Harrison T. P. Herodotus’ conception of foreign languages (1998)

Harrison T. P. Herodotus’ conception of foreign languages // Histos. — 1998. — Vol. 2. — P. 1–45. DOI: 10.29173/histos172

Аннотация

In one of the most famous passages in his Histories, Herodotus has the Athenians give the reasons why they would never betray Greece (8.144.2): first and foremost, the images and temples of the gods, burnt and requiring vengeance, and then ‘the Greek thing’, being of the same blood and the same language, having common shrines and sacrifices and the same way of life. With race or blood, and with religious cult, language appears as one of the chief determinants of Greek identity. This impression is confirmed in Herodotus’ accounts of foreign peoples: language is—with religious customs, dress, hairstyles, sexual habits—one of the key items on Herodotus’ checklist of similarities and differences with foreign people s. That language was an important element of what, to a Greek, it meant to be a Greek, should not perhaps be thought surprising. As is well known, the Greeks called non-Greeks βάρβαροι, a term usually taken to refer pejoratively to the babble of * This paper has been delivered in a number of different versions at St. Andrews, Newcastle, and at the 1997 Classical Association AGM.

Ключевые слова

геродот, языки древнего мира, греческая идентичность, варвары, этнография античности, эллинство, античная историография