The Ancient Myth of ‘Good Fences’ (Ancient Greeks' view of foreigners)

The Ancient Myth of ‘Good Fences’ by Ingrid Rossellini in The New York Times,  May 2018

In Ancient Greece, where a profound appreciation of human reason produced a brilliant civilization, pernicious biases were also established. Women were assumed to be guided by passions rather than rationality, and so they were considered inferior to men and excluded from the cultural and political life of the city-state. As the word “virtue” — from the Latin “vir,” meaning “man” — so clearly expresses, the ethos that Greek as well as Roman culture fostered derived from a military and patriarchal mentality. The “fence” of bigotry and prejudice that prevent the flourishing in public life of half the population certainly hobbled the development of Greek and Roman society.

The Greeks held similarly disparaging views toward foreigners, called “barbarians” because they seemed to say “bar-bar-bar” when they spoke. The Greek word “logos,” which simultaneously indicated “language” and “rationality,” gave further validation to that premise: Those who did not share the Greek idiom were viewed as inferior Others who lacked the intellectual talents that had made possible the free and self-ruled society that the Greek polis represented.

With the rise of Islam, the Other came to be represented by the Muslims, whose rapid territorial expansion (which included cities that had been important centers of Greek and Latin culture) struck fear in the very heart of Europe.

To foster the righteous spirit of the Crusaders, Christian art depicted Muslims with monstrous traits suggesting they were closer to animals than human beings. But the humiliating defeat that the “infidels” dealt to the Crusaders turned out to be an unexpected gift: the Christian world, having come into contact with the Muslim intelligentsia, rediscovered its own cultural roots — the classical heritage that eventually led to the blooming of the Renaissance.