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J.M. Coetzee's novel, Waiting for the Barbarians , has long been regarded as a political fable that takes place in an abstract, delocalized world. Source material in the Coetzee archive has revealed, however, that far from featuring a completely invented place, Barbarians is in fact set in the very real and recognizable terrain of Xinjiang, the Westernmost province of China. Relocating the novel into Xinjiang's multi-ethnic context has considerable implications for the way we are to understand Coetzee's positioning of civilized and barbarian peoples. It enables us to see how racialization is used to stabilize the abstract concepts of civilization and barbarism, moving beyond the black-white binary of South African apartheid. Perhaps most importantly, it draws attention to the racialized assumptions that readers themselves bring to the text and highlights the tenuous basis on which civilization constructs itself.

The Mediterranean diet, which was born in the Mediterranean basin, was initially quite poor and simple, essentially based on the products that grew almost spontaneously along the shores of the Mediterranean, i.e., olives, grapes, and wheat, which were long cultivated in the Mediterranean region. The invasions of the Roman Empire by barbarian populations, between 400 and 800 AD, made the diet enriched with products from wild uncultivated areas, meat from game and pigs, and vegetables. With the arrival of the Arabs in southern Italy in the ninth century, the focus of the diet shifted to carbohydrates, particularly to dried pasta and to other new ingredients. The Arabs primarily brought a new imaginative spirit to the kitchen by introducing and using an infinity of condiments and seasonings. The discovery of the Americas and the arrival of new ingredients from the New World brought the final adjustments to the Mediterranean diet: new meat (turkey), new vegetables (potatoes, broad beans, corn, tomatoes,) new fruits (strawberries, pineapples, coconuts, peanuts), chocolate, coffee and sugar completed the list of components of the Mediterranean diet as we know it today.

There was racism in the ancient world, after all. This groundbreaking book refutes the common belief that the ancient Greeks and Romans harbored \"ethnic and cultural,\" but not racial, prejudice. It does so by comprehensively tracing the intellectual origins of racism back to classical antiquity. Benjamin Isaac's systematic analysis of ancient social prejudices and stereotypes reveals that some of those represent prototypes of racism--or proto-racism--which in turn inspired the early modern authors who developed the more familiar racist ideas. He considers the literature from classical Greece to late antiquity in a quest for the various forms of the discriminatory stereotypes and social hatred that have played such an important role in recent history and continue to do so in modern society. Magisterial in scope and scholarship, and engagingly written, The Invention of Racism in Classical Antiquity further suggests that an understanding of ancient attitudes toward other peoples sheds light not only on Greco-Roman imperialism and the ideology of enslavement (and the concomitant integration or non-integration) of foreigners in those societies, but also on the disintegration of the Roman Empire and on more recent imperialism as well. The first part considers general themes in the history of discrimination; the second provides a detailed analysis of proto-racism and prejudices toward particular groups of foreigners in the Greco-Roman world. The last chapter concerns Jews in the ancient world, thus placing anti-Semitism in a broader context.

During the Middle Ages, Vegetius’ Epitoma rei militaris was one of the most renowned war treatises. Five translations into langue d’oïl enable us to retrace the period of vulgarisation processes. In particular, the translation of the Latin barbarus, which designated the most distant otherness, delivers very diverse results. By analysing the results of barbar-, we propose to draw up a typology of translations to unravel the political project in which they came into being.

This paper investigates Philomela's metamorphosis into a swallow as inferred from Sophocles’ fragmentary Tereus. The first part focusses on the association between the swallow and barbaric language, casting new light on Philomela's characterization in the play. The second investigates the shuttle, the weaving tool which prompts the recognition of Philomela, arguing that the mention of its ‘voice’ in fr. 595 Radt refers not only to the tapestry which it created, but also to the actual sound of the shuttle, which ancient Greeks associated with the swallow, and thus anticipates Philomela's metamorphosis. The representation of Philomela as a speech-impeded and yet vocal character supports the Dionysiac background of the act of vengeance which she and her sister commit.

