Re: On the old amber road?

From: george knysh
Message: 67852
Date: 2011-06-24



--- On Fri, 6/24/11, Torsten <tgpedersen@...> wrote:



I've been considering your idea that the Dacian invasion described by Jordanes' '...cujus consilio Gothi Germanorum terras, quas nunc Franci obtinent, populati sunt' is the war against Critasirus and his allies.

****GK: I'm still stuck with the idea that this might have been a raid against Thuringia (part of which was Frankish in Jordanes' time). If Burebista created a short lived empire north of the Carpathians that raid wouldn't be too farfetched.*****


The Franks were never near the territory of the relevant Bastarnae tribes, the Atmoni and Sidoni, neither the one given by Strabo nor those given by Ptolemy and Tacitus of Strabo, especially not when Jordanes wrote that sentence in 551 CE.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Frankish_Empire_481_to_814-en.svg
But if your proposal is true, what then made the Atmoni and Sidoni break up from their old homes and wander northwest?

We have to remember that the Cimbri and Bastarni mobilized for war in 89 BCE (that might account for the southeastward migration of the Przeworskers you mentioned)
http://tech.groups.yahoo.com/group/cybalist/message/67060
(Justinus: Epitome of Pompeius Trogus' "Philippic histories" 38.3.6)
'In the next place, well understanding what a war be was provoking, he sent ambassadors to the Cimbri, the Gallograecians, the Sarmatians, and the Bastarnians, to request aid;'
and that the invasion they prepared for never happened.

****GK: In passing.  One of the recent theories Pachkova is discussing (and questioning on archaeological grounds) is that of Shchukin and Yeremenko about the Cimbri in this context. They thought that Posidonius' idea (as recounted by Strabo in his book 7) reflected a real historical event, and that the Cimbri ("Cimmerians") invaded much further to the southeast than established western historiography allows, reaching the Maeotis. Subsequently (a bit like the Atuatuci in Gaul) some of them stayed behind, and functioned as mercenaries for Bosporus and other North pontic city-states. It is these independent hirelings that Mithradates allegedly approached. I haven't read the works Pachkova refers to (but will try to locate them) and so don't know the details of the Shchukin-Yeremenko thesis.*****

I recalled a similar episode in Danish history.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Canute_IV
'As the grandnephew of Canute the Great, who ruled England, Denmark and Norway until 1035, Canute considered the crown of England to be rightfully his. He therefore regarded William I of England as a usurper. In 1085, with the support of his father-in-law Count Robert and Olaf III of Norway, Canute planned an invasion of England and called his fleet in leding at the Limfjord. The fleet never set sail, as Canute was preoccupied in Schleswig due to the potential threat of Henry IV, Holy Roman Emperor, with whom both Denmark and Flanders were on unfriendly terms. Canute feared the invasion of Henry, whose enemy Rudolf of Rheinfelden had sought refuge in Denmark.
The warriors of the fleet, mostly made up of peasants who needed to be home for the harvest season, got weary of waiting, and elected Canute's brother Olaf (the later Olaf I of Denmark) to argue their case. This raised the suspicion of Canute, who had Olaf arrested and sent to Flanders. The leding was eventually dispersed and the peasants tended to their harvests, but Canute intended to reassemble within a year.

Before the fleet could reassemble, a peasant revolt broke out in Vendsyssel, where Canute was staying, in early 1086. Canute first fled to Schleswig, and eventually to Odense. On July 10, 1086, Canute and his men took refuge inside the wooden St. Alban's Priory in Odense. The rebels stormed into the church and slew Canute, along with his brother Benedict and seventeen of their followers, before the altar. According to chronicler Ælnoth of Canterbury, Canute died following a lance thrust in the flank. He was succeeded by Olaf as Olaf I of Denmark.'

(The Danish text
http://da.wikipedia.org/wiki/Knud_den_Hellige#Konge_af_Danmark
doesn't mention any 'peasants', the insertion of which must be an artifact of the effects of 1066, like the distinction between 'city' and 'town', which make it difficult sometimes to represent foreign events in English; there was no serfdom in Denmark at the time; when it was introduced, then not in Jutland
http://da.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vornedskab
the disgruntled rebels were magnates who had both farms (homesteads?) and ships).

The famine under his Canute's successor
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Olaf_I_of_Denmark#King_of_Denmark
could be explained as the result of field erosion after two years of neglect (note Saxo's explicit testimony that the famine struck only Denmark). If something similar had happened to the Bastarnae, or rather to their crop-growing douloi, when winter came, they would have had no choice but to move in with their cousins the Przeworskers/Cimbri. And they were hungry. That can't have been nice and tranquil.

Torsten