Re: The "Lesser Goths" of Jordanes

--- In cybalist@..., x99lynx@... wrote:

> George wrote:
> *****GK: This would mean accepting the view that Berig
> > brought his Goths over from Scandza ca. 1500 BC, and
> > that Filimer led them into Scythian Oium some 150
> > years or so later...
>
> Torsten replied:
> <<Maybe some of us know that these claims are totally inappropriate

and

> anachronistic and based on an arbitrary misperception, but some of

us don't.

> Would you share with us the reasons why we think this is so?>>
>
> In support of George's statement:
> "The Getica places material from two millenium of Classical Greek

history and

> pseudo-history between its account of Filmer's migration and the

point at

> which it returns to genuinely Gothic activities in the Black Sea

region. It

> was a standard conceit of late antique ethography that there were

no new

> people, only old ones under new names. For Cassiodorus this

offered the

> opportunity - grasped with both hands - of giving the Goths a

grandiose

> pre-history....
>
> According to this view of the past, the kingdom of the Goths was

founded well

> before the city of Rome, and Goths had even fought in the Trojan

war. An

> incidental effect was to date Berig's crossing from Scandinavia to

1490 BC...

>
>
> Writing in the early 520s, Cassiodorus, in his lost Gothic History,

linked

> the takeover of Spain [by Theodoric] to a notational 2000th

anniversary of

> the creation of the Gothic kingdom..."
> - Peter Heather, The Goths 12-13, 233

Yes, so now it's three to one. I'm outnumbered. But at least you
understood the question.

Torsten