Third seminar of the research group
Third seminar: topics of discussion, papers, transformation of the notion of ‘barbarian’ in Greek culture from Homer to Aristotle, workshop on Classical sources
Daniil Pleshak, doctoral student of the Faculty of Philology of Saint Petersburg State University, presented a paper on the development of the notion of ‘barbarian’ in Greek culture from Homer to Aristotle. The paper traced the evolution of this term from the epithet describing a person whose speech is hardly discernible to a comprehensive concept used for legitimating ethnic superiority of the Greeks over other peoples. Pleshak examined the the texts by Herodotus, Xenophon, Euripides and others and consider historical factors which caused such transformation. After the presentation there was a discussion of the paper and workshop centred round the analysis of the fragments from Aeschylus, Aristophanes, Euripides, Xenophon, Plato and Aristotle.