Terry Jones’s “The Barbarians”

Now available on Daily Motion in four parts (part 1, part 2, part 3, part 4) or as a book based on the BBC series shown above, Monty Python alumnus Terry Jones’s “Barbarians” is a superlative exercise in historical revisionism. As he makes abundantly clear, the real barbarians were the Romans, not the people they robbed, murdered and raped. The first disk looks at the Celts and the Goths, while the second takes up the Persians, the Goths and the Vandals. On almost all criteria associated with “civilization”, the Roman Empire comes off looking atrocious. The central point that Jones keeps hammering away as narrator and writer as he travels about Europe in pursuit of the truth is that history is written by the winners. If American and British history has a triumphalist and self-vindicating character, so does Roman history.

By correcting the record, Jones implicitly helps to undermine the imperialist mindset of today, which by no accident appropriates many of the themes of the Roman Empire. Within the walls of the civilized world (New York, London, Paris, et al), there is reason and goodness; outside that world (Baghdad, Tehran, Khartoum), there is nothing but insanity and evil. This worldview is virtually the same that the Romans put forward as an excuse for their conquests. As Jones points out, the real motivation for the conquests was the desire to control gold and other precious resources, not to “civilize”.

For those of you who were inspired by Cliff Conner’s ground-breaking “People’s History of Science,” you will likely applaud Terry Jones’s determination to set the record straight on who was the real scientific pioneer, “civilized” Rome or its “barbarian” enemies. It turns out that the real scientific breakthroughs were taking place in the Celtic territories, which ranged from Ireland to Eastern Europe, before the Roman conquest. We learn that Rome set out to colonize the Celts because they had immense supplies of gold that was extracted from the earth using advanced mining techniques that were unknown to the Romans. The Celts also created roads all across Europe that linked trading centers. While none of their cities were as large as Rome, they were every bit as “civilized”. And they certainly did not have wild animals eat people in coliseums for “entertainment”, the precursor to today’s football games.

Just like George W. Bush today, Julius Caesar launched the Gallic Wars against the Celts in the name of self-defense. Unless the Celts were stopped in Gaul, they might invade Rome. It turns out that Julius Caesar was motivated much more by the desire to resolve a long-standing problem of public debt in the Roman Empire than anything else. He even used a bogus casus belli to muster support for his invasion. He claimed that it was necessary to “rescue” the Helvetii people who were being threatened by the Celts. As masters of propaganda, the Romans clearly provided lessons in how to manipulate public opinion to Woodrow Wilson, Lyndon Johnson, Tony Blair and others in the modern epoch.

The Celts were also far more humane in how they treated their own citizens. One of the many renowned archaeologists interviewed by Jones shows artifacts that reveal the elevated status of women in Celtic society, who enjoyed political power and wealth of a kind unknown in Imperial Rome. The Celts also looked after children, the weak and infirm, and the elderly in a way that anticipates the modern welfare state. Meanwhile, the Romans were content to throw unwanted infants on garbage heaps.

The Persians also come across as much more enlightened, as well as superior military tacticians who repelled Roman invasions repeatedly. The Parthian Dynasty was particularly civilized as it created an Empire that rested on totally different values than Rome’s. Those who lived within its borders paid tribute, but they were never brutalized as were those subject to Roman rule. Indeed, the Parthians anticipated the Ottoman Empire in its willingness to allow political and cultural diversity to prevail. The determination of the Romans to forcibly assimilate conquered peoples is much more of a forerunner to British and American norms.

The connection to today’s world is unmistakable as Jones pointedly refers to the Parthians routing the Romans in Mesopotamia, i.e., the land that became Iraq. He also travels about modern Tehran and interviews Iranians who clearly identify with their Parthian ancestors. As military innovators second to none, the Parthians taught the Romans that they were not the master race, a lesson that perhaps the Romans of today have still not learned.

The Goths and the Vandals are probably the two “barbarian” groups that have the worst reputation in terms of ushering in the “Dark Ages”. The standard historical presentation is that after Rome was sacked in the fifth century Europe descended into a pit of superstition and depravity. It took five hundred years to recover from this abysmal state. Jones corrects the record by showing that the Huns never even entered Rome and were persuaded to turn back by Pope Leo. As for the Vandals, they simply took control of Carthage in the same period, which had been a Roman colony, and thereby denied Rome a traditional source of wealthy imports extracted by force from North Africa. Without this steady flow of resources, including grain and gold, the Empire began to shrivel and die–an obvious lesson for today.

Despite Jones’s background with Monty Python, “Barbarians” is played pretty straight except for the occasional clever barb. If he does not refer to the Roman Empire of today, it is only because he expects the clever viewer to make that connection themselves. There is no doubt, however, about what Jones thinks of the Julius Caesar of today. This was written on the eve of the invasion of Iraq:

I’m really excited by George Bush’s latest reason for bombing Iraq: he’s running out of patience. And so am I!

For some time now I’ve been really pissed off with Mr Johnson, who lives a couple of doors down the street. Well, him and Mr Patel, who runs the health food shop. They both give me queer looks, and I’m sure Mr Johnson is planning something nasty for me, but so far I haven’t been able to discover what. I’ve been round to his place a few times to see what he’s up to, but he’s got everything well hidden. That’s how devious he is.

Jones quotes the words of a Celtic general as found in the writings of Tacitus. Although Tacitus was a Roman, he was not above allowing one of the “barbarians” to make an eloquent case for his people. It includes the famous dictum: “They built a wilderness (or solitude) and call it peace”, an apt description of Iraq today.

To us who dwell on the uttermost confines of the earth and of freedom, this remote sanctuary of Britain’s glory has up to this time been a defence. Now, however, the furthest limits of Britain are thrown open, and the unknown always passes for the marvellous. But there are no tribes beyond us, nothing indeed but waves and rocks, and the yet more terrible Romans, from whose oppression escape is vainly sought by obedience and submission. Robbers of the world, having by their universal plunder exhausted the land, they rifle the deep. If the enemy be rich, they are rapacious; if he be poor, they lust for dominion; neither the east nor the west has been able to satisfy them. Alone among men they covet with equal eagerness poverty and riches. To robbery, slaughter, plunder, they give the lying name of empire; they make a solitude and call it peace (ubi solitudinem faciunt, pacem appellant).