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98-671: Barbaras were barbarians who were mentioned in the Indian epic Mahabharata , along with the Yavanas , Sakas and Kambojas . This Hindu mythology–related article is a stub . You can help Misplaced Pages by expanding it . Barbarian A "barbarian" may also be an individual reference to an aggressive, brutal, cruel, and insensitive person, particularly one who is also dim-witted, while cultures, customs and practices adopted by peoples and countries perceived to be primitive may be referred to as " barbaric ". The term originates from

196-477: A hecatomb , a sacrifice of 100 oxen, if he won Helen, but forgot about it and earned her wrath. Menelaus inherited Tyndareus' throne of Sparta with Helen as his queen when her brothers, Castor and Pollux , became gods, and when Agamemnon married Helen's sister Clytemnestra and took back the throne of Mycenae. Paris, under the guise of a supposed diplomatic mission, went to Sparta to get Helen and bring her back to Troy. Before Helen could look up to see him enter

294-406: A better hunter than she. The only way to appease Artemis, he said, was to sacrifice Iphigenia , who was either the daughter of Agamemnon and Clytemnestra, or of Helen and Theseus entrusted to Clytemnestra when Helen married Menelaus. Agamemnon refused, and the other commanders threatened to make Palamedes commander of the expedition. According to some versions, Agamemnon relented and performed

392-663: A certain admiration, perhaps unwilling, for the rude force of these peoples or simpler customs. In a somewhat related example, Mencius believed that Confucian practices were universal and timeless, and thus followed by both Hua and Yi, " Shun was an Eastern barbarian; he was born in Chu Feng, moved to Fu Hsia, and died in Ming T'iao. King Wen was a Western barbarian; he was born in Ch'i Chou and died in Pi Ying. Their native places were over

490-461: A co-commander, which he was granted. The last commander to arrive was Achilles , who was then 15 years old. Following a sacrifice to Apollo , a snake slithered from the altar to a sparrow's nest in a plane tree nearby. It ate the mother and her nine chicks, then was turned to stone. Calchas interpreted this as a sign that Troy would fall in the tenth year of the war. When the Achaeans left for

588-555: A constant motif, sometimes minor, sometimes very major indeed. They figure prominently in the Shang oracle inscriptions, and the dynasty that came to an end only in 1912 was, from the Chinese point of view, barbarian." Shang dynasty (1600–1046 BC) oracles and bronze inscriptions first recorded specific Chinese exonyms for foreigners, often in contexts of warfare or tribute. King Wu Ding (r. 1250–1192 BC), for instance, fought with

686-545: A foul smell; on Odysseus's advice, the Atreidae ordered Philoctetes to stay on Lemnos . Medon took control of Philoctetes's men. While landing on Tenedos, Achilles killed king Tenes , son of Apollo, despite a warning by his mother that if he did so he would be killed himself by Apollo. From Tenedos, Agamemnon sent an embassy to the Priam king of Troy composed of Menelaus and Odysseus, asking for Helen's return. The embassy

784-673: 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 made part of the province of Syria – used the term "barbarian" to describe himself. Because he was a noted satirist, this could have indicated self-deprecating irony. It might also have suggested descent from Samosata's original Semitic-speaking 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 standard usage in

882-487: A pejorative and politically motivated manner. The term also carried a cultural dimension to its dual meaning. The verb βαρβαρίζω ( barbarízō ) in ancient Greek meant to behave or talk like a barbarian, or to hold with the barbarians. Plato ( Statesman 262de) rejected the Greek–barbarian dichotomy as a logical absurdity on just such grounds: dividing the world into Greeks and non-Greeks told one nothing about

980-520: A period of four days and two nights in the tenth year of the decade-long siege of Troy; the Odyssey describes the journey home of Odysseus , one of the war's heroes. Other parts of the war are described in a cycle of epic poems , which have survived through fragments. Episodes from the war provided material for Greek tragedy and other works of Greek literature, and for Roman poets including Virgil and Ovid . The ancient Greeks believed that Troy

1078-542: 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 Scythians and Galatians as heroic individuals – and even (as in the case of Anacharsis ) as philosophers – but they regarded their culture as barbaric. The Romans indiscriminately characterised

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1176-697: A rough garment in wool"). The region, still known as " Barbagia " (in Sardinian Barbàgia or Barbàza ), preserves this old "barbarian" designation in its name – but it no longer consciously retains "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)

