RACE COLOR AND CIVILIZATION

"If slavery was accepted, there was a general feeling against enslaving Greeks, and most slaves were obtained, by war or raids, fron non-Greek countries. In this way the question of slavery was connected in the Greek mind, as in the American, with that of racial inferiority." Guthrie, III, p 156

 

There are several things about this passage, and about this account, to note.

 

One thing to note is that the Greeks tended to equate nationalism, or civilizationalism, not just city-statism, with race, although it seems that Greeks could and did enslave other Greeks, I guess. It was frowned upon.

 

Another thing to note is that the concept of race itself, for the ancient Greeks, had nothing to do with skin color, much less physical differences which modern people also consider racial characteristics.

Guthrie's comparison, between ancient Greeks amd modern Americans' views of the meaning of race, is troubling, because although as he means that slaves were also mostly foreigners among Americans, they were also identified, most crucially, by the skin color and physical features, criteria absent from the ancient Greeks' criteria:

"The complaint of the Old Oligarch is well known: slaves at Athens are an insolent lot who will not get out of your way in the street, and you are not allowed to strike them for the simple reason that there is nothing in their dress and general appearance to deistinguish them from free Athenians." Guthrie, III p. 156  

 

For the Greeks, race was a civilizational criterion, since they considered even white non-Greeks as members of a different race, as barbarians. Non-Greek whites were a different race because they were barbarians, not because their skin color was different, or because their physical features differed from Greek ones. 

 

Language, customs, dress, and religion presumably identified someone, racially, as Greek or non-Greek, not skin color or physical features, but the slaves in Athens apparently dressed and looked like Greeks.