ORIGINS OF THE
WORD 'BARBARIANS'
G'day folks,
Met any barbarians lately? Know where the word came from? Read on ...
The word
“barbarian” originated in ancient Greece, and was initially used to describe
all non-Greek-speaking peoples, including Persians, Egyptians, Medes and
Phoenicians. The ancient Greek word “bárbaros,” from which it derives, meant
“babbler,” and was onomatopoeic: In the Greek ear, speakers of a foreign tongue
made unintelligible sounds (“bar bar bar”). Similar words exist in other
Indo-European languages, including the Sanskrit “barbara,” which means “stammering.”
It was the
ancient Romans, who by the original definition were barbarians themselves, who
first transformed the use of the term. Late in the Roman Empire, the word
“barbarian” came to refer to all foreigners who lacked Greek and Roman
traditions, especially the various tribes and armies putting pressure on Rome’s
borders.
There was
never a single united barbarian group, and many of the different
tribes–including Goths, Vandals, Saxons, Huns, Picts and many more–shifted
alliances over the years or fought alongside Roman forces against other
barbarian armies. Later scholars would expand on this use of the word when
writing about attacks on cultures considered “civilizations” (be it ancient
China or ancient Rome) by external enemies who don’t share that civilization’s
traditions or structure.
Today, the
adjective “barbaric” is most commonly used to describe an act that is either
brutal or cruel to the point of savagery or primitive and uncivilized (or all
of the above) while a “barbarian” is a person who commits such acts or displays
such characteristics. This more general–and explicitly negative–definition,
when compared with either the Greek or Roman sense of the word, illustrates
clearly just how far “barbarian” has been removed from its ancient roots.
Clancy's comment: Mm ... I guess the modern day barbarians are somewhere in a parliament, devising smart ways to send others to war.
I'm ...
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