1274-588: 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

1372-635: A thousand li apart, and there were a thousand years between them. Yet when they had their way in the Central Kingdoms, their actions matched like the two halves of a tally. The standards of the two sages, one earlier and one later, were identical." Trojan War On the Greek side: On the Trojan side: The Trojan War was a legendary conflict in Greek mythology that took place around

1470-582: A war of conquest against Persia as a panacea for Greek problems. However, the disparaging Hellenic stereotype of barbarians did not totally 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

1568-539: 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. Historically, the term barbarian has seen widespread use in English. Many peoples have dismissed alien cultures and even rival civilizations, because they were unrecognizably strange. For instance, the nomadic Turkic peoples north of

1666-541: A woman so that he would not have to go to war, but, according to one story, they blew a horn, and Achilles revealed himself by seizing a spear to fight intruders, rather than fleeing. According to another story, they disguised themselves as merchants bearing trinkets and weaponry, and Achilles was marked out from the other women for admiring weaponry instead of clothes and jewellery. Pausanias said that, according to Homer, Achilles did not hide in Skyros, but rather conquered

1764-553: Is attributed to the 6th century BC Sicilian poet Stesichorus , while for Homer the Helen in Troy was one and the same. The ship then landed in Sidon . Paris, fearful of getting caught, spent some time there and then sailed to Troy. Paris' abduction of Helen had several precedents. Io was taken from Mycenae, Europa was taken from Phoenicia , Jason took Medea from Colchis , and

1862-932: Is given by the Bibliotheca that differs somewhat but agrees in numbers. Some scholars have claimed that Homer's catalogue is an original Bronze Age document, possibly the Achaean commander's order of operations. Others believe it was a fabrication of Homer. The second book of the Iliad also lists the Trojan allies , consisting of the Trojans themselves, led by Hector, and various allies listed as Dardanians led by Aeneas, Zeleians , Adrasteians , Percotians , Pelasgians , Thracians , Ciconian spearmen, Paionian archers, Halizones , Mysians, Phrygians , Maeonians , Miletians , Lycians led by Sarpedon and Carians . Nothing

1960-647: Is known from a summary included in Proclus ' Chrestomathy . The authorship of the Cyclic Epics is uncertain. It is generally thought that the poems were written down in the 7th and 6th century BC , after the composition of the Homeric poems, though it is widely believed that they were based on earlier traditions. Both the Homeric epics and the Epic Cycle take origin from oral tradition . Even after

2058-561: Is now accepted by most scholars. The historicity of the Trojan War remains an open question. Many scholars believe that there is a historical core to the tale, though this may simply mean that the Homeric stories are a fusion of various tales of sieges and expeditions by Mycenaean Greeks during the Bronze Age . Those who believe that the stories of the Trojan War are derived from a specific historical conflict usually date it to

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2156-477: Is said of the Trojan language ; the Carians are specifically said to be barbarian-speaking , and the allied contingents are said to have spoken many languages, requiring orders to be translated by their individual commanders. The Trojans and Achaeans in the Iliad share the same religion, same culture and the enemy heroes speak to each other in the same language, though this could be dramatic effect. Philoctetes

2254-466: Is usually credited as Zeus' daughter, and sometimes Nemesis is credited as her mother. Helen had scores of suitors , and her father was unwilling to choose one for fear the others would retaliate violently. Finally, one of the suitors, Odysseus of Ithaca, proposed a plan to solve the dilemma. In exchange for Tyndareus' support of his own suit towards Penelope , he suggested that Tyndareus require all of Helen's suitors to promise that they would defend

2352-471: The 12th or 11th century BC , often preferring the dates given by Eratosthenes , 1194–1184 BC, which roughly correspond to archaeological evidence of a catastrophic burning of Troy VII , and the Late Bronze Age collapse . The events of the Trojan War are found in many works of Greek literature and depicted in numerous works of Greek art . There is no single, authoritative text which tells

2450-745: The Guifang 鬼方, Di 氐, and Qiang 羌 "barbarians." During the Spring and Autumn period (771–476 BC), the meanings of four exonyms were expanded. "These included Rong, Yi, Man, and Di—all general designations referring to the barbarian tribes." These Siyi 四夷 "Four Barbarians", most "probably the names of ethnic groups originally," were the Yi or Dongyi 東夷 "eastern barbarians," Man or Nanman 南蠻 "southern barbarians," Rong or Xirong 西戎 "western barbarians," and Di or Beidi 北狄 "northern barbarians." The Russian anthropologist Mikhail Kryukov concluded. Evidently,

