Re: Fw: Farzoi's chief racket and his northern boys.

--- In cybalist@yahoogroups.com, george knysh <gknysh@...> wrote:

>
>
> --- On Wed, 9/9/09, tgpedersen <tgpedersen@...> wrote:
>
>
>
> > > --- On Mon, 9/7/09, george knysh <gknysh@> wrote:
> > >
> > > > First of all this:
> > > >
> > > > http://www.princeto n.edu/~pswpc/ pdfs/scheidel/ 050704.pdf
> > > >
> > > > Cf. especially the text to footnote 48.
> > > >
> > > > Then have a look at Strabo (Book 11, section 2, paragraph
> > > > 3).
> > > > It appears that slave trading was one of the Eurasian
> > > > nomads' chief occupations. And Greek city states were
> > > > intermediaries. The Scythian fortresses of the Lower Dnipro
> > > > fulfilled the same basic function.
> > >
> > > Which puts a somewhat different slant on Tacitus' famous
> > > passage in the "Germania" ch. 46: "from whence [the Sarmatians
> > > GK] the Venedians have derived very many of their customs and a
> > > great resemblance. For they are continually traversing and
> > > infesting with robberies all the forests and mountains lying
> > > between the Peucinians and Fennians."
> > >
> > > Proto-Slavs as slave raiders for Farzoi and his successors...
> > > And they were occasionally accompanied by their employers. The
> > > fearsome mounted "ispolins" (Slavic designation for the Spali
> > > as the rulers of Scythia were called) are a part of East Slavic
> > > folklore (ditto re the "Serpent" (=Dragon!) threatening from
> > > the steppes ,and the "Serpent Walls" built south of Kyiv for
> > > protection many times), and Farzoi coins have been found deep
> > > in the forest area of the north.
> > >
> > > Interesting twist on these "glorious" empires.
> >
> > That's why continuous warfare was necessary for the upper layers
> > also of Germanic societies.
> >
> > The Veneti were not Proto-Slavs,
> >
> > GK: Tacitus' Venedi are excellent candidates. The name persisted
> > in Germanic tradition (cf. Jordanes and mediaeval German).

Danish history for that matter. Or the by-title of kings of Denmark and Sweden '... of the Wends and the Goths'.

> It's not the communis opinio.
> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vistula_Veneti
>
> ****GK: I identify Tacitus' Venedi with the Zarubinian culture,
> which basically originated from the earlier Pomoranian culture
> (with Celtic and Yastorf elements added) and absorbed local Balts
> and Thrakoids as it moved into the Prypjat' and Middle Dnipro
> basins. I have no theory about some ancient "Venetic community"
> which might somehow have incorporated groups from the Baltic,
> Italy, and France.

Not 'incorporated'; 'consisted of'. By Tacitus' time those descendants of the Urnfield culture
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Urnfield
were mere vestiges of a once contiguous linguistic area.

> If it ever existed it was long gone by the 1rst c.BCE.

Yes.

> The Veneti of France were Celtic-speaking,

You don't know that.

> the Veneti of northern Italy had their non-Celtic language,

True.

> and the Pomorians had a dialect Ukrainian linguists think akin to
> Illyrian.

Pokorny's term for Central European vaguely IE roots is Veneto-Illyrian.

> Nor is any psychological or other unity between them evident.

Water. Boats. Trade.

> Your tortuous analyses are not convincing.==

OK.

> Tacitus' Venedi were Proto-Slavs in that they were an important
> component of emerging Slavdom (and here Shchukin's thesis is an
> excellent contribution).

Ref.?

> Slavic is an offshoot of Baltic most likely,

Latest I heard is that the division is not Baltic | Slavic, then East Baltic | West Baltic || Slavic, but East Baltic | West Baltic | Slavic from the beginning

> and may be to some extent "Baltic through Venedic throats".

Possible.

> The fact remains that it is after the disintegration of the
> Zarubinian culture in the 50's CE and the dispersion of its
> carriers "from the Bastarnians to the Finns" (proven
> archaeologically beyond all doubt) that Slavdom arose in its first
> historical culture, the Kyivan culture, which, in Tacitus' time,
> was in statu nascendi (50-200CE).*****

Which would be why he didn't mention it.

> > and there's nothing in the text that implies that they trade in
> > Slaves.
> >
> > GK: In context it's pretty certain. The practice antedated them
>
> Antedated who?
>
> ****GK: Pliny's Tacitus' and Ptolemy's Venedi****
>
> > and persisted into the middle ages (cf. the accounts of Arabic
> > geographers about the raiding Scandinavian Rus').
>
> The Scandinavians were slave trades, and therefore the Veneti a
> thousand years earlier were too?
>
> ****GK: Not "therefore", just "were".*****

You had no independent evidence the Veneti, nor for that matter the Slavs were slave traders, so if it's not 'therefore', why bring it up at all?

> > Svyatoslav asserted as much in his pre-Bulgarian campaign speech
> > of 969 as recorded in "The tale of bygone years"
>
> How is that relevant to what the Veneti did 800 years earlier?
>
> ****GK: Slave raiding was a continuous occupation here from
> Scythian times onwards, up to Svyatoslav and beyond.****
>
> > (read it)
>
> Got it.
>
>
> ****GK: good.****
>
> > At Tacitus' time they would have been on their last legs, those
> > former traders on the Amber Road being squeezed out from east and
> > west, reduced to living by brigandage.
> >
> > GK: I don't agree with your Venetic theories.
>
> Nor with Wikipedia's nor with Gol/a,b's.
>
> > Tacitus' text considers the Venedi an important population (this
> > is confirmed in Jordanes when he talks about Hermanaric)

He doesn't. He considers them to be brigands.

> >
> How is this relevant?
>
> *****GK: It indicates that the 1rst c. Venedi raiders were hardly
> on their last legs. And Tacitus indicates their raiding
> proclivities were in imitation of the Sarmatians.


> BTW the Late Zarubinians were joined in their raids by Germanic
> elements from Przeworsk and Baltic elements from the Stroked
> Ceramic culture of Belarus and the Yuchnov culture of northeastern
> Ukraine(this too is archaeologically proved). The former were also
> "Farzoi's boys" (at least their eastern elements), while the
> Strokers came in because of pressure against them by the Balts
> further West. The Venedi predominated at the leadership level, but
> there were more Balts (or Baltoslavs acc. to some incl. Shchukin)
> which explains the emergence of Slavic as the lingua franca rather
> than any other. In the time of Ptolemy this mixed group was
> recorded as the "Stavani" (cf. Trubachev's interesting analysis of
> this as the Iranic term "glorious ones". But debate on this
> continues. A recent Polish scholar has suggested that "Slav" is a
> religious concept ("worshippers of...") The Slavic term for "God"
> is not the same as the Baltic (which retains the old IE word (as
> does Latin etc.) We know that "Bagha" was not a prime Scythian
> deity. Perhaps it was that of Farzoi and the Venedi got their "Bog"
> from his group. God as the "rich one". "Rich in slaves"....But this
> is purely speculative.****

So they were 'Pharzoios' boys', but Pharzoios' people, the Sarmatians were never part of this mixed crowd?


Torsten