How barbarian were the Barbarians?

[Alanus]

Soitenly! (nuk, nuk, nuk) :lol:

I get a kick out of the Roman perspective. Long-sleeved tunics and trousers were "sissy stuff" in the time of Augustus. It was a long chain of events-- tracing back to the Sogdians, then the Alans, then to the East Germans-- that brought boots, trousers, long sleeves, even the beret and pill-box hat, into the Roman world.

Let's face it. Before the barbarians introduced "tailor-made" clothing, the Romans were wearing rectangular pieces of cloth while tripping over black slaves. On the other hand, barbarian clothes made it all the way to cowboy boots, Levi trousers, the Green Berets, and Jackie Kennedy's hats. :lol:

[Gaius Julius Caesar]

Soitenly! (nuk, nuk, nuk) :lol:

I get a kick out of the Roman perspective. Long-sleeved tunics and trousers were "sissy stuff" in the time of Augustus. It was a long chain of events-- tracing back to the Sogdians, then the Alans, then to the East Germans-- that brought boots, trousers, long sleeves, even the beret and pill-box hat, into the Roman world.

Let's face it. Before the barbarians introduced "tailor-made" clothing, the Romans were wearing rectangular pieces of cloth while tripping over black slaves. On the other hand, barbarian clothes made it all the way to cowboy boots, Levi trousers, the Green Berets, and Jackie Kennedy's hats. :lol:

Romans didn't just have black slaves......they were totally indiscriminate on who they allowed to enter the elite caste of slavery. Germani, Gauls, Greeks, Latins, Ibernians, Britanii, you name it, no one was excluded on the grounds of race or colour!!

And the rectqngular pieces of cloth were totaly adequate for a man. Seems today even the penchant for 'fancy clothes'
runs riot with the more effeminate bent of the males in our society..... :wink: :twisted:

[Robert Vermaat]

-- tracing back to the Sogdians, then the Alans, then to the East Germans-- that brought boots, trousers, long sleeves, even the beret and pill-box hat, into the Roman world.

Hmm, I doubt that. Trousers maybe (although steppe trouser fashion was different), but I'd say long-sleeved tunicas may have been more of a Middle eastern affair. The pillbox was from the Balkans, not from the nomad peoples or Germanics.

[Alanus]

A number of recently discovered Sogdian wall paintings in the ruins around Maracanda depict the pill box and beret, even one-inch heels. It's still online-- "The Late Sogdian Custume, 5th-8th c. AD." The author, Sergey Yatsenko, classified the clothing into 2 time periods, the latter being a Turkic influence. The illustrations are toward the end of the paper.

Tunics with the longest sleeves, longer than a man's arm, were a Central Asian (steppe) innovation, not just Turkic but dating back to the previous millennium, a method of keeping ones hands from freezing. :wink:

My current interest is the close parallels in the development of tweeds (as in tartans) between the Celts and a people who were probably the Tokarians. These colorful tweeds are still popular in Kyrgaztan, Kazakhastan, and the mountain regions of Western China. They are almost identical to the tweeds found in the Halstadt salt mines and modern Scotland. They were pictured in Barber's The Mummies of Urumchi, and also can be seen in the Zhang Yamou's film "The Road Home."

(I don't think it's efemminate to be interested in barbarian clothes. The suit gives clues to the man. And that man didn't live upon the balmy shores of a large pond, but survived in snow and ice and wind-chill. And in the end of the final end, that man inherited the pond.)

[Gaius Julius Caesar]

Did he really? :lol: :lol:

[Alanus]

Well, actually they didn't. Maybe just the politics and backstabbing. :lol:

The Romans left enough for me-- a set of grandparents born in Ponta Genavese, great wine like Nero D'avola, Sangiovese, and Valepollicalla Superiore (my favorite), plus some of the most interesting museums in the world. :lol:

[Gaius Julius Caesar]

:lol:
I guess the understatment of the year but, it would be a different world without them....

[Alanus]

:lol:
I guess the understatment of the year but, it would be a different world without them....

So true. As you might know, I'm a fanatic on Eastern barbarian culture and its relationship to "the modern us" but also to the structure of the Roman military. That's why I'm mostly on "Friends and Enemies of Rome" threads.

It seems to me, that many barbarian techniques and weapons borrowed by the Roman army helped change, or at least extend, the life of the Roman state. In the final century of the Western Empire, we find top officers from barbarian tribes (Nectarid, Generid, Sarus, Stilicho). Some had their own agenda, yet others were truly "Roman" in their interests and actions. Even Aetius may have been in this mix, the "last Roman general," yet born at Durostorm and perhaps half barbarian.

In this fashion, barbarians were inextricably linked to the "Roman way of life." And as a Roman reenactor, I chose to show this connection. Consequently, I am a member of the Cohors Pannonorium, wear an akinakes on my left leg, hang a sword to my right-- just the opposite of the "barbarian way" of doing things and "newly" Roman. In real life my grandparents were born in the foothills of the Alps, so they may have extended from the Celts or Germans. But at the same time they arrived from a culture that reached back to a great Roman period, and in their own way they were quite Roman themselves.

[recondicom]

-- tracing back to the Sogdians, then the Alans, then to the East Germans-- that brought boots, trousers, long sleeves, even the beret and pill-box hat, into the Roman world.

