Re: The complexities of Bastarnia

From: Torsten
Message: 67569
Date: 2011-05-19

--- In cybalist@yahoogroups.com, george knysh <gknysh@...> wrote:
> > 1. Re (a) Strabo's account (7,3,17) is almost certainly drawn from
> > a source which discussed the Bastarnae of Mithradates' time frame
> > (i.e. first half of the 1rst c. BCE), since he admits he has no
> > recent knowledge of them.
>
> I can't find that?
>
> ***** Strabo 7,2,4:  what is beyond Germany and what beyond the
> countries which are next after Germany â€" whether one should say
> the Bastarnae, as most writers suspect, or say that others lie in
> between, either the Iazyges, or the Roxolani,47 or certain other of
> the wagon-dwellers48 â€" it is not easy to say; nor yet whether they
> extend as far as the ocean along its entire length, or whether any
> part is uninhabitable by reason of the cold or other cause, or
> whether even a different race of people, succeeding the Germans, is
> situated between the sea and the eastern Germans. And this same
> ignorance prevails also in regard to the rest of the peoples that
> come next in order on the north; for I know neither the
> Bastarnae,49 nor the Sauromatae, nor, in a word, any of the peoples
> who dwell above the Pontus, nor how far distant they are from the
> Atlantic Sea,50 nor whether their countries border upon it. *****

He says he has no knowledge of the Bastarnae, not that he has no recent knowledge of them. Your 'almost certainly' is unwarranted.


Torsten