Ancient insider-outsider boundaries were permeable through cultural adoption

Evidence

Bernard Lewis, in a discussion of ‘insider’ and ‘outsider’ in the world of antiquity, has suggested that the tendency to make such distinctions is common to all times and all places. However, the distinctions were not necessarily fixed and irrevocable. Though the Jews distinguished between Jew and Gentile, they were prepared to accept converts. Similarly, the Greeks distinguished between Greek and barbarian, but they allowed that it was possible to cease to be a barbarian by adopting Greek language and culture. Lewis continues: ‘There is another respect in which Greeks and Jews were unique in the ancient world - in their compassion for an enemy. There is nothing elsewhere to compare with the sympathetic portrayal by the Greek dramatist Aeschylus - himself a veteran of the Persian wars - of the sufferings of the vanquished Persians…’ — Robert Irwin, For Lust of Knowing, 33

Categorization

• XREF: Connects to the book’s running dispute between Bernard Lewis and Edward Said over how to read ancient East-West relations.