2548-708: The Ancient Greek : βάρβαρος ( barbaros ; pl. βάρβαροι barbaroi ). In Ancient Greece , the Greeks used the term not only for those who did not speak Greek and follow classical Greek customs, but also for Greek populations on the fringe of the Greek world with peculiar dialects. In Ancient Rome , the Romans adapted and applied the term to tribal non-Romans such as the Germanics , Celts , Iberians , Helvetii , Thracians , Illyrians , and Sarmatians . In

2646-679: The Black Sea , including the Pechenegs and the Kipchaks , were called barbarians by the Byzantines . The native Berbers of North Africa were among the many peoples called "Barbarian" by the early Romans. The term continued to be used by medieval Arabs (see Berber etymology ) before being replaced by " Amazigh ". In English, the term "Berber" continues to be used as an exonym . The geographical term Barbary or Barbary Coast , and

2744-454: The Caucasus , that, like his father Cronus, he would be overthrown by one of his sons. Another prophecy stated that a son of the sea-nymph Thetis, with whom Zeus fell in love after gazing upon her in the oceans off the Greek coast, would become greater than his father. For one or both of these reasons, either upon Zeus' orders or because she wished to please Hera, who had raised her, Thetis

2842-645: The Egyptians , Persians , Medes and Phoenicians , emphasizing their otherness. According to Greek writers, this was because the language they spoke sounded to Greeks like gibberish represented by the sounds "bar..bar..;" the alleged root of the word bárbaros , which is an echomimetic or onomatopoeic word. In various occasions, the term was also used by Greeks, especially the Athenians , to deride other Greek tribes and states (such as Epirotes, Eleans, Boeotians and Aeolic-speakers) and also fellow Athenians in

2940-641: 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

3038-531: The Huai River region, and generalized references to "barbarian; foreigner; non-Chinese." Lin Yutang's Chinese-English Dictionary of Modern Usage translates Yi as "Anc[ient] barbarian tribe on east border, any border or foreign tribe." The sinologist Edwin G. Pulleyblank says the name Yi "furnished the primary Chinese term for 'barbarian'," but "Paradoxically the Yi were considered the most civilized of

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3136-596: The Peloponnese , the Dodecanese islands, Crete, and Ithaca, comprising 1186 pentekonters , ships with 50 rowers. Thucydides says that according to tradition there were about 1200 ships, and that the Boeotian ships had 120 men, while Philoctetes ' ships only had the fifty rowers, these probably being maximum and minimum. These numbers would mean a total force of 70,000 to 130,000 men. Another catalogue of ships

3234-544: The Styx , the river that runs to the underworld , making him invulnerable wherever he was touched by the water. Because she had held him by the heel, it was not entirely immersed during the bathing and thus the heel remained mortal and vulnerable to injury (hence the expression " Achilles' heel " for an isolated weakness). He grew up to be the greatest of all mortal warriors. After Calchas' prophecy, Thetis hid Achilles in Skyros at

3332-569: The Yao people , for instance, was changed from yao 猺 "jackal" to yao 瑤 "precious jade" in the modern period. The original Hua–Yi distinction between Hua ("Chinese") and Yi (commonly translated as "barbarian") was based on culture and power but not on race. Historically, the Chinese used various words for foreign ethnic groups. They include terms like 夷 Yi , which is often translated as "barbarians." Despite this conventional translation, there are also other ways of translating Yi into English. Some of

3430-579: The early modern period and sometimes later, the Byzantine Greeks used it for the Turks in a clearly pejorative manner. The Greek word was borrowed into Arabic as well, under the form بربر ( barbar ), and used as an exonym by the Arab conquerors to refer to the indigenous peoples of North Africa, known in English as Amazigh or Berbers , with the latter thereby being a cognate of

3528-749: The "Other" as those who do not speak one's language; Greek barbaroi was paralleled by Arabic ajam "non-Arabic speakers; non-Arabs; (especially) Persians ." In the ancient Indian epic Mahabharata , the Sanskrit onomatopoeic word barbara- referred to the incomprehensible, unfamiliar speech (perceived as "babbling", "incoherent stammering") of non-Vedic peoples ("wretch, foreigner, sinful people, low and barbarous".) The term "Barbarian" in traditional Chinese culture had several aspects. For one thing, Chinese has more than one historical "barbarian" exonym . Several historical Chinese characters for non-Chinese peoples were graphic pejoratives . The character for

