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The opposition Greeks vs barbarians is a term which initially referred exclusively to Greek vs. non-Greek-speaking: From the neutral connotation of this word from Homer to the Hellenistic age, barbaros was associated with several and further meanings, such as stranger, foreigner, Persian, cultureless savage, uneducated/dumb, etc. One can observe the tendency towards a purely cultural perception of diversity, which could entirely exclude the linguistic reference, especially since Greek speakers themselves could also be called barbaroi. On the other hand, the self-perception of the Greeks as ‘Greek’ dates from the time of the city states, as witnessed in Herodotus’ famous statement about common descent (ὅμαιμον), language (ὁμόγλωσσον), religion and customs (ἤθεα ὁμότροπα; Herodotus 8.144.2–3). This of course was a later ‘external’ reflection on commonalities that were real but had to be explicitly expressed, since this kind of self-perception and sense of ethnic belonging had to be constructed first. From today’s perspective, the polarity between the Ionian and Doric tribes corresponded more to a polarity between different ethnic groups. Although the Greek tribes had shared ethnic bonds (e.g. language, ancestry, religion, customs), these commonalities were not necessarily perceived as such; they only developed via a historical process.
Although interlingual translations in Greek could have different motivations and arose in very different socio-cultural contexts, what should be noted in all cases is the fact that both the source varieties and the target varieties became indicators of the language behavior of the speech community. The different categories of diachronic intraTr document the complex relationship of the Greek speech community to its cultural and linguistic history. This relationship is characterized repeatedly, but not entirely continuously, also by the lack of insight that linguistic development is a natural state. In this sense, diachronic IntraTr seems, among others, to reflect the attitude of the Greek speech community towards language change, at least in part, either as a disapproval of this change or as its acceptance.