The preceding two chapters discussed the presence of ethnographic discourse in representation of the barbarian peoples and individuals who had come to rule portions of the former Roman and Chinese empires. Thus far, a central focus has been the ways in which Procopius and the historians of the Jin shu 晉書 offer critical evaluations of individual barbarian actors and the presence or absence of ethnographic rhetoric in those assessments. An underlying theme that has run throughout the discussion is the question of political legitimacy and its relationship to assumptions inherent in the respective bodies of ethnological discourse. While the preceding chapters have focused more on general forms of ethnic or individual representation, this chapter will address the question of political legitimacy directly: How was political legitimacy conceived of in Rome and China in this period and to what degree did perceptions of ethnic identity function as criteria in its construction and articulation?

As the latter part of this book will examine ethnological discourse in Late Antiquity and Early Medieval China, periods that post-date by several centuries the formulation of that discourse into a relatively stable set of norms, tropes, and conventions, this chapter will provide an introductory survey to early ethnographic practices in the Greco-Roman and Chinese traditions. Such a survey will serve as the basis for an assessment of the degree of continuity of these practices in a later age of great transformation and change, namely the sixth-century Roman Empire and the seventh-century Tang 唐 dynasty. Only by establishing the basic components of classical ethnography and ethnological thought in each tradition will it be possible to contextualize the representations of foreign peoples in the later periods in terms of their respective traditions.

The previous chapter demonstrated the continuity of classicizing ethnographic discourse in the Wars and the Jin shu 晉書, paying particular attention to the presence and function of the “barbarian” antithesis in the two works, the dichotomous division of humanity into a civilized center and a barbarian periphery. This chapter will further explore the intersection of traditional concepts of barbarian alterity and the political discourse of sixth-century Constantinople and seventh-century Chang’an, as historians in either capital included accounts of individual barbarian political figures in their works. It will seek to determine the degree to which ethnic labels, and the connotations associated with them (whether vague as in the case of “barbarian” – in Chinese Rong 戎, Yi 夷, Di 狄, Hu 胡, or combinations of these – or specific as in the case of Goth, Vandal, Xiongnu 匈奴, Särbi-Xianbei 鮮卑, etc.), condition the representation of barbarian political figures who had risen above the status of generals, allies, or federates to become leaders of their own independent states.

Whereas the previous chapter discussed the barbarian antithesis in the pre-imperial and imperial literature of the Greco-Roman and Chinese traditions, this chapter will turn to the later periods of Late Antiquity and Early Medieval China. It will first consider the expression of this concept in the Wars of Procopius and the Jin shu 晉書 of the Tang 唐 Bureau of Historiography, before examining the perpetuation of the three ethnographic frameworks discussed in Chapter 1. After considering the aspects of classical ethnography treated in Chapters 1 and 2, i.e., the notion of the barbarian antithesis and the epistemological frameworks used by both Greco-Roman and Chinese authors to rationalize and represent foreign peoples, the chapter will then turn to the two texts’ representations of the main non-Roman and non-Chinese peoples who will be the primary focus of the remaining chapters. Central to the concerns of this study, these were the peoples who had moved into the empires and claimed to be legitimate rulers over formerly imperial territories, counting both their own original followers as well as the Roman and Chinese populations of their domains among their subjects. Procopius and the authors of the Jin shu were not treating the unknown quantities situated beyond the frontiers, peoples who had been in a relationship of either subjugation to the empire or one of independent hostility or alliance. Accordingly, the historians were presented with a new and unprecedented phenomenon: How does one represent a barbarian people that has not only entered the empire but also assumed the reins of state along with royal or imperial prerogatives? This chapter provides a critical link between the classical past of each tradition and the new realities of the early to mid-first millennium AD. By establishing continuity with the respective classical traditions, the chapter allows us to consider the later legacy of ancient worldviews while also offering a window onto the way those worldviews were adapted to represent new realities.

While the previous chapter examined the different conceptual frameworks within which foreign peoples could be represented, rationalized, and understood in Chinese and Greco-Roman antiquity, a study of ancient ethnography must also consider the concept of the “barbarian” itself. In particular, the notion of a “barbarian antithesis,” a dichotomous division of mankind in Greco-Roman thought that places Greeks and then Romans on one side of an ethno-cultural barrier and everyone else – the uncivilized, ungoverned, immoderate, bestial portion of humanity – on the other is a commonplace in modern scholarship. In some ways, the notion of a binary division of humanity into civilized and barbarian categories may be understood as an interpretative or rationalizing framework in its own right, on a par with those considered in Chapter 1. It differs, however, in that it is not only a far more simplistic response to the realities of human diversity but also to the extent that it has been identified by many scholars as a fundamental principle in Greek and Roman worldviews and attitudes. The same notion has been exported to the study of ancient China, as several scholars have identified a comparable bipartite schema that developed in ancient Chinese philosophical and political thinking. Therefore, a discussion of the civilized–barbarian dichotomy in the Greco-Roman and Chinese classical periods is essential before moving on to consider texts of a later period, when the geographical and cultural distance between these two categories, the civilized Self and the barbarian Other, had narrowed considerably.

Questions with which this study began are intimately tied to the ways in which the two imperial traditions were understood in antiquity and how they have been perceived in the modern period. Why was a Roman Empire never firmly restored in the western Mediterranean following the deposition of the last western emperor in 476? And, more importantly, why did the several states that succeeded it in the west choose not to identify as Romans, as rightful descendants and perpetuators of the Roman name who could trace their ancestry back to such august figures as Aeneas and Romulus? This question becomes all the more necessary when one considers that, under similar circumstances, a Chinese empire thousands of miles away did reestablish itself in the late sixth century under the Sui 隨 and Tang 唐 dynasties. After nearly three hundred years of division, the empire was restored and the barbarians who had entered China eventually abandoned their respective barbarian identities for a “Chinese” one. Comparative historians are therefore presented with a similar set of circumstances that led to radically different outcomes. Western scholars, following in the footsteps of Edward Gibbon, have long been vexed by this question of how and why the Roman Empire, at least its western half, ultimately dissolved. Why did a great ecumenical empire that was, and still is, recognized as the source of so many fundamental ideas and institutions valued by modern western nations ultimately fail?