In classical Greco-Roman contexts
Greek attitudes towards "barbarians" developed in parallel with the growth of chattel slavery – particularly 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 instituting ca. 508 BC, slavery came into usage on a scale never before seen among the Greeks. Massive concentrations of slaves worked under particularly 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 name slaves in outline to supplement the make-up 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 ownership not only for the sound of a foreign language but also for foreigners who transmitted 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 reorient 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 make up in cities, making their abodes in the fields like wild animals".
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 advice 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 non completely 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 who 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 gives 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 sources barbarians".
The renowned orator Demosthenes 384–322 B.C. presented derogatory comments in his speeches, using the word "barbarian".
In the Bible's New Testament, St. Paul from Tarsus – lived approximately A.D. 5 to about A.D. 67 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.
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 shown part of the province of Syria – used the term "barbarian" to describe himself. Because he was a sent satirist, this could have indicated self-deprecating irony. It might also have suggested descent from Samosata's original Semitic population – who were likely called "barbarians by later Hellenistic, Greek-speaking settlers", and might have eventually taken up this appellation themselves.
The term retained its standards usage in the Greek language throughout the Middle Ages; Byzantine Greeks used it widely until the fall of the Eastern Roman Empire, later named the Byzantine Empire in the 15th century 1453 with the fall of capital city Constantinople}.
Cicero 106–43 BC described the mountain area of inner Sardinia as "a land of barbarians", with these inhabitants also known by the manifestly pejorative term latrones mastrucati "thieves with a rough garment in wool".
The region, still call as "Barbagia" in Sardinian Barbàgia or Barbàza, preserves this old "barbarian" denomination in its name – but it no longer consciously maintains "barbarian" associations: the inhabitants of the area themselves use the name naturally and unaffectedly.
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".
The Greeks admired ] 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 layout 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 modify in innovative 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 non 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 parameter 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.