barbarian

Etymology

Ancient Greece

The ancient Greek name βάρβαρος (bárbaros) 'barbarian' was an antonym for πολίτης (politēs) 'citizen', from πόλις (polis) 'city'. The earliest attested form of the word is the Mycenaean Greek 𐀞𐀞𐀫, pa-pa-ro, written in Linear B syllabic script.

The Greeks used the term barbarian for all non-Greek-speaking people, including the Egyptians, Persians, Medes, and Phoenicians, emphasizing their otherness. According to Greek writers, this was because the language they spoke sounded to Greeks like gibberish represented by the sounds "bar..bar..;" the alleged root of the word bárbaros, which is an echomimetic or onomatopoeic word. In various occasions, the term was also used by Greeks, especially the Athenians, to deride other Greek tribes and states (such as Epirotes, Eleans, Boeotians, and Aeolic-speakers) and also fellow Athenians in a pejorative and politically motivated manner. The term also carried a cultural dimension to its dual meaning. The verb βαρβαρίζω (barbarízō) in ancient Greek meant to behave or talk like a barbarian, or to hold with the barbarians.

Plato (Statesman 262de) rejected the Greek–barbarian dichotomy as a logical absurdity on just such grounds: dividing the world into Greeks and non-Greeks told one nothing about the second group. Yet Plato used the term barbarian frequently in his seventh letter. In Homer's works, the term appeared only once (Iliad 2.867), in the form βαρβαρόφωνος (barbarophonos, 'of incomprehensible speech'), used of the Carians fighting for Troy during the Trojan War. In general, the concept of barbaros did not figure largely in archaic literature before the 5th century BC. It has been suggested that the 'barbarophonoi' in the Iliad signifies not those who spoke a non-Greek language but simply those who spoke Greek badly.

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 the vast Persian Empire. Indeed, in the Greek of this period 'barbarian' is often used expressly to refer to Persians, who were enemies of the Greeks in this war.

Ancient Rome

The Romans used the term barbarus for the uncivilised, opposite to Greek or Roman, and in fact, it became a common term to refer to all foreigners among Romans after the reign of Augustus. As, among the Greeks, the Persians (post Persian Wars). This included the Germanic peoples, Persians, Gauls, Phoenicians and Carthaginians.

Other cultures

The Greek term barbaros was the etymological source for many words meaning "barbarian", including English barbarian, which was first recorded in 16th century Middle English.

A word barbara- (बर्बर) is also found in the Sanskrit of ancient India, with the primary meaning of "cruel" and also "stammering" (बड़बड़), implying someone with an unfamiliar language. The Greek word barbaros is related to Sanskrit barbaras (stammering). This Indo-European root is also found in Latin balbutire / balbus for "stammer / stammering" (leading to Italian balbettare, Spanish balbucear and French balbutier) and Czech brblat "to stammer". The verb baṛbaṛānā in both contemporary Hindi (बड़बड़ाना) as well as Urdu (بڑبڑانا) means 'to babble, to speak gibberish, to rave incoherently'.

In Aramaic, Old Persian, and Arabic context, the root refers to "babble confusedly". It appears as barbary or in Old French barbarie, itself derived from the Arabic Barbar, Berber, which is an ancient Arabic term for the North African inhabitants west of Egypt. The Arabic word might be ultimately from Greek barbaria.

English semantics

The Oxford English Dictionary gives five definitions of the noun barbarian, including an obsolete Barbary usage.

1. Etymologically, A foreigner, one whose language and customs differ from the speaker's.

2. Hist. a. One not a Greek. b. One living outside the pale of the Roman Empire and its civilization, applied especially to the northern nations that overthrew them. c. One outside the pale of Christian civilization. d. With the Italians of the Renaissance: One of a nation outside of Italy.

3. A rude, wild, uncivilized person. b. Sometimes distinguished from savage (perh. with a glance at 2). c. Applied by the Chinese contemptuously to foreigners.

