Tolerância e xenofobia ou a consciência de um universo multicultural nas Histórias de Heródoto

Abstract

Presentley we live at a time in which the building of the European Union expresses the political willingness to recognise a common identity among nations with affinities at different levels, namely a broad notion of culture. Having this in mind, our aim in this article is to search the roots of that understanding in the works of Herodotus, the so-called pater historiae. Although his writings bear witness to a twofold diviskm of the known peoples into Europe and Asia, the historian deviates himself from this stereotyped view, which is responsible for the perception of two homogeneous blocks. These, distinct and often antagonistic, resulted in the opposition Greeks vs. Barbarians. Throughout this paper we shall illustrate how the author, despite his impartiality concerning one's own customs (the nomoi), provides various examples of some attitudes as ancient as tolerance and xenophobia. At the beginning of a new millennium, the Histories' ecumenical lesson continues to testify the modernity and pertinence of a text and of an author which are more than twenty five centuries old.