The spread of Taoism to the Western Regions marked the movement of Central Plains culture to the frontier, demonstrating its influence on local society. During the Han Dynasty, Central Plains culture had reached the Western Regions. With the deification of Laozi and his becoming the founder of Taoism, the story “Laozi converting the barbarians” (Laozi huahu 老子化胡), which claimed that Laozi journeyed to the west and taught the Hu people, provided the impetus for the spread of Taoism to the Western Regions. The Tang imperial family venerated Laozi and regarded Taoism as the state religion. Laozi belief, including the veneration of the man himself, his writings, his stories, and the precepts claimed to be related to him, was also used to assist in the Tang Dynasty’s governance of the Western Regions. Following the Tang Dynasty’s decline, the Central Plains’ influence receded from the Western Regions. However, due to the relaxed religious environment in the Western Regions, Taoism, which was representative of Central Plains culture, still survived there. Moreover, Taoism attempted to incorporate Islam in the Western Regions into its divine system by huahu, which might be related to the early history of exchange between the two religions.

Against Massacre looks at the rise of humanitarian intervention in the nineteenth century, from the fall of Napoleon to the First World War. Examining the concept from a historical perspective, Davide Rodogno explores the understudied cases of European interventions and noninterventions in the Ottoman Empire and brings a new view to this international practice for the contemporary era.

Sidoine Apollinaire nous a laissé le plus important témoignage que nous ayons sur le ve siècle dans l’Occident romain. Un des problèmes rencontrés par ce membre de l’élite politique et culturelle gallo-romaine fut celui des populations et des royaumes barbares installés en Gaule, en particulier celui des Wisigoths à Toulouse et celui des Burgondes à Lyon. À Toulouse comme à Lyon, sa ville natale, et à Clermont-Ferrand, où il finit ses jours comme évêque de la cité et adversaire du roi goth Euric, Sidoine put les connaître et les apprécier de diverses manières, mais toujours avec le mépris dû à cette sorte de peuples. L’article essaie d’évaluer les notions de barbare et de barbarisme en les comparant à l’usage qu’en font Augustin et d’autres auteurs chrétiens, ainsi que de mesurer les ressemblances et différences de comportement de Sidoine envers les Goths de Théodoric et ceux d’Euric, et de celui de son ami Syagrius envers les Burgondes. Sidonius Apollinaris has let us the most important testimony we have of the Vth century in the Roman West. One of the main problems this member of the Romano-Gaulish political and cultural elite confronted was that of Barbarian populations and Barbarian kingdoms established in Gaul, especially the Wisigothic one at Toulouse and the Burgundian one at Lyon. At Toulouse as well as at Lyon, his native city, and Clermont-Ferrand, where he finished his life as a bishop of the city and a foe to the Gothic king Euric, Sidonius was able to know and appreciate them in different manners, but always with the scorn due to that kind of people. The paper tries to evaluate the notions of barbarian and barbarism compared with the use made of them by Augustine and other Christian writers, and to measure the similarities and differences of Sidonius’ behaviour towards the Goths of Theodoric and then to those of Euric, and of that of his friend Syagrius towards the Burgundians.

Korean Buddhist orthodoxy can be traced to a narrow period of time in history when characteristics of exclusive orthodoxy originated—when a shift occurred in the nature of the genealogy from an inclusive to an exclusive one. The significance of this shift is that it was a result of influences from the wider Confucian developments that occurred in the early seventeenth century. This development in turn was also influenced by events such as the Japanese and Manchu invasions of Korea in the late sixteenth and early seventeenth centuries, respectively. This brings to question the tendency to understand Chosŏn Buddhism by focusing only on “Buddhist” matters limited to within the Buddhist community. This article argues that monastic matters such as identity were influenced not only by the socio-political events related to the government but also by greater societal narratives, in this case, “transmission of the Confucian Way” and the “doctrine of the civilized and barbarian.” This study asserts that the influences of the Chinese Buddhist tradition cannot be underestimated or overlooked even during the Chosŏn period when the monastic community was considered to be socially isolated. By considering the notion of orthodoxy within the Chosŏn Buddhist community, we can highlight that such ideas of Buddhist orthodoxy did not escape general societal conceptions, which in this case were closely related to the notion of China as the source of orthodoxy.

A decorated copper-alloy key handle was recovered during excavation of a town house in Roman Leicester (Ratae Corieltavorum). The decoration comprises two groups of figures modelled in high relief: a bearded, unarmed man fighting with a lion, arranged above four naked male youths embracing one another in a protective manner. This decoration cannot be paralleled among other similarly elaborate Roman key handles and is best interpreted as a scene of damnatio ad bestias, although it does not directly replicate other known scenes of this punishment and spectacle. Other readings of the image are possible, depending on the context and perspective of the viewer as they handled the object.