Re: Post-Gothic "Getic" fantasies: the source(s)

--- In cybalist@..., george knysh <gknysh@...> wrote:

>
> --- tgpedersen <tgpedersen@...> wrote:
> > I think it is an understatement to say that Goths
> > and other Germanic-
> > speaking tribes were not concerned with their roots.
>
> *****GK: Yes. So were the Romans, so are our Indian
> friends on this list. In fact so is just about
> anybody. So what? I wasn't actually talking about the
> Goths (either in general, or about those whose sense
> of greatness would have been titillated by the efforts
> of Cassiodorus), but about potential protesters from
> the Getae/Dacians. Being extinct silences you
> wonderfully.*****
>
>

But what would be the motive for the Goths to write in the Getae into
their history? It would hardly impress a classical audience whether
one runny-nosed, club-dragging barbarian people claimed ancestry from
another one of the same category, so why do it? And every people,
literate or not has an idea of where they came from. If that idea in
the native tradition of the Goths et al. had differed from the one
offered unanimously by their chroniclers, you can bet on it that
someone at some time would have protested.

Torsten