Alteridade e relações étnicas na antiguidade: as noções de etnos (ἔθνος) e genos (γένος) nas Histórias de Heródoto (livro VII Polímnia).

Abstract

The present article aims at demonstrating the lexical distinction that Herodotus de Halicarnassos made in Book VII (Polymnia) which is contained in his work: Stories, where the author differentiates between ethnos (ἔθνος) and genos (γένος), contributing to the relation of otherness, that is, to distinguish the I (Hellenic, European) from the other (Persian, barbarian). In this narrative, we will realize that ethnic conflicts are not exclusive to modern and contemporary society, but that they existed even before the fifth century BC., these concepts of "people," "race," "ethnos," "nation," were used in Greek-Persian conflicts. The idea of building a nationalism and the perceptions of the other ethnic group as being the strange, the evil, that comes to subjugate, where a union should take place in favor of the defense of the territory in common already occurred in antiquity.