Intersecting “Classical” and Latin American, Caribbean, and Iberian studies
Beige Analog Compass. Ylanite Koppens. Nov. 22, 2017. Photo from pexels.com. CC0.
Encompassing the literature, history, and culture of the ancient Greeks and Romans, the discipline historically—and Eurocentrically—known simply as “Classics” might initially appear peripheral to the theme of “borders,” as so evocatively conceived within this issue of the LACIS Review. This article traces some starting-points for thinking about how the bounds of the “classical” world intersect with those of Latin America, the Caribbean, and the Iberian peninsula—to the mutual benefit of all alike.
We might start with the question of how the Iberian peninsula was conceived in Greek and Roman antiquity. The name “Iberian” (ibēr) is attested as early as the fifth-century B.C.E. Greek historian Herodotus (Histories 7.165; cf. 1.163)—though he interestingly uses it to refer to the Elisyci, a tribe who dwelled along the Mediterranean coast between the Pyrenees and the Rhone River. By the time of the first-century B.C.E. geographer Strabo—who came from Amaseia (in modern Turkey), wrote in Greek, and himself lived under Rome rule—the confines of “Iberia” would largely match contemporary ones: the peninsula as defined by the Atlantic, Mediterranean, and Pyrenees (Geography 3.4.19). Still, Strabo’s identification comes amidst a survey of prior delineations and appellations. The Ebro, in particular, receives attention as both etymology and the earlier eastern boundary for “Iberia”—attesting to the ongoing mutability of names and borders within antiquity. Even more interesting is Strabo’s comment on the use of the name “Hispania” interchangeably with that of “Iberia”—a practice he imputes to Rome’s conquest of the peninsula (starting in 197 B.C.E.). But as Strabo also observes, Rome’s bifurcation of Hispania into the provinces of “Farther” and “Hither”—where each appellation turns on their relative proximity to the metropole of Rome—varied over time and in accordance with their administrative (read: imperial) needs. None of this necessarily tells us anything about how the local denizens of Iberia-cum-Hispania conceived their own lands or identities, but it does speak to the way that, whatever role geography or other “natural” considerations may have played in defining them, borders remained matters of power and perspective in antiquity—just as today.
But what might ancient Greek and Roman studies have to offer in Latin American and Caribbean contexts? Of course, neither Greeks nor Romans were aware of anything beyond the confines of what they called Okeanos. Instead, reception furnishes one bridge over this spatial and temporal gulf: early modern European colonizers brought “classical” knowledge with them, employed in ways large and small. A 2018 edited volume, Antiquities and Classical Traditions in Latin America, adumbrates the liveliness of this tradition—sometimes appropriated by indigenous peoples as well. More pernicious is the case of seventeenth- and eighteenth-century Luso-Brazilian Jesuits, who, as Rafael de Bivar Marquese and Fábio Duarte Joly show, synthesized the precepts of ancient household management and agricultural texts with Christian tradition to shore up the practice and institution of slavery in the face of resistance by the enslaved. Perhaps more felicitous is the famous case of Toussaint Louverture, whose signal role in securing autonomous borders for Haiti, earned him the sobriquet of “Black Spartacus.” One could cite numerous other examples of creative re-deployments of the “classical” tradition in later periods: from invocations of Athens as part of José Enrique Rodó’s efforts to construct a uniquely Latin American identity in Ariel to the imaginative reworkings of threads from “classical” mythology in the celebrated writings of Gabriel García Márquez. In these respects, reception offers an opportunity to span temporal, geographical, and disciplinary divides—as well as to destabilize any notion that the Greek and Roman “classics” belong solely to Greece or Rome or, for that matter, the European tradition.
Yet, we might also flip the question and briefly consider the important contributions that scholars with various connections to Latin America and the Caribbean are currently making to reinvigorating the discipline of Greek and Roman studies. One could cite the explosion in Spanish and Lusophone scholarship in recent years as evidence for the vibrant contributions that Latin American scholars are making to the field. In my own work, for example, a new edition of the ancient Roman writer, Cornelius Nepos, is now required reading. But let me instead close by considering one of the leading voices on the future of “classical” studies: Dan-el Padilla Peralta.
