Greek and Barbarian Polarity

The split between Hellene and barbaros (literally, those whose speech sounds like 'bar-bar') organized much of Greek ethnography and history, used to explain differing customs, freedoms, and the great East-West wars. Herodotus (5th c. BCE) builds his Histories around the clash of Greece and Persia, and after the Persian Wars the antithesis hardened into a cultural framework. It became a lasting lens — and stereotype — through which Greeks defined themselves against others.