Being the Barbarian: From Antiquity to the Present

BEING THE BARBARIAN: FROM ANTIQUITY TO PRESENT

by Niki Borghei

THE OXFORD LEARNER’S DICTIONARY defines the word “barbarian” as the following:

"(in ancient times) a member of a people who did not belong to one of the great civilizations (Greek, Roman, Christian), who were considered to be violent and without culture"

Etymologically, we can attribute this word to the ancient Greeks, who used the word βάρβαρος (“barbaros”) to describe any foreigner, but most often the Persians. In fact, some Ancient Greek textbooks will use “Persians” as a direct translation of this word.

As many classicists know, one of the challenges of studying antiquity is obtaining an objective understanding of the ancient world because most of our sources come from the writings of upper-class men. Many of these men had little to no regard for unbiased accounts of history. In the West, there is a fixation with the Greeks and Romans as the protagonists of ancient times. This can be traced back to the story we are told — the Greeks and Romans had achieved the pinnacle of culture and excellence, whereas the Persians, Carthaginians, and Egyptians were violent, ignorant, and brutish.

It is not surprising that the Greeks would want to linguistically assert that their military rival, the Persians, were somehow “lesser” than them in culture, and that any military prowess of theirs was a result of an “uncivilized” lust for violence. If this sounds familiar, that’s because it is. This is the language of white supremacy. The ancient perception of the Persians transcends to this day. It is common for Western media to weaponize language to antagonize the Middle East. Arguably, the notion of the “barbaric” East being a threat to white and/or Western values began even before the development of the modern concept of race; it began with the dichotomy of the Hellenic West versus the Persian East that the Greek historian Herodotus presented in The Histories. Western academics credit Herodotus with being the “Father of History,” meaning that the divorce between East and West would forever shape the way historians record and analyze history and current events. Unfortunately, this has not only tarnished the Persians’ reputation in academia, but it has influenced the media and shaped foreign policy.

In 2005, journalist Jonathan Jones wrote an article titled “The Evil Empire” in reference to the Persian Empire. He wrote that the Persians were “as notorious in their way as Darth Vader, the Sheriff of Nottingham, General Custer, or any other embodiment of evil empire you care to mention. They are history’s original villains.” His justification for this depiction of the Persians is that they were tyrannical by nature. He introduced this concept by invoking how Herodotus, “‘the father of history’, takes as his epic theme the struggle of it as a war of liberation. The idea of democracy was born in the fight against Persian despotism: that is how Herodotus tells it.”

What he does not mention is that the “democracy” we celebrate so much in the contemporary West would have been appalling to the average Greek in antiquity. Under Athenian democracy, only free men were allowed to vote, and women were not even considered citizens. This is in addition to the fact that a significant portion of the population was dehumanized by slavery. There is little difference between aristocracy and a system that calls itself “democracy” if only a select few members of a society are allowed to participate. Even so, democracy was not always a popular concept among the Greeks. At one point in history, there were thirty tyrants ruling over Athens led by anti-democracy aristocrats. However, because of Herodotus’ historical legacy, his narrative of the ancient world remains the dominant perspective.

The aforementioned article is only one example of how Herodotus’ ancient Greek supremacy narrative has bled into modern perspectives, but there are more sinister examples of antagonizing the Persians. More recently, the former president, Donald Trump, threatened to destroy cultural sites in Iran during one of his Twitter tirades. While the most dangerous aspect of this threat is that it would result in the slaughter of innocent civilians, it is also significant that he specifically chose to threaten cultural sites that connect ancient Persia to modern Iran. Trump, desperate to be seen as a hero of the West, sought to create a modern parallel to battling the ancient barbarians that threatened Western civilization. This, however, could not be further from the truth.

It can be argued that the Persians have contributed to Western civilization as much as the Greeks and Romans have. In fact, much of the contemporary world would be unrecognizable today without the Persian contributions of agriculture, astronomy, and medicine. Even the concept of human rights, which is attributed to the Cyrus Cylinder, the world’s first universal charter of human rights, comes from ancient Persia. Maintaining Herodotus’ narrative that the Persians somehow threatened cultural development is not only wrong, it is a threat to historical integrity.

Because we have not yet dismantled dominant narratives that are presented as the truth, the association of barbarism with Persia remains. Characterizing an entire civilization as barbaric is ironic considering that violence was ubiquitous even in the Greco-Roman world, and neglecting to acknowledge the contributions of ancient Persia as evidence of its rich culture is an obvious indicator of Western bias in the study of history. Even more alarming, however, is that this perspective influences contemporary worldviews and foreign policy. This dehumanizes Eastern peoples and justifies atrocities committed against them at the hands of Western forces. For the sake of the present, it is crucial that we leave the notion of barbarism in the past.