Tag: Polites

May 10, 2013

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…