Tales of the Barbarians: Ethnography and Empire in the Roman West Paperback - 2014

From the rear cover

"A work of fundamental importance for students of ancient ethnography. Summing Up: Essential. All levels/libraries." (Choice, 1 November 2011)

"Woolf has rendered the topic in crisp and elegant prose. This reviewer suspects that, like good ancient ethnography, Woolf's contribution will very soon take on a life of its own." (Bryn Mawr Classical Review, 25 July 2011)

"W. provides new insights into ancient texts, and stimulating new ways of looking at these ancient views of barbarians -- chasing his 'middle ground' provides an exciting challenge for Romanists working with other fields of evidence." (Britannia, May 2013)

"With Greg Woolf's brief Tales of the Barbarians we are at peace, but constantly made to sit up, not only by single opinions but by the overall ways in which Woolf asks us to read the material, in particular by his convincing stress on 'the middle ground' where explorers and natives have met, in western Europe and America." (Greece & Rome, April 2013)

"Greg Woolf's wide-ranging and engaging study of ethnographic traditions about the "barbarian" west exposes the complex mixture of myth, stereotype, and information deriving from the interplay between inquirers and inhabitants and from the shifting circumstances that generated their creation and their transformation."
Erich Gruen, University of California, Berkeley

"Woolf dissects Greek and Roman ethnological accounts to give a voice to the otherwise silent people Rome conquered and analyses the role of myths in empire building."
David Breeze, The University of Edinburgh

Tales of the Barbarians traces the creation of new mythologies in the wake of Roman expansion westward to the Atlantic. Providing a fresh perspective on the topic by examining passages from ancient writers in a new light, Woolf explores how ancient geography, local histories and the stories of wandering heroes were woven together by Greek scholars and local experts to establish a place for Celts and Spaniards, Africans and Britons in the classical world. The author also investigates the impact of Roman imperialism on those intellectual endeavors, the attempts to reconcile science and myth, and why ancient stereotypes have survived for ages.

Making use of comparisons with modern empires and the voyages of exploration, Woolf offers fascinating new insights into the creation of the first national traditions of Western Europe.