Barbarians/Barbaren season one was an awesome show about the famous German hero Arminius. He had been raised in Rome and groomed to be a Roman puppet in Germany. Similar to the story of Vlad Dracula, who was raised in the court of the Turkish Sultan to be the Sultan’s puppet ruler of Wallachia. Like the hero Vlad Dracula, Arminius switched sides and fought for the liberation of his people.
The show is in Old Latin and modern High German. The show went all out for the Romans, using authentic armor, weapons, and period Latin. For the Germans, whom we have much less documentation, Netflix took greater liberties. Modern High German is used simply because we don’t know how they talked in the first century. Some of the war paint looks more like it belongs to modern heavy metal bands than people who were alive in 9 AD. Of course, we all love Mel Gibson’s Braveheart, despite the wild historical inaccuracies and the modern blue clown paint.
Historical blue war paint and makeup among European Celtic peoples were made with malachite. Many falsely claim the historical blue/green Celtic warpaint was made from woad. This is not true. Believe me; I have personally tried to make warpaint from both woad and malachite. Woad does not work. Malachite also matches the description written by Julius Ceasar himself about the Gauls. But I digress!
Season one ends with the battle of Teutoburg Forrest, a major historical event. An army of German tribes commanded by Arminius annihilated three Roman legions.
Of course, Netflix had to add some leftist shenanigans. They transformed the historical bride of Arminius into a mythical warrior woman. But alas, the show was hideously White and lacked any diversity. It was nothing but cisgendered White males as far as the eye could see.
Something had to be done. So Netflix added a female Black hero and homosexuality to season two. Netflix invents a younger brother for Arminius, who is the gay lover of another prominent German chieftain. Then there is a fearless and noble sub-Saharan African woman who beats up males three times her size and saves the day for Arminius.
So progressive!
So how does a sub-Saharan African get to modern-day Germany in 10 AD? They falsely depict the Semitic Phoenicians of Carthage as sub-Saharan Africans. Something Hollywood has already done for decades. The actual Phoenicians came from modern-day Lebanon and probably looked a lot like many modern-day Levantines.
In fact, what Netflix did sounds like anti-Semitism to me. They falsely attributed the accomplishments of Semitic people to sub-Saharan Africans. This was seven hundred years before the Islamic conquest of North Africa and the introduction of sub-Saharan Africans into the region as slaves by the Muslims.
