Daily Life of the Ancient Greeks

The People 115
Religion apart, to what extent were Athenians tolerant of foreign
influences, let alone in the business of absorbing them? Very possibly
the presence of Greeks from other communities in their midst
did produce a more open-minded community than was the case
elsewhere in the Greek world. Non-Athenian Greeks are sometimes
ridiculed in Aristophanic comedy, but this circumstance hardly
helps us ascertain the level of xenophobia. Certainly the Athenians
would have encountered metics in a wide variety of cultural contexts.
Metics participated in religious ceremonies organized by the
state, including the procession that formed part of the Panatheniac
festival, which suggests that they were to some extent integrated
into the life of the community, as does the fact that they could attend
dramatic performances. The Spartans in particular had their fans,
even though it is unlikely that many Spartans would have been
seen in the streets of Athens. Some Athenians, known as Lakonizers,
even adopted the Spartan style of dress by wearing short cloaks
and growing their hair long, out of admiration for Spartan practices.
Only wealthy Athenians are likely to have had any personal
dealings with Spartans, however, notably through ties of hospitality
(see p. 15).
Barbarians
It is sometimes suggested that the Greeks more or less invented
racism single-handedly by holding up their culture as a shining
example of everything that was noble and praiseworthy, while at
the same time rubbishing everybody else, particularly the Persians.
The truth is more complex. Even if the Greeks considered their culture
to be superior to others, we should not assume that they were
all out-and-out bigots. Certainly some Greeks saw much to admire
in Persian culture. The historian Herodotos was so enamored of
the Persians that he was dubbed philobarbaros, or “barbarian lover.”
Overall, the Greek attitude toward the Persians was probably a
complex mixture of fascination, envy, and contempt.
The notion of the barbarian was not inherent in Greek culture.
There is no trace of racial prejudice against the Trojans in The Iliad.
In fact, the word barbarian never appears in Homer, either as a noun
or an adjective, even though there was ample opportunity for it.
The word barbarophônoi, meaning “of barbarous diction,” appears
only once in The Iliad, in reference to a contingent of Karians, a half-
Greek, half-Persian people who fought on the side of the Greeks.
More than that, Homer suggests that the regard for civilized values
on the part of the Trojans is equal, if not superior, to that of the