t works of art which
were spread over the empire. They robbed and burned like savages, and
in a few years destroyed many of the beautiful things which had been
made with so much care and skill by the Greek and Roman artists. So
deep an impression did their destructiveness make on the world of that
time that their names have been handed down through sixteen centuries,
and are used to-day in the unpleasant sense of wilful destroyers of
beautiful things.

The words _barbarian_ and _barbarous_ are used in the same way. We
describe a child who behaves in a rough way as "a little barbarian,"
or a grown-up person without ordinary good manners as "a mere
barbarian." And the word _barbarous_ has an even worse meaning. It is
used to describe very coarse, uncivilized behaviour; but most often it
has also the sense of cruelty as well as coarseness. Thus we speak of
the barbarous behaviour of the Germans in Belgium. But when the word
_barbarous_ was first used it meant merely "foreign."

To the Greeks there were only two classes of people--Greeks, and
non-Greeks or "barbarians." The name _barbarian_ meant a bearded man,
and came from the Greek word _barbaros_. The Greeks were clean-shaven,
and distinguished themselves from the "bearded" peoples who knew
nothing of Greek civilization. The Romans conquered Greece, and
learned much from its civilization. To them all who were not Greeks or
Romans were "barbarians." Some Roman writers, like Cicero, use the
word in the modern sense of unmannerly or even savage, but this was
not a common use. St. Paul was a Roman citizen, for he belonged to
Tarsus, a city in Asia Minor which had been given full Roman rights;
but he was a Greek by birth, and he uses the word in the Greek way. He
speaks of all men being equal according to the Christian religion,
saying, "There is neither Greek nor ... barbarian, bond nor free."

The word _slave_, again, contains in itself whole chapters of European
history. It comes from the word _Slav_. The Slavs are the race of
people to which the Russians, Poles, and many other nations in the
East of Europe belong. The Great War has been partly fought for the
freedom of the small Slav nations, of which Serbia is one. The Slavs
have a long history of oppression and tyranny behind them. They have
been subject to stronger nations, such as the Turks, and, in Hungary,
the Magyars. The first "slaves" in mediaeval Europe belonged to this
race, and the word "slave" is only ano