[Fyron]

I am tired of my Posts being wildly misconstrued and also of words being placed in my mouth that I never said (nor typed). So, I am no longer going to respond to any Posts about religion. I will continue participating in the few discussions about non-religious matters in this thread though, as they are actually interesting.

Mephisto:

Actually, the Romans were quite “liberal” as someone else already posted. Give me your money and live as you like. And for that matter, it were different times. The Celts weren’t better or worse in treating their enemies. Heck, they burned the Last warrior to come to a raid to death as a sacrifices to the gods. Better not be late, eh?

Maybe we should implement that in classes at College... those Celts were on to something... j/k

The Celts did have an egalitarian society for most of their history in which the women and men were fairly equal though. In fact, women were allowed to be chiefs and kings, and I recall that property was inherited through the mother's side, not the father's.

The Celts also did not enslave anyone, unlike the Romans.

Mephisto:

You are correct, “barbarians” is a term for a foreigner but it is Greek, not Roman. It means “bearded”, which was uncommon for Greeks.

BM:

Actually, no. 'Barbarian' comes from the Greeks immitating what the sound of foreigner's language sounded like to them. That's why the long, repetitive, multi-voweled 'trance' words in the Gnostic texts are called 'barbarous names'. They're huge, confusing messes of letters to us, but they were apparently representing some form of chant for the ancient people who wrote them down.

Greek, Roman, the point is still there, even if the technical details are slightly off. Barbarian still did not mean savage.