MONSTERS AS ALTERITY, DIVERSITY AND IMPERIAL POWER
MONSTERS AS ALTERITY, DIVERSITY AND IMPERIAL POWER

Summary/Abstract: This study focuses on images of alterity in Pliny's Naturalis Historia, the 1st century encyclopaedia that comprises information on geography, peoples, zoology, medicine, astronomy, mathematics and it represented the pinnacle of knowledge during Antiquity and it was widely quoted during the Middle Ages. Plinyřs encyclopaedia comprises thirty-seven and in the seventh book he writes about whole monstrous nations, what has been called the monstrous races, some of them dispersed in other parts of his book that deal with nations and settlements. In presenting races like headless-less men with eyes on their chests, called the blemmyes, Pliny shows us a type of alterity devoid of spirituality, fantastic as though it may be, placing the text within a tradition where monsters are wonders of nature meant not only to amuse readers, but, more important, to showcase natureřs inexhaustible propensity for innumerable creations, variations of men, women, animals and everything in between.

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