Barbarian
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- For other meanings of Barbarian see Barbarian (disambiguation)
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Greek origins of the term
Barbarian comes from the ancient Greek word barbaros which meant a non-Greek, someone whose (first) language was not Greek. The word is imitative, the "bar-bar" representing the impression of random hubbub produced by hearing a language spoken which one cannot understand.
Originally the term is empty of content beyond 'not Greek'. The Greeks encountered hundreds of different foreign cultures (Egyptian, Persian, Phoenician, Etruscan, Roman, Carthaginian, Kurdish, Basque and so on) which as a group had no characteristics in common with each other. (Plato Statesman 262de rejects the Greek-barbarian dichotomy as a logical absurdity on just such grounds: dividing the world into Greeks and non-Greeks tells you nothing about the second group.) It is not the case that Greeks automatically despised all alien cultures. They were aware of the greater antiquity of the much more developed civilisations of Egypt and Mesopotamia, from whom they borrowed extensively.
In Homer the term appears only once (Iliad 2.867) and in the form barbarophonos ("of incomprehensible speech") used of the Carians fighting for the Trojans. Notably the Trojans themselves, who despite having Greek names are emphatically not Greek, are not called barbaroi. In general the concept does not figure largely in archaic literature (before 5th cenury BC).
A change occurred in the connotations of the word after the Greco-Persian Wars in the first half of the 5th century BC. Here a hasty coalition of Greeks defeated a vast empire. Indeed in the Greek of this period 'barbarian' is often used expressly to mean Persian. In the wake of this victory they began to see themselves as superior militarily and politically. A stereotype developed in which hardy Greeks live as free men in city-states where politics are a communal possession, whereas among the womanish barbarians everyone beneath the Great King is no better than his slave. This marks the birth of orientalism.
A parallel factor was the growth of chattel slavery especially at Athens. Although enslavement of Greeks for non-payment of debt continued in most Greek states, it was banned at Athens under Solon in the early 6th century BC. Under the democracy at Athens (established c506 BC) slavery came to be used on a scale never before seen among the Greeks and these slaves were overwhelming barbarian in origin, especially from a number of peoples in Asia Minor such as the Lydians and Phrygians. It is not hard to despise the people you are keeping as your slaves. In the intellectual justification of slavery (Aristotle Politics 1.2-7; 3.14), barbarians are slaves by nature. From this period words like barbarophonos cited above from Homer began to be used not only of the sound of a foreign language but of foreigners speaking Greek improperly. In Greek the notions of language and reason are easily confused in the word logos, so speak poorly was easily conflated with being stupid (an association not of course limited to ancient Greeks).
Out of those sources the stereotype was elaborated: barbarians are like children, unable to speak or reason properly, cowardly, effeminate, luxurious, cruel, unable to control their appetites and desires, politically unable to govern themselves. These are however only stereotypes. They were voiced with much shrillness by writers like Isocrates in the 4th century BC who called for a war of conquest against Persia as a panacea for Greek problems. But one could cite in particular Xenophon who wrote the Cyropedia, a laudatory fictionalised account of Cyrus, the founder of Persian empire, effectively a utopian text. In his anabasis, Xenophon's accounts of the Persians and other non-Greeks he knew or encountered hardly seem to be under the sway of these stereotypes at all.
Later developments, other cultures
Barbarian is used in its Hellenic sense by Paul in the New Testament (Romans 1:14) to describe non-Greeks, and to describe one who merely speaks a different language (1 Corinthians 14:11). The word is not used in these scriptures in the modern sense of "savage".
Historically, the term has seen widespread use. Many peoples have dismissed alien cultures and even rival civilizations as "barbarians" because they were unrecognizably strange. The Greeks admired Scythian and Eastern Gauls as heroic individuals, but considered their culture to be barbaric. The Romans indiscriminately regarded the various Germanic tribes, the settled Gauls, and the raiding Huns as barbarians all.
The Chinese (Han Chinese) of the Chinese Empire regarded the Xiongnu, Tatars, Turks, Mongols, Jurchen, Manchu, and Europeans as barbaric. The Chinese used different terms for barbarians from different directions of the compass. Those in the east were called Dongyi (东夷), those in the west were called Xirong (西戎), those in the south were called Nanman (南蛮), and those in the north were called Beidi (北狄).
The Japanese adopted the Chinese usage. When Europeans came to Japan, they were called nanban (南蛮), literally Barbarians from the South, because the Portuguese ships appeared to sail from the South.
Converted barbarians have historically proved sometimes the staunchest supporters of the more developed culture they have recently subverted. Historic examples are the Lombards and the Manchu. "The best Romans," wrote Henry James, "are often northern barbarians."
Often today, barbarian is used to mean someone violent, primitive, uncouth or uncivilized in general. See also Philistine.
A non-pejorative, simply functional concept of "barbarian", as sociologists have redefined the term, depends upon a carefully-defined use of "civilization", denoting a settled, urban way of life that is organized on principles broader than the extended family or tribe, in which surpluses of necessities can be stored and redistributed and division of labor produces some luxury goods (even if only for gods and kings). The barbarian is technically a social parasite on civilization, who depends on settlements as a source of slaves, surpluses and portable luxuries: booty, loot and plunder.
Rich, deep authentic human culture exists even without civilization, as the German writers of the early Romantic generation first defined the opposing terms, though they used them as polarities in a way that a modern writer might not. "Culture" should not simply connote "civilization".
The culture of the nomad is not to be confused with the barbarian, either. The nomad subsists on the products of his flocks, and follows their needs. The nomad may barter for necessities, like metalwork, but does not depend on civilization for plunder, as the barbarian does.
In fantasy novels and role-playing games, barbarians (or berserkers) are depicted as brave uncivilized warriors, often able to attack with a crazed fury. Conan the Barbarian is best known among these. The modern sympathetic admiration for such fantasy barbarians is a direct descendant of the Enlightenment idealization of the "Noble Savage".
See also
- List of words meaning outsider, foreigner or "not one of us"
- Barbarian kings of Italy: in fact merely a list of the highly civilized Ostrogothic rulers, who avoided the term "king".
- Michael Wall's 1989 play Amongst Barbarians
- Conan the Barbarian
Compare
- Oriental, of or pertaining to the Orient, East Asia, now also with pejorative connotations.
Further reading
- Hall, E. (1989) Inventing the Barbarian: Greek Self-Definition through Tragedy (Oxford/New york)
