[tied] Re: Vanir

--- In cybalist@..., george knysh <gknysh@...> wrote:

>
> --- tgpedersen@... wrote:
> > From Dio Chrysostomos' 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?*****

I don't know, haven't looked. I typed it from a book.

> > "
> >
> >
> >(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.

Archaeology has progressed mightily in the last couple of decades.
Who'd've thought you could date things 2000 years back with that kind
of precision?

>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.*****
>
>

Torsten