ABSTRACT
When Greek colonists set up new cities in the then unknown frontier of Italy, they were quick to compose myths that connected them to their ancestors, and that gave their customs and their shrines legitimacy. So I suppose it is no surprise that people who initiate new styles of government or patterns of living — political colonists, we might call them — also seek precedents in the prestigious civilisations of the past. Proponents of slavery in the United States discovered Greek and Roman writings that supported their views; so, of course, did the Abolitionists.1 Karl Marx found that the notion of free (rather than enforced) sale of labour first occurred in the Roman army.2 Most recently, and in some ways most absurdly, feminists have come up with supposed evidence for matriarchal societies, such as the Amazons, and have called attention to extraordinary achievements of a few women, as if they set a pattern that twentieth-century women could emulate and revive, and finally bring into full realisation.3
