In antiquity, the term “barbarians” originated in ancient Greece. The Greeks called all foreigners who did not know their language barbarians (the word “bar-bar” originally was something like the modern “blah-blah-blah”), meaning “muttering”. The ancient Romans adopted this name from the ancient Greeks. When the northern defensive wall (“limes”) was built in the 1st century BC, becoming the boundary of the Roman Empire, all the peoples living beyond its limits were called barbarians. At that time, the term “limitrophes” also appeared, which then meant the provinces of Rome located next to the limes.
Is there a ???race??? or ???ethnicity??? in Greco-Roman antiquity?
Assome readers of this blog ( https://rfkclassics.blogspot.com/) know, I am currently working on a book that has been about 10 years in the making — a…