[Renfield]

Remember, folks...these people put pine tar in their wine.......and refer to US as Barbarians/I>.....

[apro]

Ah but to the ancien Greeks the term barbarians did not imply uncivilized or uncouth, it meant someone who was not Greek. The Greeks also called the Persians "barbarians" while the same time considering them one of the most civilized peoples of ancient times; it doesn't make sense for them to call people they viewed civilized as 'barbarians' unless the term did not have the same meaning as it does nowadays and it doesn't. The term barbarian we associate with, meaning 'uncivilized' is based in Late Antiquity when bishops and catholikoi separated the 'civilized' from the 'uncivilized'; Ralph Mathison in Roman Aristocrats in Barbarian Gaul writes an interesting piece about this.

[apro]

Want to see how "oriental" Greeks living in Anatolia(modern Turkey) were before the big population exchange of the 1920's? The little girl is about my great-grandmother's age during that time period, who was also from the Smyrna/Izmir coastal region.

"A Greek mother and daughter early turn of the century right before the population exchange from the town of Ayvalik(Kidonies), on the Smyrna/Izmir coast in Asia Minor opposite from the Greek island Mytelini. The town was known as Kidonies by the town's formerly large Greek population although use of the name Ayvalik was widespread for centuries by both Turks and Greeks."