The Idea of Europe in The Ancient World - Historum

mansamusa · May 17th, 2012, 04:46 AM

It was Plato who described Greece as frogs around a pond. A very humble estimation of what is often seen as the mother of this world's most dominant culture--Western Europe.

Before the conquest of Western Europe by the Romans, Ancient Greece was the only part of Europe interacting with that part of the world the Greeks themselves would consider to be civilized. And indeed the most vital partners and rivals of Ancient Greece from the Mycaenean age to the Classical age were cultures such as Kemet (Ancient Egypt); the Phoenecians; the Lydians and Persians. Western Europe was largely hinterland to the Greek world.

In the case of the Phonecians it seems that the Greek alphabet was largely influenced by them. In the case of the Ancient Egyptians, they were heavily influenced and impressed by the learning of Egyptian scribes and priests. It was only after the birth of the Roman Kingdom, 753BC and its subsequent imperial expansions into the rest of Italy, then Iberia(ending 27 BC) and later Germany (completed AD 16)and Great Britain do we see what we now regognise as Western Europe playing any signifigant part in Ancient histrory.

Map by Strabo of the Ancient World; everything apart from Asia is often cited as Western Eurasia--a euphemism for the Western world in Western Historiography.

Western Historiographers have found ways to deal with this deficiency. The phrase Western Eurasia has been coined for the specific purpose of turning Western Europe into a magical and fantasy land that can contract and expand into space and time to suit all sorts of ideological conveniences. Western Eurasia for instance can expand far enough into Ancient Egypt as far back as 3000BC to make Western Europe millenia older than what it really is. It can also contract to include simply the Roman empire or rather its centre in Rome to emphasize the martial supremacy of the West over Eastern cultures.

In the case of the Medieval Ages such Martial supremacy is also emphasized in relation to the Eastern Roman Empire or Byzantine culture as exemplified by the absurd excuses made to justify or redefine the planned conquest of Byzantine by the Venetians and Crusaders during the 4th crusade as the most monumental and freakish accident in world history. The excuse is often that the Byzantines were too weak or effeminate or condescending and did not sufficiently appreciate Latin might.

Other weird things come about as a result. In that process, Ancient Egypt is no longer African, and even the people in that part of the world are bleached white. This is something that Egyptian history is recovering from with the work that begun essentially with Cheik Anta Diop and which continues with later historians and scholars such as Shomarka Keita, who are able to point out this obvious absurdity. But nonetheless North African history remains locked in the grip of Western Eurasia. Up to now people find it difficult to associate "blacks" with North Africa, historically. Often pointing out to the presence of modern day lightskin Berbers as evidence that North Africa was always more European or Mediterranean than African.

But that too is beginning to change.

Baldtastic · May 17th, 2012, 05:12 AM

Here we go again.

mansamusa · May 17th, 2012, 05:50 AM

The attitude of the Greeks towards Ethiopia( or modern day Sudan or Africa, South of Egypt) is absolutely fascinating. They associated Ethiopia with the idea of a Holy Land sacred to all the Gods, something which they may have adopted from the Egyptians who described Nubia as Tanetjer--or sacred land:

Quote:

The first Europeans to employ the term Ethiopia were the ancient Greeks, who used the word to designate all dark-skinned people south of Egypt. The classical authors of Greece made many references to the country. Homer, in the 9th. century BC, wrote in the Odyssey of the Ethiopians as eschatoi andron, or the most remote of men. In Book I of the Iliad he makes Zeus, the king of the gods, leave heaven for twelve days, with all the other gods, to visit the "blameless Ethiopians", while the goddess Iris goes to their country to participate in sacrificial rites to the immortal gods. In the Odyssey the sea god Poseidon is likewise said to have "lingered delighted" at one of the feasts of the Ethiopians.

Almost half a millennium later, in the 5th. century BC, the Greek dramatist Aeschylus had Io, the wandering woman of Prometheus Bound, travel to "a far-off land". It was inhabited by "a nation of black men", who lived near "the fountain of the sun" and the "river Aethiops".
Later again, in the 1st. century BC, the Greek historian Diodorus Siculus observed that the Greek hero Hercules and the Greek god of wine Bacchus were both "awed by the piety of the Ethiopians.
"Loved by the gods"

Later once again, in the 7th. century AD, the Byzantine writer Stephanus Placidus reiterated that the Ethiopians were "loved by the gods because of their justice, and adds:
"Juniper frequently leaves heaven and feasts with them [the Ethiopians] because of their justice and the equity of their customs. For the Ethiopians are said to be the justest of men and for that reason the gods love their abode frequently to visit them".

