In which department were the 'Barbarians' undeveloped compared to the civilised?

[Ranika]

It's funny by the definition of barbarian being one who is a non greek speaker, the "barbarians" could write in greek and therefore could most likely speak it. I just think thats quite funny.

Ah, alright, that makes sense. I misunderstood your context and was confused. And yes; Celts and Dacians could speak Greek quite often. As said, all Gallic aristocracy generally spoke Greek as a matter of principle, as well as Latin when the Romans had expanded their power, but before the conquest of Gaul. In fact, Caesar was wary of sending messages while campaigning in Gaul, because even the average soldier often had a rudimentary command of written Latin or Greek, and a messenger caught even by a scouting party could often reveal too much before the letter even reached the enemy general.

Sometimes, such as in the case of the Helveti, while the spoken language was Celtic, they would actually write their records in Greek (some suppose they felt their own language was too holy to be commited to writing; this wouldn't actually be that far off, according to some Irish legends about the eloquence and intellignece deity, Ogma, he developed Ogham writing as a secret code script for short messages, because it was wrong for the language to ever be written at length, for fear of the minds of adherents being weakened by not having to memorize everything). Since the memory and mental prowess was the most precious part of Celtic religion (far more so than physical prowess; warriors were indeed popular, but no one was given higher respect than those most educated members of society), it was important to them to encourage memorization to strengthen the mind; memorizing poems, songs, stories, war chants, etc. Celts often sang while marching; this was probably partly to encourage an appreciation of music and songs, keep step, and encourage memorization (a story or teaching recorded rythmically in poem or song is easier to remember; Celts and many other societies with lengthy oral traditions almost invariably have a great appreciation of song and poems because of their ease to recall to memory, and so had developed musical traditions).