--- tgpedersen <
tgpedersen@...> wrote:
> --- In cybalist@..., george knysh <gknysh@...>
> wrote:
> >
> > --- tgpedersen <tgpedersen@...> wrote:
> > > I think it is an understatement to say that
> Goths
> > > and other Germanic-
> > > speaking tribes were not concerned with their
> roots.
> >
> > *****GK: Yes. So were the Romans, so are our
> Indian
> > friends on this list. In fact so is just about
> > anybody. So what? I wasn't actually talking about
> the
> > Goths (either in general, or about those whose
> sense
> > of greatness would have been titillated by the
> efforts
> > of Cassiodorus), but about potential protesters
> from
> > the Getae/Dacians. Being extinct silences you
> > wonderfully.*****
> >
> >
>(Torsen) But what would be the motive for the Goths
to write
> in the Getae into
> their history?
*****GK: Cassiodorus was not a Goth. The jury is still
out on the dating of Ablabius, but his Gothic
nationality is doubtful. The only history the "Goths"
had, which became a source for both Ablabius and
Cassiodorus were their ancient fables and heroic songs
(carmina prisca et fabulae). If one examines Jordanes
carefully, there seems no evidence that Getae or Getic
heroes figured in these "carmina prisca". Cassiodorus'
main source here was the lost Getic history of Cassius
Dio. The Getae gave the Goths an additional 600-700
years of recorded "classical" history. Theodoric seems
to have been pleased.******
It would hardly impress a classical
> audience whether
> one runny-nosed, club-dragging barbarian people
> claimed ancestry from
> another one of the same category, so why do it?
*****GK: I think you considerably overemphasize the
narrow-minded navel-gazing chauvinistic proclivities
of Greeks and Romans. Unfortunately we don't have
Dio's work, but judging from the excerpts paraphrased
in Jordanes this Greek treatment of the Getae was
quite friendly and positive. And scrounging Pompeius
Trogus for information about the "Gothic" Scythians
would also add some historic lustre to the otherwise
undistinguished (in terms of time depth) real history
of the Goths.*****
And
> every people,
> literate or not has an idea of where they came from.
*****GK: The Gothic "idea" was that they came from
Scandza. We on the other hand don't quite agree with
this, for very good reasons. The Romans had their
Trojan myth. Slavs thought they dispersed from the
Danube. The pseudo-Avars borrowed the history of the
real Avars. The Scythians thought themselves
autochtons. Hungarians were shocked when their Uralic
roots were revealed to them in the 18th c. One could
go on endlessly. People seem pretty open to
reinterpretations of their "real" origin.******
>
If that idea in
> the native tradition of the Goths et al. had
> differed from the one
> offered unanimously by their chroniclers, you can
> bet on it that
> someone at some time would have protested.
*****GK: Wouldn't bet a farthing on it. But note that
Cassiodorus etc. did adopt the fundamental information
provided about Gothic origins by their undated carmina
prisca. ******
>
> Torsten
>
>
>
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