3626-501: The "barbarophonoi" in the Iliad signifies not those who spoke a non-Greek language but simply those who spoke Greek badly. A change occurred in the connotations of the word after the Greco-Persian Wars in the first half of the 5th century BC. Here a hasty coalition of Greeks defeated the vast Persian Empire . Indeed, in the Greek of this period 'barbarian' is often used expressly to refer to Persians, who were enemies of

3724-469: 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 live in cities, making their abodes in

3822-459: The 'Four Barbarians,' north, west, east, and south." Professor Creel said, From ancient to modern times the Chinese attitude toward people not Chinese in culture—"barbarians"—has commonly been one of contempt, sometimes tinged with fear ... It must be noted that, while the Chinese have disparaged barbarians, they have been singularly hospitable both to individuals and to groups that have adopted Chinese culture. And at times they seem to have had

3920-459: The 12th or 13th century BC. The war was waged by the Achaeans ( Greeks ) against the city of Troy after Paris of Troy took Helen from her husband Menelaus , king of Sparta . The war is one of the most important events in Greek mythology, and it has been narrated through many works of Greek literature , most notably Homer 's Iliad . The core of the Iliad (Books II – XXIII) describes

4018-649: The Greeks in this war. The Romans used the term barbarus for uncivilised people, opposite to Greek or Roman, and in fact, it became a common term to refer to all foreigners among Romans after Augustus age (as, among the Greeks, after the Persian wars, the Persians), including the Germanic peoples, Persians, Gauls, Phoenicians and Carthaginians. The Greek term barbaros was the etymological source for many words meaning "barbarian", including English barbarian , which

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4116-636: The Persians and other non-Greeks whom 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 makes 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 rule barbarians". The renowned orator Demosthenes (384–322 B.C.) made derogatory comments in his speeches, using

4214-469: The Trojan War circulated. In later ages playwrights , historians , and other intellectuals would create works inspired by the Trojan War. The three great tragedians of Athens , Aeschylus , Sophocles and Euripides , wrote a number of dramas that portray episodes from the Trojan War. Among Roman writers the most important is the 1st century BC poet Virgil; in Book 2 of his Aeneid , Aeneas narrates

4312-474: The Trojan princess Hesione had been taken by Heracles, who gave her to Telamon of Salamis . According to Herodotus , Paris was emboldened by these examples to steal himself a wife from Greece, and expected no retribution, since there had been none in the other cases. According to Homer, Menelaus and his ally, Odysseus, travelled to Troy, where they unsuccessfully sought to recover Helen by diplomatic means. Menelaus then asked Agamemnon to help him enforce

4410-548: The Trojans Hector and Paris, the city fell to the ruse of the Trojan Horse . The Achaeans slaughtered the Trojans, except for some of the women and children whom they kept or sold as slaves and desecrated the temples, thus earning the gods' wrath. Few of the Achaeans returned safely to their homes and many founded colonies in distant shores. The Romans later traced their origin to Aeneas, Aphrodite's son and one of

4508-489: The Trojans, who was said to have led the surviving Trojans to Italy . The following summary of the Trojan War follows the order of events as given in Proclus' summary, along with the Iliad , Odyssey , and Aeneid , supplemented with details drawn from other authors. According to Greek mythology, Zeus had become king of the gods by overthrowing his father Cronus ; Cronus in turn had overthrown his father Uranus . Zeus

4606-527: The apple. They submitted the judgment to a shepherd they encountered tending his flock. Each of the goddesses promised the young man a boon in return for his favour: power, wisdom, or love. The youth—in fact Paris, a Trojan prince who had been raised in the countryside—chose love, and awarded the apple to Aphrodite. As his reward, Aphrodite caused Helen, the Queen of Sparta, and most beautiful of all women, to fall in love with Paris. The judgement of Paris earned him

4704-413: The barbarian tribes at first had individual names, but during about the middle of the first millennium B.C., they were classified schematically according to the four cardinal points of the compass. This would, in the final analysis, mean that once again territory had become the primary criterion of the we-group, whereas the consciousness of common origin remained secondary. What continued to be important were

4802-408: The composition of the Iliad , Odyssey , and the Cyclic Epics, the myths of the Trojan War were passed on orally in many genres of poetry and through non-poetic storytelling. Events and details of the story that are only found in later authors may have been passed on through oral tradition and could be as old as the Homeric poems. Visual art, such as vase painting , was another medium in which myths of

