Barbarians

“ Do not reject the title of Barbarians. It is the only one that suits you. You might have been fine Barbarians, but for a long time to come you will be only shabby civilised men. I had rather see you stand on a pedestal, and hear you shout, exaggerating your misdeeds, overstraining your cruelty, your vices, your animality:
"Yes, we are Barbarians! ”

“ These pious Barbarians are kindled into rage: they thirst to avenge the persecution of the East. Abandon your rash and fatal enterprise; reflect, tremble, and repent. If you persist, we are innocent of the blood that will be spilt in the contest ”

“ Ignorance as well as anarchy veiled Europe in darkness. The rust of barbarism became harder and thicker. The last hope of man had fled, and glory was succeeded by shame. Even slavery, the curse of the Roman Empire, was continued by the barbarians; only, brute force was not made subservient to intellect, but intellect to brute force. The descendants of ancient patrician families were in bondage to barbarians. The age was the jubilee of monsters. Assassination was common, and was unavenged by law. Every man was his own avenger of crime, and his bloody weapons were his only law. ”

“ The Barbarians trust to their overwhelming numbers, and to the deafening clamour with which they charge, but if you resist them bravely, you will find them—it shames me to say so—nothing but a cowardly mob. ”

“ Barbarous in origin, barbarous in law, barbarous in all its pretensions, barbarous in the instruments it employs, barbarous in consequences, barbarous in spirit, barbarous wherever it shows itself, Slavery must breed Barbarians, while it develops everywhere, alike in the individual and the society to which he belongs, the essential elements of Barbarism. ”

“ There were old men and young men—fierce and wild-looking barbarians, in all truth—some with the raw, red scars on chest and limbs they had taken a few weeks before in a last stand for liberty, and some groaning in the sickness that attended the slaver’s lash and their condition. ”

“ There are incursions of barbarians—the strange, little-known life of nomadic tribes—with pristine virtues of valor and chastity, half-pictured, half-imagined, by Tacitus. There is conquest, rapine, subjugation, suffering. There are ages in which violence is master, and in the disordered struggle of the violent among themselves the weak are trampled under foot. There are scenes of humble happiness and content, the toiler in the fields, the family about the hearth-stone, which scarcely are seen by the chronicler busy with kings and popes. ”

“ What rudeness of demeanor and brutality of manner, which had been introduced into Europe, by those swarms of barbarians, that overwhelmed it from the north, had hardly begun to dissipate before the enlivening sun of civilization, when this infernal practice first sprang up into existence. ”

“ Barbarians records the adventures of these men, not together, but singly or in groups, along the whole western battle front, from the Belgian coast to the mountains of Alsace. It is filled with unusual character sketches of the lives of the men in the Trenches, and of life in the little towns just inside the lines of Battle. Through it all there is great beauty and wonderful sense of justice and right that is indeed more precious than peace. ”

“ One has only to go into the streets of any great city in England to see how we, with all our boast of civilisation, are yet but one step removed from barbarism. Is that a hard word? Only there are the barbarians round us at every street corner—grown barbarians, it may be, now all but past saving, but bringing into the world young barbarians whom we may yet save, for God wishes us to save them. ”

“ The codes of the Barbarians who sat on the ruins of the Roman Empire—the Burgundians, Bavarians, the Allemanni, with the Visigoths and their northern kin—have left enactments certainly more terrible in themselves. But the darkness of that period shrouds all those barbarian legislations in a general and homogeneous gloom; and here, it is "the freest and most enlightened nation of the world," who keeps, extends, and intensifies the dreadful statutes which make men only things, binds them and sells them as brute cattle. ”

“ Not in vain, as I said, did we call you, some fifteen hundred years ago, the barbarians of the north. But tell me, good barbarian, whom I know to be both brave and wise—for the fame of your young British empire has reached us even in the realms below, and we recognise in you, with all respect, a people more like us Romans than any which has appeared on earth for many centuries—how is it you have forgotten that sacred duty of keeping the people clean, which you surely at one time learnt from us? ”

“ Once more life resumed its normal course; but those times were the most wretched that mankind had yet experienced. The barbarians swarmed over the whole Empire. Their ways were uncouth, and as they nurtured feelings of vengeance and greed, they firmly believed in the ransom of sin. ”

“ With many thinking men there was a growing apprehension of these barbarians, who were gathering in such appalling swarms upon the frontiers of the Roman world. Occasionally an adventurous traveller would penetrate these wilds, and bring back astounding stories of the numbers, barbarism, and warlike ferocity, of these innumerable tribes.
If we look within the Roman empire, we see little but crime and misery. A haughty slaveholding aristocracy, few in number, but strong in the resistless power of the Roman legions, trampled the degraded and depraved millions beneath their feet. ”

“ In the midst of our civilization, down in our slums and labor-ghettos, we had bred a race of barbarians, of savages; and now, in the time of our calamity, they turned upon us like the wild beasts they were and destroyed us. ”

“ For our part, if we were forced to make a choice between the barbarians of civilization and the civilized men of barbarism, we should choose the barbarians. ”

“ Language had attained such development that poetry of the highest structural form was about to embody the inspirations of genius. The closing period of barbarism brought this portion of the human family to the threshold of civilization, animated by the great attainments of the past, grown hardy and intelligent in the school of experience, and with the undisciplined imagination in the full splendor of its creative powers. Barbarism ends with the production of grand barbarians. ”

“ We cannot call such beings barbarians, because "barbarian" implies something wild, strong, and even noble; yet, to our shame, we must call them savages, and we must own that they are born and bred within easy gunshot distance of our centres of culture, enlightenment, and luxury. ”

