobility and the ephemerality of the Panhellenic idea”

Dewald and Marincola

”Herodotus seems to have found in his inquiry that harmony between the two was necessary for each, and for all of Greece”

Edith Hall

At the time of the Persian wars we get a collective label of the Greeks because they had to unite

Edith Hall

Athenians found very useful propaganda to say that they were the leaders of ‘the Greeks’ against ‘the barbarians… This is an Athenian invention

Cartledge

A cultural concept not a geographical concept

Cartledge

(Greeks united) “They spoke Greek as a language. There were various dialects… but they all had a common ancestry and above all religion”

Edith Hall

“Aeschylus describes the Persians utterances as ‘barbarian’ in the primary, linguistic sense of the word”

R. Scodel

“medea is an unlikely representative of Greek heroic values”

R. Scodel

“Medea’s dreadful situation is her own fault”

R. Scodel

(Jason) “Helplessly vulnerable to Medea's deception”

R. Scodel

”she is acting out of pride and anger that are not under rational control”

R. Scodel

”Medea is both misogynist and feminist, invoking stereotypes on both sides”

James Morwood

”the hostile presentation of Jason for most of the play's length adds strength to Medea’s case”

Else

“Hardly anything happens in the play at all” (The Persians)

James Morwood

(Jason) “ schooled by catastrophe, he wins his own tragic status”

H. Kitto

”she is indeed possessed of a passionate nature, quite uncontrolled in love and hate”

P. Vellacott

”The lesson of the play is that carefully worked-out notions of right and wrong are dangerous unless they are flexible”

P. Walcot

”They challenged and defied women’s function as wife and mother”

Brown and Tyrrell

”the Amazons not only defy sexual classification but can hardly be integrated into a social structure”

Pasi Loman

”The Greeks kept repeating various stories about the Amazons, if no such tribe of warrior women ever existed”

Pasi Loman

”Used as an archetype of the defeated barbarian” (The Amazons)

P. Walcot

”They illustrate the appalling consequences of women usurping what is properly a man’s role and emphasise man's fear of any attempt at such usurpation”

Edith Hall

“Aeschylus implies that the Barbarian characters, in contrast with the free and disciplined Hellene, is luxuriant and materialistic”

Lane Fox

“The battle was for Greek freedom, but the contrasts of justice and luxury were woven into memories of it”

Tom Holland

”All non-Greeks were Barbarians, a term originally signifying incomprehensible language but later used derogatorily to indicate cultural inferiority”

Cartledge

”Hellenism, is a compound of common blood, language and customs - not a common political system, which has served more often to divide than unite the Greeks”

Flower

”the dichotomy between free and manly Greek and servile and effeminate Persian…does not correspond to the way that Persians are depicted in Herodotus”

Alexandra Villing

“The projection of the Persians as a barbarian ‘other’ was a confident foil against which Greek values and norms could be set”

Alexandra Villing

“The victory was seen as an ideological one”

Tom Holland

Persian Religion was like “a light morning mist”

Cartledge

Aeschylus’ The Persians was “a hymn to democracy”

T. Harrison

It was a pronouncedly Persocentric world: in which the Persian elite dominated and the ‘Persian man’ was elevated for his ideal qualities

J. Sharwood-Smith

The great king's wealth and magnificence was always 100 times greater than that of his nobles and his power was limitless

J. Hart

Herodotus […] shows how the Persian kings were thought to be capable of behaving

A. Kuhrt

When kings emphasise diversity… the effect is to enhance the supreme power of the Persian monarch

T. Harrison

What are presented as excessive or barbaric acts in the Greek sources can be explained, as actions whose symbolism is misunderstood

Michael Axworthy

This was an empire that was […] based on might being right

Waters

the message of the Apadana reliefs seems rather one of solidarity and inclusiveness between the King and his subjects

Llewelyn-Jones

one of the most remarkable rulers in the ancient world, Cyrus the Great

Llewelyn-Jones

The rise of the man who would rival Cyrus II as the most accomplished of all Persian rulers to preside over the Empire itself - Darius the Great