Re: [tied] Thrace

--- "Rex H. McTyeire" <rexbo@...> wrote:

> George K. comes back with:
> O-: (1) What do you make of Herodotus' comment
> that "ancient Scythia" began just north of the
> Danube?
>
> (R McT)Potentially confusing, imprecise, but

accurate when

> sorted in geography
> and time. The Danube is large. The Scythian
> incursion and State was
> North and east of the Danube, on a Dniester and east
> center c. 800 BCE.
> By H.'s time the area of Scyth control had extended
> around the Black Sea
> coast to the West and South, down to the Border with
> Dodrogea (That
> border the Danube Delta) which Ateas then invaded
> across temporarily.
> That < is > "just North of the Danube" and the
> beginning of Scythia.
> No conflict.

*****GK: My view on the other hand is that "Ancient
Scythia" is Herodotus' way of referring to the
political situation here antecedent not only to the
arrival of the "Royal" Scythians ca. 650 BC but also
prior to the Cimmerians. He used "Ancient Scythia" for
lack of a better term. It extended from the Danube to
appr. the isthmus of Perekop, therefore WEST of the
"Royal" Scythian lands of Herodotus' time. ******

(R McT)H. also lists Thracians as the most

> numerous people in the
> world after Indians, and capable of domination if
> united: he was not
> referring to a tiny Roman province..while you are.

*****GK: I am not referring to a tiny Roman province,
but to a large though undefined area SOUTH OF THE
DANUBE. If you check all contexts where Herodotus
speaks of Thrace, including the one where he makes his
comment about their numbers, you will find that he
nowhere knows of a Thrace North of the Danube. In fact
he even located the Getae south of the Danube. I am
quite willing to accept that by "AGATHYRSI" he meant
the Daco-Getan population NORTH of the Danube (he
localizes the Agathyrsi in Transylvania and in the
Rumanian plain west of Scythia). What is interesting
to me here is that these "Agathyrsi" are closely
related to the Scythians (Pontic Greek Foundation
Legend).******
/The Costobocs can be discussed on another
occasion/:******GK: I suppose that in a very extended
sense

> one
> might consider a number of closely related
> linguistic
> families "Thracian", though I personally prefer the
> term "Thrakoid", so as to restrict "Thracia" in the
> strong sense to the territories south of the Danube.
>
>(R McT) The essence of our difference. Thracia in no

sense

> was limited to south
> of the Danube < until > Romans applied the name to a
> province that was
> so limited..which was one late stage in a series of
> moves away from the
> culture and language that was definitively Thracian
> before that series
> of actions; and most specific to that small piece of
> the larger whole.

****GK: But as mentioned above Herodotus knew of no
THRACE north of the Danube. And that is more than 400
years before the Romans.*******
/Other matters deferred/

> Cu Stima
> Rex H. McTyeire
> Bucharest, Romania
>
>

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