“ I shall dream to-night of myriads of bullocks massacred for beef-tea, and of an endless procession of pills—reaching their destination. I ask myself, in my foolish theoretic way, what earthly right we have to lay claim to civilisation. How much better it would be always to speak of ourselves as barbarians. ”

“ War, in its fairest form, implies a perpetual violation of humanity and justice; and the hostilities of Barbarians are inflamed by the fierce and lawless spirit which incessantly disturbs their peaceful and domestic society. ”

“ The well-armed barbarians, hand to hand and man to man, drove back the Roman soldiers. The villagers, mad with rage against their oppressors, and inspired with hope by the unexpected aid they had received, became in turn the assailants, and following the Huns among their retreating adversaries, armed with the knives which they bore upon their own persons, or the swords which they caught up from the dead or dying, cut the sinews of the Roman horses, or gave the stroke of death to any one who fell wounded from his charger. ”

“ Like the fashionable people of all times, these designated victims of the Barbarians built, with their small daily pleasures, a rampart against all offensive or saddening realities, leaving the important questions without answer, no longer even asking them. And they said: "I have beautiful books, a well-heated house, well-trained slaves, a delightfully arranged bathroom, a comfortable vehicle: life is sweet. ”

“ Of course, during these centuries, the gradual subjugation of the western empire by the barbarians had been powerfully operative in the obscuring of culture. Most of the public schools disappeared, and generally the light of learning was kept burning only in monasteries, and in them more and more faintly as they became Effect of barbarian inroads.more or less isolated units exposed to attack by ruthless foes or living in continual dread of such attack. ”

“ The chivalry of the Barbarians, with its characteristics of high spirit, choice manners, and distinguished bearing,--what is this but the attractive commencement of the politeness of our aristocratic class? In some Barbarian noble, no doubt, one would have admired, if one could have been then alive to see it, the rudiments of our politest peer. Only, all this culture (to call it by that name) of the Barbarians was an exterior culture mainly. It consisted principally in outward gifts and graces, in looks, manners, accomplishments, prowess. ”

“ Some have heard of these barbarians, but more have not; and when the few are set talking the most astonishing stories pass from mouth to mouth. Will they act for or against the rebels? is the practical question. ”

“ Clearly it is we who were the barbarians in the eyes of the East, when we went to trouble them with our crusades. ”

“ Every vital and productive germ with which the Germans inoculated the Roman world, was due to barbarism. Indeed, only barbarians are capable of rejuvenating a world laboring under the death throes of unnerved civilization. ”

“ Know that even if they have not drawn swords, hunger, fatigue, or intemperance will overtake them. Furthermore, it is not they that should be punished, it is those sedentary barbarians who from the depths of their offices order, while they are digesting their last meal, the massacre of a million men, and who subsequently give solemn thanks to God. ”

“ As respects the wager of battle I have already traced its career as a peculiarly European form of the Judgment of God, which was fostered by the advantage which it gave, in the times of nascent feudalism, to the bold and reckless. With regard to the other forms, one reason for their increased prevalence is doubtless to be found in the universal principle of the Barbarians, in their successive settlements, to allow all races to retain their own jurisprudence, however much individuals might be intermingled, socially and politically. ”

“ But the Barbarians are stable in their manners, and firmly continue to employ the same words. Hence they are dear to the Gods, and proffer words which are grateful to them; but which it is not lawful for any man by any means to change. ”

“ But on the edges of the Empire this decivilization became a definite barbarism, owing to the nearness of wild neighbours who were ready to destroy as deafly and blindly as things are destroyed by fire. Save for the lurid and apocalyptic locust-flight of the Huns, it is perhaps an exaggeration to talk, even [Pg 17] in those darkest ages, of a deluge of the barbarians; at least when we are speaking of the old civilization as a whole. ”

“ Still we must not call them barbarians because they cherish an institution hostile to civilization. Their highest culture stands out all the more brilliantly from the dark background of ignorance against which it is seen ”

“ Nor were there seen among the barbaric chieftains the virtues of ancient Pagan Rome and Greece, for Christianity was nominal. War was universal; for the barbarians, having no longer the Romans to fight, fought among themselves. There were incessant irruptions of different tribes passing from one country to another, in search of plunder and pillage. There was no security of life or property, and therefore no ambition for acquisition. Men hid themselves in morasses, in forests, on the tops of inaccessible hills, and amid the recesses of valleys, for violence was the rule and not the exception. ”

“ The native races who inhabited eastern Europe were unequal to repel the savage invasions of these formidable marauders, who inundated Europe with their fierce and unsettled bands. If we may credit the account given of these tribes by the Roman writers of the period, their manners were savage, their habits of life simple, but of a roving and predatory character. By the Roman historians they are invariably styled—the Barbarians. They cultivated not commerce, they built not cities, they dwelt not in luxurious towns. ”

“ The barbarians prided themselves upon a scrupulousness which they were surprised at not finding in our nation, and could not understand that there was less to reprehend in the stripping of dead bodies than in the devouring of their flesh like wild beasts. ”

“ The Persians, Egyptians, Hebrews, Arabians, Gauls, Germans, and even the Romans, were, in their phraseology, barbarians, however learned or polite they might be in themselves. St. Paul comprehends all mankind under the names of Greeks and barbarians: “I am a debtor both to the Greeks and to the barbarians; to the wise and to the unwise,” Rom. i, 14. St. Luke calls the inhabitants of the island of Malta barbarians, Acts xxviii, 2, 4. St. Paul, writing to the Colossians, uses the terms barbarian and Scythian almost in the same signification. ”

“ Relatively to the old, sick, moribund culture they will be "barbarians"—not barbarians coming up from the slums and below, such as our capitalistic society now fears, but barbarians coming from above, of whom Prometheus was an instance, fresh, unspoiled conquering natures who look for material on which to impress themselves. ”