How barbarian were the Barbarians?

[VespilloAD64]

Another meaning of barbarian is from the Greeks in which term some one who doe not speak the lingo and basically sounds like there saying 'Bar Bar Bar'.
I just can't remember where I read it

[Gaius Julius Caesar]

Herodotus?

[Theodosius the Great]

And I don't think the Romans really saw the barbarians as being their inferiors in any sense except maybe political organization.

Indeed. The fact that internecine warfare was the national sport couldn't have made a good impression. But we can say the same of the Greeks. All I know is that the Romans ended both peoples' fratricidal proclivities.

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.

I, for one, believe complexion and height are the most useless distinctions. Facial features are the overridding ones. Indians, Persians, Egyptians are all caucasoid peoples. Nordic features represent only a very small subset within the Caucasian category. Besides, IIRC, the Romans themselves were ultimately an offshoot of the Celts.

It is the word the Greeks used for Non-Greeks.

Hmm...so it seems.

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.

I can see your point with the Romans but not with the Greeks given their well known cultural chauvinism. It seems to make sense that at some point (post-Herodotus, et al.) the word must have picked up a negative connotation.

Apparently Roman mothers used to get teh kids to bed by telling them the Gauls would get them

But this part is fully justified. The Gauls did sack Rome in the 4th century b.C. afterall.

~Theo

[D B Campbell]

I had heard from one of my history professors the term "barbarian" meant any non-greek speaking peoples ... I don't know how accurate that is or where his original source for that explanation was from.

Hah, found it! Strabo 14.2.28: "... Those, therefore, they called barbarians in the special sense of the term, at first derisively, meaning that they pronounced words thickly or harshly; and then we misused the word as a general ethnic term, thus making a logical distinction between the Greeks and all other races."

[Theodosius the Great]

Good work, Duncan.

Heh, it seems I had it backwards. So, it was derogatory in the beginning but later lost its connotation ?
Interesting how that worked out.


~Theo

[Gaius Julius Caesar]

Actually, Strabo is just quoting ancient sources Duncan, and making his own analysis of them, much as we are doing here really....
The original definitions were from the earlier sources I would say. Or at least thats the way it looks to me.

[Gluteus Maximus]

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?[/color]

Quintus
(AKA Guido Aston)

Here's a thought. Many Italians, especially from the central/northern regions, have black hair and light gray eyes. As do Many people (?celts) in Wales and Ireland. Even allowing for movement of other peoples in and out of these areas - which isn't as much as previously believed, as genetecists are revealing - it shows that Setrtorius could have resembled many people in those invading forces. I believe it was at least possible for his spying mission to come off. Even if the Cimbri and Teutones were blonde and tall like the Belgae and north eastern Gauls, I bet there were a lot of angry Cisalpine Gauls from the Lombardy plain amongst them who would've conformed to the Black haired, Grey eyed type. He could quite possibly have slotted straight in.

Just as an aside, A theory which is starting to gain increasing respectability suggests that Belgae, Northeastern Gauls and Lowland Britons may have been Germanic all along.

[D B Campbell]

The original definitions were from the earlier sources I would say. Or at least thats the way it looks to me.

If you find them, do let us know! :wink:

[Gaius Julius Caesar]

Hdt. 1.1.0
This is the display of the inquiry of Herodotus of Halicarnassus, so that things done by man not be forgotten in time, and that great and marvelous deeds, some displayed by the Hellenes, some by the barbarians, not lose their glory, including among others what was the cause of their waging war on each other.

Seems Strabo did not read Herodotus?

[D B Campbell]

Seems Strabo did not read Herodotus?

Well, he was just explaining the etymology of the word barbaroi, which (as he says) was originally an attempt to replicate the guttural speech of non-Greeks. Clearly this was before the time of Herodotus, because (as you say) he uses it as a general ethnic term.

If you're based in Aberdeen, Byron, you'll be familiar with the guttural speech of the barbaroi! :wink: [size=85:38m9t1mq](Don't tell my brother-in-law -- he's an Aberdonian.)[/size]

[Gaius Julius Caesar]

Glad you said that....you never know whos lurking on here!! :mrgreen:

[Conal]

Just as an aside, A theory which is starting to gain increasing respectability suggests that Belgae, Northeastern Gauls and Lowland Britons may have been Germanic all along.

If you are referring to the excitement caused by Oppenheimer's book .... his theories have been dismissed by most experts in the field ... he wont submit his data for peer review and his suppositions regarding language have been slated as amateurish by linguists.

Have a mooch round http://dna-forums.org/ ...search for Cimbri and the Oppenheimer.

[Theodosius the Great]

Cicero, in one of his letters, seems to use the word in the more familiar sense.

He wrote (while in a highly emotional state) in his letter on January 22nd, 49 BC :

Rome is delivered to him [Caesar] stripped of defenders, stocked with supplies : one may fear anything from a man who regards her temples and her homes...as his loot...We depend entirely on two legions that were kept here by a trick, and are practically disloyal. For so far the levy has found unwilling recruits, afraid of war...As for Tullia and Terentia [Cicero's wife and daughter] when I picture the approach of the barbarians on Rome, I am terrified.

The term as used here seems devoid of any neutrality much less adulation. And, as this is a private letter, it can't be construed as political rhetoric.

~Theo

[Urselius]

Returning to the original instance. Celtic areas of what is now Northern Italy had come under Roman rule at the time of the Cimbric invasions. It is entirely possible that a Roman citizen-soldier might have been raised in an area where a Celtic dialect was still widely spoken and have spoken it from childhood, alongside Latin.

The idea that in the deep past racial traits were somehow more clear cut and that "mixing" has occurred since is a myth. Just as today you can get dark Swedes and fair Italians you could have found dark Celts and Germans and fair Romans a few thousand years ago. The ancient cultures had their own myths of what people should look like, Caligula rounded up the tallest Gauls he could find and dyed their hair red, to pass them off as Germans in a triumph for an nonexistant victory. All this says is that the Gauls were not universally tall and not many were red haired, it implies nothing about the Germans other than that the mob in Rome had an expectation of them to be tall and ruforous.

[Alanus]

Hdt. 1.1.0
This is the display of the inquiry of Herodotus of Halicarnassus, so that things done by man not be forgotten in time, and that great and marvelous deeds, some displayed by the Hellenes, some by the barbarians, not lose their glory, including among others what was the cause of their waging war on each other.

And, too, we must remember that Herodotus also referred to the Persians as barbarians, a society that we can hardly picture as such. They were simply speakers of a "non-Greek" language.
If we can gather anything from Herodotus, it might appear his respect for barbarians as equally intelligent to the Greeks, and that their society might have been different but not "lesser."