A barbarian is, etymologically, a foreigner, specifically someone whose language and customs differ from those of the speaker. In ancient Greece, the term designated non-Greeks, while in the Roman world it referred more generally to peoples living outside the cultural and political sphere of the empire. In modern English, the word has developed a pejorative sense, commonly meaning a "rude, wild, or uncivilized person".
The term originates from the (; ). In ancient Greece, the Greeks used the term not only for those who did not speak Greek and follow classical Greek customs, but also for Greek populations on the fringe of the Greek world with peculiar dialects. In ancient Rome, the Romans adapted and applied the term to tribal non-Romans such as the Huns, Germans, Celts, Iberians, Helvetii, Thracians, Illyrians, and Sarmatians. In the early modern period and sometimes later, the Byzantine Greeks used it for the Turks in a clearly pejorative manner.Εκδοτική Αθηνών, ο Ελληνισμός υπό ξένη κυριαρχία: Τουρκοκρατία, Λατινοκρατία, 1980, p. 34 .Justin Marozzi, The Way of Herodotus: Travels with the Man who Invented History, 2010, pp. 311–315.
The Greek word was borrowed into Arabic as well, under the form (), and used as an exonym by the Arab invaders to refer to the indigenous peoples of North Africa, known in English as Amazigh or Berbers, with the latter thereby being a cognate of the word "barbarian".
Etymology
Ancient Greece The ancient Greek name () 'barbarian' was an antonym for () 'citizen', from () 'city'. The earliest attested form of the word is the Mycenaean Greek , , written in Linear B syllabic script.Palaeolexicon, Word study tool of ancient languagesJohannes Kramer, Die Sprachbezeichnungen 'Latinus' und 'Romanus' im Lateinischen und Romanischen, Erich Schmidt Verlag, 1998, p.86
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 , 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.Siculus Diodorus, Ludwig August Dindorf, Diodori Bibliotheca historica – Volume 1 – Page 671 The term also carried a cultural dimension to its dual meaning.Plutarch's "Life of Pyrrhos" records his apprehensive remark on seeing a Roman army taking the field against him in disciplined order: "These are not barbarians."Foreigners and Barbarians (adapted from Daily Life of the Ancient Greeks) , The American Forum for Global Education, 2000. "The status of being a foreigner, as the Greeks understood the term does not permit any easy definition. Primarily it signified such peoples as the Persians and Egyptians, whose languages were unintelligible to the Greeks, but it could also be used of Greeks who spoke in a different dialect and with a different accent ... Prejudice toward Greeks on the part of Greeks was not limited to those who lived on the fringes of the Greek world. The Boeotians, inhabitants of central Greece, whose credentials were impeccable, were routinely mocked for their stupidity and gluttony. Ethnicity is a fluid concept even at the best of times. When it suited their purposes, the Greeks also divided themselves into Ionians and Dorians. The distinction was emphasized at the time of the Peloponnesian War, when the Ionian Athenians fought against the Dorian Spartans. The Spartan general Brasidas even taxed the Athenians with cowardice on account of their Ionian lineage. In other periods of history the Ionian-Dorian divide carried much less weight."Sir Edward Bulwer Lytton. Athens: Its Rise and Fall. Kessinger Publishing, 2004. , pp. 9–10. "Whether the Pelasgi were anciently a foreign or Grecian tribe, has been a subject of constant and celebrated discussion. Herodotus, speaking of some settlements held to be Pelaigic, and existing in his time, terms their language 'barbarous;' but Mueller, nor with argument insufficient, considers that the expression of the historian would apply only to a peculiar dialect; and the hypothesis is sustained by another passage in Herodotus, in which he applies to certain Ionian dialects the same term as that with which he stigmatizes the language of the Pelasgic settlements. In corroboration of Mueller's opinion, we may also observe, that the 'barbarous-tongued' is an epithet applied by Homer to the Carians, and is rightly construed by the ancient critics as denoting a dialect mingled and unpolished, certainly not foreign. Nor when the Agamemnon of Sophocles upbraids Teucer with 'his barbarous tongue,' would any scholar suppose that Teucer is upbraided with not speaking Greek; he is upbraided with speaking Greek inelegantly and rudely. It is clear that they who continued with the least adulteration a language in its earliest form, would seem to utter a strange and unfamiliar jargon to ears accustomed to its more modern construction." The verb (barbarízō) in ancient Greek meant to behave or talk like a barbarian, or to hold with the barbarians.βαρβαρίζω, Henry George Liddell, Robert Scott, An Intermediate Greek-English Lexicon, on Perseus
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 (, '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.Hall, Jonathan. Hellenicity, p. 111, . "There is at the elite level at least no hint during the archaic period of this sharp dichotomy between Greek and Barbarian or the derogatory and the stereotypical representation of the latter that emerged so clearly from the 5th century." 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.Hall, Jonathan. Hellenicity, p. 111, . "Given the relative familiarity of the Karians to the Greeks, it has been suggested that 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.Tsetskhladze, Gocha R. Ancient Greeks West and East, 1999, p. 60, . "a barbarian from a distinguished nation which given the political circumstances of the time might well mean a Persian."
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.barbarus, Charlton T. Lewis, Charles Short, A Latin Dictionary, on Perseus
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.Barbara (entry) SpokenSanskrit.deS Apte (1920), Apte English–Sanskrit Dictionary, "Fool" entry, 3rd ed., PuneA Sanskrit–English Dictionary: Etymologically and Philologically Arranged with Special Reference to Cognate Indo-European Languages, Monier Monier-Williams (1898), Ernst Leumann, Carl Cappeller, pub. Asian Educational Services (Google Books) The Greek word barbaros is related to Sanskrit barbaras (stammering).Onions, C.T. (1966), edited by, The Oxford Dictionary of English Etymology, page 74, The Clarendon Press, Oxford. 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 "to stammer".Barbarian, Etymology Dictionary, Douglas Harper (2015) The verb baṛbaṛānā in both contemporary Hindi (बड़बड़ाना) as well as Urdu (بڑبڑانا) means 'to babble, to speak gibberish, to rave incoherently'.बड़बड़ाना Wiktionary
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.Barbary, Etymology Dictionary, Douglas Harper (2015)
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.