From: george knysh
Message: 67614
Date: 2011-05-25
--- In cybalist@yahoogroups.com, george knysh <gknysh@...> wrote:
>
> > Strabo would then mean that Mithradates as early as 110 or even
> > sooner was "intending" (or planning) to lead "an army against the
> > barbarians who lived beyond the isthmus as far as the Borysthenes
> > and the Adrias; this, however, was preparatory to a campaign
> > against the Romans". Not that he or his generals were already on
> > the field!
>
> (TP) Were too.
>GK: Where exactly?
I was being inexact. I was disagreeing with your contention that Strabo meant to say that Mithridates was 'dreaming' of a campaign against those who lived as far as the Borysthenes and the Adrias, I think it's pretty obvious that he said Mithridates was already in the process of doing it in 108.*****GK: More precisely 110.****That of course doesn't mean necessarily that Mithridates actually did it, Strabo could be mistaken.****GK: I too prefer to interpret Strabo's words as referring to actual deeds where such really occurred (even if only in part). But one can't escape the fact that his language is somewhat loose here. What would be acceptable would be something like this: 'Chersonesos lost its independence at the time Mithradates was leading (through his generals in the field) his forces against the barbarians who lives across the isthmus to the Borysthenes and Adrias, i.e. against the Scythians, Sarmatians, Bastarnae, Thracians etc. Chersonesos is still subject to Bosporus (which Mithradates acquired during the process). And it all started with an appeal from Chersonesos to help them against the Scythians.' Such an interpretation (Strabo talking about the period 110-88 "preparatory to the war against the Romans" would include everything, and also the war against the Bastarnae (perhaps a second campaign? We don't know if a single one would have been sufficient. It wasn't against the Scythians.)*****
> In ->110 BCE the Scythians controlled everything from the Thracian
> boundary (as described by Ps. Skymnos) to that of the Bosporan
> kingdom. And M's "first spoils" against them were those of
> Diophantes at Chersonesos.
Source, remind me?
*****GK: The DIophantos Decree, here: "he (Diophantos), drawing his army up in the moment of need and routing the Scythians, who were thought to be irresistible, brought it about that the king Mithridates Eupator set up his first trophy from Scythian spoils" (this is the campaign of 110).*****
> So which "barbarians" was he battling against? (NB= Not Greek
> coastal cities).****
The Romanians, of course ;-)
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Map-balkans-vlachs.png
No, but seriously, this is the point I've just been been arguing with the other George about: was there a Proto-Romanian language and a Proto-Romanian ethnos already in the 1st century BCE, because it would fill the bill, geographically. Now if so, can we stretch it back to -> 108 BCE?
*****GK: It depends at what point you want to say that enough exists to warrant positing a functioning language. It's obvious that one can assume some Dacian or Scythian or some anyone speaking broken and bad Latin to a Roman merchant on the Danube. But is this enough? Can one prove that this particular "pidgin" is what developed into the Romanian language? Can one even demonstrate that certain words in the presently functioning Romanian language go back to this pidgin, and how many such words (and here we're only talking lexicon!) would one need to have to say that the Romanian language already existed then? In other words, "critical mass" (as to everything: syntax, morphology, vocabulary, the works in fact) already in 110 BCE, or not? Are there Romanian nationalists (not you (:=)) who claim this?*****
Torsten