Scientific racism in Germany/Arthur de Gobineau/An Essay on the Inequality of the Human Races/Book 4

Book 4 of Arthur de Gobineau's work An Essay on the Inequality of the Human Races is subtitled Semitized civilizations of the Southwest. In this book, Gobineau claims the concept of "history" exclusively for the white race: history arises only where white peoples with different concepts of civilization encounter one another. The Occident—Western Asia and Europe—is the sole theater of history, while conflicts between non-white peoples cannot constitute history. Gobineau postulates a progressive westward movement of white peoples from east to west, which simultaneously represents a purification process: each successive civilization is "whiter" than its eastern predecessor, creating an ascending racial hierarchy from Semites through Iranians and Greeks to Romans and finally Germans. The Zoroastrians, particularly the Persians, serve as concrete illustration of these abstract theses. They form an intermediate stage between Assyrians/Egyptians and Greeks in Gobineau's racial hierarchy and exemplarily demonstrate his cycle of Aryan superiority, ethnic admixture, and decline. Particular emphasis is placed on numerical inferiority accelerating decline: the Persians were "absorbed" by the Semitic population masses. The account prepares for the Greeks as the next "purer" stage and establishes the Germans as the inevitable culmination of world history—the ideological core message of the entire work. Content of Book 4 Gobineau's Occident: The sole theatre of history this sectionGobineau Arthur de Versuch über die Ungleichheit der Menschenracen. Dritter Band 2 1902 Stuttgart Fr. Frommann 3ff Vincenzo GiobertiVincenzo Gioberti 1843 Del primato morale e civile degli Italiani Bruxelles https://archive.org/details/bub_gb_vmYtpkdOE_EC Background: The mechanisms that propel human history Gobineau reduces civilizational development to biological "racial composition": "white purity" determines success or decline; history becomes biological destiny; peoples are locked into immutable hierarchical categories. Even as Gobineau wrote his Essay, his monocausal thinking stood in stark opposition to the analyses of the era's most influential scholars regarding the factors determining human development and historical processes. Thinkers such as Adam Smith, Montesquieu, Alexander von Humboldt, Carl Ritter, François Guizot, Alexis de Tocqueville, Augustin Thierry, Edward Gibbon, Jules Michelet, and the pioneering sociologist Auguste Comte all advanced multifactorial explanations, analyzing the complex interplay of geography, climate, resources, economic structures, technological innovation, political institutions, legal systems, religious and cultural values, social conflicts, and historical contingencies. Subsequent generations of scholars developed empirical social sciences characterized by systematic methods, statistical analysis, and field research rather than speculative theory. Karl Marx established historical materialism with detailed analysis of economic structures. Franz Boas scientifically refuted biological racism through empirical anthropology, demonstrating the cultural plasticity of human societies. Fernand Braudel analyzed history over extended periods through geographical, economic, and social structures. Max Weber and Barrington Moore Jr. developed rigorous comparative methods. Paul Vidal de la Blache replaced geographical determinism with possibilism: environment offers possibilities, but culture decides. These approaches were empirically grounded, methodologically rigorous, and systematically refuted biological determinisms. Read: Stanley Mellon (The Political Uses of History, 1958), Georg G. Iggers (The German Conception of History, 1968; Historiography in the twentieth century, 1997), Michael D. Biddiss (Father of Racist Ideology: The Social and Political Thought of Count Gobineau, 1970), Lionel Gossman (Between History and Literature, 1990) History as a privilege of the white race In the second and third books of his essay, Gobineau demonstrated through various examples that the origin of every civilization presupposes the creative initiative of a white people. At the same time, he argued that every civilization contains the seed of its own downfall: racial mixing, which at first invigorates and fosters diversity, inevitably leads, in his view, to degeneration and decline because the "noble qualities" of the white race become progressively diluted. Thus, human history appears to him as a succession of civilizations that rise and fall—driven by the process of racial mixing. In the fourth book, he moves beyond his previous theses and claims the concept of history—without defining it precisely at any point—exclusively for the white race, on the grounds that "history" occurs only where peoples come into conflict over mutually contradictory concepts of civilization. Since only white peoples, he believes, are capable of holding strong ideas about civilization, history necessarily presupposes conflicts that are fought between white peoples. At the beginning of the fourth book, Gobineau contrasts "isolated" civilizations such as India and China, which endured for millennia due to ethnic homogeneity, with the unstable Western world, where civilizations last only a few centuries.Gobineau Arthur de Versuch über die Ungleichheit der Menschenracen. Dritter Band 2 1902 Stuttgart Fr. Frommann 1f The West has always been the center of the world. Arthur de Gobineau Versuch über die Ungleichheit der Menschenracen. Third volume, 1902, p. 2 "All countries of any prominence," including the Egyptians, Hindus, and Chinese, have laid claim to this status out of vanity.Gobineau Arthur de Versuch über die Ungleichheit der Menschenracen. Dritter Band 2 1902 Stuttgart Fr. Frommann 2f But according to Gobineau, only those lands can truly claim it in which— as in Europe —"the highest interests" clash like pieces on a chessboard.Gobineau Arthur de Versuch über die Ungleichheit der Menschenracen. Dritter Band 2 1902 Stuttgart Fr. Frommann 3 He places the beginning of this European history in the 7th century BCE. The greatest sum of movement, the most astonishing diversity of events, the most illustrious conflicts, and those most interesting for their far-reaching consequences are concentrated there, whereas in China and India many significant upheavals have taken place of which the world was so little informed that scholarship—alerted only by certain clues—has uncovered their traces only with great difficulty. [...] Where does this difference come from? It is because, in the eastern part of the world, the permanent struggle of ethnic forces occurred only between the Aryan element on the one hand and the black and yellow elements on the other. Arthur de Gobineau Versuch über die Ungleichheit der Menschenracen. Third volume, 1902, pp. 3f Gobineau declares that neither the struggles of yellow nor of black peoples—so long as no white people is involved—have ever been able to constitute history, because "nothing emerged from them, nothing remained."Gobineau Arthur de Versuch über die Ungleichheit der Menschenracen. Dritter Band 2 1902 Stuttgart Fr. Frommann 4 History springs only from the contact of white races. Arthur de Gobineau Versuch über die Ungleichheit der Menschenracen. Third volume, 1902, p. 4 As an example showing that even the mere participation of a white people does not necessarily create history, Gobineau cites India and China. There, white peoples fought purely defensively against mixing with "inferior" black and yellow peoples.Gobineau Arthur de Versuch über die Ungleichheit der Menschenracen. Dritter Band 2 1902 Stuttgart Fr. Frommann 5f History, however, can only arise from conflict between different white groups holding distinct concepts of civilization: If, in a word, history begins to flourish from that moment in the western regions, it is because from then on whatever stands at the head of every party will be mixed with white blood; because henceforth the only actors will be Aryans, Semites (the Hamites having already merged with them), Celts, Slavs — all peoples originally noble, each possessing distinctive ideas, each having formed for itself a more or less elaborate system of civilization, yet all possessing such a system, and astonishing and surprising one another by the doctrines they advance on every matter, doctrines whose triumph they seek over rival doctrines. […] Thus, western Asia and Europe constitute the great workshop where the most important human questions have been posed. It is there, moreover, that for the needs of the civilizing struggle, everything in the world that has possessed a value capable of arousing desire has inevitably tended to concentrate. Arthur de Gobineau Versuch über die Ungleichheit der Menschenracen. Third volume, 1902, pp. 7f For Gobineau, it is this intellectual antagonism that produces the constant change and the rich historiography of the Western world.Gobineau Arthur de Versuch über die Ungleichheit der Menschenracen. Dritter Band 2 1902 Stuttgart Fr. Frommann 7f Cultural appropriation as racial superiority Gobineau next emphasizes a characteristic ability of white peoples: their capacity to appropriate intellectual achievements from other white civilizations that they may not have been capable of creating themselves. As examples, he cites the Athenians, who learned from both Egyptian science and Hindu philosophy; the Romans, who knew how "to seize the discoveries belonging to the most distant points of the globe"; and the Middle Ages, which penetrated deeply "into the sanctuaries of Oriental wisdom," among other accomplishments. For Gobineau, this appropriative capacity constitutes further proof of white racial superiority and ultimately legitimizes Western dominance.Gobineau Arthur de Versuch über die Ungleichheit der Menschenracen. Dritter Band 2 1902 Stuttgart Fr. Frommann 8 Race over place: Rejection of environmental determinism Without naming his opponents explicitly—possibly referring to thinkers such as Montesquieu, Ritter, Humboldt, Smith, and Guizot—Gobineau explicitly and emphatically rejects the prevailing doctrine of his time that the development of societies is primarily determined by factors such as climate, environment, and geography (environmental determinism). He argues instead that "great population centers" like Alexandria and Constantinople, despite their apparently favorable locations, declined after periods of flourishing; that cities like Paris, London, Vienna, Berlin, and Madrid became "famous capitals" without being particularly well-situated; and that cities like Cádiz, Gibraltar, and Trieste remained relatively insignificant despite favorable locations.Gobineau Arthur de Versuch über die Ungleichheit der Menschenracen. Dritter Band 2 1902 Stuttgart Fr. Frommann 9f Moreover, he cites Holland and Venice as extreme examples: Holland demonstrated that the "genius of a people" could create great cities in water and build "a fatherland on pilings" in unproductive marshes, while Venice proved that a state could be founded "without any territory whatsoever, not even a marsh" and rival the most vast empires in splendor.Gobineau Arthur de Versuch über die Ungleichheit der Menschenracen. Dritter Band 2 1902 Stuttgart Fr. Frommann 13 Gobineau despises political economy as a materialistic pseudoscience ("the economist sect"), which reduces human life to mere production and consumption while disregarding higher aristocratic values.Gobineau Arthur de Versuch über die Ungleichheit der Menschenracen. Dritter Band 2 1902 Stuttgart Fr. Frommann 10-12 He contends that it is "motives more elevated" than economics that drive the development of societies, and that "the most important place on the globe" is not the one best situated for economy and trade, but rather: It is the place where there resides, at a given moment, the purest, most intelligent, and strongest white group. Arthur de Gobineau Versuch über die Ungleichheit der Menschenracen. Third volume, 1902, p. 10 The purifying journey west: Gobineau on the racial hierarchy among the white peoples Fact check: Europe's settlement history Gobineau postulated that Europe had been settled by a homogeneous "noble Aryan race" from the East, which alone was responsible for civilizational developments. According to his conception, civilization moved in a clear East-West progression, carried by a superior "white race" whose purity determined the degree of cultural achievement. Modern archaeogenetics paints a very different picture of Europe's settlement history. The genetic composition of today's European population is the result of a complex admixture process that unfolded over several millennia. Instead of a unified ancestry, three major genetic components can be distinguished, each arriving in Europe at different times. The earliest component is that of the Mesolithic hunter-gatherers. These groups inhabited Europe after the last Ice Age and adapted to changing climatic and ecological conditions. Their genetic heritage is especially pronounced in western and northern Europe. The second component is associated with the early European farmers of the Neolithic period. Beginning around 7000 BCE, farming populations migrated from Anatolia into Europe, bringing agriculture, animal husbandry, and sedentary lifestyles. Their gradual expansion from the southeast reshaped the demographic and cultural landscape of the continent. The third major component is linked to the Indo-European expansion. Steppe populations with ancestry related to ancient North Eurasian peoples entered Europe beginning around 3000 BCE. Often associated with the Yamnaya culture, they spread rapidly across large areas, contributing new technologies such as metalworking traditions and likely playing a key role in the spread of Indo-European languages. Today's European population carries the genetic heritage of all three ancestral lineages, with proportions varying regionally. Read: Kristian Kristiansen (Europe Before History, 1998), David W. Anthony (The Horse, the Wheel, and Language, 2007), David Reich (Who We Are and How We Got Here, 2018) According to Gobineau, the overall development of white civilizations in Europe's early history is characterized by white peoples having advanced progressively westward from the east, spreading civilization in the same direction as their own migration.Gobineau Arthur de Versuch