1/4 Terry Jones' Barbarians part 1; The Primitive Celts

[ANashuu]

@Manwithamission1972 Seems like American Foreign Policy today! Who does what USA wants is considered " Democratic State"! As soon as a state wants to be independent and refuses to play how USA wants, is portrayed as a fundamentalist dictatorial state( aka Iran). Nothing changed! Well Rome was sacked by the Arabs once, I think Washington follows!:))))

[mratkinson2007]

There is actually a lot of mystery on the origins of Celtic culture, who they were and where they originated from...Celt as actually been a catch all term for many diverse cultures across northern Europe.

[mrcaffenino]

@EpiphoneArchtopLover Sorry, soap was invented by ancient Syrians (soap of Alep), and Egyptians, and then Arabs invented soap as we know it today.

[EpiphoneArchtopLover]

@mrcaffenino No, I'm sorry, because you're wrong. Look elsewhere than wiki for your information next time. I suggest you read Pliny the Elder's Historia Naturalis, where he states that soap, in a form we would recognise today, is in fact a Celtic invention.

[nusquamesse1248]

Excellent series! Thank you for uploading.

[MidnighWolf]

He's not a Barbarian, he's a very naughty boy!

[zackmerc0311]

Julius Caesar had hair. He wasn't shaved.

[ccroceiii]

Wait until they do the history of the barbaric American empire. (They put sluts like Paris Hilton on TV!) And the heroic Jihad warriors that took us down and brought about a wonderful Caliphate.

[cleanhomer]

@ccroceiii And don't forget the equally heroic Crusader warriors who want to blow shit up & bring back a glorious Feudal/Serfdom age. ;)

[MushashiMiyamotoSama]

Here we go again another over simplification of history. So now the Romans were barbaric but other civilizations were not. There were barbaric aspects to all of these cultures, Celts and Romans, according to our standards. When Rome fell none of these nations that were part of the Pax Romana were celebrating. They perceived themselves are Romans and were full of anxiety as their world was ending. Yes, Rome was brutal at times but so were they all. Also, it was the Celts that attacked Rome first.

[4ThomasAllan]

@MushashiMiyamotoSama very true

[poshnile]

@MushashiMiyamotoSama It was probably because they realised were the wholw thing was going and the romans destroyed the whole celt culture by killing everyone the found including the priests.

[MushashiMiyamotoSama]

@poshnile The Celtics attached each other, raiding was common. The Celtic culture wasn't destroyed by the Romans, but incorporated Roman ideas etc. As far as the Romans destroying the druids, Romans were perfectly fine with a people keeping their own gods, only if it didn't mean rebellion against Rome. Yes, the Romans weren't nice by our modern standards, but neither were the Celts. Both the Romans and Celts had fascinating cultures that contributed to Western Civilization.

[MushashiMiyamotoSama]

@MushashiMiyamotoSama I meant to write "The Celts attacked each other...."

[poshnile]

@MushashiMiyamotoSama thats not what ive heard in a ocumentary about when they wiped out the last of the celtic civalazation, but maybe you havent seen that

[4ThomasAllan]

@poshnile I have to agree with MushashiMiyamotoSama here(nice name bro). The Romans were very adaptive adaptive and Publius Ovidius Naso articulated their attitude succinctly when he wrote, "fas est et ab hoste doceri"(It is right to learn, even from the enemy). Even the Roman sword; the Gladius Hispaniensis, was copied from some Celtic tribes of Spain( Celtiberian to be specific, were hybrid tribes living on the boarders in the center between Celtic/Atlantic Spain and-

[4ThomasAllan]

-Iberian/Mediterranean Spain). This is one fo the major aspects of the Romans that distinguished them from other Mediterranean civilizations who simply dismiss other peopls as barbarians. Celtic culture, language, and even their religion survives and fuses with the Roman one, take for instance, the Roman word for 'Mine'; Metallum, and compare it with the Celtic equivalent 'Mena', the late Latin, Romanian, Italian, Spanish and Protuguese 'Mina', and the French and English 'Mine'. Metallurgy and-

[4ThomasAllan]

-mineral extraction was a Celtic forte and so it's not surprising that they influence the Romans in this field, another is 'Carrus' (cart) from the Celtic 'Carro'. The Roman highway was the Mediterranean and consequently their commerce and transportation depended on shipcraft and they didn't develop much in the way of overland transport technologies but the Celts had. Even their gods in the provinces were dual-faceted and conflated with local deities. The fact that people often think of Zeus-

