TERRY JONES\' BARBARIANS

[Robert Vermaat]

I had no problem at all with his assertions that the barbarians were not all that,well, barbaric. Seeing them in a different light was interesting. To me, all he said was they weren't filthy,blood-thirsty savages but had families and cultures that were different from the popular writers of history.

Me neither. I had a problem with him first bashing historians for showing only the Roman side of things and painting them in a much too favarouble light (he was right there), but then he turned that around and did the very same thing from the opposite direction. Romans worse than bad, etc. And when he got to the vandals and there were no more Romans to blame, he made a light skip and happily declared the catholic Church about the same as the Romans, blaming them in turn for the bad press the Vandals had been given. And so forth and so on. It was full of very wrong claims, and very black and white.

I never altered my view of the Romans (I'm a historian), but it did not change my view of the barbarians much, either. He just did not impress me. His series about the Medieval world seemed to have been a lot better.