über die Ungleichheit der Menschenracen. Dritter Band 2 1902 Stuttgart Fr. Frommann 11 In this process, they intermingled with the yellow populations that had settled in Europe before their arrival, a mixture that, in his view, made them more susceptible to utilitarian ideas alien to the Aryan character.Gobineau Arthur de Versuch über die Ungleichheit der Menschenracen. Dritter Band 2 1902 Stuttgart Fr. Frommann 11f Thus one must expect to see white nations becoming increasingly realistic and decreasingly artistic as one observes them further to the west. It is certainly not for reasons derived from climatic influence that they will be such. It is solely because they will simultaneously become more mixed with yellow elements and more freed from black principles. Arthur de Gobineau Versuch über die Ungleichheit der Menschenracen. Third volume, 1902, p. 12 The westward—or more precisely, northwestward—migration of white peoples constitutes, for Gobineau, a purification process despite the admixture of "yellow blood," because black influences are progressively eliminated. Each successive civilization is "more purely white" than its eastern predecessor, creating a progression from southeast to northwest. His underlying racial hierarchy ascends from black peoples through Hamites, Semites, and Iranians to Greeks, then Romans, culminating in the "purest" people: the Germans. The Iranian empire falls to the "whiter" Greeks, who yield to the "even whiter" Romans, who are finally supplanted by Germanic supremacy—presented as the inevitable culmination of world history.Gobineau Arthur de Versuch über die Ungleichheit der Menschenracen. Dritter Band 2 1902 Stuttgart Fr. Frommann 12 The Zoroastrians thumb|left|Takht-e Soleymān, Iran; remains of one of the most important Zoroastrian sanctuaries this sectionGobineau Arthur de Versuch über die Ungleichheit der Menschenracen. Dritter Band 2 1902 Stuttgart Fr. Frommann 15-41 Christian LassenChristian Lassen 1847 Indische Altertumskunde Bonn 2 volumes. https://archive.org/details/indischealterthu01lass_0 Volume 1 2025-11-12 https://archive.org/details/indischealtert02lass Volume 2 2025-11-12Christian Lassen 1839 Beiträge zur Kunde des Indischen Alterthums aus dem Mahābhārata. II. Die altindischen Völker (Fortsetzung von Band 1, S. 354) Zeitschrift für die Kunde des Morgenlandes 2 21-74) Eugène BurnoufEugène (1833-1835) Burnouf Commentaire sur le Yaçna Imprimerie royale Paris HerodotusHerodotus Histories (around 430 BC) Julius KlaprothJulius Klaproth 1823 Asia polyglotta Paris https://archive.org/details/asiapolyglotta01klapgoog Adolf Friedrich von SchackAdolf Friedrich von Schack 1851 Heldensagen des Firdusi Wilhelm Hertz Berlin https://books.google.de/books?id=swOO-KtfRy4C Karl BöttigerKarl (1826–1836) Böttiger Ideen zur Kunstmythologie Dresden, Leipzig Arnoldische Buchhandlung https://archive.org/details/ideenzurkunstmy01btgoog/page/n4/mode/1up 4 volumes. Franz Karl MoversFranz Karl Movers 1841 Die Phönizier Bonn E. Weber https://archive.org/details/diephnizier00unkngoog John Gardner WilkinsonJohn Gardner Wilkinson Manners and Customs of the Ancient Egyptians J. Murray London https://catalog.hathitrust.org/Record/001968950 6 volumes (1837–1841). Eduard Maximilian RöthEduard Maximilian Röth Geschichte unserer abendländischen Philosophie Bassermann Mannheim https://archive.org/details/geschichteunser03rtgoog 2 volumes, 1846–1858. Henry RawlinsonHenry Creswicke Rawlinson 1851 Memoir on the Babylonian and Assyrian Inscriptions Journal of the Royal Asiatic Society of Great Britain and Ireland 14 1 i–civ, 1–16 25228653 Austen Henry LayardAusten Henry Layard 1848 Nineveh and its remains : with an account of a visit to the Chaldean Christians of Kurdistan, and the Yezidis, or devil worshippers; and an inquiry into the manners and arts of the ancient Assyrians John Murray London https://archive.org/details/in.ernet.dli.2015.281808 2 volumes. When Volume II of his Essay, containing the section on the Zoroastrians, appeared in 1853, Gobineau was 36-37 years old. Following publication, he twice served as French envoy to Persia (1855-1858, 1861-1863). There he learned Farsi and engaged so intensively with Persian literature and culture that he subsequently published three books on Persia (Trois ans en Asie, 1859; Les Religions et les philosophies dans l'Asie centrale, 1865; Histoire des Perses, 1869). When writing the Zoroastrian chapter, however, he relied on the same secondary sources he used for other cultures. Fact check: The Zoroastrians Contrary to Gobineau's portrayal, the "Zoroastrians" were not a people or ethnic group, but rather a religious community of various Iranian-speaking peoples—including Bactrians, Medes, and Persians—who adopted the faith founded by the prophet Zarathustra (Greek: Zoroaster). Zoroastrianism developed from common Indo-Iranian religious traditions rooted in Proto-Indo-European beliefs. Zarathustra, whose lifetime remains disputed (traditionally placed in the 7th/6th century BCE), reformed older Iranian polytheistic cults. Many elements still reveal the shared origins with Vedic religion in India: related languages (Avestan and Vedic Sanskrit), similar divine names (Mithra/Mitra), fire rituals, and the Soma/Haoma cult. Zarathustra's reform transformed the older polytheism into an ethical dualism that teaches the struggle between the good god Ahura Mazda and the evil spirit Angra Mainyu. The sacred texts, the Avesta, are composed in Avestan, an Old Iranian language. What theological, philosophical, social, and cultural processes drove Zarathustra's reform of the older Iranian religion toward dualistic Zoroastrianism remains insufficiently researched and largely speculative. In the Achaemenid Persian Empire (6th-4th centuries BCE), Zoroastrianism became the state religion and influenced later monotheistic religions. Today it counts only 110,000-120,000 believers worldwide, mainly Parsis in India and minorities in Iran and in North America. Zoroastrianism did not develop, as Gobineau portrayed it, as a counter-religion or protest movement against Hinduism or Vedic polytheism; rather, both developed in parallel from common Indo-Iranian roots. Similar to the Vedic religion, Zoroastrianism may also date back to the 2nd millennium BC. Read: Mary Boyce (A History of Zoroastrism, 3 volumes, 1975–1991), Michael Stausberg (Zarathustra and Zoroastrianism: A Short Introduction, 2008), Richard Foltz (Religions of Iran, 2013) The greater part of Book 4 is devoted to Gobineau's account of the "Zoroastrians." He first mentioned them in Book 3, where he portrayed them as an originally Aryan ethnic group that migrated together with other Aryans from the postulated Aryan homeland to South Asia, lived there for a time alongside the Hindus, but later separated from them due to religious differences. For Gobineau, the southern Zoroastrians, including the Bactrians, Medes, and Persians, form the core group he calls "Iranians." In contrast, he depicts the northeastern tribes—Sarmatians, Alans, and "Ases"—as even more "perfect," on the grounds that they had allegedly avoided mixture with black peoples. Despite this claimed superiority, he does not elaborate on these tribes in the present chapter.Gobineau Arthur de Versuch über die Ungleichheit der Menschenracen. Dritter Band 2 1902 Stuttgart Fr. Frommann 19 The thesis of the progressive westward migration of the "white peoples," introduced abstractly at the beginning of Book 4, is here to be concretely illustrated for the first time, with Gobineau positioning the Zoroastrians in his racial hierarchy as an intermediate stage between the Assyrians/Egyptians and the Greeks. Moreover, he uses the Zoroastrians—or rather that subgroup that interests him most: the allegedly particularly "pure" Persians—to illustrate once again his regeneration thesis, according to which every civilization is inevitably doomed to decline without continuous "infusions of white blood." Like the Egyptians and Chinese, and in contrast to the Assyrians, the Persians, according to Gobineau's account, failed to continuously acquire "new white blood," so that they mixed with subjugated "black" and Hamitic peoples and were eventually supplanted by the—"whiter"—Greeks. Westward migration of the Zoroastrians At the beginning of his chapter on the Zoroastrians, Gobineau elaborates on what he had already stated about this "people" in connection with Indian history. In the region north of Sogdiana, according to him, white tribes had split apart in an indeterminate prehistoric period: while the Hellenes had migrated westward, the Hindus and Zoroastrians—who, though two different peoples, had "for a rather long period borne the same name Aryas or Airyas"—had turned southward and southwestward, where "religious disputes" arose between them that ultimately "caused them to develop into separate nationalities."Gobineau Arthur de Versuch über die Ungleichheit der Menschenracen. Dritter Band 2 1902 Stuttgart Fr. Frommann 15 Gobineau describes this schism as a rebellion by the Zoroastrians against the "strict discipline of the Brahmins" and against their "rather tyrannical doctrine," though the Zoroastrians did not stop at "protesting" but had "strayed in the opposite direction" and "introduced a certain licentiousness."Gobineau Arthur de Versuch über die Ungleichheit der Menschenracen. Dritter Band 2 1902 Stuttgart Fr. Frommann 17 The Zoroastrian tribes then spread across extensive, partly inhospitable territories westward as far as the Tigris, where they lived as herders and were governed by elected or hereditary officials.Gobineau Arthur de Versuch über die Ungleichheit der Menschenracen. Dritter Band 2 1902 Stuttgart Fr. Frommann 16f Gobineau describes the Zoroastrians as strongly independence-loving, which allegedly led them to be "very hostile" even among themselves and eager "to subjugate one another." The Bactrians Fact check: The Bactrians Gobineau portrays the Bactrians as the originally most powerful of the Zoroastrian peoples, whose capital, Balkh, was reputed in the East to be the "mother of cities." They supposedly created the Zoroastrian dogmas; Zarathustra was, he claims, born among them; and their language—the Avestan tongue—was allegedly almost free of "Semitic admixtures," which for him signified their supposed racial superiority within the Iranian peoples. Their primacy, he maintains, was later lost to the Medes and Persians "in ways unknown to us today." This construction allows Gobineau to present the Bactrians as the purest and most creative bearers of Zoroastrianism. In fact, the Bactrians were the Iranian-speaking population of a region in present-day northern Afghanistan that had been urbanized since the Bronze Age (the Bactria-Margiana Archaeological Complex, ca. 2000–1500 BCE). From the 6th century BCE onward, Bactria belonged to the Achaemenid Empire; Balkh became an important center. Alexander's conquest in 329 BCE ushered in the Seleucid period, followed around 250 BCE by the independent Greco-Bactrian Kingdom, a multicultural Hellenistic polity that flourished until the mid-2nd century BCE. Nomadic invasions (Saka, Yuezhi) ended Greek rule. Under the Kushan Empire (1st–3rd century CE), Bactria once again became a cultural heartland, subsequently ruled by the Sassanids, Hephthalites, and Turks, until the Islamic conquest (7th–8th century) brought ancient Bactrian culture to a close. This complex, multilayered history wholly contradicts Gobineau's claim of Bactrian "primacy" or of a racially grounded origin of Zoroastrianism. While Zarathustra and the Avestan language may indeed have emerged from eastern Iranian regions, Gobineau's notions of linear power transfers and "Semitic admixtures" lack all linguistic and historical foundation. Read: Frank Holt (Thundering Zeus, 1999), Pierre Briant (From Cyrus to Alexander, 2002), Rachel Mairs (The Hellenistic Far East, 2014) Fact check: Avestan language By correlating linguistic "contamination" with "blood mixture," Gobineau transforms language into a biological marker. This is not only a fundamental categorical fallacy that impermissibly conflates linguistic and biological levels, but in the case of Gobineau's presentation of the Iranian languages, it is also erroneous on purely linguistic grounds. These languages belong to the Iranian and thus Indo-European language family, not the Semitic. No structural or systematic Semitic influence on phonology, morphology, or core vocabulary has been found in any of the languages mentioned by Gobineau, insofar as research has established to date—although individual loanwords through language contact and, in the case of Middle Persian, script adoption do occur. His primary source for Avestan was Eugène Burnouf, the leading Avesta scholar of his time, whose linguistic observations Gobineau misinterpreted and then further transformed into biological-racial theory. Avestan is an extinct Eastern Iranian language in which the sacred texts of Zoroastrianism, the Avesta, were composed. It was a liturgical language, not necessarily the everyday language of all Bactrians; they later also spoke Bactrian. Together with Scythian-Ossetian, Bactrian, Sogdian-Yaghnobi, and Khwarezmian, it belongs to the Eastern Iranian languages, which like all Iranian languages are classified within the Indo-European language family. Due to their common Indo-Iranian roots, Avestan has a close relationship with Vedic Sanskrit. Avestan was orally transmitted for centuries and only written down in a specially developed script in Sasanian Persia (3rd-7th centuries CE). Only about one quarter of the original Avesta survives. Read: Prods Oktor Skjaervo (An Introduction to Old Avestan, online publication, 2006) thumb|The location of historical Bactria In their advance into southern and western regions, the Zoroastrian tribes encountered the Assyrians and other peoples, absorbing "black blood" through intermingling with the local population; Gobineau cites this as the reason why the individual Zoroastrian tribes were racially unequal in standing, and also why they were later inferior to the Greeks.Gobineau Arthur de Versuch über die Ungleichheit der Menschenracen. Dritter Band 2 1902 Stuttgart Fr. Frommann 17f The highest rank in Gobineau's racial hierarchy within the Iranians is occupied by the Bactrians. Their capital, Balkh, was reputed in the East to be the "mother of cities." They spoke Avestan (Zend), which was supposedly "almost free