[4ThomasAllan]

-and Jove as the same deity despite the fact that they're distinct(at least originally), more, that Jove is more popularly known as Juppiter which is a Roman rendering of the Celtic Dis Pater(essentially the Celtic equivalent of Zeus, Jove, Wodan, Perun, Ra etc). The role of the druids in Celtic society wasn't just religious, it was also legal and diplomatic and they exerted a trans-tribal authority, more than anyone else, they had a sense of a Celtic collective and nationhood and this is-

[4ThomasAllan]

-probably what made them a bitter enemy of the Romans who would restrict their role to a purely religious one and make law the province of magistrates(a division of labour would encroach upon their privileges). The druids incited rebellion and the Romans responded with repression but they didn't wipe out their beliefs entirely and what was lost was more a consequence of theirs having been an oral tradition than from any malice towards the Celtic deities(Romans were superstitious, the emperors-

[4ThomasAllan]

-even went so far as to have subject peoples pray to their gods for his well-being). There were other culture clashes with the Celts but the detraction here were typically Greek in origin such as the revulsion for headhunting. There were Romans, especially the Catonians, who despised what they considered to be eastern decadence in Greeks and admired first Celtic, then Germanic tribal virtues.

[MushashiMiyamotoSama]

@poshnile To add to 4ThomasAllan's posts: 1.The Celtics were made of fiercely independent tribes that attacked each other. The Trinovates hated the Catuvellauni more than they hated the Romans, and aided the Romans to defeat them. Rome responded differently in each case, so not only was “Romano-British” different than “Gallo-Roman” but different parts of Britain were treated differently. Parts of Britain adopted Roman ways (meaning they combined Celtic and Roman culture.

[MushashiMiyamotoSama]

@poshnile 2. The ruins of Slichester in Hamshire testy to a Roman town founded by Britain, build by Britians, and run by Britians. Slichester incorporates both Roman city planning and Celtic planning. Some Celtic Romanized (the South) others didn’t (the North). The Romans never conquered the Pics, and just build Hadrian’s wall. Britainia was Romanized, Caledonia wasn’t. Again, to agree with 4ThomasAllan, Rome was about cultural exchange. Each part of Rome synthesized native culture with Roman.

[MushashiMiyamotoSama]

@MushashiMiyamotoSama "testify" not "testy"!

[poshnile]

@MushashiMiyamotoSama they still wiped out the last of the celtic civalzation i britain, they had to resort to cannibalism to please the gods so that they would win the battle, wich they didnt.

[poshnile]

@MushashiMiyamotoSama It still doesent justify that they killed the celts, including women and children and druids, at some battle at some place I cant remember the name of.

[MushashiMiyamotoSama]

@poshnile No brutality is justified. We can sympathize with Boudica’s rebellion. However, at Camulodunum all the citizens were slaughtered and many burned alive. In the Temple of Claudius, where many woman and children found refuge, they were terrified for two days then slaughtered. She also destroyed Londinium and Verulamium, as many as 70,000 Roman citizens were massacred. The breasts of noble Roman women were cut off and sown to their mouths, and their bodies were impaled on stakes.

[HojoOSanagi]

They never invented crucifixion, one can see many accounts of it being used by peoples before the Romans did such as the Persians, Indians, Scythians, Carthaginians, etc... Even Alexander the Great crucified 2 000 men, but I do agree that they were a Barbaric group of individuals and that there were more civilized aspects of other groups out there in the world.

[mutemusic0]

The Romans liked to touch little boys and other men. They were the filthy, vile barbarians.

[sixtiksix]

LOL...just one fat savage attacking in the beginning.....poor guys....no budget to round up some drunks at the train station for five savages...

[Guerilla49N]

as far as people being upset about the celts' bad name due to roman history... vae victis.

[OriginalBlace]

yeah fuck rome. They were the unwashed savages and barbarians of the ancient world. for fuck sack they slaughtered people for entertainment and invented crucifixion. How is that not barbaric

[carolineleiden]

@OriginalBlace

Actually: Rome did not invent crucifiction. The Romans had copied it from the peoples they conquered.