Hmm, I doubt that. Trousers maybe (although steppe trouser fashion was different), but I'd say long-sleeved tunicas may have been more of a Middle eastern affair. The pillbox was from the Balkans, not from the nomad peoples or Germanics.

Rugiland.
According to Strabo the Winnili lived at the extreme of Gaul; 'Germanic barbarians that were more barbarian than barbarian'.
Tacitus called them the suevi.
Still better sources: Codex Gothanus earlier than historia gentis langobardorum by Paul the Deacon. VIII cent.
So… we have the suevi, the vandals and some tribe called chauci. And from the II cent on the name Franks, Alamanni ,bavarii, Saxons, Normans appeared… they took over the Pontix Maximus, wrote books and “they changed”

[recondicom]

A number of recently discovered Sogdian wall paintings in the ruins around Maracanda depict the pill box and beret, even one-inch heels. It's still online-- "The Late Sogdian Custume, 5th-8th c. AD." The author, Sergey Yatsenko, classified the clothing into 2 time periods, the latter being a Turkic influence. The illustrations are toward the end of the paper.

Tunics with the longest sleeves, longer than a man's arm, were a Central Asian (steppe) innovation, not just Turkic but dating back to the previous millennium, a method of keeping ones hands from freezing. :wink:

My current interest is the close parallels in the development of tweeds (as in tartans) between the Celts and a people who were probably the Tokarians. These colorful tweeds are still popular in Kyrgaztan, Kazakhastan, and the mountain regions of Western China. They are almost identical to the tweeds found in the Halstadt salt mines and modern Scotland. They were pictured in Barber's The Mummies of Urumchi, and also can be seen in the Zhang Yamou's film "The Road Home."

(I don't think it's efemminate to be interested in barbarian clothes. The suit gives clues to the man. And that man didn't live upon the balmy shores of a large pond, but survived in snow and ice and wind-chill. And in the end of the final end, that man inherited the pond.)

The same as Xiongnu/dragons and pearls

[Alanus]

Hailog, Recondicom

Xiongnu, as in the Black Huns? :wink:

There are recent arguments that the Xiongnu were not Huns, based on hair style and a few other recorded physical details. But, like any society, the Xiongnu had three centuries to evolve before they arrived on the Roman periphery. Who really knows what tribes they met, how they were influenced? The Black Huns (and also the White Huns) were like the Alans, and like the Goths. They were not the same people they started out as. :lol:

The dragon and pearl seems a different matter. It has evolved very little, perhaps due to its cultural position in a fixed religion... the same way the swastika remains central to the Buddha in India. In the West, the dragon and pearl appears with the arrival of the Equites Taifali (perhaps the Taifali tribe as its carriers from the East). No doubt, this dragon image had much influence in late Roman Britain, and its "reintroduction" gave rise to semi-historical phrases such as "pendragon."

I suppose we can say that the dragon, never a Celtic symbol until the late Roman/post-Roman period, was actually introduced to Europe by Eastern barbarians. The same can be said for the Jersey cow (originally Sarmatian gray cattle). :lol:

[recondicom]

Hailog, Recondicom

Xiongnu, as in the Black Huns? :wink:

There are recent arguments that the Xiongnu were not Huns, based on hair style and a few other recorded physical details. But, like any society, the Xiongnu had three centuries to evolve before they arrived on the Roman periphery. Who really knows what tribes they met, how they were influenced? The Black Huns (and also the White Huns) were like the Alans, and like the Goths. They were not the same people they started out as. :lol:

The dragon and pearl seems a different matter. It has evolved very little, perhaps due to its cultural position in a fixed religion... the same way the swastika remains central to the Buddha in India. In the West, the dragon and pearl appears with the arrival of the Equites Taifali (perhaps the Taifali tribe as its carriers from the East). No doubt, this dragon image had much influence in late Roman Britain, and its "reintroduction" gave rise to semi-historical phrases such as "pendragon."

I suppose we can say that the dragon, never a Celtic symbol until the late Roman/post-Roman period, was actually introduced to Europe by Eastern barbarians. The same can be said for the Jersey cow (originally Sarmatian gray cattle). :lol:

Vereni. Cow? I like the symbolic Europa riding the bull… still
Well said alanus… Apollonius of Tyana an stoic survived in Arabic.
Apollonius.
." Next they crossed the Indus and passed through countries whose coinage was of yellow and black copper and whose kings were clothed in white and despised ostentation. One evening, on a lonely river bank, they came on a brass stele inscribed with the words, "Here Alexander the Great halted."

And when they had for many days followed the course of the Ganges, when they had climbed more hills and mountains, and met the single-homed wild ass, the fish with a blue crest Eke the peacock's, and the insect from whose body inflammable oil is made; when they had avoided the tiger with the precious stone in its skull.” (They arrived and stayed for a while.)…
The wise men, on the threshold of their valley of meditation, gave them white camels on which to cross India. They returned by the Red Sea, in which the Great Bear is not reflected and where at midday men cast no shadow on the deck of their ship. They saw the country of the Orites, where the rivers abound with copper ore; Stobera, the city of the Ichthyophagi ; and the port of Balara, (Nominalia of the Bulgarian khans) surrounded with myrtle and laurel, where are found shell fish with white shells and a pearl in the place of the heart.” Khan or not Khan?... perhaps both.