From: Rex H. McTyeire
Message: 10179
Date: 2001-10-13
Hi Anders..some thoughts:
Locally..the Goths are treated as post Roman intrusives, while the Getae are among the earliest identifiable groups of tribes ( becoming an ethnic group of tribes, like the pre-state Daci) (in fact, very difficult to separate from Daci). The Goth, on the other hand, first impact on the region of modern Romania allied with "Free Daci*", CarpiDaci, Costobocs (also a Daci subtribe) around 238, resisting Roman presence. Later, (248-269) Goths are then allied with Tiafali, Bastarnae and Heruli: harassing the Roman order of things < after > Free Daci and Danubian resistance to the Romans had been reduced. History suggests that the Goths then expanded into the post Roman void (after 271) and attempted to dominate North of the Danube, raiding south; with Constantinople intervening at the request of the locals to defeat them, but not push them out initially. (Some maintain the request, and force presence in response, was the sole mechanism for asserting Byzantine dominance in the region into Transylvania; in place of the Goths of a more northerly origin.) It is also suggested that Byzantine treaties with the Goths then empowered and paid them as a "barbarian guard" force for the eastern portion, and delta, of the Danube for a period. (This pulled them from many Romanian provinces and collected them into the easternmost several.) Later reverses and political changes pushed them back into Transylvania briefly; then on westward and into Pannonia. Fortifications from the Byzantine Border treaty period, and attributed (locally supported.. but disputed externally*) to this "Goth" guard force are distinct from Roman and local types in style and construction methods, as are the Transylvanian graves locally attributed to them (also disputed). The local take is they were briefly powerful in the region and moved on westward; leaving genes, graves, walls: but very little culture (and language?). There is < no > local confusion with Getae. I believe (speculate?) that the Getae identity had already become incorporated into Dacian and Moesia regional/national identities in a post tribal environment west of the Danube mouth before the Goth appear. I am reasonably certain that if Thracian existed as a language, then most people who carried the Getae label: spoke it. (And only slightly less certain that it was the same dialect of Thracian as Daci.)
I don’t know the standard arguments against a Getae / Goth link; but the following are some of mine:
1. Getae are at least classically well identified, and were not strangers to the writers of the Gothic references. The limited later Goth references in the same region clearly indicate instances of the latter intruding on the former and the Daci, post Roman; IMHO.
2. Ovid was banished to Tomi about AD 8 (a Greek influenced colony then in Moesia). He wrote a piece now lost, in the local language: Getic. If the place was Thracian pre-Greek; then Getic is Thracian, and probably the Greek applied label for all the regional Dialects (Daci, Getae and others: grouped as dialectically distinct from Moesi, but related, north of Moesia; and generally considered to have been IE for several Millennia before Greek interaction).
3. The G in Getae is soft locally, resulting in Jettae and Jetto (in Geto-Daci), while the G in Goth (Goti, locally pronounced: Gots) is hard.
4. Subtribes of Daci to the north are clearly linked even with widely varied names (Costoboc), but unless you want to extend Thrace well north of contemporary thought, and explain why the link to Getae was lost, while Daci links were not.. Getae and Goth are distinct.
Notes from above:
*Free Daci: were essentially refugees from the territory of initial Roman occupation in the region north of Moesia, most of which had been the previous state of Dacia, but certainly included some Getae (and to a lesser degree Moesi and intrusives.)
* (Some dispute these as a new style of Roman construction following Roman victories in Nestus (267) and Naiss (269, Serbia) and the Roman withdrawal from North of the Danube (271)..rather than later Goth construction, however. I am not sure if any of the subject fortifications are north of the Danube, which would support the Goth argument.)
Cu Stima;
Rex H. McTyeire
Bucharest, Romania
O-:-----Original Message-----
O-:From: malmqvist52@... [mailto:malmqvist52@...]
O-:Subject: [tied] Re: Skiri Bastarnae
O-:
O-:Hi Torsten,
O-:I'll come to the other question but first.
O-: --- In cybalist@......, tgpedersen@...... wrote:
O-:> (apart from the obvious fact that the Getae spoke Thracian)?
O-:>
O-:What are those obvious facts that say that the Getae spoke Thracian?
O-:I thought that the only things we know about Thracian are place names
O-:in Thracia where also other tribes like e g the Daci lived. And The
O-:Goths if we are to believe Jordanes.
O-:What kind of a language then is Thracian? IE or not? Hittite? Greek?
O-:Germanic? Etruscan? Slavonic? What degrees of certainty are we
O-:dealing with?
O-:Anders