of Semitic admixtures"—for Gobineau the decisive "proof" of their racial superiority within the Zoroastrians.Gobineau Arthur de Versuch über die Ungleichheit der Menschenracen. Dritter Band 2 1902 Stuttgart Fr. Frommann 18f Gobineau constructs a linguistic hierarchy to support his racial theory: Bactrian Avestan was purest, the "dialect of Persis" (Old Persian) less pure, Median more strongly "Semiticized," and Pahlavi (Middle Persian) most "contaminated." This alleged linguistic gradation supposedly proved that "the blood of the future conquerors of Western Asia remained, in its noblest southern branches, Aryan enough to explain their superiority." Linguistic "purity" thus becomes an indicator of biological "racial purity" and thereby of military and political dominance. The Bactrians were allegedly the "most powerful of the original Zoroastrians" and had created and developed the Zoroastrian dogmas. The prophet Zarathustra was supposedly born in their region, in that distant epoch under the nebulous reigns of the Kayanian kings, when the Zoroastrian nations stood shortly after their separation from the Hindus. The Bactrians had guided the first steps of the Zoroastrian family "on the paths of Magianism." Through "a manner unknown to this day," however, the Bactrians lost their "predominance." The Medes and especially the Persians became their successors, though these were less "Aryan"—yet their limited "purity" sufficed to dominate Western Asia temporarily.Gobineau Arthur de Versuch über die Ungleichheit der Menschenracen. Dritter Band 2 1902 Stuttgart Fr. Frommann 19 The Medes Fact check: The Medes Gobineau's claim that a Median dynasty ruled Assyria as early as 2234 BCE is false on two counts: neither did an Assyrian empire exist at that time, nor was there a Median dynasty. The Medes first appear in 9th-century BCE Assyrian sources, and the earliest securely attested Median king was Cyaxares (ca. 625-585 BCE). Gobineau relied on Herodotus and Christian Lassen, who in turn used legendary king lists (Ctesias of Cnidus). This dating served Gobineau's ideological goal of demonstrating the antiquity of "Aryan" superiority and presenting Zoroastrian monotheism as an ancient, originally "Aryan" religion. Historically, the Medes were Iranian-speaking tribal confederations in northwestern Iran (Zagros Mountains). In the 7th century BCE, they formed an empire under Cyaxares that conquered Nineveh in 612 BCE alongside Babylon, ending the Neo-Assyrian Empire. Around 550 BCE, Cyrus II rebelled against his Median grandfather Astyages and united Medes and Persians under Persian rule. This was a political-military coup, not a "racially" determined power transfer as Gobineau suggested. The Medes retained their importance in the Achaemenid Empire, as evidenced by their frequent paired designation as "Medes and Persians" in ancient sources. Read: Giovanni B. Lanfranchi, Michael Roaf, Robert Rollinger (eds., Continuity of Empire, 2003) Fact check: Median language In his hierarchy of Iranian languages, with which he attempts to support his racial theory, Gobineau places Median in third position, behind the Avestan of the Bactrians and Old Persian. The criterion for this ranking is the degree to which each language is supposedly permeated with "Semitic elements"; Gobineau infers from this a racial intermixture of the speakers with "black blood." The source of Gobineau's idea of "Semitic admixture" in Median is unclear. He may have misunderstood the fact that (Semitic) Aramaic was used as an administrative lingua franca in the Achaemenid Empire as linguistic "Semiticization," or he may have erroneously interpreted the fact that Middle Persian (Pahlavi) uses Aramaic script and logograms—a purely writing system phenomenon—as a linguistic phenomenon. Most likely, this represents a combination of insufficient linguistic understanding, misinterpretation of sources, and deliberate construction to support his racial ideology. In fact, Median belongs to the Northwestern Iranian languages, a branch of the Indo-Iranian language family within the Indo-European languages. This group also includes Parthian, the Caspian languages, Zaza-Gorani, and possibly the Kurdish languages and Balochi. The Semitic languages, by contrast, belong to the Afroasiatic languages, a language family entirely distinct from the Indo-European languages. Median is extinct, and little is known about it today. No continuous written records have survived, and very little is known about its grammar. Only some Median loanwords and proper names are attested in Old Persian and in Assyrian sources, from which certain phonological features can be reconstructed. Read: Rüdiger Schmitt (Die Sprache der Meder - eine große Unbekannte, conference paper, 2003), Adriano Rossi (Elusive Identities in Pre-Achaemenid Iran, conference paper, 2010) thumb|Horseman in Median dress (6th-4th century BCE) The Persians and, to a lesser extent, the Medes, whom Gobineau considers most "Semiticized," then replaced the Bactrians in the leadership role. These too had certain weaknesses—beyond their slight racial contamination, also numerical weakness—but still possessed enough Aryan blood to dominate the region for a time and "accomplish quite mighty deeds" there.Gobineau Arthur de Versuch über die Ungleichheit der Menschenracen. Dritter Band 2 1902 Stuttgart Fr. Frommann 18f Bronze Age rule of the Medes over Assyria To substantiate this, Gobineau reports, citing Christian Lassen—who himself had no better sources than mythical chronologies and legendary king lists—of an alleged Median dynasty that supposedly ruled Assyria as early as around 2234 BC, whose first king bore the name Zoroaster. He emphasizes that the "monotheistic faith" of the Zoroastrians was already established at this time: this first monarch was not identical with the religious reformer of the same name, but rather bore the name in his honor.Gobineau Arthur de Versuch über die Ungleichheit der Menschenracen. Dritter Band 2 1902 Stuttgart Fr. Frommann 20 Median rule over Assyria came, as Gobineau claims, to an end as a result of a "Chaldean-Semitic invasion from the northwestern mountains." The numerically inferior tribe was driven from Nineveh and fell under Chaldean suzerainty. Despite this overlordship, the Medes preserved their Aryan character, continued to practice their Zoroastrian religion, and even elected their own chieftains in the "villages" where they continued to live "dispersed by tribes" as warlike herdsmen according to Aryan custom.Gobineau Arthur de Versuch über die Ungleichheit der Menschenracen. Dritter Band 2 1902 Stuttgart Fr. Frommann 20-22 Renewal of Median rule In the 7th century BC, the Medes established an hereditary monarchy through popular election and began to subjugate neighboring Iranian tribes, including the Persians.Gobineau Arthur de Versuch über die Ungleichheit der Menschenracen. Dritter Band 2 1902 Stuttgart Fr. Frommann 22f The two "ancient great powers"—Assyria and Egypt—were at this time in decline, as they no longer absorbed new white blood.Gobineau Arthur de Versuch über die Ungleichheit der Menschenracen. Dritter Band 2 1902 Stuttgart Fr. Frommann 23f This offered the Medes the opportunity to "present themselves as candidates for world dominion."Gobineau Arthur de Versuch über die Ungleichheit der Menschenracen. Dritter Band 2 1902 Stuttgart Fr. Frommann 25f They were initially disrupted by Cimmerians (Celts)—"white peoples mixed with yellow elements"—who came from Tauris and conquered Sardis, but then by Mongol Scythians who had followed the Cimmerians. The Median king Cyaxares initially suffered a defeat against the Scythians, who devastated Western Asia for 28 years. He finally succeeded in repelling and expelling these "yellow riders" and in definitively capturing Nineveh, whose siege he had been forced to abandon due to the Scythian invasion.Gobineau Arthur de Versuch über die Ungleichheit der Menschenracen. Dritter Band 2 1902 Stuttgart Fr. Frommann 26f The "Iranians" Fact check: The Persians For Gobineau, the Persians constitute another example through which he develops his narrative of cyclical development from initial Aryan superiority, followed by ethnic admixture and resulting decline, in this case enriched by the demonstration that numerical inferiority favored and accelerated decline. His sources include, besides Eugène Burnouf, Christian Lassen, and several others, above all Herodotus. The Persians were originally an Iranian-speaking people in the region of Fars (Persis) in present-day southern Iran, who under the Achaemenid dynasty (Cyrus II, 559-530 BCE) conquered the Median Empire and within a few decades created a multiethnic empire stretching from Asia Minor through Mesopotamia and Egypt to the Indus. The Persians established Zoroastrianism as the state religion but permitted numerous local cults and practiced a tolerant religious policy (Cyrus Cylinder). Through the creation of an elaborate administrative structure (satrapies) and an efficient communication system (Royal Road), and through its syncretic culture that deliberately adopted elements of Mesopotamian, Egyptian, and other traditions, the Persian Empire was one of the most significant ancient civilizations. Beyond his untenable racial-theoretical premise and the illegitimate conclusions he draws from his – already flawed – linguistic analysis, Gobineau's account of the Persians contains many other serious factual errors. For instance, he underestimates the size of the Persian population; the Achaemenid Empire actually had 17-35 million inhabitants. Zoroastrianism was a dualistic religion (Ahura Mazda versus Ahriman), not monotheistic in the sense in which Gobineau understood the word. Gobineau's claim that the Persians were artistically incapable for racial reasons is contradicted by Persian art and architecture (Persepolis, Susa), which, though integrating Mesopotamian, Egyptian, and Greek influences, was highly developed, bore a distinctive style, and displayed high craftsmanship and aesthetic quality. Also fundamentally mistaken is Gobineau's description of Persia's decline and his interpretation of this decline as an ethnic process. The Achaemenid Empire actually persisted until its conquest by Alexander the Great in 330 BCE. Prior to this, military defeats against Greece (Marathon 490, Salamis 480 BCE), internal dynastic conflicts, and administrative overextension had contributed to the weakening of the empire. The Persian Empire remained powerful and culturally influential until the end – Alexander's successors adopted numerous Achaemenid administrative practices. Read: Albert T. Olmstead (History of the Persian Empire, 1948), Pierre Briant (From Cyrus to Alexander: A History of the Persian Empire, 2002) Joint rule of Medes and Persians thumb|The Achaemenid Empire under Cyrus (modern map) After the rule of the "southern Aryan-Zoroastrian race" was secured, Gobineau designates the Zoroastrian peoples remaining in the region – the Medes and Persians – as "Iranians." Due to their "contact with Chaldean culture," he declares the Medes the "most civilized" people, but immediately adds that they lost strength through racial mixing.Gobineau Arthur de Versuch über die Ungleichheit der Menschenracen. Dritter Band 2 1902 Stuttgart Fr. Frommann 27 In this constellation, Cyrus (ca. 600–530 BCE) emerged who, as the son of a Median princess and a Persian king, assumed rule over both peoples.Gobineau Arthur de Versuch über die Ungleichheit der Menschenracen. Dritter Band 2 1902 Stuttgart Fr. Frommann 27f Gobineau claims both tribes practiced a genuine power-sharing arrangement.Gobineau Arthur de Versuch über die Ungleichheit der Menschenracen. Dritter Band 2 1902 Stuttgart Fr. Frommann 28f Gobineau claims that Medo-Persian rule under Darius left strong marks on Assyrian culture, particularly on its religious cult, which lost its bloodthirstiness because the Persians abhorred and did not tolerate cruelty.Gobineau Arthur de Versuch über die Ungleichheit der Menschenracen. Dritter Band 2 1902 Stuttgart Fr. Frommann 29 Perhaps it was the first time, since the invention of polytheism, that prescriptions emanating from the throne had spoken of humanity. This was one of the remarkable characteristics of the new government of Asia. Arthur de Gobineau Versuch über die Ungleichheit der Menschenracen. Third volume, 1902, p. 29 A further innovation, he claims, was that the king—referred to since the Achaemenid period as King of Kings—became more "practical" and began to "attend to administration" rather than merely displaying pomp and indulging his whims.Gobineau Arthur de Versuch über die Ungleichheit der Menschenracen. Dritter Band 2 1902 Stuttgart Fr. Frommann 30 To speak truly, common sense inspires politics, alongside and sometimes a little above tumultuous passions. Until then the latter had spoken far too much. Arthur de Gobineau Versuch über die Ungleichheit der Menschenracen. Third volume, 1902, p. 30 Gobineau emphasizes the superiority of the Iranians, who subjugated "all of Lower Asia" including the kingdoms beyond the Euphrates, the Phoenician Mediterranean coast and Lydia, and finally even Egypt, which was difficult to conquer, organizing them into satrapies.Gobineau Arthur de Versuch über die Ungleichheit der Menschenracen. Dritter Band 2 1902 Stuttgart Fr. Frommann 36f thumb|Gobineau laments Persian art's lack of originality and creative merit. The image shows the Gate of All Nations in Persepolis. He sees a decline, however, in the realm of art, particularly in its originality and elegance. The monuments of the Persian period were, despite the wealth of their kings, "merely a mediocre imitation of the old Assyrian style."Gobineau Arthur de Versuch über die Ungleichheit der Menschenracen. Dritter Band 2 1902 Stuttgart Fr. Frommann 30f Let us try to find the key to this problem. We have already seen that the Aryan nation, inclined toward the positive reality of facts and not toward the disorder of imagination, is not artistic in itself. Reflective, reasoning, argumentative and reasonable, it is; comprehensive to the highest degree, it is as well; skilled at discovering the advantages of all things, even of what is most foreign to it, yes, we must also recognize in it this prerogative, one of the most fruitful of its sovereign right. But when the Aryan race is pure of all mixture with the blood of blacks, no artistic conception for it: this is what I have