‘‘Barbarian’’ is a very old, Greek word. A compound form, barbarophonus (‘‘speaking barbarian’’ or perhaps better ‘‘babbling’’) appears in Homer, though not the term barbarus itself (Hom. II. 2. 867). In the Iliad, the archaic Hellenes confronted the Asiatic Trojans without the aid of a dichotomy of‘‘us versus the barbarians’’ (Thuc. 1. 3. 3; Janse2002: 332-8; J. Hall 2002: 111-17). It was in classical Athens of the fifth century bc that the term barbarus became commonly used, and whence it spread to become the dominant way of describing a foreigner, first in other Greek dialects and, later, in Latin (J. Hall 2002: 182-9). This blanket term applied not only to economically less developed neighbors of the Greeks, such as the Scythians, but also to civilizations the Greeks recognized as older, wiser, and more sophisticated - more ‘‘civilized’’ - than their own, including Achaemenid Persia and Late Period Egypt. The term ‘‘barbarian’’ applied not to a particular type of foreigner, but to the whole range of peoples the Greeks regarded as ‘‘outsiders.’’ The term collapsed multiple possibilities of diversity into a single class of alienation, a sweeping conceptual categorization.
Early Roman culture appreciated the value of this term, as of so many other Greek concepts. Latin already had words for describing foreigners, strangers, or savages (terms such as externus, peregrinus, ferus), which continued to be used alongside the new borrowing. Barbarus was adopted by Romans not because of a lack of terms to describe these aspects of‘‘outsiders’’ (as, e. g., philosophical terminology was imported from Greek into Latin in Roman republican times, or new ecclesiastical and theological terms in Late Antiquity, because of a lack of native equivalents for these concepts). The strong ideological associations ofthe Greek term conveyed more than the sum ofthese Latin terms. As part of the Roman appropriation of Hellenistic culture, barbarus was naturalized into Latin both as a word and as a package of concepts.
The conceptual compactness of barbarus comprised concepts ranging, in modern terms, from ‘‘non-native speaker’’ and ‘‘savage,’’ to ‘‘decadent’’ and ‘‘Other.’’ In most modern European languages, barbarus is glossed by a word that, though a derivative, has a narrower semantic range (‘‘barbarian,’’ Barbar, barbare, and so on). These false friends and our own familiarity with them can obscure not only the complexity of the original term, but also its cultural specificity. Middle Kingdom Egypt and Han China, mentioned above as comparanda, experienced a range of foreign confrontations and interactions, both with small tribal groups along their frontiers and with major civilizations of a complexity equivalent to their own. But the languages of neither ancient Egypt nor China developed a word equivalent to Greek barbarus, a blanket term for all foreign peoples, of both ‘‘inferior’’ and equivalent status, applicable also as a derogatory term within its own culture, as Jerome demonstrates above (Poo 2005: 38-48). Both Chinese and Egyptian cultures were very conscious of potentially threatening outsiders, but did not conceptualize the surrounding world by means of a term equivalent to barbarus. ‘‘The barbarian’’ was a specifically Hellenistic cultural construct.
The specificity of the Hellenistic term barbarus is all the more striking in view of its coexistence alongside other Greco-Roman practices for identifying alien peoples that, unlike barbarus, did have parallels in ancient Egypt and China. One habitual practice of Chinese sources was the transfer of a specific autonym, originally attached to one foreign group, onto others that were perceived as occupying similar categories, such as inhabiting the same geographic areas or sharing similar cultural qualities. These ‘‘transferred’’ names were preserved and used by Chinese writers, long after the historical existence of the original group (e. g., all western peoples were Rong, all nomads were Hu; Poo 2005: 38-48). Greco-Roman authors likewise generalized individual foreign autonyms into umbrella terms reused over centuries. Both Scythii and Germani were such ‘‘transferred’’ names, adopted in the classical period and enduring in Late Antiquity and beyond (Tac. Germ. 2. 3; see Rives 1999: 117-21; so too, apparently, was Graeci: J. Hall 2002: xix). Such generic titles simplified diversity: historically (‘‘new’’ peoples could be understood as ‘‘old’’ ones), geographically (all lower Danubian peoples were Scythians), and taxonomic-ally (all nomadic peoples beyond the Syrian desert were Saracens). Gothi, often synonymous with Scythii, was one of several late antique additions to such simplifying terms (Roman military lists of auxiliaries from the ad 240 s reproduced in the inscription of the Sasanian shah Shapur I: Greek inscription no. 6 in Huyse 1999, i: 25-6), where Germani and Gothi cover all European barbarian auxiliaries in the Roman army; Amm. Marc. 31, where terms applied to trans-Danubian groups, like Theruingi and Greuthungi, are collapsed into generic Gothi when describing events within Roman territory; Procop. Wars 3. 2. 2 and Agathias, Histories 1. 2. 1, 3. 3 for lists of ‘‘Gothic’’ peoples). These generalizing names provided terms for types of alien peoples, but lack the potent ideological function of the broader category barbarus.