4900-534: 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 argument was turned around and applied to the European invaders. With this shift in meaning,

4998-513: The court of King Lycomedes , where he was disguised as a girl. At a crucial point in the war, she assists her son by providing weapons divinely forged by Hephaestus (see below ). The most beautiful woman in the world was Helen, one of the daughters of Tyndareus , King of Sparta. Her mother was Leda , who had been either raped or seduced by Zeus in the form of a swan. Accounts differ over which of Leda's four children, two pairs of twins, were fathered by Zeus and which by Tyndareus. However, Helen

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5096-403: The downfall of Troy. After bathing in the spring of Ida, the goddesses appeared to him naked, either for the sake of winning or at Paris' request. Paris was unable to decide among them, so the goddesses resorted to bribes. Athena offered Paris wisdom, skill in battle, and the abilities of the greatest warriors; Hera offered him political power and control of all of Asia ; and Aphrodite offered him

5194-469: The entire events of the war. Instead, the story is assembled from a variety of sources, some of which report contradictory versions of the events. The most important literary sources are the two epic poems traditionally credited to Homer, the Iliad and the Odyssey , composed sometime between the 9th and 6th centuries BC. Each poem narrates only a part of the war. The Iliad covers a short period in

5292-505: The examples include "foreigners," "ordinary others," "wild tribes," "uncivilized tribes," and so forth. Chinese historical records mention what may now perhaps be termed "barbarian" peoples for over four millennia, although this considerably predates the Greek language origin of the term "barbarian", at least as is known from the thirty-four centuries of written records in the Greek language. The sinologist Herrlee Glessner Creel said, "Throughout Chinese history "the barbarians" have been

5390-486: The factors of language, the acceptance of certain forms of material culture, the adherence to certain rituals, and, above all, the economy and the way of life. Agriculture was the only appropriate way of life for the Hua-Hsia . The Chinese classics use compounds of these four generic names in localized "barbarian tribes" exonyms such as "west and north" Rongdi , "south and east" Manyi , Nanyibeidi "barbarian tribes in

5488-424: The fairest"). The apple was claimed by Hera, Athena, and Aphrodite. They quarrelled bitterly over it, and none of the other gods would venture an opinion favouring one, for fear of earning the enmity of the other two. Eventually, Zeus ordered Hermes to lead the three goddesses to Paris, a prince of Troy, who, unaware of his ancestry, was being raised as a shepherd on Mount Ida , because of a prophecy that he would be

5586-469: 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 control 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

5684-533: The growth of chattel slavery – especially 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 established ca. 508 BC, slavery came into use on a scale never before seen among the Greeks. Massive concentrations of slaves worked under especially brutal conditions in

5782-538: The interior of Asia Minor. Reinforcements continued to come until the very end. The Achaeans controlled only the entrance to the Dardanelles, and Troy and her allies controlled the shortest point at Abydos and Sestos and communicated with allies in Europe. Achilles and Ajax were the most active of the Achaeans, leading separate armies to raid lands of Trojan allies. According to Homer, Achilles conquered 11 cities and 12 islands. According to Apollodorus, he raided

5880-558: The ire of both Hera and Athena, and when Helen left her husband, Menelaus, the Spartan king, for Paris of Troy, Menelaus called upon all the kings and princes of Greece to wage war upon Troy. Menelaus' brother Agamemnon , king of Mycenae , led an expedition of Achaean troops to Troy and besieged the city for ten years because of Paris' insult. After the deaths of many heroes, including the Achaeans Achilles and Ajax , and

5978-516: The island, as part of the Trojan War. The Achaean forces first gathered at Aulis . All the suitors sent their forces except King Cinyras of Cyprus. Though he sent breastplates to Agamemnon and promised to send 50 ships, he sent only one real ship, led by the son of Mygdalion, and 49 ships made of clay. Idomeneus was willing to lead the Cretan contingent in Mycenae's war against Troy, but only as

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6076-472: The last year of the siege of Troy, while the Odyssey concerns Odysseus's return to his home island of Ithaca following the sack of Troy and contains several flashbacks to particular episodes in the war. Other parts of the Trojan War were told in the poems of the Epic Cycle , also known as the Cyclic Epics: the Cypria , Aethiopis , Little Iliad , Iliou Persis , Nostoi , and Telegony . Though these poems survive only in fragments, their content

6174-430: The love of the most beautiful woman in the world, Helen of Sparta. Paris awarded the apple to Aphrodite, and, after several adventures, returned to Troy, where he was recognised by his royal family. Peleus and Thetis bore a son, whom they named Achilles. It was foretold that he would either die of old age after an uneventful life, or die young in a battlefield and gain immortality through poetry. Furthermore, when Achilles

6272-399: The main narrative, and therefore as likely to be "early and integral". Eight years after the storm had scattered them, the fleet of more than a thousand ships was gathered again. When they had all reached Aulis, the winds ceased. The prophet Calchas stated that the goddess Artemis was punishing Agamemnon for killing either a sacred deer or a deer in a sacred grove, and boasting that he was

6370-412: The marriage of Helen, regardless of whom he chose. The suitors duly swore the required oath on the severed pieces of a horse, although not without a certain amount of grumbling. Tyndareus chose Menelaus. Menelaus was a political choice on her father's part. He had wealth and power. He had humbly not petitioned for her himself, but instead sent his brother Agamemnon on his behalf. He had promised Aphrodite

6468-403: The name of the Barbary pirates based on that coast (and who were not necessarily Berbers) were also derived from it. The term has also been used to refer to people from Barbary , a region encompassing most of North Africa . The name of the region, Barbary, comes from the Arabic word Barbar, possibly from the Latin word barbaricum, meaning "land of the barbarians". Many languages define

6566-547: The non-Chinese groups. On the one hand, many of them harassed and pillaged the Chinese, which gave them a genuine grievance. On the other, it is quite clear that the Chinese were increasingly encroaching upon the territory of these peoples, getting the better of them by trickery, and putting many of them under subjection. By vilifying them and depicting them as somewhat less than human, the Chinese could justify their conduct and still any qualms of conscience. This word Yi has both specific references, such as to Huaiyi 淮夷 peoples in

6664-436: The non-Chinese peoples. Some Chinese classics romanticize or idealize barbarians, comparable to the western noble savage construct. For instance, the Confucian Analects records: The translator Arthur Waley noted that, "A certain idealization of the 'noble savage' is to be found fairly often in early Chinese literature", citing the Zuo Zhuan maxim, "When the Emperor no longer functions, learning must be sought among

6762-479: The oath of Helen's suitors, which was to defend her marriage, regardless of which suitor was chosen. Agamemnon agreed, and sent emissaries to all the Achaean kings and princes to call them to observe their oath and retrieve Helen. Since Menelaus's wedding, Odysseus had married Penelope and fathered a son, Telemachus . In order to avoid the war, he feigned madness and sowed his fields with salt. Palamedes outwitted him by placing Telemachus, then an infant, in front of

6860-463: The palace, she was shot with an arrow from Eros , otherwise known as Cupid , and fell in love with Paris when she saw him, as promised by Aphrodite. Menelaus had left for Crete to bury his uncle, Crateus. According to one account, Hera, still jealous over the judgement of Paris, sent a storm. The storm caused the lovers to land in Egypt, where the gods replaced Helen with a likeness of her made of clouds, Nephele . The myth of Helen being switched

6958-526: The plough's path. Odysseus turned aside, unwilling to kill his son, so revealing his sanity and forcing him to join the war. According to Homer, however, Odysseus supported the military adventure from the beginning, and travelled the region with Pylos ' king, Nestor , to recruit forces. At Skyros, Achilles had an affair with the king's daughter Deidamia , resulting in a child, Neoptolemus . Odysseus, Telamonian Ajax, and Achilles' tutor Phoenix went to retrieve Achilles. Achilles' mother disguised him as

7056-635: The root refers to "babble confusedly". It appears as barbary or in Old French barbarie , itself derived from the Arabic Barbar , Berber , which is an ancient Arabic term for the North African inhabitants west of Egypt. The Arabic word might be ultimately from Greek barbaria . The Oxford English Dictionary gives five definitions of the noun barbarian , including an obsolete Barbary usage. The OED barbarous entry summarizes

7154-407: The sack of Troy. Traditionally, the Trojan War arose from a sequence of events beginning with a quarrel between the goddesses Hera , Athena , and Aphrodite . Eris , the goddess of discord, was not invited to the wedding of Peleus and Thetis , and so arrived bearing a gift: a golden apple , inscribed "for the fairest". Each of the goddesses claimed to be the "fairest", and the rightful owner of

