Torsten wrote:
<Yes, true. But as far as I can tell, your "reappraisal" of Jordanes' account
is based what on nothing else than what you would wish to be the case.>
I don't think there's anyone on this list who buys Jordanes' account 100%,
word-for-word, as accurate history. So the question is really what you
believe and what you don't. Somethings are more improbable than others. But
a key factor in all this is Cassiodorus'/Jordanes' indisputable need to
provide the Goths with a long and respectable history.
And in that light, the idea that Jordanes consciously excluded the
"Bastarnae/Peucini" from his telling is not really such a wild idea.
It's important to remember that Jordanes did not apparently believe that the
Goths arrived in the area in the 2d century AD. His account has them
arriving many, many centuries before that and to some degree in areas where
his own authorities placed the Bastarnae.
Could he or Cassiodorus/Jordanes have failed to notice the special mention
the Bastarnae receive in Dio, Strabo, Livy and Plutarch? Could they have
failed to notice that this "group" was not only described as
Germanic-speakers but also disparaged for their lineage in an essential
source - Tacitus? How is it they receive one flippant mention in Jordanes?
Did it ever occur to Jordanes that the predecessors of the Goths might not be
the "Getae-speaking Dacians" but the Germanic-speaking Bastarnae?
Is it plausible that he never considered that, given that HIS Goths were on
the Danube and eastward in the same areas as the Bastarnae at the same time,
according to his own time table? I think looking at what his own sources
said about the Bastarnae MIGHT suggest that Jordanes was trying to avoid that
name in his re-telling.
I may not be the most objective person on this list. But I think that anyone
trying to be objective might be interested in this possibility. It may not
fit some of our preconceptions, but perhaps it might be worth looking at,
just as a double-check, if nothing more.
<You offer no proof or even circumstantial evidence other than that you think
it must have been so.>
I don't think that anything "must be so" when it comes to this subject
matter. And I hope I don't give that impression. I do try to use words like
"perhaps" and "suspect" in order to convey my own uncertainty. At this
point, I'm merely working out the idea and I appreciate your feedback, even
though it might be negative at this point. All I ask is that you give it a
chance and consider whether, just maybe, there may not be some small
possibility it might have some merit.
<<And BTW your essentialist interpretation of the success of languages as
depending on "their" will to borrow is rather outdated these days.>>
Theories swing back and forth. I was raised in the environment of American
pragmatism (ie, Pierce, James, Popper) and historians like Gordon Childe. So
I tend to see language as primarily a tool for the exchange of information.
The fact that that tool follows structural rules is important. But, as with
any tool, that structure cannot interfere with the basic function, or the
tool will become useless. For me this has the force of simple logic. And,
as much as I'd like to, I can't be fashionable in forgetting that. I hope
you'll forgive me for being out-of-date.
Steve