Fw: Re: [tied] Re: Frankish origins

From: Torsten
Message: 65113
Date: 2009-09-24

--- In cybalist@yahoogroups.com, "gknysh" <gknysh@...> wrote:
>
> --- In cybalist@yahoogroups.com, george knysh <gknysh@> wrote:
> >(TP) This is what Lucan has Caesar say on his arrival in Rome after having crossed the Rubicon in 49 BCE.
> > ''tene, deum sedes, non ullo Marte coacti
> > deseruere uiri? pro qua pugnabitur urbe?
> > di melius, quod non Latias Eous in oras
> > nunc furor incubuit nec iuncto Sarmata uelox
> > Pannonio Dacisque Getes admixtus: habenti
> > tam pauidum tibi, Roma, ducem fortuna pepercit,
> > quod bellum ciuile fuit.'
> > Pharsalia, Book III
> > http://www.thelatin library.com/ lucan/lucan3. shtml
> > which Riley
> > http://tinyurl. com/ls8exo
> > translates as
> > " And have there been men, forced by no warfare, to
> > desert thee, the abode of the Gods! For what city will they fight?
> > The Gods have proved more favouring in that it is
> > no Eastern fury that now presses upon the Latian shores,
> > nor yet the swift Sarmatian in common with the Pannonian,
> > and the Getans mingled with the Dacians. Fortune, Borne,
> > has spared thee, having a chief so cowardly [Pompey], in that the
> > warfare was a civil one."
> >
> > GK: Does nothing for your thesis. Merely "supports" Harmatta's
> > view that the Sarmatians were across from Pannonia (he thinks),
> > although frankly, it doesn't even do that.
>
> ****GK: Lucan may simply have projected the situation of 59/60 CE
> (when Sarmatians were indeed located just across Pannonia on the
> Danube) back to 49 BCE.

True, Vannius' war would have given the spectacle of Germani joined in common operations with Pannonian Sarmatians.

> Poetic license which Harmatta interpreted as historical proof.*****

No, historical hint.

> I stand by my evaluation of your "expertise".
>
> ****GK: Neither Eusebius nor Lucan prove that the Sarmatians were
> regular inhabitants (as against occasional raiders) of Illyria.

I never claimed they did.

> Nor does Harmatta (who provides this dubious evidence) support your
> notion.

True.

> Nor do any of the other sources you have adduced.

Not to the exclusion of other scenarios, no.

> Nor in fact any sources whatsoever.

I didn't claim they did. But if Vannius' infantry cooperating with Sarmatian cavalry was understood as a one-off by the contemporaries, I don't think Lucan writing at the same time would have Caesar imagining it as a generic threat.


> You've simply "sucked this from your finger" to use an old
> Ukrainian expression. Par for the course for you.****


The problem with you in this field is that you don't get the concept of nomads setting up shop among sedentary farmers. If a sedentary population neighboring a nomadic population suddenly develops an upper class showing many characteristics of the nomadic population next door, in your interpretation it has to be local. At least in Europe.


Torsten