Terry Jones' Barbarians (DVD)

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One man´s terrorist is another man´s freedom fighter. It´s all a matter of perspective or, in the words of an American politician, it´s all a matter of whether you´re "with us" or "against us."

The same is true of the word "barbarian" which derives from a Latin word which refers to the unintelligible sound of a foreign language perceived by its listener as gibberish. The Romans, likely copying from the Greeks as they did in so many ways, applied the term to virtually foreign speakers, dividing the world clearly into "us" and "them." The term is most closely associated today with a handful of foreign armies that invaded the Roman Empire at various points during its vast dynasty.

"Barbarian" is hardly a value-neutral term either. The word conjures up images of foul-smelling, poorly-dressed illiterate brutes or perhaps current California governors. I´m pretty sure there´s a difference between the two. Today, we know that the Romans represented Western civilization while the depravations inflicted by the swarming barbarians were largely responsible for plunging us into the Dark Ages.

Or do we? Terry Jones, of Monty Python fame, offers a different take on these knuckle-dragging savages of lore in his entertaining and informative BBC series "Terry Jones´ Barbarians" (see, his name is even in the title.) The series is comprised of four episodes in which Jones hosts a revisionist take on history´s most loathsome barbarians like the Celts, the Goths, the Huns and the Vandals. What Jones discovers in his investigations is radically different from the standard historical account which shouldn´t be a surprise since these accounts come from the Romans who had a slight bias in telling only one version of the story.

Take Attila the Hun, for example. What a piece of work this man described as the "scourge of God" must have been, what with the raping and the looting and the killing and all the big nastiness. Attila was a ferocious military leader for sure, but according to Jones he was hardly a monster leading a faceless horde of marauders. The Huns were not even a single group, but rather a hodge-podge community/army that many Germans, uneasy under the Roman yoke, were eager to join. While Attila was set on global conquest (he claimed to have had a spiritual vision that predicted his dominance) he wasn´t interested in engaging in the wanton slaughter that characterized most Roman military campaigns. He was more of a racketeer than a mass killer; the Romans paid him a massive annual bribe that amounted to protection money in order to leave them alone. When his army invaded Rome, he abruptly turned back after a meeting with Pope Leo most likely because the Pope caved into all of Attila´s demands.