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Comment by austincheney | Hacker News Reader

By the time Germans became familiar to the Romans milk consumption was common. The common source of dietary fats for Romans at the time was olive oil. The common source of fats for the Germans was butter which the Romans looked down upon as barbaric.

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"All Gaul is divided into three parts: the part that cooks with lard and goose fat, the part that cooks with olive oil, and the part that cooks with butter."

Greeks did use butter, but not milk.

But Illyrians, (northern neighbors, in modern day Albania) did drink milk. At some point they were invaded/incorporated by the Roman empire, and about 190 B.c. 'drinking milk' was not such a unfathomed thing. (but, albeit, might have been not a 'aristocratic' thing to do).

http://www.ancientportsantiques.com/wp-content/uploads/Docum...

So, romans didn't drink milk originally, but their neighbors across the sea did.

Barbaric didn't have the same meaning then as now. To the latin speakers, they made fun of the Germans as sounding like 'Bar Bar' when they talked, hence Barbarians. To call something 'Barbaric' in those times simply meant Germanic.

Same with Vandals.

Barbarian: word originated from the Greek, antonym for "citizen". The Greeks used the term barbarian for all non-Greek-speaking peoples...

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Barbarian

Thanks for the correction and link, guess I should have refreshed on it before commenting.

Wasn't it Gaullian at the time?

Earlier than the Romans the word is originally Greek and basically meant “foreigner” - someone that doesn’t speak Greek

I wasn’t aware it came from the “bar-bar” sound though so thanks for mentioning that

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