In Greek, Hellenistic, and Roman societies, representation of ‘‘the barbarian’’ became a central element of cultural expression, embedded and elaborated in literary genres and visual motifs that we broadly label ‘‘ethnographic’’ (representations of foreign places, habits, culture, and history). Unlike ‘‘barbarian,’’ ‘‘ethnography’’ is not an ancient term; it is a modern neologism, with Greek etymology but no actual existence in antiquity; ‘‘ethnography’’ was too fundamental an element in classical discourses to be identified, and thus restricted, by naming (see Dench 2005: 41-6). Ethnographic discourses permeated a spectrum of classical genres. In literary culture, ‘‘ethnic discourses’’ informed comic and tragic drama, history, geography, philosophy, and political theory (e. g., Ps.-Arist. Rh. Al. F658; Isoc. Philippus (Or. 5) 107; Long 1986; E. Hall 1989a, 1989b; Harrison 2000; J. Hall 2002: 175-8, 211-19). In visual media, works ranging from household utensils to pervasive governmental propaganda in numismatics featured images of ‘‘the barbarian’’ as an antitype or enemy of Hellenistic ideals (Pollitt 1986: 79-110; Cohen 2000; Ferris 2000; J. Hall 2002: 178-9). ‘‘Ethnographic’’ texts constituted major Greek and Roman literary and artistic monuments. Although barbarians were, by definition, liminal in ancient societies, the concept of the barbarian was central, not peripheral, to classical culture.
In the last two decades of classical studies, ethnographic conceptions have taken center stage in research on a range of key areas. Athenian literature, Panhellenism,
Hellenistic and Roman geography, and imperial ‘‘romanization’’ are all areas in which the concept of the barbarian has served as an explanatory model in the analysis of ancient thought and texts. Each of these areas shares a basic concern with that most characteristic theme of late twentieth-century research, identity. Each area also envisages our extant literary and visual texts not only as sources that illustrate Greco-Roman thought and belief, but also as being complicit in generating ‘‘identity and alterity,’’ and the power relations that proceed from them. The functions of the classical concept of the barbarian, and of the texts which mediate it, has been a profitable field of study (see bibliographical note below).
The development of ‘‘Panhellenism’’ (or now ‘‘Hellenicity’’; J. Hall 2002) - the subsuming of regional ‘‘Greek’’ communities, dialects, and cults under the single identity of Hellenes - is associated with the ethnographic bent of classical performative texts. Literary texts and their public performance are seen as fundamental to the construction of a unified classical Greek identity not only by scholars dealing primarily with the analysis of literary genres (primarily historia and drama; Hartog 1988, 2001; E. Hall 1989b), but also by those seeking to apply anthropological models of ethnicity to classical Greece (J. Hall 1997: 45-7; 2002: 172-220). A dominant model in current classical Greek studies sees classical Greek thought as fundamentally characterized by polarity: a structuring of the world around a series of mutually exclusive categories: male versus female, free versus slave, citizen versus alien, god versus mortal (Cartledge 2002). ‘‘Greek versus barbarian’’ (which should be understood as ‘‘Greek versus non-Greek’’) became one of these dichotomies, but not without the investment of cultural energy to cement it. In the wake of the Persian wars, Greek concepts and terminology were deployed in order to construct a single, unifying Panhellenic identity and - necessarily at the same time - also the concept of the barbarian as a single category for all foreign peoples. The multiplicity of regional Greek identities, and the great variety of peoples neighboring the Greek world, were collapsed into the simple polemical division of‘‘Greek and barbarian.’’ In this view, ‘‘ethnic’’ or political identity is therefore an oppositional construct, which only exists contrary to a single outside category, the Other.
Publicly presented texts were an important vehicle for this shift in thought. Prominent among extant examples are Greek comedies and tragedies (most obviously Aeschylus’ Persians), and particularly Herodotus’ Histories (E. Hall 1989b; Hartog 1988, 2001; Munson 2001). Ethnographic material was intrinsic to this font of the Greco-Roman historical tradition. Herodotus’ narrative of political and military events (equivalent to the narrative style of later Thucydidean historiography) is more or less matched in length by his description of foreign peoples and lands (what we would call ‘‘ethnography’’ or, misleadingly, ‘‘digressions’’). Both modes of description address the deeds and mores of barbarians.
