“The Construction of the Ethnic and Political Achaean Identity in Polybius’ Histories”

MORENO LEONI, ÁLVARO MATÍAS

Berlin

Congreso; 13ième Conférence de la Féderation Internationale d'Études Classiques; 2009

Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin

The general question of this subject is enclosed in studies about Representation and Identity in the Hellenistic world. Our research process is based on identity as a concept socially constructed and subjectively perceived. This approach will allow develop the dimension of ethnic identity as fundamental component in political, social, and cultural processes developed in the republican Hellenistic and Roman World. In according to this general aim, we will analyze the Histories of Polybius as one of the most important fonts to research the literary representations of ethnic identities and observe perceptions about ethnic diversity inside the late Hellenistic Greece, when a new mediterranean political order was being constructed by Rome with reformulation and construction of new identities. In this context, the Histories are an example of discoursive construction where to be a Peloponesian became a synonymous of to be an Achaean.