Terry Jones' "Barbarians"

[Lydia Leftcoast]

The ex-Monty Python members read history at Oxford and has maintained his interest in the subject. These days, he makes documentaries and lectures about ancient and medieval history.

Last night, I finished watching his two-disk documentary "Barbarians," and it was fascinating.

As a college freshman, I took medieval history, a course that started with the fall of Rome. In that course, the barbarians were just names of tribes moving around Europe and the Mediterranean. We didn't learn anything about THEM other than that they fought the Romans, so I imagined them as sweaty brutes with matted, greasy hair, wearing bearskin and leather clothes, and clubbing people over the head when they weren't walking around grunting and scratching their armpits.

Jones' documentary attempts to break through that stereotype by looking at several "barbarian" groups in depth (as revealed by modern archeology) and describing the circumstances in which they encountered the Romans. For examples, the Gauls, a Celtic people, had settled towns, elegant arts, strong women rulers, and a sophisticated calendar. The Parthians were at a level of civilization equal to Rome's. When the Vandals sacked Rome, they didn't actually destroy much of anything. The Visigoths were a Christian tribe who came to Rome with a mixed purpose: pilgrimage and pillage. The Germanic warriors who vanquished the Romans in the Teutoburger Forest were fighting for their land and way of life against Roman incursions, and their leader, Herman, had been the subject of Roman attempts to co-opt him by training him in their ways. The Huns, who swept across Central Asia, were not a single tribe but had a lot of followers from other ethnic groups.

It's clear that Jones doesn't much like the Romans, whom he considers to be cruel and single-minded imperialists, more barbaric than many of the so-called barbarians they conquered. They seem to have been like the Borg: assimilate or die.

I also detected a subtext, a critique of the British and American sense of entitlement to tell the rest of the world how to live.

Anyway, if you're a history buff, you'll enjoy this series.

[WCGreen]

1. The shows made the rounds on the various History Channels a while

back.

I believe I saw them all. Great entertainment and wonderful bits of entertainment to boot...

[Staph]

2. I haven't seen the series,

but I read the book. Fascinating! I spent a lot of time googling places and people and tribes. I love a good history book, especially a book about something I know little about.