Who is a barbarian? The barbarians in the ethnological and cultural taxonomies of Strabo

<small-caps>stranger</small-caps>: ‘… most people in this country … separate the Hellenic race from all the rest as one, and to all the other races, which are countless in number and have no relation in blood or language to one another, they give the single name ‘barbarian’ ’. (Plato, <italic>Politicus</italic> 262d) The <italic>Geography</italic> of Strabo, the most comprehensive ethnographic work to survive from classical antiquity, is one of the main sources for a study of the ancient attitude towards other races and nations, viz. the barbarians. Not only does it describe various barbarian groups of the <italic>oikoumene</italic>, but also, as has already been noticed, it uses the term <italic>barbaros</italic> quite extensively. But what is the meaning of this term in the <italic>Geography</italic>? It generally connotes a classification of human societies, which are separated by some standards, and denotes the group that is judged to be different from the point of view of the speaker, whether ethnically, culturally or otherwise. What taxonomy does the word <italic>barbaros</italic> imply in this particular work? It seems that so far, earlier researches of Strabo's usage of this concept were limited in both their scope and conclusions, while there is no elaborate study which takes into consideration each instance of the term in order to establish its precise meaning. The aim of this paper is to draw attention to the variety of ethnological classifications embraced by Strabo.