expounded elsewhere superabundantly. Arthur de Gobineau Versuch über die Ungleichheit der Menschenracen. Third volume, 1902, p. 32 Above all in Assyria, less so in Egypt, and only to a very limited extent in India, the rapid development of art owed itself to "racial mixing between Whites (or Aryans) and Blacks," though art here also quickly "degenerated" due to "black influence."Gobineau Arthur de Versuch über die Ungleichheit der Menschenracen. Dritter Band 2 1902 Stuttgart Fr. Frommann 32f In "predominantly black" Assyria, the white Iranians were, among other things, numerically insufficient to "elevate" through their influence the already "degenerated black art" at the time of their rule.Gobineau Arthur de Versuch über die Ungleichheit der Menschenracen. Dritter Band 2 1902 Stuttgart Fr. Frommann 34 Time and again Gobineau highlights the limited influence that the Iranians had exercised in Asia despite their racial superiority, attributing this primarily to the small size of their population. He invokes Herodotus, through whom it is reported that the armies of Xerxes (c. 519-465 BC), at the time of their crossing of the Hellespont, were led by "Persians or Medes," while the proportion of these tribes among the actual soldiers was less than 2 percent.Gobineau Arthur de Versuch über die Ungleichheit der Menschenracen. Dritter Band 2 1902 Stuttgart Fr. Frommann 34f Gobineau concludes from this that the Iranian nation, being greatly in the minority, could not possibly have been capable of "renewing the dense mass of Asian peoples."Gobineau Arthur de Versuch über die Ungleichheit der Menschenracen. Dritter Band 2 1902 Stuttgart Fr. Frommann 35 It therefore had only the prospect of a single future: to corrupt itself by soon being engulfed within them. Arthur de Gobineau Versuch über die Ungleichheit der Menschenracen. Third volume, 1902, p. 35 Gobineau bases this on the fact that the Iranians did not separate themselves from the non-Iranian masses of people either through the establishment of institutions or through religious isolation. Persian decline According to Gobineau, who relies on Herodotus in his description of the decline of the Persian Empire, Persian rule collapsed through ethnic overwhelming: the Iranians were merely "a handful of men" who were surrounded, seized, and infected with the intoxication of the "immense Assyrian spirit." The Semitic population masses absorbed the numerically inferior conquerors.Gobineau Arthur de Versuch über die Ungleichheit der Menschenracen. Dritter Band 2 1902 Stuttgart Fr. Frommann 40 According to Gobineau, the decline occurred rapidly: already under Cambyses, the son of Cyrus, the first signs of admixture with the Semitic-Hamitic element had appeared. Initially, however, the Aryan spirit had held firm—evidenced, Gobineau argues, by the famous council of the seven Persian nobles after the death of the false Smerdis, at which democracy, oligarchy, and monarchy were debated and Otanes demanded permanent freedom from royal authority for himself and his family. After "several glorious years," however, the "Semitic disorder" finally overwhelmed the Iranians. By the reign of Xerxes' son at the latest, it had become evident that the Persians had lost the strength to maintain their world-dominating position—and this only a century and a half after the conquest of Nineveh by the Medes.Gobineau Arthur de Versuch über die Ungleichheit der Menschenracen. Dritter Band 2 1902 Stuttgart Fr. Frommann 40f Persians and Greeks as brother peoples Even before concluding his section on the history of the Iranians, Gobineau inserts an additional passage in which he compares the Persians with the Greeks, portraying them as closely related yet hierarchically differentiated peoples. Both despised the rest of the world with equal contempt and treated it as objects of conquest and exploitation. They also regarded each other as barbarians, half forgetting, half neglecting their common origin. Their judgment of other peoples followed the same standard: they accused Assyrians, Egyptians, and others of lacking a sense of freedom, of weakness in misfortune, effeminacy in prosperity, and cowardice in battle. Given the present weakness of these cultures, their glorious past counted for little.Gobineau Arthur de Versuch über die Ungleichheit der Menschenracen. Dritter Band 2 1902 Stuttgart Fr. Frommann 37f Gobineau explains this concordance through the common Aryan principle, which still dominated in both peoples despite ethnic admixtures. As he discerns from Herodotus's account among other sources, they were at comparable levels of civilization and shared a similarity in their social and political fundamental conceptions.Gobineau Arthur de Versuch über die Ungleichheit der Menschenracen. Dritter Band 2 1902 Stuttgart Fr. Frommann 38 The crucial difference lay in their hierarchical position: Gobineau describes them as two brothers of different fortunes and social rank, but with the same character and tendencies. The Aryan-Iranian Persians were the elder brother of the family, ruling the world. The Greeks, by contrast, were for Gobineau the younger brother, destined one day to assume dominion. Even while the Persians still ruled, they prepared for this through a kind of isonomia vis-à-vis the ruling branch—an equality that did not yet signify full independence. The Greeks this sectionGobineau Arthur de Versuch über die Ungleichheit der Menschenracen. Dritter Band 2 1902 Stuttgart Fr. Frommann 43-105 George GroteGeorge Grote A History of Greece London Murray https://www.gutenberg.org/files/56342/56342-h/56342-h.htm 12 volumes, 1846–1856. Gobineau cites only from the first two volumes. Pierre Henri LarcherPierre-Henri Larcher 1786 Histoire d'Herodote Paris Musier 7 volumes. Gobineaus refers to the editor's/translater's foreword. Barthold Georg NiebuhrBarthold Georg Niebuhr Römische Geschichte Berlin Realschulbuchhandlung https://www.deutschestextarchiv.de/book/show/niebuhr_roemische01_1811 3 volumes, 1811-1832. Karl Otfried MüllerKarl Otfried Müller 1828 Die Etrusker Breslau Josef Max und Komp. https://archive.org/details/diedoriervierbc00mlgoog Karl Otfried Müller 1824 Die Dorier Breslau Josef Max und Komp. https://archive.org/details/dieetruskervolu00mlgoog Hecataeus of Miletus ThucydidesHistory of the Peloponnesian War, late 5th century BC HesiodTheogony, Works and Days, around 700 BC Diodorus SiculusBibliotheca Historica, 1st century BC Karl BöttigerKarl August Böttiger Ideen zur Kunst-Methologie Leipzig Arnoldische Buchhandlung https://digi.ub.uni-heidelberg.de/diglit/boettiger1836bd2?sid=aa67cb37975bfb5f101ad8fbe88fc92b 2 volumes, 1826, 1836. William McCullagh Torrens The Industrial History of Free Nations London Chapman and Hall August Friedrich PottAugust Friedrich Pott Indogermanischer Sprachstamm Ersch, Johann Samuel; Gruber, Johann Gottfried Allgemeine Encyclopädie der Wissenschaften und Künste, Section II, Part 18 Leipzig F. A. Brockhaus 1842 1-112 Karl Gottlob ZumptKarl Gottlob Zumpt 1841 Über den Stand der Bevölkerung und die Volksvermehrung im Alterthum Abhandlungen der Königlichen Akademie der Wissenschaften zu Berlin (Historisch-Philologische Klasse) Berlin 1-72 August BöckhAugust Böckh 1817 Die Staatshaushaltung der Athener Berlin Realschulbuchhandlung https://archive.org/details/in.ernet.dli.2015.80881/page/n11/mode/2up 2 volumes. Charles de ClaracCharles Othon Frédéric Jean-Baptiste de Clarac 1847 Manuel de l'histoire de l'art chez les anciens Paris Renouard https://archive.org/details/manueldelhistoi02clargoog Johann Gustav DroysenJohann Gustav Droysen 1832 Des Aischylos Werke Berlin G. Fincke https://archive.org/details/desaischyloswer00droygoog Gobineau refers to the editor's/translator's foreword. Franz Karl Movers Gobineau generally portrays the Greeks in a highly negative light, emphasizing their supposed chaos, racial mixing, and foreign influences, in contrast to the mainstream scholarly admiration for Greece prevalent in the mid-19th century. His critical view of Greece was likely shaped by his opposition to progressive political thinkers—such as the Jacobins, Rousseauists, and early socialists—who idealized the political and cultural achievements of ancient Greece. Any truly positive evaluation, he reserved for the Germanic peoples, discussed later in his work. Ancient Greek ethnogenesis Fact check: Ancient Greek ethnogenesis Gobineau constructs a threefold ethnic stratification of Greece: (1) Pre-Greek Slavic-Celtic aborigines, already mixed with "yellow" (Finno-Mongolian) elements; (2) "Semitic" (Phoenician-Canaanite) colonists who founded early states; (3) "Aryan" Hellenes (Titans/descendants) who migrated from the north, also bringing "yellow" admixtures. Southern Greece was shaped by the mixture of all three elements, with the Semitic element dominating culturally and artistically. Northern Greece remained more "Aryan" (with yellow admixture), hence militarily and practically oriented. The actual Greek ethnogenesis unfolded in a very different manner. Before roughly 2000 BCE, mainland Greece was inhabited by pre-Greek populations of uncertain origin, while Crete was home to the non-Indo-European Minoan civilization. Between about 2200 and 1900/1600 BCE, Indo-European–speaking groups—most likely arriving from the Balkans—entered the region, bringing Proto-Greek and mixing with the earlier inhabitants. During the Mycenaean period (ca. 1750–1050 BCE), a palace society developed, and the Linear B tablets demonstrate that Greek was already spoken. After the collapse of Mycenaean civilization, the so-called Dark Ages followed (ca. 1180–800 BCE); the later tradition of a "Dorian migration" is now considered highly uncertain, though population movements and regional shifts did occur. From the 8th century BCE onward, city-states emerged and a shared Greek identity gradually formed. Linguistically, Greek belongs to the Indo-European family (alongside, for example, Hittite, Persian, and Indo-Aryan languages), not to the Semitic family, though cultural contact between Greeks and Semitic peoples was continuous and significant. Gobineau's most serious errors (participation of Phoenicians/Canaanites, Slavs, and Celts in Greek ethnogenesis; interpretation of the Titans as historical "Aryans") are based partly on his uncritical reading of Greek mythographers (Hesiod, Homer, Herodotus) as historical sources—treating mythology as ethnography—and partly on etymological interpretations based more on fantasy and speculation than on methodologically sound linguistic analysis. His misrepresentation, however, is methodical. He constructs this ethnic stratification because his racial theory requires it. Greece cannot be purely Aryan—otherwise it would contradict his thesis that pure races cannot create high culture. Civilization arises through racial mixing: the Semitic element provides artistic genius, the Aryan military-political strength, the yellow practical abilities. Simultaneously, this mixture leads to degeneration, explaining Greece's later decline. Historical "facts" are subordinated to ideological necessity. Read: Robert Drews (The Coming of the Greeks, 1988), Robin Osborne (Greece in the Making, 1996), Jonathan M. Hall (Ethnic Identity in Greek Antiquity, 1997) Fact check: Chronology of Ancient Greece Gobineau dates the founding of Sicyon by Semitic colonists to 2164 BCE—a date taken uncritically from mythological king lists. In reality, although Sicyon was inhabited since the Neolithic and was part of the Mycenaean cultural sphere, it only gained political significance in the Archaic period (7th–6th centuries BCE) under the Orthagorid tyranny. Gobineau greatly overestimates Sicyon's role as "the first civilized center." This supposed Semitic founding was followed, in his scheme, by 600 years without Aryan presence until the mythical arrival of Deucalion in 1541 BCE. Greek artistic originality, he claims, lasted only from ca. 420 to 322 BCE, preceded by Semitic imitation and followed by degeneration through racial mixing. The actual chronology differs fundamentally. In the Early Bronze Age (ca. 3000–2000 BCE), pre-Greek populations inhabited the mainland; on Crete, the Minoan culture (ca. 2700–1450 BCE) developed into the Aegean's first advanced civilization. Between ca. 2200 and 1600 BCE, speakers of Proto-Greek (an Indo-European branch) entered the Greek mainland and merged with pre-Greek populations. The Mycenaean palace culture (ca. 1600–1100 BCE) was the first Greek-speaking civilization, evidenced by Linear B tablets—though this remained unknown until Schliemann's excavations in the 1870s and Ventris's decipherment of Linear B in 1952, long after Gobineau's work. After its collapse followed the Dark Ages (ca. 1100–800 BCE). The Archaic period (ca. 800–480 BCE) saw the rise of city-states, large-scale colonization, and the composition of Homer and Hesiod (ca. 750–650 BCE; Hesiod likely slightly later than Homer). The Classical epoch (480–323 BCE) encompassed the Persian Wars, the Parthenon, classical sculpture, and the great dramatists and philosophers. Gobineau's dating of the "golden age" to 420–322 BCE ignores the cultural flowering of the 6th and 5th centuries. He dates Homer and Hesiod about 150–200 years too early. Major developments such as colonization, the Olympic Games (traditionally dated to 776 BCE), and the Persian Wars do not fit his scheme. His claims about ethnic migrations and "racial mixing" are speculative and based on uncritical readings of mythological genealogies and pseudo-linguistic etymologies rather than archaeological or linguistic evidence. Read: Oswyn Murray (Early Greece, 1980), John Boardman et al. (eds., The Oxford History of Greece and the Hellenistic World, 1991), Sarah B. Pomeroy et al. (Ancient Greece, 1999) Gobineau's account of Greek history begins in "primordial times" (by which he likely means the Bronze Age), when the population of the southern Balkan Peninsula was, in his assessment, "half Semitic, half indigenous." In a footnote, he lists examples of autochthonous peoples including the Pelasgians, Leleges, Curetes, Caucones, Aones, Temmices, Hyantes, Thracian Boeotians, Teleboans, Ephyrians, and Phlegyans. The primary sources from which Gobineau draws—having studied them only through secondary sources—include Herodot, Hesiod, Thucydides, Strabo, and other ancient chroniclers and poets. At this point, Gobineau postpones a "racial" assessment of these alleged aboriginal