The conception of the barbarian in Herodotus and other classical Athenian writers was not simplistic and one-dimensional, like our modern derivative words. Although Herodotus describes a range of non-Greek peoples - most importantly Egyptians, Scythians, and Persians - they all represent different aspects of one category, ‘‘the barbarian,’’ schematized in such a way that together they form a cumulative pattern of‘‘non-Greekness.’’ The Egyptians are excessively submissive, the Scythians excessively aggressive, the Persians ‘‘soft’’ and suited to serve despotism; by contrast, the Greek is assertive, rational, and free. Herodotus does not tell the story of many different peoples but, as he says in his opening, of‘‘Greeks and barbarians,’’ of two classes only; both have multiple aspects (1. 1). Xenophon’s varied portraits of the Achaemenid Persians (the dominant culture in the Mesopotamian and east Mediterranean world, against which Greek culture sought to define itself: Miller 1997; Burkert 2004), ranging from the Greeks’ enemy to an idealized king in the person of Cyrus II, presents a comparable schema of aspects of the Other (Briant 2002; Cartledge 2002: 59-65; J. Hall 2002: 179-82). These multiple images of ‘‘the barbarian’’ facilitated the construction of a Greek self-portrait that was itself multifaceted.
The image of the barbarian could shade into the fantastic and the utopian, particularly in discussions of remote peoples (Evans 1999; see also Merrills 2004). Classical ethnography mixed the observable, the possible, and the bizarre (not always indifferently) in its accounts of‘‘barbarian’’ peoples; verisimilitude and accountability were secondary to estrangement. (In Roman times, even as seemingly sober an author as Caesar concluded an ethnographic discussion with an account of improbable beasts: Caes., B Gall. 6. 26-8.) Distant ‘‘barbarians’’ could become models of moral virtue and religious piety, regrettably lost in the sophistication of the Mediterranean world (e. g., the fourth-century bc author Ephorus apud Strabo 7. 3.9; Tac. Germ. 19-20; the third-century ad sophist Ael. VH 2. 31, cited in Potter 2004: 31; E. Hall 1989b: 211-23). Their virtue could be inculcated by philosophy, ‘‘alien wisdom’’ admired in the Mediterranean world, attributed not only to the ancient cultural centers of Mesopotamia and Egypt but also to northern European barbarians such as the Thracians and, in Late Antiquity, the Goths (e. g., the Getic Pythagorean Salmoxis/Zalmoxes: Hdt. 4. 94; Strabo 7. 3. 5; Diog. Laert. 1. 1; Julian. Or. 8. 244 A, Caes. 327 C-D; Jord. Get. 5. 39, see also 11. 67-72; Suda, s. v. ‘‘Zamolxis’’; Hartog 1988: 84-111; E. Hall 1989b: 149-50).
The function of classical ethnography was not primarily descriptive but creative, to ‘‘articulate... a discourse of alterity’’ (J. Hall 2002: 176). In Francois Hartog’s terms, ethnography is a ‘‘rhetoric of Otherness,’’ concerned primarily not with reportage but with ‘‘difference and inversion.’’ The ‘‘mirror of Herodotus’’ and of those who succeeded him in the writing ofhistoriae is held up to their audiences as an aid to the construction of their own past and identity, emphasizing a contrast to the ‘‘barbarian’’ antitype (Hartog 1988: xxiii-iv, 212). Thucydidean narrative would be the most influential model for Roman and late antique classicizing historiographers, but Herodotean ethnographic ‘‘digressions’’ would nonetheless remain a standard element of historia (seen, e. g., in Ammianus Marcellinus’ accounts not only of the Huns and Alani (31. 2), but also of the Persians (23. 6): Averil Cameron 1985: 37-8). The longevity of this discourse should not obscure its complexity or jade modern readers into dismissing reworkings of long-standing topoi as boilerplate; intertextual references themselves could communicate sophisticated messages (e. g., Claudian’s portrait of Alaric in terms drawn from Roman representations of Hannibal: Dewar 1994). But more important was the ideological function of alienation performed by ethnography.
Though developed in the specific historical circumstances of fifth-century BC Athens, the concept of the barbarian was a cultural and political tool that, with adjustments, was transferable to Athens’ cultural heirs in the Hellenistic and Roman periods. Attalus I of Pergamon (269-197 bc) presented himself as protector and avatar of Athenian culture in his monumental constructions, at Pergamon and Athens, celebrating his defeat of the barbarian Galatians (and playing down their Hellenistic, Seleucid allies: Pollitt 1986: 79-110; Marszal 2000). Classical Athenian public art had mythologized the Otherness of barbarians, most famously in the gigantomachy of the Parthenon, celebrating the defeat of the Achaemenid Persians with portrayals of vanquished giants and Amazons. The new, hyperrealistic, ‘‘baroque’’ style of the Attalid monuments, however, portrayed defeated barbarians as visually distinct from their victors in physiognomy and dress; hairstyle, clothing, ornament, and muscularity marked off the alien. These motifs became key elements of Hellenistic and Roman victory monuments down to the columns of Trajan and Marcus Aurelius in Rome, and the obelisk of Theodosius I and the column of Arcadius in Constantinople.
