“What the barbarians did not do, the Barberini did.”
This Latin epigram—
“Quod non fecerunt barbari, fecerunt Barberini”
—has, over time, become proverbial.
Nowadays it is invoked to criticize those who, under the guise of progress or authority, violate their own cultural legacy.
The phrase was originally a pointed rebuke of the Barberini family, particularly Pope Urban VIII, born Maffeo Barberini. It mockingly accused them of excessive and destructive behavior, most notably the looting of ancient Roman monuments to obtain materials for new constructions.
The most notorious instance involved stripping bronze from the Pantheon. That bronze was used to build the grand baldachin over the altar of St. Peter’s Basilica, a project led by Bernini. Some of the metal was also repurposed for making cannons.
By the early 20th century, around 1920, restoration efforts were completed to return the Pantheon to its original form. The earlier removal of materials had jeopardized the structural integrity of the building.
The epigram implies that even Rome’s barbarian invaders had respected these ancient treasures—yet the Barberini, driven by ambition and grandeur, committed acts of cultural destruction that their predecessors would have scorned.
This saying is a powerful example of how Renaissance and early modern critics employed the language of antiquity to question power, using the elegance of Latin as a weapon of protest.