O lugar de Heródoto: um mensageiro da morte na fronteira da alteridade

Abstract

The historiographical narrative written by Herodotus (485-425 B.C.E.) and bequeathed to posterity reflects the broad vision of its author, as he plays certain roles, since he fulfills certain functions with a view to composing his text. As an investigator and also the enunciator of his account, the author occupies places that include seeing, hearing, knowing and knowing. In this way, Herodotus acts not only as an eyewitness and traveler-researcher, but also as a messenger-narrator. The central theme of the Histories - although Herodotus also resorts to numerous digressions - is the great war between the Greeks and the barbarians. It is a multi-century clash, and it is enough to remember the first of its manifestations in the Homeric Iliad: the war of the Achaeans against the Trojans, within a context that can be understood as prehistoric or mythical. As a result, in the Herodotian lógoi we have to consider the relationship between the narrator and the enunciator and the various foreign nómoi (customs) portrayed there. Furthermore, to discuss death, considering different cultures and their understanding of the phenomenon, is inevitably to enter the realm of religion. In this sense, the focus of our research revolves around the portrayal given to social understandings of death, its ritualistic practices and religious representations, considering the different ethnic groups portrayed in the Stories. Once impelled to reflect on the social values of death and the rites practiced around it, we perceive a significant and inexorable correlation with otherness, insofar as the individual's position in the face of finitude and the countless practices associated with it depend greatly on the values and customs - nómoi - of the community described. For the purposes of this discussion, it is worth explaining the concept of nómos, since it is around it that the approach to ethnography and alterity is viable. As Romilly points out in La loi dans la pensée grecque (1971, p. 54), the word underwent a semantic transformation as a result of the evolution of the Greek polis. Thus, to its primordial, ethnographic understanding (encompassing the practices and beliefs passed down from generation to generation, constituting the ethical legacy of each people), a political meaning was added. In other words, the meaning of customs was added to the meaning of law. The research is based on a qualitative approach, and to make it feasible we draw on the theoretical contributions of Loraux (1975/1977/1994), Romilly (1971/ 1993), Garland (1985), Hall (1989), Burkert (1993), Calame (2000), Vernant (2002/2009), Soares (2003/2005), Silva (1995/2010), Gagnebin (2005), Hartog (2003/2014). Thus, we realize that death in Herodotian prose represents, in its original sense, the practical execution of the values of a code, of a nómos, insofar as it is a phenomenon of a social, political and religious nature. The nómos, therefore, constitutes a formative element of the individual and collective identity of the subjects portrayed in the Stories.