What the Barbarians Did for Us.
An onomatopoeic word for foreignors
The Dark Ages: Age of Light
The Sack of Rome, Visigoths
Focusing on the Huns, Vandals and the Goths, Valdemar Januszczak follows each tribe’s European journey and discovers the art they produced along the way.
The word “barbarian” is a misleading expression. And the art that goes with it is misleading, too.
This picture was painted in 1890 by an arrogant French painter called Joseph-Noel Silvestre. It shows the Sack of Rome in 410 A.D. by the Visigoths.
The Visigoths were a so-called barbarian tribe. You can’t miss them, they’re the ones without any clothes on. It’s such nonsense.
The Visigoths were never naked savages, clambering about Rome, destroying civilisation. They were pioneering Europeans who produced beautiful art and who
achieved important things. It was actually these so-called Barbarians who invented trousers. Riding a horse was much easier in trousers. So if it wasn’t for
the Barbarians, we’d all be wearing togas.
So this is a programme about misunderstood peoples. And their misunderstood achievements. About how we’ve got the Dark Ages wrong, again. And about a
word whose meaning has been warped by time.
It’s this word here. “Barbarian”.
Vandal Art
The word “barbarian” actually comes from the ancient Greek. Its original meaning was someone whose language you can’t understand. A foreigner. You
know like we say, “it all sounds like Greek to me” when we can’t understand something, well, the Greeks said, “It all sounds like bar bar bar”.
So it was an onomatopoeic word. Anyone who spoke a funny, foreign language was a barbarian. The same word, “barbara”, can be found in Sanskrit,
the ancient language of India. When it means gibberish or stammering. And if you’re actually called Barbara, like Barbara Windsor or Barbra Streisand,
then I’m afraid your name means “barbarian woman”. And you, madame, are particularly in touch with your barbarian self.
When the Romans took over the word it came to mean anybody, anywhere, who wasn’t a Roman. So the Persians were barbarians. The Indians, the
Chinese. The entire non-Roman world.
It isn’t just this word barbarian that has been demonised and distorted. You open your dictionary and start looking for words with bad,
Dark Ages connotations, you’ll find lots of them. Take this word here. Vandal.
The Vandals were actually another fascinating and creative ancient peoples who made things like this beautiful art. But their name has been
stolen from them and turned into something dark. Or what about the Goths? Today Goths are oily punks with dyed black hair who worship the devil.
But in real life, in Roman times, the Goths were fabulous, international creatives who made the most beautiful Bible I’ve ever seen.
