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28 The Mediterranean and Ancient History
the greatest suspicion; The Corrupting Sea vividly summarizes
the many types of disruption that throughout their period (and
since, it may be added) disturbed rural life, from invasions of
settlers to the manipulations of the powerful. 84
One of the most lucid and persuasive ancient historians who
have made use of Mediterranean anthropology in recent times
has been David Cohen. The crucial point in his theoretical
argument is the faute-de-mieux gambit (no one has found a
better model than the ethnographic Mediterranean) 85 —which
comes close to circularity. What we need is what Cohen in fact
attempts to provide in his later work, a much wider ethnography
which can be applied to specific historical problems
(see below, Section 6).
. If we are going to engage in the comparative history of
Mediterranean or other cultures, we should pay more attention
to difficulties of translation and to linguistic nuances, concerning
honour among other subjects. 86 Translation problems can
be quite fundamental. 87 An ethnography of Mediterranean
honour that failed to analyse the vocabulary of the subject in
Arabic would have little value. 88 The vocabulary of honour in
84
CS 275–7. The authors’ belief in ‘mutability’ was referred to earlier.
Their practice, however, verges on the inconsistent: they often ‘turn to the
recent past for illumination of remoter periods’ (CS 465, with cross-references).
They claim to have used Mediterranean anthropology ‘selectively’
(ibid.), and they can at the very least be credited with having dedicated two
lengthy chapters to discussing the issue (XI and XII).
85
Law, Sexuality, and Society in Classical Athens (Cambridge, 1991), 38–
41. It must be added at once that Cohen was concerned with a specific set of
historical problems which he in my view succeeded in illuminating brilliantly.
He also maintains that his model is immune to Herzfeldian objections because
it is based on many different Mediterranean societies; but that is simply a
technical improvement. Later, Cohen seems to have modified his approach
(below, p. 40).
86
Cf. J. A. Pitt-Rivers, ‘Honour’, Proceedings of the British Academy 94
(1997), 229–51.
87
As in the cross-cultural study of the emotions: W. V. Harris, Restraining
Rage: the Ideology of Anger Control in Classical Antiquity (Cambridge, Mass.,
2002), 34–6.
88
On sharaf and other concepts in a particular (and atypical) population
see still A. Abou-Zeid, ‘Honour and Shame among the Bedouins of Egypt’, in
J. G. Peristiany (ed.), Honour and Shame: The Values of a Mediterranean
Society (London, 1966), 243–59.