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I have an interesting anecdote on barbarian. This …

Comment posted on Barbarian by cuneiform

I have an interesting anecdote on barbarian. This is all from memory so I hope its accurate. My high school latin teacher was a retired professor of classical languages and he explained while we were learning about Julius Caesar’s conquest of Gaul that the enemy (later to be known as British) painted themselves blue and glued feathers on their bodies. When the Roman soldiers saw them they laughed and commented “bar bar” because bar meant a wild bird which is what they looked like to them. Since then I believe that the word bar has been used together with bird in some ancient languages to designate that the bird is a wild one, so perhaps it was a bit of a play on words by the Romans. Do you know of references were bar is used alone and not barbaros?

Tags: Barbarian