What is a Barbarian?
The word Barbarian comes from the Greek
barbaros, which simply
meant "foreign". If a Greek could not understand a vistors language
he was labeled a Barbarian.
The word Barbarian was also reserved for foreigners who had customs dissimilar
to the Greeks or Romans, especially those whose manners were not refined
in the same way, or who lived under a political system not as complex or "sophisticated".
Anyone viewed as an outsider by Greeks or Romans was automatically
classified a
"Barbarian".
It is mistake to view a barbarian as one who was especially savage in his
methods of warfare. Savagery was the order of the day, and the Greeks and Romans
were every bit as savage and barbaric as anyone they engaged. The way Christians
were slaughtered for entertainment in the Roman Coliseum was as barbaric as anything
before or since.
But it is the winners who write the history, so Romans branded their Celtic invaders the "Barbarians".