4. An uncultured person, or one who has no sympathy with literary culture.

†5. A native of Barbary. [See Barbary Coast.] Obs. †b. Barbary pirates & A Barbary horse. Obs.

The OED barbarous entry summarizes the semantic history. "The sense-development in ancient times was (with the Greeks) 'foreign, non-Hellenic,' later 'outlandish, rude, brutal'; (with the Romans) 'not Latin nor Greek,' then 'pertaining to those outside the Roman Empire'; hence 'uncivilized, uncultured,' and later 'non-Christian,' whence 'Saracen, heathen'; and generally 'savage, rude, savagely cruel, inhuman.'"

In classical Greco-Roman contexts

Historical developments

Greek attitudes towards "barbarians" developed in parallel with the growth of chattel slavery – especially in Athens. Although the enslavement of Greeks for non-payment of debts continued in most Greek states, Athens banned this practice under Solon in the early 6th century BC. Under the Athenian democracy established ca. 508 BC, slavery came into use on a scale never before seen among the Greeks. Massive concentrations of slaves worked under especially brutal conditions in the silver mines at Laureion in south-eastern Attica after the discovery of a major vein of silver-bearing ore there in 483 BC, while the phenomenon of skilled slave craftsmen producing manufactured goods in small factories and workshops became increasingly common.

Furthermore, slave-ownership no longer became the preserve of the rich: all but the poorest of Athenian households came to have slaves in order to supplement the work of their free members. The slaves of Athens that had "barbarian" origins were coming especially from lands around the Black Sea such as Thrace and Taurica (Crimea), while Lydians, Phrygians, and Carians came from Asia Minor. Aristotle (Politics 1.2–7; 3.14) characterises barbarians as slaves by nature.

From this period, words like barbarophonos, cited above from Homer, came into use not only for the sound of a foreign language but also for foreigners who spoke Greek improperly. In the Greek language, the word logos expressed both the notions of "language" and "reason", so Greek-speakers readily conflated speaking poorly with stupidity.

Further changes occurred in the connotations of barbari/barbaroi in Late Antiquity, when bishops and catholikoi were appointed to sees connected to cities among the "civilized" gentes barbaricae such as in Armenia or Persia, whereas bishops were appointed to supervise entire peoples among the less settled.

Eventually the term found a hidden meaning through the folk etymology of Cassiodorus (c. 485 – c. 585). He stated that the word barbarian was "made up of barba (beard) and rus (flat land); for barbarians did not live in cities, making their abodes in the fields like wild animals".

Hellenic stereotypes

From classical origins the Hellenic stereotype of barbarism evolved: 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. Writers voiced these stereotypes with much shrillness – Isocrates in the 4th century B.C., for example, called for a war of conquest against Persia as a panacea for Greek problems.

However, the disparaging Hellenic stereotype of barbarians did not totally dominate Hellenic attitudes. Xenophon (died 354 B.C.), for example, wrote the Cyropaedia, a laudatory fictionalised account of Cyrus the Great, the founder of the Persian Empire, effectively a utopian text. In his Anabasis, Xenophon's accounts of the Persians and other non-Greeks whom he knew or encountered show few traces of the stereotypes.

In Plato's Protagoras, Prodicus of Ceos calls "barbarian" the Aeolian dialect that Pittacus of Mytilene spoke.

Aristotle makes the difference between Greeks and barbarians one of the central themes of his book on Politics, and quotes Euripides approvingly, "Tis meet that Greeks should rule barbarians".

The renowned orator Demosthenes (384–322 B.C.) made derogatory comments in his speeches, using the word "barbarian".

In the Bible's New Testament, St. Paul of Tarsus (c. 5 – c. 65 A.D.) uses the word barbarian in its Hellenic sense to refer to non-Greeks (Romans 1:14), and he also uses it to characterise one who merely speaks a different language (1 Corinthians 14:11). In the Acts of the Apostles, the people of Malta, who were kind to Paul and his companions who had been shipwrecked off their coast, are called barbarians (Acts 28:2).

