Doing History: Perceptions of Outsiders in the Ancient World

1. Making comparisons: How might you compare the perceptions of outsiders in these three accounts? Did the authors notice the same features of these societies? Did they focus more on what was exotic or different rather than on what may have been familiar? Did they adopt a similar posture toward the peoples they were describing? Were they simply reporting what they observed or were they making judgments as well?
2. Describing the “uncivilized”: Both Tacitus and Sima Qian wrote about peoples living beyond the boundaries of “civilization.” To what extent did they describe these peoples in a similar fashion?
3. Relating encounters and observations: How might the actual relationships between the observers and the observed peoples affect the writers’ perceptions of those peoples?