How barbarian were the Barbarians?

[Quintus Sertorius]

In 105BC the Cimbri and the Teutones defeated Capeo's army. By 102BC Marius was getting ready to avenge that defeat. Quintus Sertorius volunteered to 'spy' amongst the enemy and spent some time gathering facts and information disguised as a barbarian.

This begs the question, just how 'barbarian' were the Barbarians? Granted Sertorius was not Roman born coming from Nursia, but he was an educated Italian who rose to some rank in society and became a loyal Marian officer. So just how did he carry off this disguise? It is not easy to envisage this soft skinned, 'civilised' Italian mixing it with the rough, tough Barbarians, speaking their language and getting out alive with the information gathered. Plutarch says he acquired a "Celtic dress" and "acquired the ordinary expressions of their language required for common intercourse…" What about the hair, the complexion, etc? Today, it would be like a Londoner trying to pass himself off as an Iraqi – very obvious.

Whilst the Romans and Caesar would have us believe these people were barbarian, were they in fact not too dissimilar to the native Italians? Was the barbarian image portrayed by the Romans to assuage the guilt of slaughtering so many and stealing their land and wealth?

This has niggled for years so now I have aired it. Thoughts?

Quintus
(AKA Guido Aston)

[Robert Vermaat]

I bet he passed himself off as a Greek. Maybe as a Celt from Galatia. Maybe Quintus spoke a Celtic language (as the Cimbri and Teutones carry Celtic tribal names, as the leaders we know by name did). If they were a Germanic tribe, it would have been virtually impossible for Quintus to picck that up apart from living among the enemy.

It's no good asking how 'barbarian' the barbarians were, because in your question I rwad 'barbarian' as 'uncivilised'. But by 'barbarian', the Greeks (and later the Romans) never meant that, just 'not of our stock', foreigner.

[Gaius Julius Caesar]

Yes exactly Robert. And also, not all Celtic people would be fairer haired and skined.
They used soap, so were not really the Stinking Barbarians of RTW fame..LOL
And there was trade and intercourse between all these peoples.

Great oportunity to learn language, especially if you had a stock of slaves to deal wit h, you would learn their language, to deal with them. Or at least it would not be unfeasible......etc etc

[VespilloAD64]

From what I gather and make out from all sources of Roman literay is basically that if you are not 1) Citizen of free birth 2) from Rome or Italy? you are barbaric. They tended to think of you as barbarian because you did not live by there customs.Like the Druids,Germanic's,Gauls even though in some ways were just as civilised as the Romans, the romans don't see it that way.The up side is that once they romanised the conquered they adopted and adapted the barbarians culture into there own.Contradictory and hypercritical! thats our beloved Romans thats why I love em.

[Titus Juventius Tertius]

From what I gather and make out from all sources of Roman literay is basically that if you are not 1) Citizen of free birth 2) from Rome or Italy? you are barbaric.

I wouldn't think that's the case though... wouldn't that make all Auxilia units barbarians? I know the end goal grants them citizenship, but they're still used in battle and serving Rome honorably. I always thought about this too. The definition or meaning of barbarian had to be completely different from how we know it now... back then. The Germans, Celts, and so forth may not have excelled in philosophy or engineering at the time... but they did survive and did manage themselves. Rome and the Greeks traded with them on a constant basis (I think that was mentioned above) so there had to be some sort of structure.

Barbarian to me means that they all lack the social skills, management, and organizational skills to control themselves. Today one could say anyone who eats with their hands is "barbarian". We've coined the phrase and use it so loosely that it doesn't hold the same meaning anymore.

What do the philosophers say about barbarians of the time? I'm interested in where this discussion goes.

[Justin of the New Yorkii]

Barbarian to me means that they all lack the social skills, management, and organizational skills to control themselves. Today one could say anyone who eats with their hands is "barbarian". We've coined the phrase and use it so loosely that it doesn't hold the same meaning anymore.

What do the philosophers say about barbarians of the time? I'm interested in where this discussion goes.

You're right about the meaning of the word changing over time. Remember, the Achaemenid Persians were considered "barbarians" too.

