>Greeks didn't care for black or white -- they cared for cultural ties (language, religion, customs, etc). The first part is trivially true, since those concep

>Greeks didn't care for black or white -- they cared for cultural ties (language, religion, customs, etc). The first part is trivially true, since those concepts only make sense in an American context. They did however know about race, they were certainly aware of the racial difference between themselves and say the Egyptians or Nubians. I think what confuses modern Americans is that many Ancient peoples (just as many peoples today) lived in ethno-states, or at least ethno-societies. Biological race was so highly correlated with language, culture and religion that there was little basis for the kind of purely biological racism that exists in America. Thus while on the one hand they would certainly consider most foreigners inferior to themselves, some even subhuman, that wasn't based entirely on biological race, and definitely not on the modern and rather arbitrary white/black distinction.