Rethinking the Other in Antiquity

An influential study of how ancient Mediterranean cultures, Greek, Roman, Jewish, and others, represented the peoples they encountered. Gruen resists the dominant scholarly emphasis on othering and antagonism, arguing that ancient representations of foreigners are more often characterized by curiosity, kinship-claims, and integration than by hostility. The chapters on Carthaginians and Phoenicians are particularly valuable as a counterweight to the "Carthage as alien Semitic enemy" reading that has long shaped popular and some scholarly accounts of Rome's wars with Carthage.