About a hundred years after Paul's time, Lucian – a native of Samosata, in the former kingdom of Commagene, which had been absorbed by the Roman Empire and made part of the province of Syria – used the term "barbarian" to describe himself. Because he was a noted satirist, this could have indicated self-deprecating irony. It might also have suggested descent from Samosata's original Semitic-speaking population – who were likely called "barbarians by later Hellenistic, Greek-speaking settlers", and might have eventually taken up this appellation themselves.

The Dying Galatian statue

The statue of the Dying Galatian provides some insight into the Hellenistic perception of and attitude towards "Barbarians". Attalus I of Pergamon (ruled 241–197 BC) commissioned (220s BC) a statue to celebrate his victory (ca 232 BC) over the Celtic Galatians in Anatolia (the bronze original is lost, but a Roman marble copy was found in the 17th century). The statue depicts with remarkable realism a dying Celt warrior with a typically Celtic hairstyle and moustache. He sits on his fallen shield while a sword and other objects lie beside him. He appears to be fighting against death, refusing to accept his fate.

The statue serves both as a reminder of the Celts' defeat, thus demonstrating the might of the people who defeated them, and a memorial to their bravery as worthy adversaries. As H. W. Janson comments, the sculpture conveys the message that "they knew how to die, barbarians that they were".

Utter barbarism, civilization, and the noble savage

The Greeks admired Scythians and Galatians as heroic individuals – and even (as in the case of Anacharsis) as philosophers – but they regarded their culture as barbaric. The Romans indiscriminately characterised the various Germanic tribes, the settled Gauls, and the raiding Huns as barbarians, and subsequent classically oriented historical narratives depicted the migrations associated with the end of the Western Roman Empire as the "barbarian invasions".

The Romans adapted the term in order to refer to anything that was non-Roman. The German cultural historian Silvio Vietta points out that the meaning of the word "barbarous" has undergone a semantic change in modern times, after Michel de Montaigne used it to characterize the activities of the Spaniards in the New World – representatives of the more technologically advanced, higher European culture – as "barbarous," in a satirical essay published in the year 1580. It was not the supposedly "uncivilized" Indian tribes who were "barbarous", but the conquering Spaniards. Montaigne argued that Europeans noted the barbarism of other cultures but not the crueler and more brutal actions of their own societies, particularly (in his time) during the so-called religious wars. In Montaigne's view, his own people – the Europeans – were the real "barbarians". In this way, the argument was turned around and applied to the European invaders. With this shift in meaning, a whole literature arose in Europe that characterized the indigenous Indian peoples as innocent, and the militarily superior Europeans as "barbarous" intruders invading a paradisical world.

East Asia

China

The term "Barbarian" in traditional Chinese culture had several aspects. For instance, Chinese has more than one historical "barbarian" exonym. Several historical Chinese characters for non-Chinese peoples were graphic pejoratives. The character for the Yao people, for instance, was changed from yao 猺 "jackal" to yao 瑤 "precious jade" in the modern period. The original Hua–Yi distinction between Hua ("Chinese") and Yi (commonly translated as "barbarian") was based on culture and power but not on race.

Historically, the Chinese used various words for foreign ethnic groups. They include terms like 夷 Yi, which is often translated as "barbarians." Despite this conventional translation, there are also other ways of translating Yi into English. Some of the examples include "foreigners," "ordinary others," "wild tribes," "uncivilized tribes," and so forth.

Chinese historical records mention what may now perhaps be termed "barbarian" peoples for over four millennia, although this considerably predates the Greek language origin of the term "barbarian", at least as is known from the thirty-four centuries of written records in the Greek language. The sinologist Herrlee Glessner Creel said, "Throughout Chinese history "the barbarians" have been a constant motif, sometimes minor, sometimes very major indeed. They figure prominently in the Shang oracle inscriptions, and the dynasty that came to an end only in 1912 was, from the Chinese point of view, barbarian."

