Re: [tied] RE:Re: Help with ban_Banat

--- S & L <mbusines@...> wrote:

> Thank You, Mr. Knysh for your comment [it's really
> appreciated].

*****GK: Just call me George(:=)) But if a title is
required, it can be "Prof." or "Dr."*****

>
> Just two short comments from my part:
>
> 1] The powerful state that the Avars founded
> extended from the Danube to the
> Dnieper and the Baltic Sea

*****GK: It is doubtful that the power of the Avars
consistently extended northward much beyond the area
of their "Croatias" along the Carpathians. Eastward,
they did not control the territory of the Antae (and
the expedition of Apsikh in 602 is now considered to
have been directed against those Antae who were on the
Danube.) The Kutrigur Bulgars east of the Dnipro
remained subject to them until the times of Kubrat (in
the 630's): they contacted by way of the sparsely
settled southern steppes.*****

and included as its

> subjects other Turanic
> peoples, such as the Utigurs and the Kutrigurs, as
> well as Slavs. In their
> raids against the Byzantine empire, the Avars were
> sometimes accompanied by
> "bands" of their subject populations, especially the
> Slavs, to the point
> that we can speak of Avaro-Slav raids.

******GK: True. Though many Slavs frequently acted
independently, since Avar dominance did not extend to
all Western or "southern" Slavs (even,
intermittently, to those on the Danube). It depends on
the time frame.*****

Thus when the

> Greeks began to suffer
> from the raids, the Slavs were under the yoke of the
> Avars; and, probably,
> it was for this reoson that their Greek names (ie
> Sklavenoi, Sthavenoi,
> Sklavoi, Slavoi, Sthlavoi) came to denote, much
> later, the status of
> slavery.

*****GK: There is a better explanation. The term
entered Western languages rather late in its meaning
of "slave". One should associate it not so much with
Avar times as with those of the Byzantine reconquista
(when huge numbers of captured Slavs were consistently
sold e.g. at Thessaloniki and other "markets") and
subsequently to the early Germanic Drang nach Osten.
Here one deals not with metaphorical "slavery" but
with the real thing.****

>
> 2] The most important greek lexicographer, Hesychios
> of Miletus/Millet
> [known also as Hesychios of Alexandria because in
> Alexandria he will
> write/compile in V-VI[?] century AC his well known
> "Lexicon", the greatest
> of his kind surviving from antiquity] informs us
> that in middle Italy the
> greek homonym "bannas" means "leader".
> But here is another question [for which I still do
> not have a clear answer]:
> V or VI century [the Avars are already in Europe at
> the middle of the VI
> Century]?

*****GK: Let's wait for the linguists on this one.****

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