ABSTRACT
Europe, and the HeEenistic Roman world before it, have always been concerned with cultural encounter and cultural appropriation in ways that other cultures perhaps have not.1 'How to deal with the Other?' was a question to which the European seemed never to be able to find a simple answer, In his book entitled The Conquest of America. The Question of the Other, Tzvetan Todorov wrote: 'The first, spontaneous reaction with regard to the stranger is to imagine him as inferior, since he is different from us: this is not even a man, or if he is one, an inferior barbarian; if he does not speak our language, it is because he speaks none at all, or cannot speak, as Columbus still believed/ It is in this fashion, according to Todorov, that the European Slavs call their German neighbours 'mutes', the Mayas of Yucatan call the Toltec invaders 'mutes', and so on.2 It was in a similar fashion that the ancient Greeks started calling foreigners 'barbarians' on account of their inarticulate manner of speaking. In due time, the pejorative 'barbarian' spread out to include the foreigners' dress, mannerisms, food and customs which, from a Hellenic point of view, seemed quite 'barbaric'.
