His name was Herodotus. As a Greek from what is now the Turkish resort of Bodrum, but was then known as Halicarnassus, he had grown up on the very margin of Asia. Why, he wondered, did the peoples of East and West find it so hard to live in peace? The answer appeared, superficially, a simple one. Asiatics, Herodotus reported, saw Europe as a place irreconcilably alien. ‘And so it is they believe that Greeks will always be their enemies.’