Roman culture consciously borrowed the oppositional concept of barbarus from Greek thought, and deployed it in a variety of ways to reinforce both Rome’s membership of the Hellenistic cultural world and her own imperial status. From the third century bc, Rome’s cultural alignment with the Hellenistic world was signaled by ideological adoption and internalization of the barbarian dichotomy, separating Roman ‘‘civilization’’ from the ‘‘primitivism’’ of other, unreconstructed parts of Italy (Dench 1995: 29-108; 2005: 96-117, 166-7). In turn, Roman imperial expansion was facilitated by exportation of the concept of the barbarian. In the western provinces annexed by Roman conquest, the same sharp divide between inclusion within the Hellenistic cultural world and exclusion among ‘‘the barbarians’’ provided an ideological scaffolding for ‘‘romanization,’’ a contested term for the acceptance and appropriation by non-Romans of Hellenistic urban culture, modes of expression, and Roman self-identification. Provincial elites, like Romans before them, internalized Hellenistic cultural assumptions and their antitype, ‘‘the barbarian’’ (Woolf 1998: 48-76; Hingley 2005: 59-71). The concept of the barbarian was a powerful ideological tool: a membrane between participants and nonparticipants in Hellenistic culture, yet transferable between societies; able to be deployed both externally and within a society; and permeable by those who ‘‘bought into’’ its cultural assumptions (Dench 1995: 11-12).
Accompanying these broad ideological conceptions on their translation into Roman culture was the estranging function of literary and visual ethnographic texts. Genres and topoi need not, of course, remain fixed in their purposes; literary models can be exploited and turned to different ends. But Roman ethnographical writings followed the lead of their Greek and Hellenistic models, as the conservatism of Tacitus or Ammianus Marcellinus demonstrates (King 1987; Lund 1991). Ethnography, like the term barbarus, was naturalized into Latin literature because of its ideological value: the alienation of its subject.
It was not only historia that was transferred from the original Greek and Hellenistic to the later Roman practice: other complicit genres were subject to the same shift.
Geographia - a genre cognate with historia, and not necessarily very strictly distinguished from it (Clarke 1999: 1-76) - addressed the human inhabitants of lands as much as their topography; ethnography was fundamental also to this genre. Geographia too is increasingly seen in current scholarship as a literary rather than as a ‘‘scientific’’ genre, and for the most part ideologically motivated (Nicolet 1991; Romm 1992; Clarke 1999; for Late Antiquity: Lozovsky 2000; Merrills 2005; note that in Latin the term chorographia was more commonly used than geographia). As a genre, geographia received its greatest impetus at times of political expansion: in the wake of Alexander’s conquests, and after the Roman consolidation of the Mediterranean basin. At these imperial moments (particularly under Rome), geographia served two contradictory yet complementary functions. By offering a systematic description of all known lands, it asserted ‘‘ecumenical claims,’’ picturing the Roman Empire as coterminous with ‘‘the whole world’’ (Nicolet 1991: 29-56). At the same time, geographia was concerned to portray ‘‘the edges of the earth’’ - lands beyond Greco-Roman knowledge - as wild, alien, and dangerous; not just different from the Mediterranean world, but an other world, the reverse of the Greco-Roman orbis, the antichthon. Hostile and impassable borders closed off these Other worlds. The most insurmountable of these borders was Oceanus, the ocean, encircling the lands of the known world, a realm of chaos and monsters (Romm 1992: 21-3). Geographia, with its appropriation of the known world and demarcation from the unknown, provides a topographic aspect to ethnography’s function of alienation.
Four points stand out from this digression into earlier antiquity. First, current scholarship sees the concept of the barbarian as central to the ideological foundations of classical societies, transferred from Athens to the Hellenistic and Roman thought-worlds. Second, this concept was a construct, an intellectual artifact of classical workmanship, not a neutral observation of the surrounding world. It served identifiable functions: to establish and reify oppositional categories. ‘‘Ethnography’’ was not essentially a descriptive genre, but a creative one - a genre intended to alienate its audience from its subject. Third, the ideological concepts of classical ethnography permeate our extant texts to a very high degree (formally in historia and geographia, more casually in other genres). And fourthly, these fundamentally structuralist and anthropological interpretations, neither new nor unique to classical studies, constitute a widely accepted interpretive framework within which by and large classical studies now operate.
World History
