Is There a Circum-Mediterranean Person? Looking for Stereotypes

Abstract

The purpose of this presentation is to develop further insight into the way Mediterranean persons of antiquity understood each other. The Mediterranean world has been radically group oriented and the documents of the past deal rather exclusively with elite males. One gets to know a human being by observing how he has much in common with certain categories of persons who have much in common with certain categories of animals who have much in common with certain categories of ethnic groups whose common traits are fixed. Physiognomics is a replication of ascribed identity. It too ascribes identity to persons on the basis of features having little or nothing to do with any internal sense of self. Finally, in the ancient Mediterranean, most non-enslaved people subject to direct or indirect control by Roman and local elites in the cities of the empire fell into a realm of external responsibility and external control. Theirs was an experience of personal powerlessness and system-blame.