Greek knowledge of and interest in foreign peoples is commonly believed to have developed in conjunction with a wider sense of "Greekness" that emerged during the Hellenic encounter with Achaemenid Persia during the late sixth to early fifth centuries BC. The dramatic nature of this "clash of cultures" is widely thought to have laid the foundations for prose descriptions of foreign lands and peoples by causing previously vague imaginings to crystallize into a diametric opposition between "Hellene" and "barbarian."

Contents

Acknowledgements
1. Ethnography before Ethnography
2. Populating the Imaginaire
3. Mapping Ethnography
4. Mapping Identities
5. The Invention of Greek Ethnography
Abbreviations
Bibliography
Index