Re: [tied] Re: Vanir

--- tgpedersen@... wrote:

> From Dio Chrysostomis' 36th Discourse, of
> Borysthenes, a Greek Black
> Sea colony at the mouth of the river Bug, in 96 CE:

*****GK: Would this source be available on line?*****

>
> "
>
>
>(TP citing DC) The city of Borysthenes, as to its

size. does not

> correspond to its
> ancient fame, because of its ever-repeated seizure
> and its wars.

*****GK: Borysthenes, better known as OLBIA. At the
confluence of So. Bog(h) and Dnipro. Founded in the
early 6th c. BC. Existed as late as Gothic and Hunnic
times. Much excavated in the last generations.*****

(TP c. DC)For

> since the city has lain in the midst of barbarians
> now for so long a
> time - barbarians, too, who are virtually the most
> warlike of all -
> it is always in a state of war and has often been
> captured, the last
> and most disastrous capture occurring not more than
> one hundred and
> fifty years ago.

****GK: Historians place this event ca. 50-45 BC.*****

(TP c. DC)And the Getae on that occasion

> seized not only
> Borysthenes but also the other cities along the left
> side of the
> Pontus as far as Apollonia [that would have been
> during the
> Mithridatic wars, perhaps "Odin" passing by? T.].

*****GK: Actually that was some 15-20 years subsequent
to the last of the Mithridatic wars. Not so much
"Odin" as the Getan warlord Burebista (82-44 BC) who
built up a large Thracian empire and was assassinated
in the same year as Caesar. The Rumanians consider him
one of their ancient national heroes.****

(TP c. DC) But after Borysthenes had been taken on the

> occasion
> mentioned, its people once more formed a community,
> with the consent
> of the Scythians, I imagine, because of the need for
> traffic with the
> Greeks who might use this port. For the Greeks had
> stopped sailing to
> Borysthenes when the city was laid waste, inasmuch
> as they had no
> people of common speech to receive them, and the
> Scythians themselves
> had neither the ambition nor the knowledge to equip
> a trading centre
> of their own after the Greek manner.

*****GK: This refers to the rebuilding of OLBIA near
the end of the 1rst c. BC. Dio overstates his case a
bit. There were Scythian urban centers along the Lower
Dnipro (listed by Ptolemy a few years after Dio.)
Their ruins still existed in the time of Constantine
Porphyrogenitus and even that of Sylvester the editor
of the Kyivan Primary Chronicle, who called them the
"Ulch cities (grads)" after the Ulch Huns who
controlled them once. But that is another story.*****


__________________________________________________
Do You Yahoo!?
Find the one for you at Yahoo! Personals
http://personals.yahoo.com