Such passing references to Ethiopia and the Ethiopians may be supplemented by a more comprehensive Greek work set in Ethiopia, which dates from the 3rd. century AD. It was the romance Aethiopika, which tells of the travels south of Egypt, in all probability to Nubia, of the hero, Theagenes, and heroine, Chariclea. This work was translated into many languages. The earliest and best known version, in English, was translated by Thomas Underdowne, and was first published in London in 1587, with the title An Aethiopian History of Heliodorus.
Ethiopia's Image in World Literature - Part I

Diodorus Siculus seems to have predicted modern human evolution theory which claims that the human race developed and originated from Africa:

Quote:

Now the Ethiopians, as historians relate, were the first of all men and the proofs of this statement, they say, are manifest. For that they did not come into their land as immigrants from abroad but were natives of it and so justly bear the name of "autochthones" is, they maintain, conceded by practically all men; furthermore, that those who dwell beneath the noon-day sun were, in all likelihood, the first to be generated by the earth, is clear to all; since, inasmuch as it was the warmth of the sun which, at the generation of the universe, dried up the earth when it was still wet and impregnated it with life, it is reasonable to suppose that the region which was nearest the sun was the first to bring forth living creatures. And they say that they were the first to be taught to honour the gods and to hold sacrifices and processions and festivals and the other rites by which men honour the deity; and that in consequence their piety has been published abroad among all men, and it is generally held that the sacrifices practised among the Ethiopians are those which are the most pleasing to heaven. As witness to this they call upon the poet who is perhaps the oldest and certainly the most venerated among the Greeks; for in the Iliad he represents both Zeus and the rest of the gods with him as absent on a visit to Ethiopia to share in the sacrifices and the banquet which were given annually by the Ethiopians for all the gods together:

For Zeus had yesterday to Ocean's bounds
Set forth to feast with Ethiop's faultless men,
And he was followed there by all the gods.

And they state that, by reason of their piety towards the deity, they manifestly enjoy the favour of the gods, inasmuch as they have never experienced the rule of an invader from abroad; for from all time they have enjoyed a state of freedom and of peace one with another, and although many and powerful rulers have made war upon them, not one of these has succeeded in his undertaking.

The "Ethiopians" According to Diodorus Siculus

The Greeks and to some extent the Romans were willing to afford Ethiopia its rightful place in history. This idea was later replaced with the concept of Africa being the land of savages with no culture or history by modern Western historigraphy, a quite depressing development, which lingers even today. Which is ironic considering that the Ancient Romans and Greeks interacted much more vigorously with Africa than with Western Europe proper, which was seen as a kind of hinterland.

BrowniesRule · May 17th, 2012, 07:54 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Baldtastic

Here we go again.

Yes indeed.

mansamusa · May 19th, 2012, 10:49 PM

Another idea now being revised in Western Historiography is that Rome never collapsed from the "Germanic invasions" per se but simply evolved via dynamic processes and non-violently into something different after 475, which led to what is now recognized as Western Europe.The end of a centralized Roman State in this regard is even seen as something beneficial. This begun as early as the 19th century:

Quote:

In a book written for children, the nineteenth-century English historian Edward Freeman robustly defended the brutality with which his own Anglo-Saxon ancestors had eliminated their rivals the Romano-Britons, the ancestors of the Welsh: ‘it has turned out much better in the end that our forefathers did thus kill or drive out nearly all the people whom they found in the land … [since otherwise] I cannot think that we should ever have been so great and free a people as we have been for many ages.’

Ward-Perkins, Bryan. The Fall of Rome : And the End of Civilization

Modern historians, such as Goffart, have run with the idea, after recovering from Gibbon's classic "The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire", which blames the collapse largely on "Barbarians":

Quote:

Goffart ....argued that ‘the fifth century was less momentous for invasions than for the incorporation of barbarian protectors into the fabric of the West’. In a memorable sound bite, he summed up his argument: ‘what we call the Fall of the Western Roman empire was an imaginative experiment that got a little out of hand.'

Ward-Perkins, Bryan. The Fall of Rome : And the End of Civilization

Those new ideas may well be due to the fact that the so called barbarians who were traditionally seen as conquering Rome were essentially Western Europeans. And maybe Western Europeans are not too comfortable with the idea of their ancestors being the exact oppossite or antithesis of the "Glory that was Rome."

The elaborate excuses made by Western Historians for the 4th crusade where Latins, descendents of the "Barbarian Invaders", conqured what was left of the "Glory that was Rome" --the Byzantine empire, seems to be the continuation of the same theme.

**Guaporense** · May 20th, 2012, 02:08 PM

how cute! it has been 11 months since I first used this nomenclature:

http://www.historum.com/general-hist...tml#post626015

About the topic: the idea of Europe was developed by the Greeks. Europe is an artificial continent, an peninsula of Asia, actually, however, due to it's great historical importance as the historical center of gravity of our global civilization, it is considered a continent. The Greeks first divided the world into Europe, Asia and Lybia thanks to the mediterranean sea.

**Linschoten** · May 20th, 2012, 02:27 PM

The ancient Greeks had no idea how big Asia and Africa (or indeed Europe itself) really are, and so could easily suppose that they were not greatly disproprtionate in size.

**Guaporense** · May 20th, 2012, 02:35 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Linschoten

The ancient Greeks had no idea how big Asia and Africa (or indeed Europe itself) really are, and so could easily suppose that they were not greatly disproprtionate in size.

Actually by the Early Empire, the Greeks had a good idea of the size and shape of the Old world:

Map reconstructed on Ptolemy's coordinates given in the text, dated from the 2nd century AD. It remained the standard world map used in Europe for the next 1,400 years until the discovery of the New World. However, 500 years earlier, the Greeks didn't knew how bigger Africa and Asia were in comparison to Europe.

The world map of the Greeks in 450 BC looked like this:

Though the reconstruction is based only on qualitative description.

jehosafats · May 20th, 2012, 04:06 PM

Enlightening thread, mansamusa.

**okamido** · May 20th, 2012, 04:11 PM

Let's all be nice.