--- In cybalist@..., george knysh <gknysh@...> wrote:
> *****GK: Sounds as though someone is picking up that
> ragged whip again and looking with interest at that
> pile of old horse bones with an itch in the wrist...
> The (mis)identification of Goths and Getae in
> Jordanes/Cassiodorus stems from the authority of
> Paulus Orosius (cf. Getica,44.)
First, sorry for popping in and out of the list like this and not
finishing up on things I may have promised to do here, but time has
been a terrible problem.
Next, let me take issue with George here.
Neither Jordanes nor Orosius seem to be the first to connect the
Goths and the Getae. In fact, it may have been a fairly common thing
to refer to the Goths as Getae for some three hundred years before
Jordanes.
I have some old notes here. In the early fourth century, Aelius
Spartianus in his Life of Caracalla wrote regarding his subject's
triumphal names: "For when he assumed the surnames Germanicus,
Parthicus, Arabicus, and Alamannicus..., Helvius Pertinax, son of
Pertinax, said to him in jest, or so it is said, "Add to the others,
please, that of Geticus Maximus also"; for he had slain his brother
Geta, and Getae is a name for the Goths, whom he conquered, while on
his way to the East,..."
So it seems there was talk of "Getae" = "Gothi" only about 50 years
after Dexippus' first fragmentary reference to Goths in Greek texts.
Claudian (born @ 370 AD) also use Getae and Goth interchangeably in
his lives of the emperors. And there is also the inscription on the
triumphal arch regarding Alaric quoted by Gibbon:"...but in less than
seven years, the Gothic conquerors of Rome might read, if they were
able to read, the superb inscription of that monument, which attested
the total defeat and destruction of their nation.... 'Getarum
nationem in omne aevum domitam,...' So it would appear that the
inscribers of that arch also thought the Goths were Getae.
It seems probable from all this that the Goths as Getae was not a
mere convenient connection made centuries later. In fact, I don't
think anyone we know of did not connect Goths and Getae before maybe
1400AD.
What's even more interesting perhaps is that the name Getae (as
referring to anyone else but the Goths) also seems to mysteriously
disappear at the same time the name Goth appears. I've asked on
other lists and in private posts for anyone to contradict me on this.
No one has so far. (Not to say someone couldn't, but no one has.)
The same is true for the sometimes repeated assertion that there is
some kind of evidence that the Goths destroyed the Getae. I've never
seen that evidence either.
One problem really is that the name "Getae" floats around a lot in
the ancient texts. They are a different kind of Thracians among
Thracians in Herodotus. And they are a group among groups along the
Danube in Arrian and Strabo. When Dacians are mentioned in Strabo,
they are kind of like Getae from west of the Getae.
Both Herodotus and Strabo also mention the "desert of the Getae" or
no-man's land northeast of the Danube. And that might suggest that
"Getes" was a place as well as it was a people at some earlier point
in time. And for ancient writers that could be the reason for giving
the name. The Goths WERE Scythians in the sense that they lived in
Scythia at one point. That Roman who wrote of living among the Huns
as a hostage used the names Huns and Scythians interchangeably.
Obviously, these ancient people weren't quite as sticky about using
such names as we would have hoped them to be.
The Goth/Getae connections given above proves nothing. But it does
leave open possibilities. And these kind of possibilities of course
can't be eliminated with any kind of real certainty.
My own idea in this direction is that maybe the name Getae became
connected with Germanic language speakers north of the Danube
sometime before the "coming of the Goths." Not exclusively or at all
times. But just enough to make it comfortable for writers well
before Jordanes to use the name interchangeably. I think the key to
that connection had something to do with a group called the Bastarnae.
My other sneaking suspicion is that Theodoric, big fan of
Tacitus, wanted nothing geneaologically to do with the Bastarnae or
Peucini, whom Tacitus insulted viciously for mixing with Sarmatians.
And that may explain why the Bastarnae name mainly disappears from
Jordanes (and presumably his source, Cassiodorus) and possibly other
texts that would have impugned Theodoric's bloodline, which needed to
be as "pure" as the Julians.
But, before 150AD, the Bastarnae/Peucini were a major factor north of
the Danube and along the Black Sea. They apparently controlled the
mouth of the Danube- the Isle of Peuci - which would seem to be a
serious piece of real estate. They were mercenaries and were hired
by a Macedonian king to remove the Dardanii and allegedly to attack
Rome. In connection with the attack on Olbia, their name is used
together with the Getae. They are allies of the Dacians and
effective protectors of the Bosporian kingdom in battles against
Rome.
And Strabo and Tacitus tells us they were Germanic speakers. Perhaps
East Germanic speakers like the Goths.
And perhaps even Jordanes slips up once. He tells us that a later
Gothic king raised an army that included "Goths and Peucini from the
isle of Peuci." We don't otherwise hear of Goths in the island of
Peuci and don't know how they got there.
If Theodoric had the Bastarnae stricken from the family tree because
they mixed-married, he had a gap to fill in time and location. There
was no memory of any migration in the second century AD from Poland.
And the Scandinavian origin thing starts to our knowledge with
Jordanes. But the only living memory of the Goths mentioned by
Jordanes were songs sung of being called "Pilleati" and "Capillati" -
a clear connection to the Dacians. So, perhaps Goths as Bastarnae
and Getae as Dacians at some point shared some common cultural,
religious or other connection that neighbors and allies often do.
That would allow Theodoric via Cassiodorus to adopt the Getae as the
"pure" ancesters so important to the new "birthright" kings.
However, given the situation on the Danube described by Strabo in the
century before Christ, it doesn't sound like anyone was free of
"inter-mingling," especially with the Thracians:
"The language of the Daci is the same as that of the Getae. Among the
Greeks, however, the Getae are better known because the migrations
they make to either side of the Danube are continuous, and because
they are intermingled with the Thracians...
For at the present time these tribes [Scythians and Sarmatians], as
well as the Bastarnian tribes, are intermingled with the Thracians -
more indeed with those outside the Danube, but also with those
inside... " - Strabo, Geography, 7.3
Steve Long
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