Shang dynasty (1600–1046 BC) oracles and bronze inscriptions first recorded specific Chinese exonyms for foreigners, often in contexts of warfare or tribute. King Wu Ding (r. 1250–1192 BC), for instance, fought with the Guifang 鬼方, Di 氐, and Qiang 羌 "barbarians."

During the Spring and Autumn period (771–476 BC), the meanings of four exonyms were expanded. "These included Rong, Yi, Man, and Di—all general designations referring to the barbarian tribes." These Siyi 四夷 "Four Barbarians", most "probably the names of ethnic groups originally," were the Yi or Dongyi 東夷 "eastern barbarians," Man or Nanman 南蠻 "southern barbarians," Rong or Xirong 西戎 "western barbarians," and Di or Beidi 北狄 "northern barbarians." The Russian anthropologist Mikhail Kryukov concluded.

Evidently, the barbarian tribes at first had individual names, but during about the middle of the first millennium B.C., they were classified schematically according to the four cardinal points of the compass. This would, in the final analysis, mean that once again territory had become the primary criterion of the we-group, whereas the consciousness of common origin remained secondary. What continued to be important were the factors of language, the acceptance of certain forms of material culture, the adherence to certain rituals, and, above all, the economy and the way of life. Agriculture was the only appropriate way of life for the Hua-Hsia.

Japan

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. The Dutch, who arrived later, were also called either nanban or kōmō (紅毛), literally meaning "Red Hair."

Middle East and North Africa

The native Berbers of North Africa were among the many peoples called "Barbarian" by the early Romans. The term continued to be used by medieval Arabs (see Berber etymology) before being replaced by "Amazigh". In English, the term "Berber" continues to be used as an exonym. The geographical term Barbary or Barbary Coast, and the name of the Barbary pirates based on that coast (and who were not necessarily Berbers) were also derived from it.

The term has also been used to refer to people from Barbary, a region encompassing most of North Africa. The name of the region, Barbary, comes from the Arabic word Barbar, possibly from the Latin word barbaricum, meaning "land of the barbarians".

Many languages define the "Other" as those who do not speak one's language; Greek barbaroi was paralleled by Arabic ajam "non-Arabic speakers; non-Arabs; (especially) Persians."

India

In the ancient Indian epic Mahabharata, the Sanskrit onomatopoeic word barbara- referred to the incomprehensible, unfamiliar speech (perceived as "babbling", "incoherent stammering") of non-Vedic peoples ("wretch, foreigner, sinful people, low and barbarous".)

Pre-Columbian Americas

In Mesoamerica, the Aztec civilization used the word "Chichimeca" to denominate a group of nomadic hunter-gatherer tribes that lived on the outskirts of the Triple Alliance's Empire, in the north of Modern Mexico, and whom the Aztec people saw as primitive and uncivilized. One of the meanings attributed to the word "Chichimeca" is "dog people".

The Incas of South America used the term "purum awqa" for all peoples living outside the rule of their empire (see Promaucaes).

European and European American colonists frequently referred to Native Americans as "savages".

Barbarian mercenaries

The entry of "barbarians" into mercenary service in a metropole repeatedly occurred in history as a standard way in which peripheral peoples from and beyond frontier regions interact with imperial powers as part of a (semi-) foreign militarised proletariat.

Examples include:

nomadic frontier tribes serving in pre-modern China

mainly Germanic soldiery in the armies of the declining Roman Empire

Viking Varangian guards in imperial Byzantium

Turkic mercenaries in the Abbasid Caliphate

Widespread use of ethnic mercenary forces in pre-historic Mesoamerica

Cossack units in the armies of (for example) Poland-Lithuania and of pre-Soviet Russia

Gurkhas in the colonial and postcolonial Indian military

Early modern period

Italians in the Renaissance often called anyone who lived outside of their country a barbarian. As an example, there is the last chapter of The Prince by Niccolò Machiavelli, "Exhortatio ad Capesendam Italiam in Libertatemque a Barbaris Vinsicandam" (in English: Exhortation to take Italy and free her from the barbarians) in which he appeals to Lorenzo de' Medici, Duke of Urbino to unite Italy and stop the "barbarian invasions" led by other European rulers, such as Charles VIII and Louis XII, both of France, and Ferdinand II of Aragon.