inhabitants, promising readers to address this question in the following book. However, he subsequently reveals that these were already degenerate white-yellow mixed peoples, whose white component derived from Celts and Slavs who had intermixed with Uralic (yellow) peoples during their migration from their Siberian homeland along the northern shores of the Black Sea and reached Greece from the north.Gobineau Arthur de Versuch über die Ungleichheit der Menschenracen. Dritter Band 2 1902 Stuttgart Fr. Frommann 43, 50f thumb|left|The theater, dating probably to the 3rd century BCE, is the best-preserved architectural monument from ancient Sicyon. To the Semites he attributes the founding of the kingdom of Sicyon (2164 BCE), which he calls "the first civilized site in the land."Gobineau Arthur de Versuch über die Ungleichheit der Menschenracen. Dritter Band 2 1902 Stuttgart Fr. Frommann 43-45 Argos, Thebes, and Athens followed later.Gobineau Arthur de Versuch über die Ungleichheit der Menschenracen. Dritter Band 2 1902 Stuttgart Fr. Frommann 44 Gobineau designates these Semitic colonists as both "colonists of Hamito-Semitic race" and "Canaanites," specifying that they came not from Egypt (which he maintains did not colonize Greece) but from Phoenicia and Canaan.Gobineau Arthur de Versuch über die Ungleichheit der Menschenracen. Dritter Band 2 1902 Stuttgart Fr. Frommann 55-57 According to Gobineau, these Semitic peoples were driven from their Levantine homeland by Hebrew and Arabic invasions, which he collectively terms "Chaldean" (chaldéennes) invasions of various periods.Gobineau Arthur de Versuch über die Ungleichheit der Menschenracen. Dritter Band 2 1902 Stuttgart Fr. Frommann 58 He sees this Phoenician-Canaanite origin confirmed in the names of the Greek "Canaanite heroes" themselves—a catalogue that includes Inachus, Azeus, Phegeus, Niobe, Agenor, Cadmus, Codrus, Cecrops, Danaus, Ogyges, and Phoroneus.Gobineau Arthur de Versuch über die Ungleichheit der Menschenracen. Dritter Band 2 1902 Stuttgart Fr. Frommann 44, 55f thumb|upright|Gobineau designates the Titan Prometheus as the purely Aryan forefather of the Greeks. For Gobineau, the Titans were the first Aryans in Greece. These "violent and irresistible" conquerors had already occupied mountainous regions in northern Greece early on and made such a strong impression on the indigenous inhabitants that they classified them as gods due to their evident superiority—a phenomenon Gobineau considers characteristic of many "primitive peoples."Gobineau Arthur de Versuch über die Ungleichheit der Menschenracen. Dritter Band 2 1902 Stuttgart Fr. Frommann 49f Gobineau identifies the Titans as Aryan by equating their father Uranus, whom he designates as the "primordial god of the Aryans," with the Indian deity Varuna.Gobineau Arthur de Versuch über die Ungleichheit der Menschenracen. Dritter Band 2 1902 Stuttgart Fr. Frommann 47-49 Deucalion: Greece born of mixture thumb|left|In Ovid's Metamorphoses, Deucalion and Pyrrha repopulate the earth after the flood by throwing stones over their shoulders. According to Gobineau, the first descendant of the Titans to descend into southern Greece was Deucalion.Gobineau Arthur de Versuch über die Ungleichheit der Menschenracen. Dritter Band 2 1902 Stuttgart Fr. Frommann 49f This conqueror, who came from the north together with local, non-Aryan troops (Leleges, Curetes), settled in Thessaly in 1541 BCE.Gobineau Arthur de Versuch über die Ungleichheit der Menschenracen. Dritter Band 2 1902 Stuttgart Fr. Frommann 44f As the son of the Aryan Titan Prometheus and Clymene, the obviously non-Aryan "daughter of Oceanus," Deucalion, the first Greek (Hellene), is already a mixed-race individual for Gobineau. With Pyrrha, a daughter of the autochthonous Pandora, he fathered Hellen, who in turn fathered Dorus, Aeolus, and Xuthus with the (presumably) autochthonous Orseis—the eponyms of the Greek tribal groups (Dorians, Aeolians, and through Xuthus' sons Achaeus and Ion: Achaeans and Ionians). The admixture with non-Aryan blood that occurred already at the founding of the Greek people is, for Gobineau, decisive for the character of the historical Greeks.Gobineau Arthur de Versuch über die Ungleichheit der Menschenracen. Dritter Band 2 1902 Stuttgart Fr. Frommann 46f Northern strength, southern brilliance Gobineau reports that northern and southern Greece differed markedly in culture as a result of different racial compositions of the population, placing the dividing line at Thebes.Gobineau Arthur de Versuch über die Ungleichheit der Menschenracen. Dritter Band 2 1902 Stuttgart Fr. Frommann 50, 53 The peoples who settled in the north with Deucalion united "to a quite particular degree the traits of the Aryan character" and were distinguished by boldness, "warlike spirit," "devotion to loyalty," and "noble sentiments." As evidence for these qualities, he cites heroes of the Iliad such as Achilles and Pyrrhus.Gobineau Arthur de Versuch über die Ungleichheit der Menschenracen. Dritter Band 2 1902 Stuttgart Fr. Frommann 51f Energy was the trait of this family. This virtue, when intelligence illuminates and guides it, is everywhere destined in advance for sovereign power. Arthur de Gobineau Versuch über die Ungleichheit der Menschenracen. Third volume, 1902, p. 52 Northern Greece, however, was less productive in the fields of art, literature, and historiography, with Pindar being the only exception he mentions.Gobineau Arthur de Versuch über die Ungleichheit der Menschenracen. Dritter Band 2 1902 Stuttgart Fr. Frommann 52f All the higher here—due to the yellow blood component—was the development of "practical genius," the "aptitude for the useful."Gobineau Arthur de Versuch über die Ungleichheit der Menschenracen. Dritter Band 2 1902 Stuttgart Fr. Frommann 53 Gobineau also associates the north of Greece in certain passages with the tribe of the Dorians, descendants of Deucalion's grandson Dorus, who mythically came from the north (Dorian migration) and who, according to Gobineau, settled near Olympus and Parnassus, but later descended as far as the Peloponnese.Gobineau Arthur de Versuch über die Ungleichheit der Menschenracen. Dritter Band 2 1902 Stuttgart Fr. Frommann 46, 77 Among the peoples of southern Greece, Gobineau sees, alongside Arianism, a strong influence of "Semitic blood." As their archetypal representative he names Odysseus, in whom he sees as typically Aryan traits wealth of knowledge, intelligence, and tenacity, and—as a result of the Semitic component—dangerousness, cunning, as well as the ability and willingness to deceive and betray others. In his artistic talent too (the "masterpiece" of the self-carved marriage bed) and his eloquence, "the Semitic blood speaks from him."Gobineau Arthur de Versuch über die Ungleichheit der Menschenracen. Dritter Band 2 1902 Stuttgart Fr. Frommann 54 Just as the Dorians represent the north, for Gobineau the Ionians - descendants of Deucalion's grandson Xuthus, who migrated from the north to Attica and the Peloponnese at an early stage - embody the Semiticized south.Gobineau Arthur de Versuch über die Ungleichheit der Menschenracen. Dritter Band 2 1902 Stuttgart Fr. Frommann 46, 77 This Aryan-Semitic mixture was responsible for Greece's artistic glory, while the northern Greek population secured the country's external power.Gobineau Arthur de Versuch über die Ungleichheit der Menschenracen. Dritter Band 2 1902 Stuttgart Fr. Frommann 55 Gobineau regrets that the boundary between the Semitically dominated south and the Aryan-dominated north was progressively pushed further northward over time, so that even Thessaly was eventually "tainted" and the "ancient traditions" survived only in Macedonia and Epirus.Gobineau Arthur de Versuch über die Ungleichheit der Menschenracen. Dritter Band 2 1902 Stuttgart Fr. Frommann 82-84 Gobineau's attack on Greek originality and independence Gobineau's overall judgment on Greece is that it possessed no genuinely European creativity and was not an independent civilization, but essentially part of the Asiatic-Semitic world. As "Asiatic," Gobineau designates in this context the "compromise" that emerged in the Near East after the end of the "antagonism of the Euphrates and the Nile" – after Egypt had "fallen to the rank of a province united with the Achaemenid states."Gobineau Arthur de Versuch über die Ungleichheit der Menschenracen. Dritter Band 2 1902 Stuttgart Fr. Frommann 61 This represents a frontal assault on the educated bourgeois self-understanding of the 19th century, which defined itself through classical antiquity, and with it he challenges – without naming names – the entire European tradition of philhellenism since the Renaissance, which had regarded Greece as the cradle of civilization (Gibbon), the source of art (Lessing), philosophy (Hegel), and democracy (Mill), as well as an aesthetic (Winckelmann), educational (Wilhelm von Humboldt), and moral ideal (Goethe). Gobineau considers Greece to be epigonal, eclectic, bastardized, orientalized, and overrated, advancing racial-historical, as well as cultural and political-critical arguments to support this view. First, he argues that Greece had no Aryan prehistory but was predominantly of Semitic origin, and that none of the peoples he identifies in Greece – Hellenes, aborigines, Thracians, Philistines, Cretans and other islanders, Arabs, Hebrews, Phoenicians, and Libyans – were racially pure. To some he attributes yellow blood elements, to others even more or less significant black blood components.Gobineau Arthur de Versuch über die Ungleichheit der Menschenracen. Dritter Band 2 1902 Stuttgart Fr. Frommann 44, 59f, 63 From this racial mixture, Gobineau directly infers Greece's lack of cultural originality: Did there exist in the world a third civilization to take the place of the ancient champions? By no means: Greece did not represent, in relation to Assyria, an original culture like the Egyptian, and although its intelligence had very special nuances, most of the elements composing it were found, with the same meaning and the same value, among the Semitic peoples of the Mediterranean coast. This is a truth that needs no demonstration. Arthur de Gobineau Versuch über die Ungleichheit der Menschenracen. Third volume, 1902, pp. 61f Second, he points to the Greek pantheon and to the "dogmas, Asiatic religious practices, and monstrously extravagant ideas" that "came from the neighboring coasts" and had obviously nothing to do with the "Aryan simplicity to which their pious, virile ancestors had once professed allegiance."Gobineau Arthur de Versuch über die Ungleichheit der Menschenracen. Dritter Band 2 1902 Stuttgart Fr. Frommann 62 Furthermore, he claims that Greece produced no original creations in the artistic realm either, but copied from Assyria. Details are discussed below. Third, Gobineau saw no original creations in Greece's political systems either, claiming they followed the Phoenician model.Gobineau Arthur de Versuch über die Ungleichheit der Menschenracen. Dritter Band 2 1902 Stuttgart Fr. Frommann 82 The central element was the absolutism of the "patrie" – an abstract state entity demanding total submission of the individual.Gobineau Arthur de Versuch über die Ungleichheit der Menschenracen. Dritter Band 2 1902 Stuttgart Fr. Frommann 77-81 The various forms of government (aristocracy, timocracy, democracy) as well as the permanently threatening tyranny – characterized by Gobineau as an "inevitable accident" – were all variants of this Semitic basic model.Gobineau Arthur de Versuch über die Ungleichheit der Menschenracen. Dritter Band 2 1902 Stuttgart Fr. Frommann 86 The constant alternation between these forms and the political instability itself proved the Asiatic-Semitic nature of the Greek state system.Gobineau Arthur de Versuch über die Ungleichheit der Menschenracen. Dritter Band 2 1902 Stuttgart Fr. Frommann 88f As a further argument against Greece's political independence, he advances the claim that Greece was comprehensively politically dependent on the Persian Empire.Gobineau Arthur de Versuch über die Ungleichheit der Menschenracen. Dritter Band 2 1902 Stuttgart Fr. Frommann 92 Greek embassies constantly traveled to Susa to obtain Persian decisions; even satraps were obeyed: "the silent republics obeyed Tissaphernes." This was explained by ethnic kinship and an "almost identical civilization" – Greece was ultimately "an Asiatic country" whose politics were decided at the Persian court.Gobineau Arthur de Versuch über die Ungleichheit der Menschenracen. Dritter Band 2 1902 Stuttgart Fr. Frommann 61f, 92 Details are discussed below. Aryan dominance in early Greek history Gobineau postulates three major periods for ancient Greek history: first, the purely Aryan "Age of the Titans"; second, the "Heroic Age" with continuing Aryan influence but beginning "Semitization"; and third, a period of progressive Semitization, which he describes as an age of decline.Gobineau Arthur de Versuch über die Ungleichheit der Menschenracen. Dritter Band 2 1902 Stuttgart Fr. Frommann 75f The first period, which he characterizes as "much purer, much more Aryan," serves as both contrast and benchmark for the later decline through racial mixing.Gobineau Arthur de Versuch über die Ungleichheit der Menschenracen. Dritter Band 2 1902 Stuttgart Fr. Frommann 107 However, he has little to say about this Age of the Titans—apparently for lack of sources—and turns quickly in his essay to the Heroic Age. Its beginning, marked for him by Deucalion and the onset of racial mixing, he dates to 1541 BCE.Gobineau Arthur de Versuch über die Ungleichheit der Menschenracen. Dritter Band 2 1902 Stuttgart Fr. Frommann 107, 109 This period was initially characterized by "numerous struggles between the aborigines, the Semitic colonists long established and arriving daily, and the Aryan invaders."Gobineau Arthur de Versuch über die Ungleichheit der Menschenracen. Dritter Band 2 1902 Stuttgart Fr. Frommann 107f The incoming "Aryan" Hellenes were overwhelmed by the numerical and civilizational superiority of the already settled populations and were either driven out or mixed partly with the aborigines, partly with the Semitic settlers, from which the various Greek tribes (Ionians, Dorians, Aeolians, Achaeans, etc.) emerged as separate entities through different local mixing processes. Through the invasion of the Heraclids and Dorians, the "Aryan principle" (though already "Mongolized," as