Mixobarbaroi

Mixobarbaroi (Greek: μιξοβάρβαροι, Latin: semibarbari, "semi-/mixed/half barbarians") was an ethnographical term first used in Classical Greece by authors to denote people who lived in the frontiers of the oikoumene, and had qualities of both the civilized peoples and the barbarians, as seen in the works of Euripides, Plato and Xenophon.[1] It would later come to describe mixed Greeks or other people mixed with "barbarians" in the Greek lands of cultural plurality. In Byzantine times this term was used by authors chiefly in the 11th–12th centuries to denote the linguistically and ethnically mixed populations of the Danube region.[2]

In the Plato dialogue Menexenus, a group of "barbarians" considered themselves Greeks, but were not full-blooded Greeks, thus only "mixobarbaroi". Xenophon describes the people of Cedreiae in Asia Minor, who were allies to Athens, as "mixobarbaroi", meaning those who were bound to treaties with Athens but were not Athenian.

After the Christianization of the Byzantine Empire and the first Christian emperor Constantine I, the term is used to denote non-Romans of Christian faith living in the frontiers bound by treaties to the emperor, thus being of half-barbarian stock opposed to ordinary "barbarians" who were either non-civilized, pagan or not living in the frontiers. Anna Comnena refers to the people of Paristrion as "mixobarbaroi", distinguished from the Scythians whom they nevertheless shared language with.

The term mixo-barbarous refers to the writing language of Modern Greek that was characterized with Hellenic phrases, ancient syntax and overall ancient mimic but combined with modern and foreign etymology applied to the vulgar dialect used by Greeks during and after the fall of Constantinople.[3]

References

  1. ↑ Byzantium's Balkan Frontier: A Political Study of the Northern Balkans, 900–1204, p. 110, at Google Books
  2. ↑ Kazhdan, Alexander, ed. (1991), Oxford Dictionary of Byzantium, Oxford University Press, p. 1386, ISBN 978-0-19-504652-6
  3. ↑ Researches in Greece at Google Books


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