Spanish sea captain Francisco de Cuellar, who sailed with the Spanish Armada in 1588, used the term 'savage' ('salvaje') to describe the Irish people.

20th-century barbarianism

The romantic reaction against reason and civilisation preceded some attempts to rehabilitate barbarianism in the 20th century. The German Empire glorified the Germans' Teutonic barbarian past. Kaiser Wilhelm II offered the Huns as an example to his troops, Russian symbolist poets such as Blok invoked an Asiatic nomad heritage of the Scyths and the Mongols, and Nazi Germany cultivated a pre-civilised nationalism to justify/promote enslaving and murdering Jews and Slavs. The Goth sub-culture continued the tradition, echoing the name and reputation of the barbarian outsider early-medieval Goths.

Marxist use of term

In her 1916 anti-war pamphlet The Crisis of German Social Democracy, the Marxist theorist Rosa Luxemburg writes:

Bourgeois society stands at the crossroads, either transition to Socialism or regression into Barbarism.

Luxemburg attributed her statement to Friedrich Engels, but as was shown by Michael Löwy, Engels had used not the term "Barbarism" but a less resounding formulation: "If the whole of modern society is not to perish, a revolution in the mode of production and distribution must take place." The case has been made that Luxemburg had remembered a passage from the "Erfurt Program", written in 1892 by Karl Kautsky, and mistakenly attributed it to Engels:As things stand today capitalist civilization cannot continue; we must either move forward into socialism or fall back into barbarism.

Luxemburg went on to explain what she meant by "regression into Barbarism":

A look around us at this moment [i.e., 1916 Europe] shows what the regression of bourgeois society into Barbarism means. This World War is a regression into Barbarism. The triumph of Imperialism leads to the annihilation of civilization. At first, this happens sporadically for the duration of a modern war, but then when the period of unlimited wars begins it progresses toward its inevitable consequences. Today, we face the choice exactly as Friedrich Engels foresaw it a generation ago: either the triumph of Imperialism and the collapse of all civilization as in ancient Rome, depopulation, desolation, degeneration – a great cemetery. Or the victory of Socialism, that means the conscious active struggle of the International Proletariat against Imperialism and its method of war.

Luxemburg's quote inspired the naming of the French unorthodox Marxist group Socialisme ou Barbarie led by Cornelius Castoriadis formed in 1948, and the Marxist scholar István Mészáros in his 2001 book Socialism or Barbarism: From the "American Century" to the Crossroads.

Amadeo Bordiga from the Italian communist left later in a 1951 commentary Onwards, Barbarians! criticized the socialist defence of the concept of civilization, instead praising the barbarians that overthrew Roman society while assimilating "all that was vital and alive in the classical tradition". He characterized the revolutionary movement of the working class as today's barbaric forces "which will not disdain the ripe fruit of modern industrial power, but will tear it from the jaws of the exploiters and shatter their teeth while they're at it."

Modern popular culture

Modern popular culture contains heroic fictional barbarians such as Robert E. Howard's Conan the Barbarian. Such fictional characters deliberately invert the negative connotations traditionally associated with "Barbarian". According to fantasy historian Richard Mathews, Howard's Conan stories ally the concept of "barbarism" with honor, tolerance, and freedom. For example, "The Phoenix on the Sword" (1932), the first of Robert E. Howard's "Conan" series, is set soon after the "Barbarian" protagonist had forcibly seized the turbulent kingdom of Aquilonia from King Numedides, whom he strangled upon his throne. The story is clearly slanted to imply that the kingdom greatly benefited from power passing from a decadent and tyrannical hereditary monarch to a strong and vigorous Barbarian usurper.

In video games, Barbarians appear throughout the Civilization series, spawning on the map to attack exploring units and loot cities.