race
raceGreeks and Romans were avid observers in art and text of departures among foreigners (allophyloi, alienigeni) from their own somatic norms. But it is difficult to discern any lasting ascription of general inferiority to any ethnic group in antiquity solely on the basis of body-type. The explanation is partly conceptual: although Aristotle realized that pigmentation was biologically transmitted (De generatione animalium 1. 18, 722a), popular anthropology understood cultural variation among humankind in terms, not of nature (i.e. heredity), but nurture, and specifically environment (thus the Hippocratic Air, Waters, Places 12. 17–24; see medicine, §4), which shaped ‘customs, appearance, and colour’ (Polybius 4. 21), the sunny south generating blackness, the north ‘glacial whiteness’ (Pliny Naturalis historia 2. 80. 189); thus,...
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