THE JOURNEY OF MYTHS FROM WEST TO EAST
THE JOURNEY OF MYTHS FROM WEST TO EAST

Summary/Abstract: The aim of this paper is to deal with the myths about the East that medieval Europeans had before geographical discoveries. We will also see how these myths were shared by Orientals with Europeans that were defined as the barbarians of the West. European men of the Middle Ages imagined that India, the islands, and in general the fabulous East were inhabited by animals and men fictional, deformed, with certain physical parts more developed than others, for example men with dogs' heads, men with ears so big that you can use them as a blanket, men with one foot that could be used as protection from the sun etc. 1 These stories were based on medieval Greek and Latin sources; Authors such as Herodotus, (c. 484–425 BC); Megasthenes, (ca. 350 – 290 B.C.) and, especially, Ctesias of Cnidus who lived in the 5th century BC and of whom we analyzed "history of India", etc. had talked about giant ants, griffins, unicorns, etc; a series of imaginative geography reports that were later collected in a work known as the Physiologus2 (third century AD) who had the merit of making known these myths to the people of the Middle Ages. The Physiologus became the source for the various “bestiaries” or "book of beasts."

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