Terry Jones: Barbarians

[Dimentio]

YouTube - Barbarians - The Primitive Celts 1/6

What are your opinions on this series? Have the Romans distorted the history of the neighbouring peoples.

 

[Drachir]

With my pathetic connection speed, I am unable to view or even download the video. However, I can say that the Romans, like all great powers, were very good at justifying their actions by depicting those they victimized as barbaric or threatening.

 

[Urien]

I enjoyed the series. Ace knows a great deal about the Romans so could offer useful info. The Romans wrote the history of their wars and they weren't big on making themselves look bad.

I think Terry Jones went a little over the top the other way, saying Romans bad, barbarians good and civilised. I suspect that by modern standards we would deem them all morally deficient; though I've never been a fan of retrofitting 21st century morals on ancient societies.

Well worth a watch though; Terry Jones is a good and interesting presenter.

 

[Peter Graham]

Well said, my liege.

As we've discussed before (for which read "as I've banged on about endlessly before"), whimsical 21st Century thinking likes to portray certain tribes/peoples - and this definitely includes the Celts - as being peace-loving proto-hippies, in touch with earth energies and part of some Celestial Oneness. Said Celestial Oneness was untimely ripp'd from them by more aggresively masculine and/or technologically advanced cultures such as the Romans.

"Barbarian" derives (I think) from a word just meaning "bearded ones". Although that is not a particularly offensive word, it does give an indication of how the Romans viewed other peoples. I think we can see echoes of that mindset today in the way that some Londoners refer to things outside the capital as being "provincial", which clearly carries negative connotations without actually expressly stating them.

But Urien Gwledig is right. Roman society and Celtic society were both capable of great beauty and great cruelty. Being on the losing side doesn't make one any more morally superior.

Regards,

Peter

 

[Dimentio]

The Romans were not actually technologically superior to the Celts. The Celts could actually have beaten Rome if they had been unified (as their metallurgy were superior to the Romans and they thus could produce superior weapons). Celtic technological and scientific inferiority is mostly a myth created by Roman authors, amongst them Julius Caesar.