Abstract
Herodotus, I 142-143, 145-148 in some ways alternates fragments taken from the story of self-representation of the Asian Ionians (the territory and the climate, the name, the Panionion as the sanctuary only for themselves, the Acaian origins, the purity of lineage, the massacre of Cari, followed by the objections of the historian), with his statements (the four types of language, the mixed origins of the Ionians) targeted to contradict other aspects of that tale. In the continuous alternation of an emic point of view and an outside view, the historian uses the same markers of ethnicity that we find at VIII 144. This contribution seeks to investigate the mechanisms of the story of self-representation of the Asian Ionians.