[OriginalBlace]

@carolineleiden does it really matter if they invented it or not. they still practiced it on an industrial scale. when they took jerusalem the highways had forests or crucified jews on them. they were the nazi's of the ancient world.

[carolineleiden]

@OriginalBlace

Killing jews is not what makes you a nazi. You should have seen wat they did to Dracia. (Modern day Romania) Killed pretty much everybody and even erected a column to commemorate it.

Romans just weren't too keen on peoples who wanted to maintain too much of their own independance, and what particularly ticked them off about the jews was that they refused to accept the emperor as a god.

They did not especially hate jews. They hated everybody who would refuse to romanise.

[4ThomasAllan]

@carolineleiden The source of the troubles for the Jews in Judea was their radical nationalists, not their Religion(the extremist terrorists of the ancient world). Jews were generally considered to be the odium humani generis or "hated human race/tribe" and their religion was particularly difficult to assimilate after the fact that it is a monotheism as opposed to the typical Indo-European polytheism which the Romans were more used to dealing with and whose on religion(s) was/ere derived but-

[4ThomasAllan]

-they were accorded a special status where in return for freedom of their religion and in the beginning, some sense of autonomy under Roman-friendly, hellanised, Jewish Kings in a client relationship with Rome, they would remain politically loyal and would integrate in other senses to the Roman system. This was unacceptable to the more zealously religious who far from realizing the reality of the situation, considered themselves to be more than mere equals let alone subjects of the Romans. That-

[4ThomasAllan]

-essentially led them on a doomed campaign(not unlike the Taliban etc) against the Romans which culminated in their diaspora from Israel. Christians unlike Jews, were not given the same status although to be fair, that was a nascent cult to them where as Judaism was already centuries - nearly a thousand years old, roughly, and therefore established enough to accord a modicum if only that, of respect. To be fair the druids of Celtic Europe were persecuted to a greater extent as they were even-

[4ThomasAllan]

-more delusional, fanatical and nationalistic then the Rabbis.

[OliverioJovellanos]

@OriginalBlace And speaking of barbarians. Do we not find amusement in watching people being killed in the most sadic ways? (murder, torture, accidents, etc.), sex (explicit and implicit), and all those things that romans used to enjoy. Just one difference, in roman times films and tv was not an option... so they had do it for real.

Romans are, in fact, the fathers of our civilization.

[OriginalBlace]

@OliverioJovellanos actually most of modern european culture and structure was laid down by the migration period germanics who brutally crushed and overwhelmed the romans. they had theatre they could have done it there, they didn't have to butcher people for fun, and in industrial numbers. the ancient romans were just as barbaric if not worse than other civilizations they accused of being barbarians. rome is one of histories most overated civilizations

[johnny71645]

@OriginalBlace its called a empire,

[Mangina9000]

@OriginalBlace King Richard wasn't such a sweetheart either.

[TBAWriter]

@OriginalBlace That's what you get when you build your empire with the rejects of the world. I don't know how true it is, but part of the foundational legend is that Romulus opened the city as a safe haven for all outcasts and fugitives. Great idea, until you end up with people who are outcast and fugitive because they're outlaws.

[TheGreaterGood80]

Primitive my ass! "War-like" doesn't necessarily mean "primitive"

I'm tired of my ancestors being thought of as little more than naked savages with blue paint

[StrikaAmaru]

@EpiphoneArchtopLover The Romans didn't know that. Nor did they want to find out.

And, iirc, Romans didn't use soap, they had ponce to scrub themselves clean (ouch).

[Vexille1983]

Even though evidence has been found for years, which contradicts the Celts as being backward savages, most people prefer to believe the latter. Bias in favour for Classical and Roman civilization is still going strong.

[thomasnordwest]

I'm glad that this series restores the name of our European ancestors!

[dixon97a]

I do love Terry Jones history docs wish hed make more. . .

[4ThomasAllan]

@dixon97a actually he did do a series called Medieval Lives - 8 episodes, but when I tried to upload them Youtube blocked them :(, blame youtube

[vivaeljason]

@4ThomasAllan it's already on YouTube in full on BBC Worldwide's channel.

[4ThomasAllan]

@vivaeljason Medieval Lives? good. :)

[SnakeEyes1337]

@dixon97a yes, check out the series, its very good.