[Footnote 389: It was in the course of these voyages upon the African coast that civilized Europeans first became familiar with people below the upper status of barbarism. Savagery and barbarism of the lower types were practically unknown in the Middle Ages, and almost, though probably not quite unknown, to the civilized peoples of the Mediterranean in ancient times. The history of the two words is interesting. The Greek word [Greek: barbaros], whence Eng. _barbarian_ (=Sanskrit _barbara_, Latin _balbus_), means "a stammerer," or one who talks gibberish, i. e. in a language we do not understand. Aristophanes (_Aves_, 199) very prettily applies the epithet to the inarticulate singing of birds. The names _Welsh_, _Walloon_, _Wallachian_, and _Belooch_, given to these peoples by their neighbours, have precisely the same meaning (Kuhn's _Zeitschrift_, ii. 252); and in like manner the Russians call the Germans _Nyemetch_, or people who cannot talk (Schafarik, _Slawische Alterthumer_, i. 443; Pott, _Etym. Forsch._, ii. 521). The Greeks called all men but themselves barbarians, including such civilized people as the Persians. The Romans applied the name to all tribes and nations outside the limits of the Empire, and the Italians of the later Middle Ages bestowed it upon all nations outside of Italy. Upon its lax use in recent times I have already commented (above, pp. 25-35). The tendency to apply the epithet to savages is modern. The word _savage_, on the other hand, which came to us as the Old French _sauvage_ or _salvage_ (Ital. _selvaggio_, _salvatico_), is the Latin _silvaticus_, _sylvaticus_, _salvaticus_, that which pertains to a forest and is sylvan or wild. In its earliest usage it had reference to plants and beasts rather than to men. Wild apples, pears, or laurels are characterized by the epithet _sylvaticus_ in Varro, _De re rustica_, i. 40; and either this adjective, or its equivalent _silvestris_, was used of wild animals as contrasted with domesticated beasts, as wild sheep and wild fowl, in Columella, vii. 2; viii. 12, or wolves, in Propertius, iii. 7, or mice, in Pliny, xxx. 22. (Occasionally it is used of men, as in Pliny, viii. 79.) The meaning was the same in mediaeval Latin (Du Cange, _Glossarium_, Niort, 1886, tom. vii. p. 686) and in Old French, as "La douce voiz du loussignol sauvage" (Michel, _Chansons de chatelain de Coucy_, xix.). In the romance of _Robert le Diable_, in the verses Sire, se vos fustes Sauvages Viers moi, je n'i pris mie garde, etc.,