3 - Ethnic Types and Stereotypes in Ancient Latin Idioms

Summary

This chapter offers a brief study of mainly Latin ethnic proverbs that apply collective names of ethnic groups and associate them with fixed attributes. By analyzing such proverbial allusions, it shows that the “others” from the point of view of the Romans were located anywhere in the inhabited known world at the time, but there was special interest either in neighbouring and well-known people or in remote groups dwelling at the fringes of the world. The first, closer group, became the focus of mockery and the second, remote group, was so distant and unknown that its members became typed as strange and weird.