READING
1 Ligabue, Giancarlo, and Sandro Salvatori, eds. 1990. Bactria: An Ancient Oasis Civilisation from the Sands of Afghanistan. Venice: Erizzo.
BADRES (Βάδρης, ὁ) of Pasargadae
HENRY P. COLBURN
Metropolitan Museum of Art
Persian admiral placed in charge of the fleet dispatched by ARYANDES to attack the Greek city of BARCA in LIBYA c. 513 BCE (4.167.1). Badres has a Persian name; related forms of it occur in tablets from the PERSEPOLIS Fortification Archive (Schmitt 1967, 129). His epithet identifies him as part of the PASARGADAE, one of the Persian tribes rallied by CYRUS (II) (see 1.125). After the Persian general AMASIS captures Barca, Badres attempts to attack CYRENE as well on the journey back, but Amasis prevents it (4.201–3).
SEE ALSO: Badres son of Hystanes; Pheretime
REFERENCE
1 Schmitt, Rüdiger. 1967. “Medisches und persisches Sprachgut bei Herodot.” Zeitschrift der Deutschen Morgenländischen Gesellschaft 117: 119–45.
FURTHER READING
Corcella in ALC, 720.
BADRES (Βάδρης, ὁ) son of Hystanes
CHRISTOPHER BARON
University of Notre Dame
Officer in XERXES’ invasion force of 480 BCE who commanded contingents from southwestern Anatolia, the Meionian CABALES (also called Lasonians) and the MILYANS (7.77). It is not known whether this Badres is the same man who commanded the Persian fleet in the expedition against LIBYA under DARIUS I (4.167.1), which occurred more than thirty years earlier (Schmitt, IPGL 158–59 (no. 117b)).
SEE ALSO: Badres of Pasargadae; Hystanes
BAGAEUS (Βαγαῖος, ὁ)
HENRY P. COLBURN
Metropolitan Museum of Art
Bagaeus, son of ARTONTES, was a Persian dispatched by DARIUS I to kill the satrap OROETES by cleverness rather than force (3.127–28). Bagaeus was chosen by LOT from thirty volunteers to orchestrate Oroetes’ demise. He first ascertained the loyalty of Oroetes’ guards by presenting them with a series of documents bearing the seal of Darius. When they responded obediently, he ordered them to execute Oroetes. Bagaeus’ son MARDONTES later served as a commander in XERXES’ expedition against Greece (7.80; 8.130.2). He may be the same man as the Bagiya who appears in an Elamite administrative tablet from the PERSEPOLIS Fortification Archive (Hallock 1969, no. 823), probably the husband of an otherwise unknown Princess Ishtin (Lewis 1997, 355–56).
SEE ALSO: Persia; Satrapies
REFERENCES
1 Hallock, Richard T. 1969. Persepolis Fortification Tablets. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.
2 Lewis, David M. 1997. Selected Papers in Greek and Near Eastern History. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
FURTHER READING
1 Kuhrt, Amélie. 2007. The Persian Empire. A Corpus of Sources from the Achaemenid Period, 598. London and New York: Routledge.
2 Vargyas, Péter. 2000. “Darius and Oroites.” AHB 14.4: 155–61.
BAGASACES, see BASSACES
BARBARIANS (βάρβαροι, οἱ)
HYUN JIN KIM
University of Melbourne
The term barbaros was most likely a foreign loanword in the Greek language, though its ultimate origin is disputed (Old Persian and Sumerian/Akkadian derivations have been proposed). It first appears in Greek as part of a compound word, in the “Catalogue of Ships” section of Homer’s Iliad where the Carians are referred to as barbarophonon, “barbaros‐speaking” (Il. 2.867; Hall 2002, 111–12). However, the existence of this term so early in Greek literature is suspect, since THUCYDIDES in the fifth century BCE stated that HOMER did not mention the word barbaros at all (1.3.3). It has therefore been argued that this early reference to barbaros is a late interpolation and that the term is a sixth century BCE neologism designating non‐Greeks. In fact the use of the word barbaros is rare even in Greek literature of the late sixth century. It is only attested three times in total: ANACREON (PMG F423); HECATAEUS (BNJ 1 F119); Heraclitus (DK 22 B 107). As a noun appellation, it is first found in Hecataeus (as cited by Strabo 7.7.1/C321), where it carries no visible negative connotations.
Since the time of STRABO (14.2.28/C662–63) it has been assumed that the word barbaros in Greek literature was originally associated with the inability to speak Greek which marked the foreigner off as inferior. From this assumption it was argued that language and the comprehension of LOGOS (i.e., Greek) was central to the Greek‐Barbarian divide. During the ARCHAIC AGE the Greeks recognized the existence of foreigners speaking incomprehensible tongues (e.g., Hom. Hymn Aphr. 5.113–14, where Trojan and Phrygian are cited as different languages). However, before the late sixth century BCE there is no evidence that speaking Greek was regarded as a marker of superiority over non‐Greeks. Bad feeling and prejudice towards foreigners no doubt existed among the Greeks in the early archaic period, but this by no means implied the antithetical “othering” of all foreigners based on speech patterns.
From the late sixth century onwards, however, the term barbaros is used with ever‐growing frequency, usually to designate either the Persians or Persian subjects in continental ASIA. For instance, AESCHYLUS in his Persians (472 BCE) equates Asia and non‐Greeks/barbaroi in general (i.e., those who live on the continent ruled by the Persians). Aeschylus refers to the Asiatic race (Ἀσιατογενής) and fits a plethora of ethnic groups as diverse and different as the Lydians, Persians, Babylonians, and even Egyptians into this race reared in the land of Asia (Pers. 61). XERXES is called the ruler of Asia (74), and the Greek land (Ἑλλάδα) is seen as being distinct from that of the Asians/βάρβαρον (186–87). Furthermore, in Aeschylus linguistic difference is not the only meaning implicit in the word barbaros nor is it the most prominent meaning overall. It is primarily a designation for the Persians and their Asian subjects invading Greece to deprive HELLAS of its political FREEDOM.
Scholars have often held that the Greek experience of Persian CONQUEST, the wars fought against PERSIA to preserve the freedom of Hellas, and the unexpected Greek triumph in that conflict were all critical to the formulation of the image/perception of the “barbarian,” though this view has been challenged recently (Skinner 2012; Vlassopoulos 2013). Edith Hall (1989) famously argued that the “barbarian” was invented by Athenian tragedians such as Aeschylus in the aftermath of the PERSIAN WARS, as part of the RHETORIC designed to “other” the defeated Persian enemy. The antithetical othering of the barbarian was also no doubt intimately associated with the gradual crystallization of the sense of a Hellenic ethnic