[SigniferOne]

In 105BC the Cimbri and the Teutones defeated Capeo's army. By 102BC Marius was getting ready to avenge that defeat. Quintus Sertorius volunteered to 'spy' amongst the enemy and spent some time gathering facts and information disguised as a barbarian.

This begs the question, just how 'barbarian' were the Barbarians? Granted Sertorius was not Roman born coming from Nursia, but he was an educated Italian who rose to some rank in society and became a loyal Marian officer. So just how did he carry off this disguise? It is not easy to envisage this soft skinned, 'civilised' Italian mixing it with the rough, tough Barbarians, speaking their language and getting out alive with the information gathered. Plutarch says he acquired a "Celtic dress" and "acquired the ordinary expressions of their language required for common intercourse…" What about the hair, the complexion, etc? Today, it would be like a Londoner trying to pass himself off as an Iraqi – very obvious.

First the barbarians did not look THAT different from Romans -- these are basically all Caucasian people here, your basis of comparing an American to an Iraqi is pretty much completely inaccurate. Other than a few stray red-hair Germanics, in hair color, skin color, demeanor, they would've been exactly the same.

Secondly for your objection to make good, these 'non-barbarians' of yours among whom Sertorius lived would've had to have had literature, theater, poetry, the basics of science and philosophy, because only that way the civilized Roman would've been able to fit in? Right? Again, pretty much completely unsubstantiated. Look at Lewis and Clark, who pretty much duked it out with the toughest that Native Americans (and wild America) had to offer. Yet they were commissioned by Jefferson and came from one of the most civilized places in the world.

Whilst the Romans and Caesar would have us believe these people were barbarian, were they in fact not too dissimilar to the native Italians? Was the barbarian image portrayed by the Romans to assuage the guilt of slaughtering so many and stealing their land and wealth?

Remeber that it wasn't 'their' wealth. It was the wealth of their chief, who stole it from everyone around him.

[Quintus Sertorius]

Thank you all for the responses.

I have always been wary of the victors writing the history and there were no more arrogant, egocentric victors than the Romans from the late Republic onwards. (Consider the history of World War Two. The inconvinient truth was that there was large support for Fascism across Europe. In the UK it had a lot of sympathy in high places as it had in France. How much of this truth do the public hear today? (A friend of my mothers was banned from the local golf club in 1953 because he was Jewish!)) Generally, we see any resistance to the glorious Caesar portrayed as the self-aggrandising Senate resisting a change led by the great man. His 'son' built on this version and eventually started began an empire that reinforced the story. The 'Boni' were portrayed as patrician fools. The victors wrote the history.

I simply wondered if the Gauls and others had been treated in a similar manner to anyone who didn't tow the party line?
Quintus
(AKA Guido Aston)

[Theodosius the Great]

All the Gauls in Caesar's day, writes JFC Fuller, were semi-civilised, practiced agriculture and cattle-breeding, carried on a considerable commerce either by road, river, or sea, and were aquainted with money and the Greek alphabet.

The Germanic tribes are another story though...

About classical use of the term barbarian, like Titus, I'm not so sure it simply meant foreigner. The Romans, IIRC, did NOT consider the Greeks barbarians and they were the only exception. So, that exception alone, if true, disproves the word was simply a synonym for foreigner. (There must be a real word for foreigner since the all the Greeks considered themselves somewhat foreign to one another !) The term doesn't seem to be a neutral one, it carries a negative connotation, IMO. Otherwise, why did the vanquished Greeks label Philip II 'the barbarian' ? At best he was only half foreign and did his best to appear as a native Greek.

You're right about the meaning of the word changing over time. Remember, the Achaemenid Persians were considered "barbarians" too.

Of course, the Achaemenids didn't help their image when they burned Athens, the most advanced city-state in Europe, to the ground. :wink:

~Theo

[Gaius Julius Caesar]

It is the word the Greeks used for Non-Greeks. the Romans were in awe of Greek culture, and their military system to start with.
The use would surely not have the connotations we give it, but there are the sources such Thucidides and Herodotus who, at least in translations, give the term the meaning. IIRC that is

Phillip was not only from the peoples just outside what the city states considered Greek, but he was also married to
a woman from outside his world, even farther from a greek. Hence it would have been easy for them to call him a barbarian.