Gobineau notes) temporarily regained supremacy, but ultimately succumbed again to Semitic influence.Gobineau Arthur de Versuch über die Ungleichheit der Menschenracen. Dritter Band 2 1902 Stuttgart Fr. Frommann 108 Aristocratic hierarchy and embryonic caste systems thumb|Odysseus's difficulty fending off the suitors reflects, for Gobineau, Aryan rejection of absolute power. In early Greek history Gobineau still sees an Aryan dominance; this became visible in three elements:Gobineau Arthur de Versuch über die Ungleichheit der Menschenracen. Dritter Band 2 1902 Stuttgart Fr. Frommann 63 These elements are: governmental thought, military aptitude, a very particular kind of literary genius. All three emerge from the union of those two Aryan instincts, reason and the pursuit of the useful. Arthur de Gobineau Versuch über die Ungleichheit der Menschenracen. Third volume, 1902, pp. 63f Gobineau assumes that in the Greek heroic age and beyond – as in other Aryan-dominated civilizations – there existed a "feudal hierarchy" with a "monarchical government limited by the authority of family heads, by the power of tradition, and by religious prescription." Ultimately, nothing was as important to the Aryans as "personal freedom."Gobineau Arthur de Versuch über die Ungleichheit der Menschenracen. Dritter Band 2 1902 Stuttgart Fr. Frommann 64 As an example of a ruler thus limited in his power, he cites, besides Agamemnon, especially Odysseus, whose authority during the confrontation with Penelope's suitors moved on "slippery ground."Gobineau Arthur de Versuch über die Ungleichheit der Menschenracen. Dritter Band 2 1902 Stuttgart Fr. Frommann 64f thumb|Greek hero on chariot He emphasizes that this time of Greek heroes fighting in Aryan chariots was also the age of epic poetry (Iliad, Odyssey).Gobineau Arthur de Versuch über die Ungleichheit der Menschenracen. Dritter Band 2 1902 Stuttgart Fr. Frommann 65 The Greek warriors appeared tall in stature, white and blond. Their eyes carried their arrogance into the azure, and this memory remained so dominant in the thinking of subsequent generations that when black polytheism, with the increasing influx of Semitic immigrations, had invaded all regions as well as all consciences and had substituted its sanctuaries for the simple places of prayer with which the ancestors had once been content, the highest expression of beauty, of majestic power, was for the Olympians nothing other than the reproduction of the Aryan type: blue eyes, blond hair, white complexion, tall, graceful, slender stature. Arthur de Gobineau Versuch über die Ungleichheit der Menschenracen. Third volume, 1902, p. 66 The superiority of the Greek Aryans is also evidenced by the fact that they – for example the Titans and the early heroes Diomedes, Heracles, and Theseus, whom Gobineau designates as "Deucalionids" – had an extraordinarily high regard for the prerogatives of strength and were even considered gods.Gobineau Arthur de Versuch über die Ungleichheit der Menschenracen. Dritter Band 2 1902 Stuttgart Fr. Frommann 66f He also attributes to them a strong sense of their Aryan purity:Gobineau Arthur de Versuch über die Ungleichheit der Menschenracen. Dritter Band 2 1902 Stuttgart Fr. Frommann 67 The idea of racial preeminence existed as completely among the primitive Greeks as among all other white families. It is an instinct that is found truly intact only in this circle, and which becomes altered there through mixture with the yellow and black races, to which it was always foreign. Arthur de Gobineau Versuch über die Ungleichheit der Menschenracen. Third volume, 1902, pp. 61f Although the scepter was in principle subject to election, this procedure particularly favored members of the racially purest and therefore most honored families:Gobineau Arthur de Versuch über die Ungleichheit der Menschenracen. Dritter Band 2 1902 Stuttgart Fr. Frommann 68 However that may be, the aristocratic idea proved extremely strong and powerful among the Aryan Greeks. The classification of citizens was made only according to the value of each lineage; individual virtues came afterward. Arthur de Gobineau Versuch über die Ungleichheit der Menschenracen. Third volume, 1902, p. 69 Gobineau even reports caste-like structures in which, for example, certain priestly families married only among themselves, which however did not progress beyond an embryonic form and did not achieve the great significance they had in India. He will then explain the early end of this "Golden Age" from the "fact" that Greece failed to develop a full caste system.Gobineau Arthur de Versuch über die Ungleichheit der Menschenracen. Dritter Band 2 1902 Stuttgart Fr. Frommann 68f Domestic authority and slavery in heroic Greece Fact check: Slavery in Ancient Greece Gobineau claims Greek slavery was based on a "natural law": Whites were "made only for independence and domination," while originally only Yellows and Blacks should have been enslaved. Slave treatment was allegedly mild, with light work and educational access. This supposedly humane slavery proved Aryan superiority: the master ruled like a "feudal lord," but with dignity – in contrast to the brutality of later Semiticized Greeks. In reality, slavery was economically central: estimates suggest that 25–40% of the population of Classical Athens were slaves — roughly 80,000–100,000, compared to about 30,000–40,000 male citizens. Slaves formed a crucial labor force in agriculture, crafts, household service, and especially in the Laurion silver mines. Xenophon's Oikonomikos and Poroi offer practical advice on household management and revenue, though not "profit-maximization manuals" in a modern sense. Slaves were rightless in a political and legal sense; Aristotle called them "living tools." Torture of slaves for evidence was legally permitted, and sexual exploitation was widespread. Conditions varied enormously: household slaves or pedagogues could enjoy relative stability, while mine slaves endured extremely harsh and often lethal labor. Aristocrats did not perform manual labor themselves, though they were active in politics, military leadership, and estate management. Gobineau's account anachronistically projects medieval feudalism backward. Greek slavery was chattel slavery – slaves were buyable, sellable. Crucially: slavery was not a racial but cultural category ("Hellenes vs. Barbarians"). Slaves were Greeks, Thracians, Scythians, Anatolians. Gobineau's gravest error is his romanticized picture of mild slavery. He follows the Homeric epics (Eumaeus) but practices cherry picking: Georg Grote, whom he cites, is ignored; likewise Thucydides, Aristotle, Aristophanes, and Xenophon, who described slavery's brutality and cynicism. Read: Yvon Garlan (Slavery in Ancient Greece, 1988), Nick Fisher (Slavery in Classical Greece, 1993), Peter Alan Hunt (Ancient Greek and Roman Slavery, 2017) With the high expectations of the Aryan Greeks, who wanted not only to "be free, honored, admired" but also to "command as much as possible," Gobineau then also explains the existence of Slavery in Greece.Gobineau Arthur de Versuch über die Ungleichheit der Menschenracen. Dritter Band 2 1902 Stuttgart Fr. Frommann 69 If one reflects that the primitive Greek city comprised a nation, a particular tribe, and that this nation, this tribe, considering itself unique in its kind, saw the world only in itself, one discovers in this fundamental prescription the proclamation of the following principle: 'The white man is made only for independence and domination; he must not, in the execution of his acts, submit to the direction of others.' Arthur de Gobineau Versuch über die Ungleichheit der Menschenracen. Third volume, 1902, p. 70 Gobineau explicitly designates this "law," which he claims is recognized in all white civilizations, as a "natural law." However, he notes that white peoples were often unaware of their kinship to other white peoples and therefore did not always mutually recognize their claims to freedom.Gobineau Arthur de Versuch über die Ungleichheit der Menschenracen. Dritter Band 2 1902 Stuttgart Fr. Frommann 70f He distinguishes from slaves the Helots and Penestae, who as serfs and rent-paying peasants lived not in the warriors' dwellings like slaves, but under their own roofs.Gobineau Arthur de Versuch über die Ungleichheit der Menschenracen. Dritter Band 2 1902 Stuttgart Fr. Frommann 71f Above them stood "a kind of bourgeoisie" (Perrhaebi, Magnetes, Perioeci), "equally excluded from the exercise of political rights, but better treated and wealthier than the class of peasants." The resident foreigners too were subject to Hellenic supremacy.Gobineau Arthur de Versuch über die Ungleichheit der Menschenracen. Dritter Band 2 1902 Stuttgart Fr. Frommann 72 thumb|Clytemnestra after killing her sleeping husband, Agamemnon The household was, according to Gobineau, characterized by the fact that the "warrior" was "king" within it, limited only by the fact that his "Aryan companion, honored by all and by himself," could "speak freely" even before him. As an example of Aryan pride in such a wife, he cites Clytemnestra, for whom "passive obedience was not made" and who did not hesitate to punish her husband when he wounded her feelings – Gobineau here alludes to the murder of Agamemnon.Gobineau Arthur de Versuch über die Ungleichheit der Menschenracen. Dritter Band 2 1902 Stuttgart Fr. Frommann 72 The children, by contrast, were subject to paternal will "even unto death" as long as they had not attained their own "domestic sovereignty." The slaves, who entered the household either through purchase, exchange, or war captivity, were indeed unfree, but well treated and "more subjects than abandoned to all the whims of the owners."Gobineau Arthur de Versuch über die Ungleichheit der Menschenracen. Dritter Band 2 1902 Stuttgart Fr. Frommann 73 Since the Greeks had little "understanding of what is profitable" and themselves gladly worked in household, garden, and livestock keeping, the work burden for slaves was light and their existence overall "tolerably pleasant."Gobineau Arthur de Versuch über die Ungleichheit der Menschenracen. Dritter Band 2 1902 Stuttgart Fr. Frommann 73f They even participated in the master's educational pursuits.Gobineau Arthur de Versuch über die Ungleichheit der Menschenracen. Dritter Band 2 1902 Stuttgart Fr. Frommann 74f Except in cases of exceptional problems with character or sanity, the master generally treated his slaves mildly and occasionally even took them as "counselor."Gobineau Arthur de Versuch über die Ungleichheit der Menschenracen. Dritter Band 2 1902 Stuttgart Fr. Frommann 75 Among the real privileges enjoyed by the master of the house were "all honorary prerogatives," such as that of "offering sacrifices" as "priest of the hearth," and as defender of the community to "participate in the general freedom and the respect" paid to all citizens of the polis.Gobineau Arthur de Versuch über die Ungleichheit der Menschenracen. Dritter Band 2 1902 Stuttgart Fr. Frommann 75 Thus the Aryan Greek, sovereign in his home, free man in the public square, true feudal lord, dominated without reserve his entourage, children, serfs, and bourgeois. Arthur de Gobineau Versuch über die Ungleichheit der Menschenracen. Third volume, 1902, p. 75 The decline of Greece: Religious corruption According to Gobineau, the decline of Greece began with the onset of "Asiatic immigrations," that is, the immigration of Semitic and Hamitic peoples who had fled Chaldean (Hebrew, Arab) conquests of their settlement areas in the Levant and Mesopotamia or had become caught in a chain reaction of displacement.Gobineau Arthur de Versuch über die Ungleichheit der Menschenracen. Dritter Band 2 1902 Stuttgart Fr. Frommann 58, 75f Gobineau hesitates to commit to dating these events but suggests that they occurred well before the "phenomena of decline" he will subsequently describe; however, events that could have served as push factors for the migratory movement he claims would include the Israelite conquest of Canaan and the Chaldean conquests in Mesopotamia (13th-10th century BC).Gobineau Arthur de Versuch über die Ungleichheit der Menschenracen. Dritter Band 2 1902 Stuttgart Fr. Frommann 77 Fact check: Greek religion Gobineau distinguishes three religious phases in Greece: first, an early Aryan religion with veneration of Varuna/Ouranos; second, the Titan phase with an already altered but still spiritualistic Aryan religion; and third, "Semiticization" with radical transformation through imported religious ideas and countless sanctuaries. This supposed development from Aryan monotheism/simple polytheism to "black polytheism" serves as his proof of cultural decline through racial mixing. In reality, Greek religion was a polytheistic system with Indo-European roots that venerated anthropomorphic deities and was closely tied to polis identity, rituals, and myths. Only some philosophers later developed more abstract conceptions, which however did not shape ritual practice. Central deities like Zeus derive from Indo-European traditions, while others—such as Athena—likely have pre-Greek origins. The pantheon integrated Minoan-Mycenaean elements and Near Eastern motifs during the Orientalizing period. Cults like Adonis show such influences, while other mysteries remain Greek developments. Overall, a distinctive synthesis of various traditions emerged. Gobineau's account is largely fiction without archaeological or textual basis. Greek religion developed neither from monotheism, nor were its polytheism or main deities imported from Semitic sources. Gobineau misused reputable sources like Herodotus, Grote, and Müller by reading mythological genealogies as ethnic history and interpreting everything through his racist ideology. Read: Walter Burkert (Greek Religion, 1985), Jon D. Mikalson (Ancient Greek Religion, 2004), Martin L. West (Indo-European Poetry and Myth, 2007) The first consequence of the "Semiticization" of Greece was, according to Gobineau, a radical religious transformation. While the "simple Aryan notions" had already been "altered" by the time of the Titans, the beliefs that followed them were "still quite spiritualistic."Gobineau Arthur de Versuch über die Ungleichheit der Menschenracen. Dritter Band 2 1902 Stuttgart Fr. Frommann 76 With the Semites, however, "black polytheism" came to Greece—a corrupted polytheistic cult, as Gobineau calls it; in place of the "simple