What are the implications of Darwin’s theory of evolution through natural selection for thinking, prejudicial or otherwise, about foreigners, race, Jews, sexual orientation, and women? Did Darwin himself, caught in Victorian prejudices, have any awareness of the full implications of his theorizing?

The freedom and power of citizens was buttressed by the exclusionary effects on non-citizens. My reading of Apollodoros’ Against Neaira ([Dem.] 59) in Chapter 5 exemplifies the practical results of the ideology of freedom on all levels of Athenian society. The case calls into question the limits of citizenship and demonstrates how a status transgression can impair the jury’s own power. The prosecution speech alleges that Neaira, a resident foreigner, is guilty of pretending to be a citizen. As a foreign, female sex laborer, Neaira represents the antithesis of the model citizen. Neaira’s arrogation of citizenship privileges, however, gives her a measure of positive freedom and power. In contrast to other readings, I show that power struggles are crucial to analyzing the prosecution’s arguments. The prosecution attempts to show that instead of doing “whatever she wishes,” Neaira deserves to be subject to others doing “whatever they wish” to her. Apollodoros’ characterization of her transgressions as destabilizing citizenship indicates the centrality of autonomy and power to citizen identity. Hence, the importance of positive freedom was not simply theoretical, but practical.

Cicero is well known to provide information about early Roman drama through his frequent references to performances, biographical details and characteristics of playwrights, motifs in dramas, language and style. Most of these comments are integrated into a specific context and therefore reflect Cicero’s argumentative aim. Yet, at the same time, they reveal insights into the nature of Roman Republican drama and its assessment in Cicero’s time. This chapter explores Cicero’s comments on the language, style and rhythm of early Republican dramas as well as his taking up of linguistic features of these plays. By looking at a selection of representative passages, this contribution examines what Cicero says about the language and idioms of early Roman playwrights and analyses whether Cicero takes up any of the linguistic features highlighted or instead opts for alternative versions. Such a study enables a better understanding of the Romans’ own view of the language of their early dramas as well as of any differences and developments between the various playwrights and dramatic genres.

Witness accounts of foreign visitors to Shanghai when the country was closed

Norms and regulations within the Greek polis provided a legal framework not only for the different markets and the support of economic activities, but also for the resolution of disputes arising between the private persons as well as magistrates. Whenever humans interacted within the economical sphere, conflicts could easily arise . Be they over the ownership of land or products, the transaction of goods and labour, or levies and taxes, in order to maintain good order they had to be resolved peacefully and without personal violence. Thus, the judicial structures and procedural principles of dispute resolution in the economic sphere of the Greek city as conveyed in literary, epigraphic, and papyrological sources are represented.

Studies of trade are predicated on the antithesis between ‘personalised exchange’ (the Network) and ‘arms-length exchange’ (the anonymous Market). As regards ancient trade, the putative incongruity between the two has informed the view of the supremacy of personalised exchange, and the concomitant absence of market exchange. In historical analyses, furthermore, trade networks are appraised solely for their role in the distribution of raw materials and commodities. This chapter challenges these views. Focusing on a formalised kind of network, the association, it first charts the diffusion of traders’ associations to, and their integration in the economic life of, eastern Mediterranean commercial centres. Then, it investigates the mechanisms that enabled associational networks to act as fighters of trade constraints, distance-shortening entities, bridge builders between state/fiscal concerns and private profit, co-determinants of routes and prices, and as producers of knowledge and trust. Formalised networks, it is concluded, helped trade to break out of its lone-peddler mode and to amalgamate with a wider organisational world, whose newly fashioned business behaviour approximated that of the firm. In all this, this chapter is in alignment with the more recent trend among social scientists to consider networks as integral parts of market models of the economy.

