Chapter 3 dissects the role of black skin color in Aeschylus’s Suppliants (c. 463 BCE). In this tragedy, Danaus’s black daughters, the Danaids, flee from Egypt to Argos to escape a forced marriage to their Egyptian cousins. Their knowledge of Greek religious rites convinces the Argive ruler, Pelasgus, that they are distant kin even though this Greek identity is seemingly contradicted by their black skin. This chapter asserts that the Danaids are sophisticated performers who successfully reduce the relevance of their physical alterity and declare their hybrid identity as black Egyptian Greeks. They are versatile and subtle ethnographers of the Argive Greeks to whom they supplicate. Conversely, their Argive audience – the intra-dramatic spectators of the Danaids’ difference – prove less able to comprehend their hybridized identity. An exploration of political resonances, particularly in relation to metics, draws the fifth-century BCE audience away from the distant mythical realm and towards their own political reality. Altogether, the drama speaks to the complicated exteriority of race in an ancient Greek tragedy.

In Chapter 5, Lucian (c. second century CE) presents a complicated model of difference that relies unevenly on skin color, attire, and language as determinants of identity. His trio of Scythian satires features characters who rework the relationships between race and identity within their specific contexts. The categories of “Greek” and “foreigner” become muddled as Greeks and Scythians share their impressions about black people in their midst: Greeks conflate blackness with Aithiopians or liken it to their own appearance with ease, while one Scythian man marvels at the sight of black Athenian athletes. These varied observations lead to a collective questioning of blackness in relation to Greek identity under the guise of humor.

Sir Arthur Evans’s concept of the ‘naturalistic spirit’ highlights the importance of animal depictions in Bronze Age Crete, their naturalism peaking in the Neopalatial period. This chapter summarises the book’s argument that animal practices, extended through animal depictions, were central to the formation and development of palatial collectives such as Knossos.

This chapter traces the history of domestic animals on Crete, starting with a group of animals, plants and humans which settled at Knossos in the Neolithic period. Focusing particularly on the herding of sheep and cattle it examines their depiction as clay figurines and their recording in clay documents. Whereas sheep were extensively herded because of their importance to the textile industry, they were rarely depicted, whereas cattle-ranching, which gave rise to bull-leaping, became a prominent part of the expansion of the palatial collective of Knossos.

Chapter 2 examines miniature replicas of the famous cult statues of Artemis of Ephesus, Athena Parthenos, Aphrodite of Knidos, and Tyche of Antioch. These souvenirs of cult statues commemorated cities as much as they represented goddesses, and they helped simultaneously localize and universalize divinities and places in the Roman Empire.

Chapter 1 demonstrates Romans’ concept of souvenirs despite the lack of a precise Greek or Latin word for souvenir. It contextualizes Roman souvenirs within ancient patterns of circulation and class and introduces the methodological frameworks for the book.

Chapter 7 examines the local idiosyncrasies of spectacle souvenirs in the Roman Empire, focusing on sites in Roman Spain, Britain, and Greece. Spectacle souvenirs enabled vicarious participation in Rome’s culture of spectacle, constructing imagined affinities but also stoking competition and differentiation on local and regional levels and excluding and objectifying certain marginalized groups in Roman society.