places of prayer with which the ancestors had formerly contented themselves," there appeared "sanctuaries in infinite number" and "the most extravagant rites."Gobineau Arthur de Versuch über die Ungleichheit der Menschenracen. Dritter Band 2 1902 Stuttgart Fr. Frommann 66, 76 Gobineau scoffs: In the schools, this fever of idolatry is called the dawn of civilization. Arthur de Gobineau Versuch über die Ungleichheit der Menschenracen. Third volume, 1902, p. 76 He considers the religion of the ancient Greeks to be imported, for they professedly held a higher opinion of the beliefs of their Asiatic neighbors than of the "Aryan simplicity once practiced by their pious, male ancestors."Gobineau Arthur de Versuch über die Ungleichheit der Menschenracen. Dritter Band 2 1902 Stuttgart Fr. Frommann 62 Through "white" reason and logic, Greek cult proved more spiritualistic—guided by the rational mind—than the seemingly mystical but actually sense-driven religious practices of the Assyrians and Phoenicians.Gobineau Arthur de Versuch über die Ungleichheit der Menschenracen. Dritter Band 2 1902 Stuttgart Fr. Frommann 101 Due to Semitic dominance, however, spiritualism among the Greeks remained overall rather weak, and the "sacred mysteries practiced in the temples" represented for Gobineau another example of imported religious materialism.Gobineau Arthur de Versuch über die Ungleichheit der Menschenracen. Dritter Band 2 1902 Stuttgart Fr. Frommann 102 The decline of Greece: Political decay In his essay, Gobineau does not treat the topic of Greek politics in a unified manner but strategically divides his material into two units presented in separate chapters. In Chapter 3 of Book 4, he analyzes Greek politics structurally and systematically: the tyranny of the patrie concept, recurring cycles between aristocracy and tyranny, Greece's fundamental political weakness, and the connection between political despotism and moral corruption. Chapter 4 then provides the chronological-causal "explanation": Gobineau precisely dates the duration of different governmental forms (heroic monarchy 800 years, Athenian aristocracy 245 years, democracy effectively only about 85 years) and links their increasing instability to progressive "Semitic" racial mixture. This division is rhetorically calculated: by first describing the political pathologies and only afterward presenting his racist interpretation, he makes the latter appear as the necessary solution to a previously established puzzle. The symptoms (Chapter 3) seem to demand the diagnosis (Chapter 4)—a pseudo-scientific argumentation in two steps. In the following summary, Gobineau's two-part division is not maintained; instead, his material is organized thematically for ease of reading. His goal here is to demonstrate, using the Greeks as an example, "what terrible agitation the increasing mixture of races brings to the destinies of a society."Gobineau Arthur de Versuch über die Ungleichheit der Menschenracen. Dritter Band 2 1902 Stuttgart Fr. Frommann 107 Fact check: Greek politics Gobineau interpreted Greek constitutional history as a racially determined process. He posited an early "Aryan" phase of limited monarchy, followed by demographic heterogenization through alleged "Semitization," which supposedly produced a drive toward absolutism without achieving stable order. Instead, an abstract "patrie" emerged, to which citizens were totally subordinated. The oscillation between aristocracy, tyranny, and democracy appeared to him as pure chaos. For Gobineau, this was proof that racial mixing led to dysfunctional hybridity—neither "Aryan freedom" nor "Semitic order." This interpretation contradicts historical evidence. The political systems of ancient Greece were extraordinarily diverse. Each polis developed its own constitution, shaped by local conditions, social conflict, and economic change. Strong civic loyalty emerged organically. The polis was not an abstract tyrannical entity but the community of citizens itself; in democracies especially, the citizens were the polis. Political development did not follow a chaotic pattern but proceeded in identifiable phases. Early monarchies (8th century BCE) were widely replaced by aristocratic oligarchies. Tyranny arose in the 7th and 6th centuries from social tensions but was usually episodic. Democratic systems developed primarily in the 5th century, most prominently in Athens. At the same time, very different regimes coexisted: Sparta’s authoritarian dual kingship, Athens' extensive citizen participation, and oligarchic systems elsewhere. This diversity reflects geographic fragmentation and distinct historical trajectories. In democratic poleis, political rights such as isegoria (freedom of speech) and isonomia (equality before the law) were real. Athenian democracy offered an unusually high level of participation by ancient standards. Greece's relationship with Persia was likewise far from submissive: the Persian Wars demonstrate sustained resistance, while diplomacy was pragmatic rather than servile. Although Gobineau relied on respected sources such as George Grote, he read them through the lens of his racist ideology. Political conflicts became racial struggles, and institutional change a symptom of supposed "blood mixing." Read: John K. Davies (Democracy and Classical Greece), :w:Mogens Herman Hansen, Thomas Heine Nielsen (eds., An Inventory of Archaic and Classical Poleis, 2004), Mogens Herman Hansen (Polis, 2006) Tyranny of the "patrie" The second consequence of the "Semiticization" of Greece, to which he devotes more attention than to the religious one, is for Gobineau the political. The "old monarchical regime," the kingship that "had been brought into proper balance with great individual freedom through the harmony of public powers," comes to an end. This form of government no longer suited the "passionate, unreflective temperament incapable of moderation of the mixed race then produced." Freedom was thereby maintained only in appearance.Gobineau Arthur de Versuch über die Ungleichheit der Menschenracen. Dritter Band 2 1902 Stuttgart Fr. Frommann 77 Instead of balance, they wanted excess. The genius of Shem drove toward complete absolutism. Arthur de Gobineau Versuch über die Ungleichheit der Menschenracen. Third volume, 1902, p. 78 However, the Semites, "accustomed to violent seizures of power and republican forms," were supposedly not prepared to recognize an institution that derived its origin "from the free choice of the people," nor were they willing to "submit to the regularity of dynastic hereditary succession" that followed from it. A monarchy with absolute royal power, as the Semites desired it, in turn contradicted the "liberal traditions of the Aryans."Gobineau Arthur de Versuch über die Ungleichheit der Menschenracen. Dritter Band 2 1902 Stuttgart Fr. Frommann 78 The compromise was then the following: In Greece, therefore, they conceived of creating a fictitious person, the patrie, and they ordered the citizen, by everything most sacred and fearful that man can imagine, by law, prejudice, and the prestige of public opinion, to sacrifice to this abstraction his tastes, his ideas, his habits, even his most intimate relationships, even his most natural affections, and this abnegation of every day, of every moment, was only the small change of that other obligation which consisted in giving, at a sign, without permitting oneself a murmur, one's dignity, one's fortune and one's life, as soon as this same patrie was deemed to demand them. Arthur de Gobineau Versuch über die Ungleichheit der Menschenracen. Third volume, 1902, pp. 78f To this construct, which Gobineau disparagingly calls "pure theory," the citizens of Greece were then subjected with the greatest radicalism, even into their private affairs, so that no freedom whatsoever existed for them.Gobineau Arthur de Versuch über die Ungleichheit der Menschenracen. Dritter Band 2 1902 Stuttgart Fr. Frommann 79f, 81 The only compensations for this extreme "self-denial" consisted in the fact that everyone could say of himself, "delirious with pride," that he bore a "magnificent name," such as that of a citizen of Athens, that they could "openly flatter themselves" with being "subject to no man," and that the laws they obeyed "did not originate from abroad."Gobineau Arthur de Versuch über die Ungleichheit der Menschenracen. Dritter Band 2 1902 Stuttgart Fr. Frommann 80 Gobineau emphasizes the assertion that abstract fictions like the "patrie" are worse tyrants than any personal despot, for through their abstract nature and structural incapacity for guilt, every arbitrary action is legitimized, while personal tyrants are vulnerable and accountable and can be appeased.Gobineau Arthur de Versuch über die Ungleichheit der Menschenracen. Dritter Band 2 1902 Stuttgart Fr. Frommann 81 Cycles of aristocratic power and tyranny thumb|upright|Pisistratus, tyrant in Athens in the 6th century BC Since the "patrie" could not speak and command, it needed representatives. To appease the Aryans, it was proposed to entrust "the supreme authority to the noblest families of the state," that is, to aristocratic bodies, which however exercised "absolute power," so that the government of the Greek communities ultimately "formed itself completely on the model of the Phoenician cities."Gobineau Arthur de Versuch über die Ungleichheit der Menschenracen. Dritter Band 2 1902 Stuttgart Fr. Frommann 81f, 84 Gobineau then explains that a high danger of instability was inherent in the division of power—a danger that was countered by concentrating power in the hands of one man.Gobineau Arthur de Versuch über die Ungleichheit der Menschenracen. Dritter Band 2 1902 Stuttgart Fr. Frommann 84f The "constant state of rivalry among the communities" had brought the "fatherland into danger"—a crisis that could only be "confronted" when "a single citizen, willy-nilly, drew governmental activity to himself."Gobineau Arthur de Versuch über die Ungleichheit der Menschenracen. Dritter Band 2 1902 Stuttgart Fr. Frommann 85 Thus tyranny arose inevitably. Tyranny—such as that of Pisistratus—was "nothing more than the exercise of the rights with which the fatherland remained endowed at all times." Although the Greek peoples found in tyranny "power excessive beyond all measure, arbitrary, degrading," criticized and cursed it, they did not rebel against the absolutist principle itself, which Gobineau explains by their Semitic blood component.Gobineau Arthur de Versuch über die Ungleichheit der Menschenracen. Dritter Band 2 1902 Stuttgart Fr. Frommann 86-88 Moreover, the tyrants they so abhorred had occasionally governed with "happy restraint" and with "mildness and wisdom." Nevertheless, their rule was often ended violently, with another tyrant immediately following the deposed one.Gobineau Arthur de Versuch über die Ungleichheit der Menschenracen. Dritter Band 2 1902 Stuttgart Fr. Frommann 88 Gobineau presents this succession of "legal" aristocracy and tyranny not as a linear but as a cyclical development, whereby tyranny, although it should have formed the "exception," "appeared much more frequently than the rule."Gobineau Arthur de Versuch über die Ungleichheit der Menschenracen. Dritter Band 2 1902 Stuttgart Fr. Frommann 86 The blood of Semitic "newcomers" had increasingly penetrated the blood of the originally aristocratic citizenry.Gobineau Arthur de Versuch über die Ungleichheit der Menschenracen. Dritter Band 2 1902 Stuttgart Fr. Frommann 89 It had consequently been weakened, partly died out, partly impoverished, and finally supplanted by a timocratic stratum (rule of the wealthy):Gobineau Arthur de Versuch über die Ungleichheit der Menschenracen. Dritter Band 2 1902 Stuttgart Fr. Frommann 89-91 Violent convulsions ensued, and the rich soon prevailed. Arthur de Gobineau Versuch über die Ungleichheit der Menschenracen. Third volume, 1902, p. 90 Greece's political weakness on all levels; historical distortion thumb|upright|Herodotus: accused by Gobineau of beautifying Greek tyranny Gobineau's devastating judgment of Greece is that its governmental system failed on all levels: in foreign policy, as a federation, and within individual sovereign citizenries. As evidence for his claim of foreign policy weakness, he cites Greece's "humility and submissiveness" toward the Persian Great King: From Thebes, from Sparta, from Athens, from everywhere, embassies did nothing but go to Susa or return from there, soliciting or debating the decrees of the sovereign of the Persians on the disputes of the Greek cities among themselves. They did not even run to the master himself. The protection of a satrap on the coast sufficed to assure the politics of one locality great preponderance over its rivals. Tissaphernes commanded, and, anxious about the consequences of disobedience, the silent republics obeyed Tissaphernes. Arthur de Gobineau Versuch über die Ungleichheit der Menschenracen. Third volume, 1902, p. 92 Only the still relatively strong Aryan blood component in Greece had prevented the land from being completely absorbed into the Persian Empire.Gobineau Arthur de Versuch über die Ungleichheit der Menschenracen. Dritter Band 2 1902 Stuttgart Fr. Frommann 92 Relations between individual Greek cities—especially Athens, Sparta, Thebes, Corinth, and Argos—were characterized, according to Gobineau, by fratricidal wars and mutual bloody enmity, not by cooperation toward the goal of large-scale state formation.Gobineau Arthur de Versuch über die Ungleichheit der Menschenracen. Dritter Band 2 1902 Stuttgart Fr. Frommann 92f Within the city-states there prevailed "in ten years, six years of tyranny, the rest strife and quarrels, proscriptions and massacres between the aristocracy and the wealthy, the wealthy and the people."Gobineau Arthur de Versuch über die Ungleichheit der Menschenracen. Dritter Band 2 1902 Stuttgart Fr. Frommann 94 Finally, to the annulled or paralyzed external power was also joined the incapacity to organize internal tranquility. It was a sad balance sheet, and to make it the object of the admiration of the centuries required the admirable eloquence of the national historians. Arthur de Gobineau Versuch über die Ungleichheit der Menschenracen. Third volume, 1902, p. 95 While the ancient authors had been forced to embellish, according to Gobineau, later admirers—pedants and political theorists—willingly adopted these embellishments and recommended the Greek