--- stevelong02 <
x99lynx@...> wrote:
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.)
****GK: Goths and Getans peacefully coexist on the
pages of Strabo (cf. 7.1.6), of Pliny the Elder (cpre
IV,99 (Goth)to IV, 42,80,82 (Getan, Tyragetan), and of
Tacitus (Goths in Annales 2.62 and Getae in Annales
11.33). Pliny reminds his readers BTW that "Getae" and
"Daci" are identical concepts, the former Greek, the
latter Roman.*****
(S.L.)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.
***GK: Neither have I. But there is good evidence that
the Romans practically destroyed the Getae (Daci) in
the early 2nd c. The disappearance of the Getae from
the sources could be associated with that event. But
Ptolemy still knows the Tyragetae (Book 3 sect. 8)
along with the Goths. He mentions the free Dacian
groups (Costoboki, Carpiani) separately.******
(S.L.) The Goths WERE Scythians in the sense that they
lived in
Scythia at one point.
*****GK: In the same sense in which Ray Bradbury's
Americans on Mars were "Martians". But that is not the
kind of identity at issue.*****
(S.L.)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.
****GK: The descendants of the Scythians proper
disappear from our sources in the 3rd c. AD.
Subsequent use of the name is just rhetorical (like
Priskos' reference to the Huns as "Royal Scythians",
or Anna Comnena's labeling of the 11th century
Pechenegs as "Scythians". We already find this vague
use of the term in Pliny, who explains that in his
time all peoples north and east of the Danube,
primarily Germans and Sarmatians, may be called
"Scythians". Just a label of convenience. Not a
substantive identity. Like "Getae" for Goths.****
(to be continued)
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