Herodotus, First Orientalist ? – Part 2.1
The modern word barbarian integrates both the ideas of the foreign, and of a lower value. Where is it coming form? The Greek βάρβαρος (barbaros) was conceived as antonym to πολίτης (polites), the “citizen” or inhabitant of the city. In Ancient Greece, a complex geopolitical order made of city-states, not belonging to the city meant being outside of the main form of community…
Tag: Homer
Herodotus, First Orientalist ? – Section 2.2.3
Finding the first Orientalist is a matter of importance. It is aiming at discovering the roots of what became later a major part of world history, one that determined world dynamics in the recent centuries and, according to Saïd, still does today as an after-effect of colonialism and in the surviving forms of Orientalism…