Were the Ancient Greeks European?
Ancient Greece and the Idea of Europe
“Since the time when the sea first separated Europe from Asia and wild Ares controlled the cities of mortals, no such deed of earthly men was ever carried out on land and sea at the same time: these men destroyed many Medes on Cyprus and then on the sea captured a hundred ships of the Phoenicians with their full complement of men; and Asia groaned loudly when struck with both hands by them with the strength of war.” - Athenian dedication to Ares.
As the passage above indicates, an idea of Europe existed in the ancient record. Europe represents something is distinguishable from something else, Asia, in this case thanks to the sea which separates the two. Understanding what Europe was in antiquity requires elaboration and above all, avoiding anachronisms by applying modern notions or expectations of Europe onto the ancient sources. My aim in this post is to understand Europe as the Greeks may have understood it. The conclusion of the evidence gathered here will show that the idea of Europe and, by extension European, was only relevant in geographical contexts and didn’t play an important role in a collective identity.
The task of writing history accurately without filtering the past through modern grand narratives is critical for the historian. Greg Anderson asks, “[h]ow exactly can we write true or real histories of lifeworlds whose standards of truth and realness were quite different from our own?” Adding, “[h]ow meaningful is it to speak of states, societies, and economies prevailing in historically distant environments, where the inhabitants would have found the very idea of a “state,” a “society,” or an “economy” entirely meaningless?” The idea of Europe in antiquity must be approached through the eyes of the ancients without translating their experience through Eurocentric thought-shaping tools and categories.
If Francis Bacon were able to have had a conversation with an ancient Greek and said “we Europeans” (nos Europai) to group himself and the Greek together to establish rapport, the Greek would not under how Francis was using European, without a doubt the Greek would peg Francis Bacon a barbarian and no collective “European” solidarity would be made. In the Greek sources, Europe is the name of one of the three continents that made up the known world; Asia and Libya being the other two.
The naming of Europe and Libya is given through Argive genealogy as decedents of Io. Libye, a granddaughter of Io, the Argive princess who had wandered away to Egypt, bore twin sons to Poseidon named Belos and Agenor. Agenor became the Phoenician king of Tyre. His daughter Europa was abducted by Zeus, took her to Crete and founded two further Inachid ruling lines in Crete and Thebes.[4]
In the earliest surviving account of Europa’s abduction, as ascribed to Hesiod and Bacchylides, Zeus fell in love with her when he saw her gathering flowers with her attendant maidens in a meadow in Phoenicia, and turned himself into a bull to carry her away. After beguiling her by breathing a crocus from his mouth, he took her on to his back and carried her through the sea to Crete, where he reverted to his proper form and took her as his mistress. (Robin Hard, The Routledge Handbook of Greek Mythology (London: Routledge, 2019), 288)
Asia is first attested in Herodotus in the fifth century to refer to Anatolia and or the Persians. According to Herodotus, Asia is the wife of the Titan Prometheus, though there is dispute over how the land of Asia received its name.
For Libya is said by most Greeks to be named after a native woman of that name, and Asia after the wife of Prometheus;1 yet the Lydians claim a share in the latter name, saying that Asia was not named after Prometheus' wife Asia, but after Asies, the son of Cotys, who was the son of Manes, and that from him the Asiad clan at Sardis also takes its name. Herodotus, The Histories 4.45.3; English translation by A. D. Godley. Cambridge. Harvard University Press. 1920
Given that the naming of geographical regions is framed within Greek mythology and genealogies, this informs us to a Greek perspective of the world. Being confronted by different cultures while establishing colonies in Asia Minor, the Greeks while not culturally assimilating to the barbarians, did unify the lands and people in a way that would make these people and regions less foreign (if only intellectually) to Greeks. Instead of modern Eurocentrism, in the ancient world, we find Hellenocentrism, where Greek writers fit in the non-Greek world into Greek thought-shaping tools and categories. The idea of Europe in this period of time extends as far as the Greek mind allows it. While it may be that Europa is a Phoenician princess from Asia, her foreignness is downplayed as she is given Argive genealogy and is a consort of Zeus, the chief God of the Greeks. This sort of reconciling dispels the possibility of racial segregation based on geography (Greeks being intrinsically “European” and unrelated to others).
To the Greeks, Europe is limited to category of geography and is not used in as a collective identity that could be utilized to group Greek and non-Greek together in a deep relational way. Europe was simply where Greeks lived if not in Asia or Libya. Further, the Europeanness of ancient Greeks is limited to geography and does not extend to the core of Greek identity beyond location of inhibition even if it is the preferred location.
In a survey of Greek texts, the appearance of Europe and or European is used to give geographical context to the audience. Europe itself is not a category of political importance. In an oration from Demosthenes, Europe and Asia are used to context the location of Hellenes.
It must be discreditable, first to denounce the Lacedaemonians for giving written licence to the King of Persia to do what he likes to the Greek inhabitants of Asia, and then to put European Hellenes and everybody whom Charidemus thinks he can overpower, at the mercy of Cersobleptes. - Demosthenes, Orations 23. Against Aristocrates, all translations of this text are taken from Loeb Classical Library, http://loeblclassics.com
Europe’s lack of political weight is crucial to understanding the Greek idea of Europe. The foundational political system for the Greeks was the city-state polis. The polis which was the cornerstone of Greek identity. “The whole sphere of ancient Greek civilisation from c.750 bce to about ad 500 was a city-state culture, with about 1,500 city-states.”[9] Thus, Europe could not provide the Greeks an intrinsic source identity that could be used in a PanHellenic manner that Francis Bacon does when he says “we Europeans.” In the funeral oration of Lysias, Europe is used once again geographical context and narration. “They [Persians] sailed to Europe and enslaved cities of the Greeks.”[10] Persians did not ‘enslave’ Europe, they ‘enslaved’ Greek cities. Cities existed as an entity with an identity that an individual could affiliate with, while Europe merely provided the geographical situation.
In conclusion, the sample survey of ancient Greek sources demonstrates that it is difficult to speak of an “idea of Europe” in Greek antiquity. The sources reveal a ‘Europe’ that is severely limited by Greek categories of thought. Beyond a geographical description, there is no other Europe to speak of. Be it political, economic, cultural, social, and so on. Europe doesn’t imply much to Greeks outside of geography. Truly, to speak of Europe beyond mere geography would come about in history much later after antiquity.
Primary Sources
Demosthenes, Orations 23. Against Aristocrates
Herodotus, The Histories
Further Reading
Anderson, Greg. The Realness of Things Past: Ancient Greece and Ontological History. New York: Oxford University Press, 2018.
Breisach, Ernst. Historiography: Ancient, Medieval, and Modern, Third Edition. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2007.
Hale, John. The Civilization of Europe in the Renaissance. London: HarperCollins UK, 2008.
Hard, Robin. The Routledge Handbook of Greek Mythology. London: Routledge, 2019.
Leyser, K. J. "CONCEPTS OF EUROPE IN THE EARLY AND HIGH MIDDLE AGES." Past and Present 137, no. 1 (1992), 25-47. doi:10.1093/past/137.1.25.
Pagden, A. The Idea of Europe: From Antiquity to the European Union. Cambridge, England: Cambridge University Press, 2002.