A Princeton professor and an accomplished scholar of ancient Rome, Padilla was born in the Dominican Republic and came to the United States as the four-year-old son of a family who had initially traveled for medical care. Padilla’s 2015 biography, Undocumented: A Dominican Boy’s Odyssey from a Homeless Shelter to the Ivy League, relates the subsequent story of his life’s journey and can be read as a profound meditation on the way that borders—political, social, educational, linguistic, and otherwise—suffuse and stratify American society to its detriment. And there is a certain irony to the way that, even as Padilla adroitly navigates the vast divides between his two worlds of East Harlem and Manhattan prep school, his lapsed visa and the impediments he faces in normalizing it circumscribe his ability to travel abroad even as they threaten deportation. Padilla’s Undocumented, in these respects, can be read as a testament to the inordinate power that some borders might retain in simultaneously entrapping and excluding—however many other borders an individual might otherwise traverse.
Which makes Padilla’s professional profile even more salient and crucial. On the one hand, Padilla’s work entails meticulous work in “philology”: the skills underpinning close-reading of Latin and Greek texts (esp. linguistics/etymology, textual criticism, and literary criticism of a strongly historicist bent) and traditionally regarded as the qualitative benchmark for scholarship in “Classics.” On the other hand, by incorporating multiple strands of contemporary sociological and critical theory, Padilla has broken new, and highly original, ground in his various areas of research. For example, a 2020 article synthesizes rigorous analysis of the ancient evidence with critical theory on “epistemicide” and comparative discussions of the Americas to argue that Roman imperialism entailed immense violence to local ways of knowing alongside its better-known depredations of enslavement, slaughter, and ecological destruction on mass scales—with the history of Roman mining operations on the Iberian peninsula as a central case-study. But it is his efforts in challenging the historically Eurocentric, often elitist, and sometimes racist terms of the discipline of “Classics” that have yielded the most attention from a non-specialist audience, rendering him one of the field’s most prominent public figures. A profile in the The New York Times Magazine is required reading for those interested in Padilla’s efforts to reform the discipline of “Classics” in ways that mutually advance the field’s inclusivity and our knowledge of the ancient Mediterranean world. In opening up new areas for scholarly investigation even as it simultaneously interrogates and reformulates disciplinary boundaries, Padilla’s work might thus be understood to serve as an exemplum for all of us alike in our own scholarly endeavors—be they Greek and Roman studies, or Latin American, Caribbean, and Iberian studies, or, as this essay briefly sketches, the numerous intersections that perhaps bind disciplines closer together than one might initially think.
About the Author
Grant Nelsestuen is a Professor of Classical Studies in the Department of Classical and Ancient Near Eastern Studies as well as an affiliate and former director of Integrated Liberal Studies. His research focuses on ancient Greek and Roman political thought, Roman cultural history, and Latin literature. He teaches a wide variety of courses, including ones on conspiracy and conspiracy theories in antiquity and modernity and on the concept and practice of friendship across time and cultures. Since August 2023, Nelsestuen has served as Associate Dean for Arts and Humanities in the College of Letters & Science.
Works Cited
Laird, Andrew, and Nicole Miller. Antiquities and Classical Traditions in Latin America (Bulletin of Latin American Research Book Series). Wiley, 2018.
Marquese, Rafael de Bivar, and Fábio Duarte Joly. “Panis, disciplina, et opus servo: The Jesuit ideology in Portuguese America and Greco-Roman ideas.” Slave Systems: Ancient and
Modern, edited by E. Dal Lago & C. Katsari, Cambridge University Press, 2008, pp. 214-30.
Oliveira, Francisco. Cornélio Nepos. Vidas de Epaminondas, Catão e Ático. Fragmentos. Imprensa da Universidade de Coimbra, 2023.
Peralta, Dan-el. “Epistemicide: The Roman Case.” Clássica: Revista Brasileira de Estudos Clássicos, vol. 33, no. 2, 2020, https://doi.org/10.24277/classica.v33i2.934.
—. Undocumented: A Dominican Boy’s Odyssey from a Homeless Shelter to the Ivy League. Penguin Books, 2015.
Poser, Rachel. “He Wants to Save Classics From Whiteness. Can the Field Survive?” The New York Times Magazine, 2 Feb. 2021, https://www.nytimes.com/2021/02/02/magazine/classics-greece-rome-whiteness.html.