Polyethnicity

from:

Herwig Wolfram

History of the Goths

translated from: Geschichte der Gothen

"

...

In his "History of the Germans" (1778) Michael Schmidt equated for
the first time the phrase "migratio gentium" with "tribal migration"
(Völkerwanderung), a loan translation which Johann Christoph
Gottsched already rejected with good reason on linguistic grounds.
Schmidt's equation is indeed semantically suspect, if not altogether
false. Even during the Early Middle Ages the meaning of the
term "gens" changed to such an extent that it came embrace a wide
spectrum of meanings, sometimes even contradictory ones. A
Carolingian "gens Francorum" is closer to a modern nation that
the "gens Francorum" of Clovis' time. And to complicate matters, we
have no way of devising a terminology that is not derived from the
concept of nationhood created during the French Revolution.

Words such as "gens", "genus"/"génos", "genealogia" and "natio",
refer to community of biological descent. The tribal sagas, however,
equate "people" with "army" and thus remain true to historical
reality. In addition, the sources attest the polyethnic character of
the "gentes". These "gentes" never comprise all potential members of
a "gens" but are instead always mixed. Therefore their formation is
not a matter of common descent but one of political decision.
Initially this implies not much more than the ability to unite and
keep together the multitribal groups that make up any barbarian army.
The leaders and chiefs of "well-known" clans, that is to say, of
those families who derive their origins from gods and who can prove
their divine favor through appropriate achievements, for the "nuclei
of tradition" around which new tribes take shape. Whoever
acknowledges the tribal tradition, either by being born into into it
or by being "admitted" to it, is part of the "gens" and as such a
member of the community of "descent through tradition".

...

Hunger and want constantly threatened barbarian existence. Such
privation did not arise bacause the population was multiplying
wildly - in fact the numbers remaine remarkbly stable - but bacause
barbarian society was in a constant state of war and because the
enemy was not only the people living beyond a broad border zone but
was as close as the neighboring village, the next clan, or another
kin group of the same tribe. After the capitulation of Cumae, for
example, Teja's brother sought to become a Roman to escape the
dangerous life of a barbarian. We may wonder why tribal traditions
saw such chaotic conditions as harmonious. This could be so only
because the barbarians lived the pathos of heroism to the fullest.

Barbarian history is the tales of the "deeds of the brave"; only the
warrior, the hero, matters. Tribe and army are one, the "gens" is
the "people in arms". When the tribe migrated an extraordinary social
mobility prevailed in its ranks. Any capable person who had success
in the army could profit from this mobility, regardless of his ethnic
and social background. In the kingdom of Ermaneric there were - apart
from the Greutungian Ostrogoths - Finns, Slavs, Antes, Heruli,
Rosomoni, Alans, Huns, Sarmatians, and probably Aestii as well. In
the western "Gutthiuda" we find, besides the dominant Tervingi (the
Visigoths, as we call them). Taifali, Sarmatians from the Caucaland,
and minorities from Asia Minor; in addition we must assume a
considerable contingent of former Roman provincials, more or less
strongly Romanized Daco-Carpian groups, other Sarmatians, and
Iranians. The polyethnic structure of the Gothic peoples remained
intact even within the Roman Empire. The Gothic army that settled in
southern Gaul in 418 had the following composition: Tervingian-Vesian
and Greutungian-Ostrogothic tribal elements, non-Gothic groups that
had been Gothicized to varying degrees, among them Alans, Bessi from
Thrace, Galindi from the Baltic Sea, Varni, probably also Heruli, and
maybe even Saxons from the Loire and Garonne rivers. Among the
elements of non-Gothic origin we must also list the barbarians from
the "dediticii" and the "laeti", the Sarmatian, Taifalian, and
Suevian colonies of the late Roman "Notitia dignitatum"

...

From the first appearance of the Gothic hordes on Roman soil, they
attracted peoples from the native lower classes. At the time of
migration this attraction was a great advantage because it alleviated
a constant shortage of manpower.

...

A "gens" is a large group as well as a clan, a fraction of a tribe as
much as a confederation of several ethnic units. The "gens" of the
migrations had no "patria". Therefore it had no distinct national
identity; it was still an open process. A "gens" in the "origo" stage
is always wandering - "in peregrinatione" - in order to grow through
the kingship and the faith, whatever that may be, into
a "populus". "Stammesbildung und Verfassung" (tribal formation and
political constitution), the duality which Reinhard Wenskus described
in 1961, is the subject of an historical ethnography. As for Gothic
history, we are here dealing with the confrontation between a tribal
society and a state. There are familiar analogies for us to
understand what the term "state" means historically. Without reviving
the fruitless debate over the use of the term "state" prior to modern
European history, we can say that the "imperium Romanum" of late
antiquity as well as the Carolingian empire had the characteristics
of a state . In these states the territorrial element, the "patria",
remained the vital component; the "gens" had to establish its
legitimacy by becoming the "patria". This is what the Visigoths in
Spain expressed in the classic phrase "patria vel gens Gothorum".
These Goths had transcended the "Scythian character" of the
migratory "gentilitas".

The original, that is, the "Scythian", "gentes" had no fixed
structures. That explains how Synesius of Cyrene could tell his
emperor Arcadius that there were really no new barbarians. They did
in fact constantly invent new names and disguise their appearance to
deceive the Romans - the civilized world - but strictly speaking the
Scythians had remained the same since the days of Herodotus. Less
than a hundred years after Synesius it had become possible to replace
the traditional Scythian name with that of the Goths: polyethnic
bands of mounted warriors who came from northeastern Europe were now
considered Goths, just as they presented themselves to traditional
ethnography.

...

Whoever uses the word "gens" must be aware of the many variations it
embraces. If we recount the "Gothic saga" with all this in mind, it
would sound something like this:

Once upon a time there was a small people - because of the story's
uncertain origin, one is tempted to begin the account like a fairy
tale - calling itself Goths, which means "men". It stepped onto the
stage of history at the time when the Romans were penetrating into
free Germania. In those days the Gothic settlements were strung along
the southern coast of of the Baltic Sea from Pomerania to the East
Prussian Passarge river.

...

In any case, the Goths - or Gutones, as the Roman sources called
them - were initially under foreign domination or formed at best a
semiautonomous group within a tribal confederation, a "nomen
antiquum".

...

Moreover, these kings were special: for Germanic standards they had
an unusual amount of authority. From the time we hear of these kings
they rule more like te kings of the migratory army than the tribal
kings of the last centuries before Christ. To join the Gutonic kings
one did not have to be a Guton or a free man, one had only to be a
good warrior and follow the king faithfully. In this way a body of
royal retainers developed, an "excercitus Gothorum" which soon
surpassed the military capabilities of the surrounding peoples. This
explains the apparent contradictions accompanying the early history
of the Goths: they were originally a dependent and for a long time a
small people who nevertheless occupied a large area extending from
the Passarge river in Prussia through eastern Pannonia nearly to the
Oder.

"

Which all means, I suppose, that arguments like "the Goths are
Germanic speakers, the Getae Thracian-speakers, therefore they are
not identical" (or similarly about Alani and Alamani) do not hold. In
such a gang, or organization, the choice of language is a matter of
expediency; if the tribe includes a sufficient number of
alternatively-speaking people, you pick your favorite lingua franca
for communication.

Interesting, BTW, that the Gothic idea of who belonged is more
similar to the present French one than the German one.

Torsten