Re: Kossack's Conclusions

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

>
>
> --- tgpedersen <tgpedersen@...> wrote:
>
> > According to this
> > http://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hermunduren
> > some Hermunduri were relocated by L. Domitius Ahenobarbus in 1 BCE
> > into the area around Main which had been abandoned by the
> > Marcomanni,
>
>
>
> cf
> > http://tinyurl.com/2dnrex , 108
> > Velleius Paterculus places the Hermunduri at the
> > Elbe (above URL, 106);
>
>
> ****GK: How about the following "reconstruction":
>
> (I don't have a Greek version of Dio Cassius (who
> seems the unacknowledged source of Wiki's
> "Hermunduren") but here's the Loeb English translation
> from Bk. 55.10.2 at
>
> http://penelope.uchicago.edu/Thayer/E/Roman/Texts/Cassius_Dio/55*.html
>
> "Coincident with these events there was an outbreak on
> the part of the Germans. Somewhat earlier Domitius,
> while still governing the districts along the Ister,
> had intercepted the Hermunduri, a tribe which for some
> reason or other had left their own land and were
> wandering about in quest of another, and he had
> settled them in a part of the Marcomannian territory;
> then he had crossed the Albis, meeting with no
> opposition, had made a friendly alliance with the
> barbarians on the further side, and had set up an
> altar to Augustus on the bank of the river. "
>
> This could refer to the arrival of ALL the
> Hermunduri(from??further north?) into Thuringia (ca. 1
> CE),not just a part.

I don't think so. L. Domitius Ahenobarbus had a command on the Ister,
ie. the Danube, presumably the upper Danube. For him to react and
leave his station, the Hermunduri must have strayed by right under his
nose, so to speak. The Wetterau is in a valley (actually this is where
the main Autobahn from Northern Germany to Frankfurt am Main runs,
after the engine-busting hills at Kassel), and people who come down a
valley would not be described as "wandering about", they are going
somewhere. Therefore I think he met them on the Main plain; after
settling the little business of telling them that this land was Roman
property and assigning a place to them to the east on someone else's
abandoned land where they wouldn't be in the way he decided to go up
the way the Hermunduri had come, namely down the road the Romans had
already built there
http://tinyurl.com/2abo4s
to fix the problem at the root; when he got to the home of the
Hermunduri in Thuringia, he met the rest of them who had stayed and
got friendly with them.

So I think the Hermunduri are part of the Przeworsk invasion, but of
the one in Thuringia, around 50 BCE.

> They would have the Chatti as
> their western neighbours, and extend from the Werra
> (?) to the Elbe. Across the Elbe from them (between it
> and the Oder) would be the Semnones. Hence Tiberius
> would have sailed "between them" in 5 CE (Velleius
> Paterculus). Referring to your conclusion: if the
> Marcomanni were Przeworsk in the last half of the 1rst
> c. BCE, this would mean that they were both in the
> Wetterau and in Thuringia, abandoning the former
> sooner and the latter later, when they centered in
> Bohemia under Marbod.

How about: Marcomanni in Wetterau and the Main plain, Hermunduri in
Thuringia, both Przeworsk, the former went to Bohemia in the Hercynian
Forest
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hercynian_Forest
when Marbod told them to, the latter stayed and later turned into
Thuringians (some of course had gone with Ariovistus and become known
as Tungri; the Marcomanni in the Wetterau got their name since they
were the people of the mark there, ie Germanic frontier, they might
originally have been known as Hermunduri). I don't think these people
centered themselves, it sounds like that was the work of Marbod.

> I would agree with the equation
> Przew.=Marcomanni (as a solid working hypothesis).
> Historically it has the merit of explaining how Marbod
> managed to win sovereignty (or alliance) with Lugii,
> Gotones, etc.. across the Elbe. That was the old haunt
> of the Marcomanni, with presumably good long standing
> contacts. The archaeological issue is admittedly a
> problem (but not more so than the Jastorf->Elb Germani
> transition). The "new Marcomanni" in Bohemia must have
> incorporated large Germanic populations upon
> relocation there.

I don't think so. Weren't they the first Germani there?
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Czech_Republic

> Both these and the Przew. element
> would have transited to the ElbGerm. culture. Possibly
> the Przew.elements which blended in have not yet been
> discovered. Possibly they have not yet been identified
> as components of the local ElbGerm.culture.

As you can see, Hachmann has difficulties upholding his early
conviction that the Wetterau and Thuringian incursion is Przeworsk,
lack of professional acceptance, one surmises, and that idea took long
before that to be recognized, so a 'hidden' Przeworsk nature of the
Marcomanni in Bohemia is not out of the question.

> In any
> case, if indeed Dio Cassius should be read as above,
> then the Hermunduri settlement in Thuringia would
> definitely associate the Marcom. with Przeworsk since
> that(the new area of the Hermunduri) had been their
> earlier haunt, and still technically "theirs". It
> would be nice to know what culture other than Przew.
> was there before Marbod's exodus: Celticized elements
> of the Leine valley, lots of Przeworsk, and "X"
> (Jastorf?) All blending into ELb Germ.soon after the
> Bohemian migration. What do you think?****

If you're talking about who was there in Thuringia, you're probably
right. It seems to gel with what all of Peschel, Hachmann and Kossack
have to say about it. What do you think of my interpretation?


Torsten