Tales of the Barbarians: Ethnography and Empire in the Roman West

"By contrast, Woolf has rendered the topic in crisp and elegant prose. This reviewer suspects that, like good ancient ethnography, Woolf's contribution will very soon take on a life of its own". (Bryn Mawr Classical Review, 25 July 2011)

"Greg Woolf's wide-ranging and engaging study of ethnographic traditions about the "barbarian" west exposes the complex mixture of myth, stereotype, and information deriving from the interplay between inquirers and inhabitants and from the shifting circumstances that generated their creation and their transformation."
Erich Gruen, University of California, Berkeley

“Woolf dissects Greek and Roman ethnological accounts to give a voice to the otherwise silent people Rome conquered and analyses the role of myths in empire building.”
David Breeze, The University of Edinburgh