• Massey University Classical Studies specialists Dr David Rafferty and Dr Anastasia Bakogianni.

Merging and mixing in the ancient world

- Parallels with the present?

In August, Massey University Classical Studies specialists Dr Anastasia Bakogianni and Dr David Rafferty present the next in the series of public lectures by staff from Massey University at the Auckland campus at Albany. They reveal how ancient practices can be a source of inspiration, as well as offering cautionary examples.

They suggest that democracy and citizenship are ancient ideas, still evolving in our time, and that we can look to the ancient Greeks and Romans when facing the challenges of living together as a democracy. As pioneers in participatory government these civilisations continue to speak to us about one of our world’s most contentious issues: how to accommodate migrants and other outsiders in existing communities.

In the lecture, Anastasia and David share insights on how outsiders were integrated into ancient Greek and Roman societies, and explore parallels and pointers for today’s world.

Athenian native Anastasia focuses her part of the Our Changing World lecture on the city of her birth, where the role and treatment of migrants in a bygone era offer fascinating lessons – especially for residents of migrant magnet, super-diverse Auckland.

During Athens’ Golden Age in the fifth century BCE (Before Common Era), “many people moved to Athens because of its booming economy. It was the centre of an empire based on its naval prowess,” Anastasia says. “You could say that they were economic migrants.”

Athenians welcomed these migrants, “who had something to offer – skills, wealth, connections – a bit like New Zealand’s point system. The Athenians also felt that they had to help those who asked. Sometimes that was entirely out of self-interest ­– they got involved in the wars of others as a means of enlarging their sphere of influence – but it was also a principle enshrined in their ‘history’, or what we would call their mythical past. In Greek tragedy, for example, there are what we could call refugee plays that deal with Athens accepting asylum seekers, even if this means putting Athenian lives on the line. The Athenians prided themselves on giving aid to those who needed help.”

In ancient Rome it was more about turning freed slaves into citizens and soldiers, says her School of Humanities colleague, David Rafferty.

“In the ancient world, a higher population was always a good thing,” he says. “More people, especially those with their own land, meant more soldiers, and more soldiers meant a better chance of winning at war rather than losing.”

But not all ideas from the ancient world are positive. One important term we get from the Greeks is ‘xenophobia’. Its modern meaning is ‘dislike of or prejudice against people from a different country’.

“In Greek, ‘xenos’ means ‘stranger’,” says Anastasia. “In Homer’s epic poem The Odyssey, Odysseus is the famous stranger seeking help from the Phaeacians (a seafaring peoples) in order to finally get home after 20 years fighting at Troy and wandering the Mediterranean. They help him get back to Ithaca, but they are punished for doing so by the god Poseidon who holds a grudge against the hero for killing his son Polyphemus.”

The scholars, who include material from classical texts – from Sophocles to Cicero, Herodotus to Virgil – in their lecture, believe studying the ancient world offers rich insights into the human condition.

“Ancient writers tend to be quite frank about the problems they face and how they deal with them,” says David. “They’re less bothered by dressing up their self-interested actions in a moral cloak. That makes it much easier for students to discuss the issues themselves. Also, because most ancient states were democracies, in a broad sense, which eventually collapsed, they help us confront the fragility of our own democracy. The ancient world can be both a warning and an inspiration.”

“Many of our ways of looking at and understanding the world today have their roots in classical antiquity,” says Anastasia. “We can use ancient Greece and Rome to interrogate modern ideas and biases. It is sometimes easier to do so using the remote past than by getting embroiled in the bitter divisions of the present.”

“The classics,” she adds, “are fun and evergreen. People are still talking about the ancient Greeks two millennia plus after. This ongoing conversation and the fact that they are now a global phenomenon is another good reason to engage with them, for the sake of intellectual curiosity, if nothing else.”

Whose community? What can the Ancients teach us about merging and mixing?

Dr Anastasia Bakogianni and Dr David Rafferty, Thursday 30 August, 6.30pm, Sir Neil Waters Lecture Theatre Building, Massey University Auckland campus in Albany.

Anastasia Bakogianni is a Hellenist who specialises in ancient Greek drama. She arrived at Massey in 2016 and is currently working on her second book about the Greek tragic heroine Antigone. She is originally from Athens, but is now a metic (foreigner living in an ancient Greek city who had some privileges of citizenship) in 21st century New Zealand.

David Rafferty is a Roman historian who has taught at Massey since 2017. His first book, on Roman political institutions, will be published at the end of the year.