Os gregos na África do Norte: Heródoto e a representação da Líbia como uma heterotopia (século V a.C.)

Abstract

The research aims at investigating the representation elaborated by Herodotus regarding Libyans, in the context of Classical Greece (V BC century). To do so, the work named História was analyzed, in which the author, besides dealing with the conflict that made Greeks stand up against the Persians, describes uses and customs of a great amount of peoples who used to gravitate around the Mediterranean. From the empirical basis point of view, the study selected for analysis, the IV book, since the author describes Libya's nomadic and sedentary communities, as well as the space they occupy. It defends the hypothesis whereby Herodotus, through his work of art, is represented as the spokesman of Polis values, including the way Greeks dealt with space, which is the reason why his narrative about the Libyan's modus vivendi acquires an evident spatial dimension. Inside Herodotus' narrative, the space inhabited by the Libyans is converted into a heterotopia, in a degraded space, establishing an opposition between Libyans and Greeks' uses and customs. As in VII BC., a group of Tereus founded, in the coast of North Africa, ancient Greek colonies (apoikia) called Cyrene, some excavation reports were also consulted in order to understand how the Libyan territory was appropriated by the Greek and to define general lines of space encountered by the author. From the theoretical point of view, the research used the representation, heterotopia, frontier, and identity concepts. However, from the methodological point of view, it was applied to Herodotus' work, the analysis of content, as proposed by Laurence Bardin. All these resources enabled us to study the Herodotus representation concerning Libya's peoples and territories in V BC century.