The Panhellenic world

Where should our account start? At which point in history does it become possible to talk of Greeks and Barbarians? Thucydides, a fifth-century Greek historian, thought he had an answer:

According to Thucydides, there existed no Greeks or Barbarians in the age of Homer: the words Hellas (Greece) and Hellenes (Greeks) were not used by the poet to describe collectively the countless Greek communities, and he had no term to describe collectively the non-Greek communities (Map 1). Modern historians have sometimes taken this ancient argument at face value and reconstructed the history of Greek identity and Greek–Barbarian relations on the basis of it. According to them, Greek identity was something that emerged gradually during the archaic period out of the multitude of diverse Greek communities. Some scholars tend to put the stress on the process of aggregation through which local and regional identities coalesced into the formation of a Greek identity: the role of genealogy, sanctuaries and festivals in creating this aggregation is seen as particularly important. Others stress the role of opposition to non-Greeks and the formation of the concept of the Barbarian as an essential aspect of the emergence of Greek identity: the Persian Wars are seen by these scholars as a key point in the formation of Greek identity.