Here is the passage that Jordanes referred to in
Getica,44. ("Getas iam superiori loco Gothos esse
probavimus, Orosio Paulo dicente" NB- Since Jordanes
did no such thing what we have here is clearly a
statement going back to Cassiodorus). It is from Book
1, chapter 16 of Orosius' historical compendium,
written in 417-418 AD.
OROSIUS [Migne PL 31, col.728-9]:
"Modo autem Getae illi, qui et nunc Gothi, quos
Alexander evitandos pronuntiavit, Pyrrhus exhorruit,
Caesar etiam declinavit, relictis vacuefactisque
sedibus suis... societatem Romani foederis precibus
sperant" (the context is that of the Danube transit of
376 AD)
The earlier allusions are to events in the 4th c. BC
(Alexander), 3rd c. BC (Pyrrhus) and 1rst c. BC
(Caesar). Nothing more recent.
Orosius' text is more or less cotemporaneous to the
monumental inscription mentioned by Gibbon. It is some
fifteen to twenty years posterior to the poetic lines
of Claudius Claudianus. The next question would be:
and what might have been Orosius' source for this
(mis)identification? And perhaps also Claudianus'?
Nothing is certain here of course, but one candidacy
is certainly verifiable. It is that of St Jerome. We
are not talking here of ad hoc suppositions such as
that of Aelius Spartianus in his "Life of Caracalla".
We are talking of a categorical affirmation that
Goths=Getae similar to that of Orosius. It seems that
in his "Quaestiones hebraicae in Genesim", completed
in 390 AD, Jerome made just such an affirmation. I
have not yet overlooked his text, but a marginal
commentary accompanying Orosius in the Patrologia
Latina edition of his historical opus make the point:
"B. Hieronymus in Genesim GOTHOS ab eruditis antiquis
GETAS appellatos fuisse testatur." The next step in
the inquiry is to see whether Jerome leaves it vague
or actually names these "eruditi"...****
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