O desafio das diferenças étnicas em Heródoto: uma questão de inteligência e de saber (2)

Abstract

The Persian conquest politics through successive military campaigns moves, from Darius on, to west, particularly towards Cythia and Greece. So farther and remote, so much unknown is that adversary, that the Persian king despises for ignorance, but against whom he will show unprovided of means and efficacious strategies. Called to render concrete the enterprise planned by his father — the promising conquest of Greece —, Xerxes acts with the same ignorance and imprudence. The enemy potentialities will be known too late on the field. That adversary seems ridiculous to him, parsimonious of means, indisciplined in his willingness for liberty, impotent for the invaders forces disproportion. But what, beyond the appearances, constituted the advantage of the Greeks — the understanding of the campaign contingencies and the resolution of the adequate strategies, changing in merit what seemed a fault, creating advantage of the number scarcity and resources poverty —, was the Great King ever unable to understand. So, not only did he retreat vanquished out of the battle field, but specially dominated by what are the great victories of intelligence and knowledge.