Hal, I'm not aware of any Greek disparagement of barbarians; one 
of my sources suggested that this perjorative aspect of the term 
was Roman useage, expected as they fought many wars with them. 
 
Athenians hired Scythian archers to man their police force.  The 
main Athenian religious festival, 'Komos' was open to barbarians 
as well as Greeks and Romans.  It was the earliest example I can 
think of, of universal brotherhood; man, woman, master, or slave 
made no difference; anyone over four who could understand enough 
Greek to know what was going on could be a 'Mystai'. 
 
Herodutus seems to have some fun exposing the hubris of Persians 
in their foolish and failed expedition into Scythia.  The Greeks 
were not at all surprised, and romanticized the 'Noble Savages'. 
 
 HW> ancient Hebrews apparently infiltrated into Canaan ca 1200 BCE... 
After Ahknaton died, his monotheistic revolution was defeated by 
an Egyptian counter revolution, and some of the monotheists fled 
with their Goshen governor Moses into the Sinai desert; and, the 
insurrections in Caanan showed up 40 years later. 
 
 HW>    I'm no historian, but didn't the Dorians--who became known as 
 HW> Greeks--, do likewise around the same time, 1200-1000, BCE. 
Not exactly. 
 HW>    And each group rationizes its conquest. 
 HW> "Aboriginal" culture disappears or is assimilated. 
 HW> If the  Jews 
 HW> painted a bad picture of their enemies, surely you know how 
 HW> the Greek generally spoke of "the barbarians." 
During the second millennium the Minoans had a naval hegemony all 
over the Aegean; IIRC, about 1400 BCE the explosion of a volcano, 
and the tidal wave, devastated their navy near Knossos.  However, 
a number of Greek ports were upwind of the ash and protected by a 
penninsula from the tidal wave.  They took advantage by revolting 
and organizing a fleet to sack Knossus, which also had earthquake 
damage to deal with. 
 
Then, after an earthquake hit Troy, they organized another fleet, 
and sacked it; but in neither case Hal, whether the Theseus myth, 
or Homer's Illiad, will you find the Greek author disparage their 
enemy. 
 
 HW> -> while in the Greek experience participation in the 
 HW> -> marketplace and determination by citizens of their political 
 HW> -> destinies 
 HW>  
 HW>    This is rather idealized.  The "citizens" were males of 
 HW> an aristocracy.   Further, you seem to consider only Athens. 
'Tyrant' was not perjorative, but simply meant an usurper of some 
king, which *wasn't* done by the aristocracy, but by the plebians
fed up with abuse of power.  Although democracies weren't common, 
the displacements of power abusers was, and civil rights were not 
often or carelessly abused. 
 
There was a critical freedom common to Greeks the Hebrews did not 
have: boats.  If a Jew was oppressed, he could flee into deserts; 
not too appealing.  If a Greek was oppressed, he could board with 
his family and all his shit, and split to set up on some coast on 
which his oppressor had no authority. 
 
By the time the Hebrews got to Caanan, their land had been farmed 
for millennia, much of it already treeless scrub.  But Greeks had 
extensive virgin forest coasts to homestead.  For a long time, it 
was not homesteading, but plunder.  If you look at city locations 
from that era, Sparta, Thebes, Athens, Corinth, etc. you may see, 
as one writer did, that nobody lived on the coast. 
 
Like America, there was always a frontier to flee to if the power 
structure got to be too pushy.  As a consequence, the cosmology a 
Greek saw on Olympas was Zeus acting like a town mayor; trying to 
keep peace between contending parties, and leaving men to run the 
lives they had by themselves.  Quite a contrast to the tyrannical 
Semite deity that you had to kowtow to, or be destroyed [anyway]. 
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--- Maximus 3.01
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