Barbarians

Two programs about ancient Rome's neighbors, competitors and subject peoples. It mainly focuses on culture and technology. It presents information that is highly accurate, and also usually overlooked in history textbooks.

Not only is the content insightful and not stuff that's already common knowledge, it's just plain good history. The claims aren't overstated ("The Celts invented everything and we have absolute proof!") or sensational, or unnecessarily opaque and mysterious, like "How did they build the pyramids? Nobody knows!" (in fact we have pretty detailed knowledge of how they were built). I am a professional historian (well, PhD candidate) and I can recommend these programs for high-school or even college-level classrooms without reservation. The second program, "The Brainy Barbarians," is especially good.

Terry Jones editorializes a bit about the Romans, but with all the fawning over them in conventional histories, I think this will do more good than harm for most viewers. Besides which, it's honest editorializing--you can easily tell when he's presenting interpretations or opinions, and when he's presenting facts.

And it's all pretty entertaining and well-presented, too.

K Hemmat

What is Terry Jones' beef with the Romans? What is the purpose of making this kind of pseudo-documentary? The guy says he's irritated by the unfair classical portrayal of Romans and barbarians he was taught at school as a young boy. But that's so 60 years ago - and many balanced scientific revisions and popular documentaries have been published on the issue since then. I think it's, in fact, a botched attempt to do a humorous historical review - much in the way his Python colleague Palin does travel documentaries.

So the Romans in classical history have been portrayed as beacon of civilization while the barbarians were regarded as wild hordes that deserved to be conquered and pacified. It's because historians of the past relied too heavily on the work of Roman writers of the era. History has advanced and nowadays anyone with iota of historical knowledge knows that many so-called barbarians were, in fact, far more civilized than the likes of Suetonius, Tacitus, Plutarch or Caesar were ready to acknowledge and that the term "barbarians" can hardly apply to any sedentary civilization at all.

Jones must have slept for 60 years and missed the latest historiographical achievements and woke up bent on proving that the Romans were "baaad" and barbarians "goood". He goes to great lengths in cheap theatrics to hammer the message home. Whatever valuable content this series contains - and incredibly, it does - it's been polluted by his fan-boy point of view. Jones, in fact, deliberately idealizes the barbarians and vilifies Romans, and to that end sometimes uses anecdotal facts and even outright fabrications and misconceptions. For instance, he praises the Parthians for having the code of honor and loyalty to their ruler, and misses the fact that they still weren't strangers to disloyalty and overthrowing rulers whenever an opportunity arose. Similarly, the Gauls were praised as great carers for women, children and elderly, yet the fact that they were also keen to use them as a strategic leverage (as demonstrated in Battle of Alesia), went misconceived.

Production values suffer the same damage as the writing and presentation. Majority of material is shot on location, actors and lavish graphics are being used for reenactment of historical events mentioned and experts are recruited to talk about various topics covered. However those good features interchange with cheap cinematography, odd directorial solutions (for instance when there was a mention of cavalry attacks, people on scooters on streets (!) have been shown) and Jones putting himself in sometimes bizarre surroundings and growling into camera.

It perfectly possible that the whole charade was to mimic Roman propaganda from the era, with roles of Romans and barbarians inversed. If it was, it's completely lost on me. As I said, Jones probably tried to do "Palin". But Jones is not Palin. He doesn't have that charisma, or a knack to write a lighthearted story. He can't even shake off his socialist point of view. His sarcasm is way out of place and 2000 years late. The Romans are gone but no one told Jones. Furthermore, he's a bad actor and his mannerisms make him look like an upset poof too many times. All the humor that I was able to extract from this was purely unintentional as I was laughing *at* Jones, not *with* him.

The show is good to watch for its camp-value and some useful and fresh historical data, for instance, rehabilitation of the Vandals. But the way the material is being presented is of use to no one.

Romans understood propaganda well and lied and bent the truth when it suited them. The heir to the Roman empire, the Catholic, and to some extent the Greek Orthodox Church, had a monopoly on knowledge throughout Europe throughout the Medieval age and to a great extent, even up to today.

Terry Jones (A Welsh-man or a descendant of the Celts) also of Monty Python fame has done a marvelous job dispelling many of the Roman biases that is so prevalent throughout Western Academia and Zeitgeist that they go unquestioned.

Even in University I was taught this rubbish in my history and art history classes. For example the absence of any meaningful coverage of Parthian Empire and then the Sassanian Empires of the near east was astonishing to me. It's like reading about the second half of the 20th Century and without mentioning the Soviet Union. Or the silly term Greco-Roman which makes as much sense as saying Judeo-Nazi. (hint Romans destroyed and pillaged the Greek (Hellenistic) city states and enslaved the majority of the population.)

The majority of history available is a verbatim retelling of Roman propaganda, this series and the accompanying book is a refreshing antidote to that. It opens eyes and minds, highly recommended. Though if Rome is sacred to you and very dear to your heart, you may want to skip it, Rome is definitely not "light of the world" in this version of history.

This attempted series by the renowned and Oxford educated comedian Terry Jones to show that the official history is too pro-Roman because historians have relied to heavily on them and Jones attempted to take a balanced view with what scientific evidence can tell us about the so called "barbarians", which is why at times he can be Anti-Roman because they had the last word in History.

The first two episodes were good but he tried to present the Celts as being too advanced for what they were. In fairness them and their German neighbours had culture but no civilisation like Rome or its advanced technology and infrastructure and absorption in to Rome gradually seemed inevitable no matter how long or the policy hard for the Celts and Soft for the Germans.

The other tribal peoples covered the Dacians and Huns were generally summarised based on archeological findings and Roman perceptions very informative but nothing extraordinary

The only episode that really makes an extraordinary difference is the Greeks and the Persians. It shows correctly that the Greeks were apart from the Romans and should not really be grouped with them in a single category.

Persia has always received a negative reception in the west and Jones refreshingly demonstrates their unique tolerance and lasting impact on knowledge to this day. It does not deserve the anathema it has got and he puts the record straight in this episode.

Terry examines in the final episode that the Catholic Church kept the Roman perceptions alive after the fall of empire. This is a slight exaggeration. The Catholic Church preserved Roman writings because they were readily available and were of value as it Christianised the empires remnants after its end the only exception to this was Atilla and his Huns whom they had direct conflict with.

But as an independent offshoot the Catholic Churches medieval relations with both Orthodox Christianity and Islam certainly was a continuation of Rome's conflict with Greece and Persia.

I looked forward to this when it came out, as I realized that the common history tends to paint the "barbarians" as uncivilized. The series does a good job of pointing out that as a lie. However, what bothers me is the tone that basically tells us that Rome had no redeeming qualities, that the "barbarians" were all saintly, advanced and nearly perfect, compared to the evil Romans.

I think the mistakes of the history books could be corrected without going overboard and simply switching from the incorrect view of Rome being the purely civilized empire, while those living in the lands around them were uncivilized and backwards, to having Rome the monster with no civilized values and no real contribution to the future world while those other lands were all so wonderful and purely peaceful.

Why is it so hard for people to try to give a balanced, unbiased account? All to often I get the feeling that there's an ax to grind. History shouldn't be about pushing some personal feelings or desire to bring someone or some nation down a peg, but to simply give us facts.

So, even though I thought this was well done, it was too black and white, in a politically correct way that was more about bashing the Romans than to give us a fair assessment of the time.