But, The Romans had a lot of baggage from their beginnings which probably encouraged them to adopt the attitude the Greeks had, and then its weight on their attitudes would be magnified by that need to distance themselves in some respect to none Romans. Make any sense to anyone else? :?

[Celtic505]

I had heard from one of my history professors the term "barbarian" meant any non-greek speaking peoples and eventually came to mean any non-Latin speaking persons/peoples, supposedly because the greeks/romans felt that foreign speaking persons sounded like a sheep "bah-bah" and hence "barbarian"........I don't know how accurate that is or where his original source for that explanation was from.

[The Alexandrian]

Another theory on the origin of the word 'barbarian' is that it implied someone with a long beard - like the Dacians and Germans. And I don't think the Romans really saw the barbarians as being their inferiors in any sense except maybe political organization. It wasn't a fear or loathing of those less civilized, but those who were different - the xenophobic "them and us" attitude that all peoples possess to some degree - including my own native "empire" of America...

I do not believe that the Italians and Cimbric/Teutonic warriors would have all had the same basic "Caucasian" look - Greek and Roman sources make it pretty clear that the Celtic peoples tended to be taller in stature and lighter in hair and skin tones than Italians. On the other hand, the northern half of Italy suffered several settlements by Gauls in the 4th and 3rd Centuries - hence "Gallia Cisalpina". Nursia was originally a Sabinian city, but is it possible that Q. Sertorius could have been the descendant of a Gaulish warrior who settled in the area? Think of all the other famous Romans of the Republic and early Empire - Virgil (who used "maros", the Gaulish word for "great" for a cognomen), Livy, Trogus, Emperor Hadrian, etc. who were of Celtic or Celtiberian descent.

I am thinking that Sertorius himself was probably at least partially Gallic in an ethnic sense. If so he probably just had to grow out his hair (and maybe a mustache :wink: ) and touch up on his Gaulish to fit in with the Cimbri long enough to gather some intelligence.

Also, Cicero remarked that Gaul was overrun with Roman traders - maybe Sertorius passed himself off as a member of the wine/slave trade with Transalpine Gaul -and thus could act like the Roman he was without causing overmuch suspicion. Just a thought.

[D B Campbell]

I had heard from one of my history professors the term "barbarian" meant any non-greek speaking peoples and eventually came to mean any non-Latin speaking persons/peoples, supposedly because the greeks/romans felt that foreign speaking persons sounded like a sheep "bah-bah" and hence "barbarian"

This might be from Brent Shaw, "Eaters of flesh, drinkers of milk", Ancient Society 13/14 (1982/3), pp. 5-31. I remember thinking this was an interesting paper back then, but I failed to keep a copy, so I cannot check.

Another theory on the origin of the word 'barbarian' is that it implied someone with a long beard - like the Dacians and Germans.

I would say this is unlikely. After all, who were bigger beard-wearers than the Greeks themselves? (And barba is not, in any case, Greek for "beard"! )

[Jona Lendering]

Whilst the Romans and Caesar would have us believe these people were barbarian, were they in fact not too dissimilar to the native Italians?

Note that the story is a copy o a similar story about a Fabius exploring the Etruscan countries. The story may be false, and may say little about the way barbarians looked.

[Conal]

Barbarian to me means that they all lack the social skills, management, and organizational skills to control themselves. Today one could say anyone who eats with their hands is "barbarian". We've coined the phrase and use it so loosely that it doesn't hold the same meaning anymore.

This is why there is confusion to a modern reader, the modern use of barbarian is someone who lacks any kind of decorum as far as social norms are concerned, but what we now know of the Celts, Gauls & Germans shows that they were far from backwoods dimwits though the Romans needed to talk them down ... just normal propoganda. Apparently Roman mothers used to get teh kids to bed by telling them the Gauls would get them hock:

Mind you I have seen a privvy right next to the cooker in a Pompeii kitchen .... how barbaric :roll: