Hannibal Was A Barbarian?
Wasn't Carthage founded by the Phoenicians? You know the people that INVENTED the alphabet? And discovered the purple dye that all the Roman emperors used for their robes?
shareI think they're calling ANYONE not Roman, Barbarian. Cause nobody wanted to change the title.
shareIn all fairness from the Roman point of view they probably thought of anyone who wasn't them as barbarians.
shareHannibal might as well have been a cannibal. The Romans were shocked that he led an Army into the Roman heartland. They were also shocked that Roman provinces sided with him.
shareActually no, that's entirely inaccurate.
First off the word "Barbarian" is Greek in origin so it's more of a Greek concept then a Roman one. But cultures at the time were seen in two dimensions: Civilized and Uncivilized.
A Roman would look at Carthage and Pheonicians as the former: A civilized society that is competitive with Roman in a different manner than say the Gauls to the North. This distinction is very important when trying to understand the complexity of cultural interactions of the Ancient and Classical period.
That's not quite true. Though Carthage were not Barbarians in the eyes of us today, they were in fact Barbarians to the Romans during that time. Essentially anyone who was not Roman were Barbarians. Another example would be the Gauls.
shareBarbarian is a Greek idea, not a Roman one. The Romans adopted it later when they conquered the Greeks later and saw their culture as dominant. But the Roman perception of Carthage and the Pheonicians is very different from their perception say the Gauls or Germans.
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