Chapter 4 delves into accounts of meetings between the mighty Aithiopians and their distant neighbors. Herodotus’s iteration of Aithiopia (Hdt. 3.17–26) simultaneously looks back to Homer’s utopian Aithiopia and positions Aithiopia as a historical allegory to critique Athenian imperial aggression. Through the Aithiopian king’s comments to Egyptian spies, Herodotus undermines any fixed, negative assumptions of foreigners that may lurk among his readership. Moreover, Herodotus distinguishes Aithiopians by their height, longevity, and skin color, thereby complicating a facile rendering of black people’s “race.” A reciprocal ethnography of Scythians further exposes the instability of race as two Scythian men, Anacharsis and Scyles, wear Greek clothes and maintain their Scythian identity (Hdt. 4.76–80). Their untimely demise reveals the dangers that Hellenocentric Scythians face once they return to their xenophobic homeland.

Women’s social relations and mobility are the main focus of the fourth chapter. Ties of friendship and love, but also enmity and hate, figure prominently in the first part of the chapter. It includes inscriptions mentioning women setting up a statue for, or receiving one from, a male or female friend, providing for a friend’s burial or including friends in their own tombs (and vice versa), but also curse tablets in which women figured both as commisioners and as targets.The second part deals with women’s involvement in patronage, their various engagements with the voluntary associations (collegia) that shaped social life in Roman cities and their presence in the main centres of social gathering: the baths, the theatre and amphitheatre. The final part of this chapter deals with inscriptions testifying to women’s travels and migration, showing thatwomen travelled for various reasons, mostly with their families but sometimes on their own (with a retinue), over considerable distances. The chapter ends with foreign (non-Roman) women migrating to Rome and Italy.

This introductory chapter sketches the main argument of the book and the various areas of interest it touches upon: sovereignty, international law and laws of war, the dilemma security versus freedom, the attempt at humanizing the war conduct, the transformation of notions and practices of citizenship, rights, individual and human in particular, humanitarianism, national belonging, war and society. The introduction focuses in particular on whether there were consolidated customary practices and codified rules to deal with aliens of enemy nationality at the moment of the outbreak of the First World War, and if and how that conflict represented a watershed. It then presents the structure of the book.

During the final decades of the 1600s, French and Spanish residents in Hispaniola had developed a deeply ambivalent yet fluid relationship that ranged from the open violence to collaboration in their daily dealings. By the end of the century, however, Spanish residents on the island, especially in the north, came to rely on French merchants and settlers, who provided Hispaniola residents with a certain level of economic prosperity that legal (and illegal) Spanish traders operating in Santo Domingo could only provide at much higher prices and limited quantities. This rise of the intercolonial trade between both sides of the island happened as the efforts of the Spanish crown to eliminate French settlements from Hispaniola also increased. The participation of Spanish local residents in the war effort allowed them to manipulate the Spanish offensive and foil the imperial objective of consolidating Spanish control over all of Hispaniola, thus choosing the commercial benefits of accommodation to the neighboring French presence, despite the risks, instead of a safe reunification under Spanish control that would once again commercially isolate them.

This chapter focuses on the rise of the contraband culture in Hispaniola in response to the economic challenges the island faced during the last decades of the sixteenth century. Smugglingexisted in some measure throughout the earlier years of the colony, but contraband as a widespread phenomenoninvolving all social groups of the island’s inhabitants appeared during the second half of the sixteenth century and had its origins in the lack of official trade and the search by local residents for alternatives to the Sevillian trade. By the early seventeenth century, contraband had become an intrinsic part of Hispaniola’s culture, and that of many other parts of the Spanish Caribbean. Thisraised the suspicions of some authorities and members of the clergy who feared the consequences that such close relations with foreign Protestant traders might have for the economic and spiritual life of the local residents. These concerned observers made no distinctions between French or English merchants. They were all seen as a threat to the economy of the island and the faith of its residents. This chapter also reveals the complete inability of Spanish bureaucracy to curve illicit trading.

To bring our examination of primary sources in Part II to a close we come to a special chapter – more of an extended case study – that deals with the demise of Classic Maya society. It is difficult to address such a profoundly complex and still far from comprehended topic in brief, but it is important to appreciate the ways in which the epigraphic record can contribute to our understanding. Indeed, it will be argued here that the texts are a valuable and underestimated resource in this regard.