Dihle Albrecht: Grci i stranci

Albrecht Dihle: Greeks and foreigners

Ancient peoples in the eyes of the ancient Greeks

The work Greeks and foreigners traces the history of Greek attitudes towards foreign cultures and peoples, from the Homeric era to the time of the advanced Christianization of the Roman Empire. At the time of Homer, all known peoples were similarly described. Language and cultural differences were not mentioned. Only peoples outside the known world are fairy-tale and partly fear-inducing. Even during the conflict with the Persians in later times, the vanquished were not characterized as less valuable people, but the Greek victory was linked to the desire of the gods to restore the balance of power.

Only in the Hellenistic era, at the time of the loss of independence and political power of the Greek polis, the emphasis on national distinctiveness comes, but belonging to Hellenism was not simply determined as belonging to the Greek nation, but it was based on belonging to a certain educational tradition. A Greek is one who has acquired education, as it was developed and defined in the classical era. In that post-classical time, the author points out, the "arrogance of education" was born among the Greeks, which was noticeable until the end of the Middle Ages. However, the possibility of acquiring the Greek "paideia" facilitated the integration of people from other cultures, albeit at the cost of assimilation, which was not related to religion, because Greek philosophy allowed different religious paths to the knowledge of the truth. Even foreign cults, which were perceived as primordial, seemed to the Greeks to be a step closer to the "natural" man, an uncorrupted civilization. Thanks to the so-called Interpretatio Graeca, the Hellenistic kingdoms, and later the Roman Empire, knew how to integrate various religious traditions and thwart religious wars and bigotry, which only monotheistic religions resisted.

Albrecht Dihle, following the genesis of the attitudes of the Greeks towards numerous Asian, North African and European peoples of ancient times, includes precious sources in his considerations and points to the extraordinary scope of Greek geography and ethnography, without which there are hardly to have any knowledge about the cultures of ancient peoples. Ancient Greek curiosity was not only related to medicine, mathematics, geometry, philosophy, etc., but with the Greeks we also have the beginnings of modern anthropology and ethnology. Also, today's postcolonial studies should definitely take into account the experience of the Greeks, who were a leading cultural force for centuries, meeting with other peoples, either because their 'construction of the other' sometimes resembles modern-day experiences, or because their perceptions of other peoples can be inspiring for contemporary intercultural dialogue.