7252-482: The sacrifice, but others claim that he sacrificed a deer in her place, or that at the last moment, Artemis took pity on the girl, and took her to be a maiden in one of her temples, substituting a lamb. Hesiod says that Iphigenia became the goddess Hecate . The Achaean forces are described in detail in the Catalogue of Ships , in the second book of the Iliad . They consisted of 28 contingents from mainland Greece,

7350-552: The second group. Yet Plato used the term barbarian frequently in his seventh letter. In Homer 's works, the term appeared only once ( Iliad 2.867), in the form βαρβαρόφωνος ( barbarophonos ) ("of incomprehensible speech"), used of the Carians fighting for Troy during the Trojan War . In general, the concept of barbaros did not figure largely in archaic literature before the 5th century BC. It has been suggested that

7448-612: The semantic history. "The sense-development in ancient times was (with the Greeks) 'foreign, non-Hellenic,' later 'outlandish, rude, brutal'; (with the Romans) 'not Latin nor Greek,' then 'pertaining to those outside the Roman Empire'; hence 'uncivilized, uncultured,' and later 'non-Christian,' whence 'Saracen, heathen'; and generally 'savage, rude, savagely cruel, inhuman.'" Greek attitudes towards "barbarians" developed in parallel with

7546-427: 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 have slaves in order to supplement

7644-487: The sound of a foreign language but also for foreigners who spoke 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 changes occurred in the connotations of barbari / barbaroi in Late Antiquity , when bishops and catholikoi were appointed to sees connected to cities among

7742-524: The south and the north," and Manyirongdi "all kinds of barbarians." Creel says the Chinese evidently came to use Rongdi and Manyi "as generalized terms denoting 'non-Chinese,' 'foreigners,' 'barbarians'," and a statement such as "the Rong and Di are wolves" ( Zuozhuan , Min 1) is "very much like the assertion that many people in many lands will make today, that 'no foreigner can be trusted'." The Chinese had at least two reasons for vilifying and depreciating

7840-484: The various Germanic tribes , the settled Gauls , and the raiding Huns as barbarians, 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 order to refer to anything that was non-Roman. The German cultural historian Silvio Vietta points out that the meaning of

7938-476: The war is the least developed among surviving sources, which prefer to talk about events in the last year of the war. After the initial landing the army was gathered in its entirety again only in the tenth year. Thucydides deduces that this was due to lack of money. They raided the Trojan allies and spent time farming the Thracian peninsula. Troy was never completely besieged, thus it maintained communications with

8036-477: The war, they did not know the way, and accidentally landed in Mysia , ruled by King Telephus , son of Heracles, who had led a contingent of Arcadians to settle there. In the battle, Achilles wounded Telephus, who had killed Thersander . Because the wound would not heal, Telephus asked an oracle, "What will happen to the wound?" The oracle responded, "he that wounded shall heal". The Achaean fleet then set sail and

8134-658: The word "barbarian". In the Bible's New Testament , St. Paul (from Tarsus ) – lived about 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 ). In the Acts of the Apostles , the people of Malta , who were kind to Paul and his companions who had been shipwrecked off their coast, are called barbarians (Acts 28:2) . About

8232-515: The word "barbarian". The Ancient Greek name βάρβαρος ( bárbaros ) 'barbarian' was an antonym for πολίτης ( politēs ) 'citizen', from πόλις ( polis ) 'city'. The earliest attested form of the word is the Mycenaean Greek 𐀞𐀞𐀫 , pa-pa-ro , written in Linear B syllabic script. The Greeks used the term barbarian for all non-Greek-speaking people, including

8330-513: The word "barbarous" has undergone a semantic change in modern 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 not the supposedly "uncivilized" Indian tribes who were "barbarous", but

8428-432: The work 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 use not only for

8526-451: The wound must be able to heal it. Pieces of the spear were scraped off onto the wound, and Telephus was healed. Telephus then showed the Achaeans the route to Troy. Some scholars have regarded the expedition against Telephus and its resolution as a derivative reworking of elements from the main story of the Trojan War, but it has also been seen as fitting the story-pattern of the "preliminary adventure" that anticipates events and themes from

8624-464: Was Heracles' friend, and because he lit Heracles's funeral pyre when no one else would, he received Heracles' bow and arrows. He sailed with seven ships full of men to the Trojan War, where he was planning on fighting for the Achaeans. They stopped either at Chryse Island for supplies, or in Tenedos , along with the rest of the fleet. Then Philoctetes was bitten by a snake. The wound festered and had

8722-423: Was betrothed to an elderly human king, Peleus, son of Aeacus . All of the gods were invited to Peleus and Thetis' wedding and brought many gifts, except Eris (the goddess of discord), who was stopped at the door by Hermes , on Zeus' order. Insulted, she threw from the door a gift of her own: a golden apple ( Ancient Greek : το μήλον της έριδος ) on which was inscribed the word καλλίστῃ Kallistē ("To

8820-833: Was first recorded in 16th century Middle English . A word barbara- (बर्बर) is also found in the Sanskrit of ancient India, with the primary meaning of "cruel" and also "stammering" (बड़बड़), implying someone with an unfamiliar language. The Greek word barbaros is related to Sanskrit barbaras (stammering). This Indo-European root is also found in Latin balbutire / balbus for "stammer / stammering" (leading to Italian balbettare , Spanish balbucear and French balbutier ) and Czech blblati "to stammer". The verb baṛbaṛānā in both contemporary Hindi (बड़बड़ाना) as well as Urdu (بڑبڑانا) means 'to babble, to speak gibberish, to rave incoherently'. In Aramaic, Old Persian and Arabic context,

8918-399: Was first to leap off his ship, he was not the first to land on Trojan soil. Hector killed Protesilaus in single combat, though the Trojans conceded the beach. In the second wave of attacks, Achilles killed Cycnus , son of Poseidon . The Trojans then fled to the safety of the walls of their city. The walls served as sturdy fortifications for defence against the Greeks. The build of the walls

9016-570: Was located near the Dardanelles and that the Trojan War was a historical event of the 13th or 12th century BC . By the mid-19th century AD, both the war and the city were widely seen as non-historical, but in 1868, the German archaeologist Heinrich Schliemann met Frank Calvert , who convinced Schliemann that Troy was at what is now Hisarlık in modern-day Turkey . On the basis of excavations conducted by Schliemann and others, this claim

9114-653: Was meditating marvelous deeds, even to mingle storm and tempest over the boundless earth, and already he was hastening to make an utter end of the race of mortal men, declaring that he would destroy the lives of the demi-gods, that the children of the gods should not mate with wretched mortals, seeing their fate with their own eyes; but that the blessed gods henceforth even as aforetime should have their living and their habitations apart from men. But on those who were born of immortals and of mankind verily Zeus laid toil and sorrow upon sorrow. Zeus came to learn from either Themis or Prometheus , after Heracles had released him from

9212-584: Was nine years old, Calchas had prophesied that Troy could not again fall without his help. A number of sources credit Thetis with attempting to make Achilles immortal when he was an infant. Some of these state that she held him over fire every night to burn away his mortal parts and rubbed him with ambrosia during the day, but Peleus discovered her actions and stopped her. According to some versions of this story, Thetis had already killed several sons in this manner, and Peleus' action therefore saved his son's life. Other sources state that Thetis bathed Achilles in

9310-521: Was not faithful to his wife and sister Hera , and had many relationships from which many children were born. Since Zeus believed that there were too many people populating the earth, he envisioned Momus or Themis , who was to use the Trojan War as a means to depopulate the Earth, especially of his demigod descendants. These can be supported by Hesiod's account: Now all the gods were divided through strife; for at that very time Zeus who thunders on high

9408-576: Was refused. Philoctetes stayed on Lemnos for ten years, which was a deserted island according to Sophocles' tragedy Philoctetes , but according to earlier tradition was populated by Minyans . Calchas had prophesied that the first Achaean to walk on land after stepping off a ship would be the first to die. Thus even the leading Greeks hesitated to land. Finally, Protesilaus , leader of the Phylaceans , landed first. Odysseus had tricked him, in throwing his own shield down to land on, so that while he

9506-464: Was scattered by a storm. Achilles landed in Skyros and married Deidamia. A new gathering was set again in Aulis. Telephus went to Aulis , and either pretended to be a beggar, asking Agamemnon to help heal his wound, or kidnapped Orestes and held him for ransom, demanding the wound be healed. Achilles refused, claiming to have no medical knowledge. Odysseus reasoned that the spear that had inflicted

9604-569: Was so impressive that legend held that they had been built by Poseidon and Apollo during a year of forced service to Trojan King Laomedon . Protesilaus had killed many Trojans but was killed by Hector in most versions of the story, though others list Aeneas, Achates , or Ephorbus as his slayer. The Achaeans buried him as a god on the Thracian peninsula, across the Troäd. After Protesilaus' death, his brother, Podarces , took command of his troops. The Achaeans besieged Troy for nine years. This part of

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