Abstract

This paper examines the intense experience of long-distance seafaring and maritime exploration as a major incentive in the development of Greek ethnography. Already in Homer’s Odyssey we find a particular way of asking questions, of categorization and of sophisticated comparison of foreign ethnic groups. The epic represents the way of thinking of seafaring landowners (basileis) that becomes visible in particular in those scenes that describe the first contacts at foreign shore and island. Moreover, Homer provides geographic-ethnographic macro patterns that turned into a paradigm for centuries to come.