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You can call the Roman Empire many things but to call them racist is very anachronistic

Romans called barbarians anyone who is not from the Roman Empire, I don't think Israel thinks any better of its Muslim neighbors. And Jews had pretty bad experience under the Roman Empire in then called Judaea and now Palestinians have pretty bad experience under Israel. Palestinians are Jews of the Islamic world as well as Kurds.

The Romans never referred to the Greeks, Jews or Egyptians as barbarian. If they did it certainly wasn't with great frequency.

It almost always targeted at the tribal Anglo, Celtic or Germanic peoples. And in these circumstances it was really an insult at their style of government rather than their ethnic identity.

Wasn't the insult to the way their languages sounded, i.e. a onomatopoetic word?

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