Abstract EN:

The barbarian problem may be examined in two different ways in the fourth century a. D. : the definition of the barbarian: the study of roman attitudes towards the barbarians living inside and outside the empire. Source material is to be found in writings, inscriptions, laws monuments and coins. Various criteria are to be considered: a situation beyond roman frontiers, a lack of organized social life, or moral and intellectual inferiority: not every roman judgment is systematically pejorative, and some foreign peoples may be perceived as not barbarian. Roman attitudes vary according to space and time: there were flights and treasons, but also popular resistance, especially in the eastern part of the empire. Employing barbarians has encountered more and more suspicion, but has hardly ever been fully condemned. The notion of assimilation has never disappeared, but the fear of barbarizations has never ceased growing.