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

Abstract

Prsentley 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 too search the roots of that understanding in the works of Herodotus, the so-called «pater historiae». Although this writings bear witness to a twofold division of the known peoples into Europe and Asia, the historian deviates himself from this stereotyped view, wich 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 millenium, the «Histories'» ecumenical lesson continues to testify the modernity and pertinence of a text and of an author wich are more than twenty five centuries old.