model for imitation, thereby undermining modern concepts of justice; he probably means radical political theorists such as the Jacobins, Rousseauists, and early socialists who used the Greek patriotism model as a weapon against Enlightenment-liberal ideas.Gobineau Arthur de Versuch über die Ungleichheit der Menschenracen. Dritter Band 2 1902 Stuttgart Fr. Frommann 95 From political despotism to moral corruption thumb|Socrates takes the hemlock: Gobineau saw him as victim of the absolutist "patrie". The "Greek system," Gobineau continues, produced not only a problematic politics but also severely harmed morals "by substituting the artificial pride of the citizen for the legitimate consciousness of the thinking being of its dignity."Gobineau Arthur de Versuch über die Ungleichheit der Menschenracen. Dritter Band 2 1902 Stuttgart Fr. Frommann 95 Since no values other than the "patrie" were recognized anymore, actions such as theft and adultery were no longer regarded as misdeeds, provided they were executed skillfully and in the name of the patrie. Gobineau reports "breeding establishments for vigorously built, strong, robust citizens" established for the "glorification of physical beauty," and "contests of naked maidens in the stadium." The Greeks were "a rabble of wretches without faith, without probity, without shame, without humanity, capable of all infamies."Gobineau Arthur de Versuch über die Ungleichheit der Menschenracen. Dritter Band 2 1902 Stuttgart Fr. Frommann 96 Although they were clever enough to know themselves that their "conditions were worthless," they did not understand the ultimate cause of their problem and therefore knew nothing to do about it.Gobineau Arthur de Versuch über die Ungleichheit der Menschenracen. Dritter Band 2 1902 Stuttgart Fr. Frommann 97 Even Plato and "true aristocrats" like Aeschylus and Aristophanes could not properly assess the problems.Gobineau Arthur de Versuch über die Ungleichheit der Menschenracen. Dritter Band 2 1902 Stuttgart Fr. Frommann 97f No one perceived the true evil and could not perceive it, since this evil was inherent in the intimate constitution of the Hellenic races. Arthur de Gobineau Versuch über die Ungleichheit der Menschenracen. Third volume, 1902, p. 98 The only one who sought to establish a personal morality independent of the state was Socrates, and Socrates had to die because of this opposition.Gobineau Arthur de Versuch über die Ungleichheit der Menschenracen. Dritter Band 2 1902 Stuttgart Fr. Frommann 98f Greek artThe fleeting golden age of Greek art Fact check: Greek art Gobineau rates the art of ancient Greece slightly higher than its religion and politics, but only to prove his thesis once again that artistic flowering requires optimal racial mixing. Since this is inherently unstable, he declares the Golden Age of Greek art to be very brief, claiming it lasted only from the 7th to the 4th century BC. He separates early Greek epic, especially Homer, and locates it in a purely Aryan early history of Greece. In reality, ancient Greek art developed over a millennium in several phases: geometric (9th–8th century BC), archaic (7th–6th century), classical (5th–4th century), and Hellenistic (323–31 BC). Each phase produced its own innovations. Greek art developed distinctive principles such as naturalism, proportion, contrapposto, and narrative reliefs. In doing so, it integrated Oriental and Egyptian influences not through mere borrowing but through creative transformation into a distinct aesthetic that combined naturalism with idealization. Diversity and innovation arose through cultural exchange, competition, and technical experimentation—artistic development followed aesthetic, technical, social, and economic factors. Artists such as Polykleitos, Praxiteles, Scopas, and Lysippos, whom Gobineau does not mention, were highly innovative. Some of the most significant works were created in the late phase after the 4th century: the Colossus of Rhodes (3rd century BC), the Pergamon Altar, the Nike of Samothrace, the Venus de Milo (all 2nd century BC), and the Laocoön Group (1st century BC). Through innovations in sculpture, architecture, ceramics, and painting, Greek art fundamentally shaped European art history. Although Gobineau uses reputable sources such as Böttiger, he systematically interprets them in favor of his racial theory. Read: John Boardman (Greek Art, 1964), Martin Robertson (A History of Greek Art, 1975), Nigel Spivey (Greek Art, 1997), Robin Osborne (Archaic and Classical Greek Art, 1998) thumb|upright|Gobineau viewed works like Myron's Discobolus as Assyrian copies, not Greek originals. Gobineau has a somewhat higher opinion of the art of the ancient Greeks than of their religion and politics, specifically because a high development of art—unlike in other areas—requires, in his view, a certain admixture of Aryan blood with black blood (represented, for example, in Semitic blood):Gobineau Arthur de Versuch über die Ungleichheit der Menschenracen. Dritter Band 2 1902 Stuttgart Fr. Frommann 100 Thus, in Greece, genius deployed all its force at the time when Semitic infusions dominated without entirely prevailing, that is to say under Pericles, and at those points of the territory where these elements flowed more abundantly, that is to say in the Ionian colonies and at Athens. Arthur de Gobineau Versuch über die Ungleichheit der Menschenracen. Third volume, 1902, p. 100 Gobineau does not consider Greek art to be original but believes it was borrowed from Assyria—like politics and morality. As examples, he cites the Temple of Aphaia on Aegina and the school of Myron, which in his assessment too closely resembled "bas-reliefs of the Ninevite style." Due to the stronger white blood component of the Greeks, however, "the regulating force living in their spirit" was more significant than in the Near Eastern civilizations marked by black Hamites, and the "elevated taste of the masses" had "protested" against the worst "monstrosities" and "corruptions."Gobineau Arthur de Versuch über die Ungleichheit der Menschenracen. Dritter Band 2 1902 Stuttgart Fr. Frommann 101 Greek art generally refused to admit either hideous or revolting symbols, or puerile monuments. Arthur de Gobineau Versuch über die Ungleichheit der Menschenracen. Third volume, 1902, p. 101 Gobineau dates the flowering of Greek art to the 7th through 4th centuries BC; thereafter "the Asiatic element definitively carried the day." Among the few representatives of the Golden Age of Greek art whom he names are Archilochus, Theodorus, and Rhoecus, whose works, in his view, were still strongly influenced by Assyrian models.Gobineau Arthur de Versuch über die Ungleichheit der Menschenracen. Dritter Band 2 1902 Stuttgart Fr. Frommann 102 Only Phidias, with works such as Athena Parthenos, had produced "a particular branch" of Greek art.Gobineau Arthur de Versuch über die Ungleichheit der Menschenracen. Dritter Band 2 1902 Stuttgart Fr. Frommann 103 Thereafter, artistic creativity abruptly ended: The beautiful age thus lasted only a flash, and was interpolated in a brief moment when the equilibrium was perfect among the constitutive principles of the national blood. Once that hour had passed, there was no more creative potentiality, but only an often happy, always servile imitation of a past that did not resurrect. Arthur de Gobineau Versuch über die Ungleichheit der Menschenracen. Third volume, 1902, p. 103 Although Gobineau calls this period "the great literary and artistic period of glory of Greece," his true admiration belongs to Homer, whose fame has "never been equaled."Gobineau Arthur de Versuch über die Ungleichheit der Menschenracen. Dritter Band 2 1902 Stuttgart Fr. Frommann 104, 106 He assigns Homer to a much earlier period of Greek history, "when, without concern for all these fine things, Aryan genius, almost free from Semitic embrace, limited itself to the production of epic, and showed itself admirable, inimitable on this grandiose point, as much as it was ignorant, unskilled and little inspired on all the others." Like the Vedas, the Ramayana, the Shahnameh, and the Chansons de geste, the early Greek epics sprang from "Aryan inspiration."Gobineau Arthur de Versuch über die Ungleichheit der Menschenracen. Dritter Band 2 1902 Stuttgart Fr. Frommann 104f Besides the Homeric epics, Gobineau also mentions Hesiod, Arctinus and Lesches, as well as the Cypria, the Capture of Oechalia, the Nostoi, the Thebaid, the Epigoni, and Aristeas' Arimaspea.Gobineau Arthur de Versuch über die Ungleichheit der Menschenracen. Dritter Band 2 1902 Stuttgart Fr. Frommann 105 Such was the literature of the most ancient past of the Greeks: it remained didactic and narrative, positive and reasonable, as long as it was Aryan. The powerful infusion of Melanian blood later drew it toward lyricism, rendering it incapable of continuing in its first and most admirable paths. Arthur de Gobineau Versuch über die Ungleichheit der Menschenracen. Third volume, 1902, p. 105 Kapitel IV - "Les Grecs sémitiques" Gesamtinhalt: Gobineau interpretiert die griechische Geschichte von 1541 v. Chr. bis zur hellenistischen Zeit als kontinuierlichen Niedergang durch "semitische" Rassenmischung. Arische Königsherrschaft weicht instabilen Demokratien. Die Perserkriege sind bloßer Zufall ohne historische Bedeutung. Makedonien siegt wegen größerer Rassenreinheit, doch Alexanders Eroberung bewirkt paradoxerweise Griechenlands ethnische Auflösung. Die hellenistische Zivilisation ist synkretistisch, schwach, unfähig zu Originalität – eine "negative Einheit" ohne schöpferische Kraft. Das "melanische" (schwarze) Element setzt sich langfristig durch. Funktion: Exemplifiziert Gobineaus Kernthese: Rassenmischung zerstört Zivilisationen zwangsläufig. Griechenland dient als Paradebeispiel für unvermeidlichen Verfall durch ethnische Vermischung, bereitet Roms Aufstieg als letzte Hoffnung vor. Abschnitt 1: Chronologie der griechischen Regierungsformen (Anfang bis "...169 ans") Inhalt: Gobineau datiert die heroische Zeit ab 1541 v. Chr. und verfolgt die Ablösung der gemäßigten arischen Königsherrschaft durch semitische Staatsformen. Aristokratie dauerte in Athen 245 Jahre (753-508), in Sparta 632 Jahre (867-235). Die athenische Demokratie bestand nur 169 Jahre (508-339), effektiv noch kürzer durch Unterbrechungen. Funktion: Demonstriert Gobineaus These vom Niedergang: Je stärker die "semitische" Rassenmischung, desto kürzer die Stabilität der Regierungsformen. Die Zahlen sollen den Verfall "beweisen". Abschnitt 2: Die Perserkriege als Missverständnis ("La puissance perse..." bis "...éléments noirs") Inhalt: Xerxes' Niederlage war Zufall, kein Triumph griechischer Überlegenheit. Griechenland und Persien waren ethnisch verwandt ("zwei Schwestern"). Die eigentliche historische Logik verlangte Griechenlands Absorption ins asiatische Reich. Persien handelte nach dem Debakel klug, rekrutierte griechische Söldner und nutzte politische Flüchtlinge. Funktion: Relativiert den klassischen Topos vom griechischen Freiheitskampf. Für Gobineau sind die Perserkriege nur ein Aufschub der unvermeidlichen "semitischen" Vereinigung beider Regionen. Abschnitt 3: Makedoniens arische Überlegenheit ("Tandis que les Grecs du sud..." bis "...sang") Inhalt: Während Südgriechenland "semitisierte", bewahrten die makedonischen "Halbbar­baren" unter monarchischer Ordnung ihre arische Reinheit. Philipp behandelte besiegte Griechen human (keine Versklavung), anders als semitische Eroberer. Makedoniens konstante Institutionen über Jahrhunderte beweisen rassische Überlegenheit, trotz geringerer Zivilisation. Funktion: Kontrastiert "arische" politische Stabilität Makedoniens mit südgriechischem Chaos. Bereitet Alexanders Sieg als ethnisch determiniert vor, nicht als militärisches Genie. Abschnitt 4: Alexanders Eroberung und die hellenistische Fusion ("Ici se présente..." bis "...vergangenen Ruhm") Inhalt: Makedonier siegen über Perser wegen größerer Rassenreinheit, trotz zahlenmäßiger Unterlegenheit. Alexanders Eroberung vollzieht ironischerweise Darius' Ziel: Griechenland wird ins asiatische Reich absorbiert, nur umgekehrt. Das semitische Element verschlingt die arischen Sieger. Eine kulturell einheitliche, aber ethnisch degenerierte hellenistische Zivilisation entsteht. Funktion: Paradox der Geschichte: Militärischer Sieg bedeutet ethnische Niederlage. Illustriert Gobineaus Kernthese, dass Rassenmischung zwangsläufig zur Degeneration führt. Abschnitt 5: Die hellenistische Welt: Eklektizismus ohne Substanz ("La nouvelle société..." bis "...la plus utile des vertus") Inhalt: Die hellenistische Zivilisation verliert das Sublime der alten Assyrer/Ägypter, gewinnt durch arischen Einfluss Mäßigung, verfällt aber in Sophistik und Synkretismus. Ihr Hauptmerkmal: eklektischer Kompromiss ohne eigene Ideen, gezwungen zur Toleranz mangels ethnischer Homogenität. "Ataraxie" wird Haupttugend. Funktion: Beschreibt die Konsequenzen der Rassenmischung: eine "mittlere" Gesellschaft ohne Originalität, nur fähig, Trümmer zu kombinieren. Vorbereitung auf die Erklärung kultureller Sterilität. Abschnitt 6: Ethnische Erklärung der hellenistischen Schwäche ("Lorsque l'Asie était partagée..." bis "...anarchie de cette société") Inhalt: Früher gab es distinkte Nationalitäten mit spezifischen Rassenmischungen und eigenen Zivilisationen. Im 5. Jahrhundert ist das arische Element zu verdünnt, um aktiv zu sein. "Negative Einheit" entsteht: Alle Völker sind gleich schwach durch Rassenmischung, aber bleiben unterschiedlich genug, um Einheit zu verhindern. Funktion: Kern der Argumentation: Erklärt, warum das vereinte hellenistische Reich schwächer war als seine Vorgängerzivilisationen. Rassenmischung zerstört sowohl Vielfalt als auch Stärke. Abschnitt 7: Die melanische Rückeroberung und römischer Ausblick ("Sous la domination..." bis Ende) Inhalt: Das "schwarze" (melanische) Element setzt sich in Asien letztlich durch, da arische Invasionen zu klein waren. Die hellenistische Welt tendiert zur melanischen Dominanz. Galater und Parther ändern wenig. Ohne neue weiße Kraft wäre die Zivilisation verloren – bis Rom als neue Hoffnung im Westen erscheint. Funktion: Schließt den Kreis: Die ursprünglichen "schwarzen" Bewohner gewinnen langfristig. Bereitet den Übergang zu Rom als neuer arischer Zivilisation vor, die das hellenistische Chaos überwindet. Continue reading Continue to Book 5. Back to Book 3. References Category:Book:Scientific racism in Germany