_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.,

the reference is plainly to degenerate civilized men
frequenting the forests, such as bandits or outlaws, not to
what we call savages.

Mediaeval writers certainly had some idea of savages, but it was
not based upon any actual acquaintance with such people, but
upon imperfectly apprehended statements of ancient writ