The book centres upon the figure of Anacharsis, a Scythian philosopher travelling around the Greek world during the age of Solon's reforms, killed for adopting alien (Greek) religious practices upon his return to Scythia and pursuing too strong an interest in alterity. His peripatetic presence combined with his penchant for intellectual exploration and questioning of 'otherness' will soon make Anacharsis a paradigm of enlightened independence. His legend was revived in the long eighteenth century, when its echo returned, within intellectual discourse, as a figure of dissonance and rupture fostering an emergent cultural relativism and cosmopolitanism. Today, Anacharsis helps us understand the reaction, ancient and modern, to religious conflicts, cultural diversity and political transformation. The legend generates reflection on the perceived threat to cultural and national identities, and the successes and failures of cross-cultural interaction. In a period in which these issues permeate our politics, Anacharsis continues to offer insights into the current modalities of dialogue and mediation between 'us' and 'them', and our own fragile sense of national or post-national belonging.

This is the first study in English on the Scythian philosopher Anacharsis in Ancient and Modern philosophy and literature. The legend and figure of Anacharsis concern the exploration of 'otherness' and the boundaries and limits of cultural interaction in the Graeco-Roman world and in the long eighteenth century.