Herodotus Bacchae Analysis

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As Herodotus is known to be the progenitor of “Orientalism,” to which Munson elucidates the interlocking Herodotean components, operating in his theory of ethnicity. Availing the The Bacchae by Euripides, Said argues in his spilt thesis that: “The two aspects of the Orient that set it off from the West in this pair of plays will remain essential motifs of European imaginative geography. A line is drawn between two continents. Europe is powerful and articulate; Asia is defeated and distant,” and, “[s]econdly, there is the motif of the Orient as insinuating danger. Rationality is undermined by Eastern excesses, those mysteriously attractive opposites to what seem to be normal values” (57). In signaling the solidification of the Orient, Said …show more content…
Beginning with “Herodotus’s first hand familiarity help to explain his pluralistic outlook as an historian as well as his attitude toward issues of “blood,” birth, and genealogy” with ethnic diversity and perhaps his own mixed background arguably” as his native Halicarnassus was founded at the end of the heroic age by colonists from Troezen, and its citizens continued to consider themselves Dorian,” (347). The abstract notion of the “other” is reflected from dogmatic culture relativism which Herodotus himself stated: “If anyone, no matter who, were given the opportunity of choosing from amongst all the nations in the world the set of beliefs which he thought best, he would inevitably—after careful considerations of their relative merits—choose that of his own country. Everyone without exception believes his own native customs, and the religion he was brought up in, to be the best”(3.38). In relation to the second clause of Said’s thesis, the ideal of noble savage—this term reverberates in the Histories—which relates to the above, in which all peoples believe their own culture, or essentially by Munson’s modernizing term, system, to be ‘greater’ in all aspects. Conversely, the ‘noble savage’ is a matched opponent, who, yet is lesser in a universal …show more content…
A group of people living on a few acres of land will set up boundaries between their land and its immediate surroundings and territory beyond, which they call the “land of the barbarians”. Alternately, to align with Herodotus, Munson, and Redfield“this universal practice of designating in one’s mind a familiar space is "ours" and an unfamiliar space beyond "ours" which is "theirs" is a way of making geographical distinctions that can be entirely arbitrary. I use the word "arbitrary" here because imaginative geography of the "our land—barbarian land" variety does not require that the barbarians acknowledge the distinction. It is enough for "us" to set up these boundaries in our own minds; "they" become "they" accordingly, and both their territory and their mentality are designated as different from "ours." To a certain extent modern and primitive societies seem thus to derive a sense of their identities negatively” (54, Said). Although certainly there was an ideal of the Greek ethnicity, however which is demonstrated by the Munson, the variability of “who” was Greek was highly

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