--- In
cybalist@yahoogroups.com, george knysh <gknysh@...> wrote:
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> --- On Sat, 9/19/09, frabrig <frabrig@...> wrote:
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> In search for a Sarmatian etymon for his invented Iazigyan word **far-ang 'enemy, one of the others', which, according to him, might have been used by the Iazyges in Pannonia (early centuries CE)
>
> ****GK: It's worth remembering that in the early centuries CE
> Pannonia (and then the Pannonias) was (were) Roman provinces south
> and west of the Danube. The Yazigi roamed in the fields north and
> east of Pannonia, across the border. Except for the possible
> unrecorded individual(s) we don't know of any Yazigi in Pannonia,
> or indeed of any Yazig entering Roman service prior to 175 CE.
> That's pretty clear from the available Roman army auxiliaries
> studies. Otherwise your linguistic points seem solid.****
>
To find a cohesive and permanent ethnic unit in the article I kept my eye straight on the word cavalry
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Auxiliaries_%28Roman_military%29
'Then the Danubian regions were annexed: Raetia (annexed 15 BC), Noricum (16 BC), Pannonia (9 BC) and Moesia (6 AD), becoming, with Illyricum, the Principate's most important source of auxiliary recruits for its entire duration.'
The Yazyges were encouraged to colonize Pannonia in 7 BC
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Iazyges
The state of affairs being that way, a large part of the newly organized auxilliaries, which were mainly cavalry, Roman cavalry being insignificant at the time, must have been Yazyges. That would explain why the Roman army adopted so many Sarmatian weapons: those who used them were ethnic Yazyges (they are not recorded as such because only when forced to do so by flagging recruitment from Italy, increasingly populated by Christian freeloaders, did the Roman army set up ethnically named units). The very fact that a unit is an auxilliary one means the troop are not Roman.
I think it's the Batavi in the auxilliaries one should concentrate on
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Batavi
as they would have had a sufficiently strong sense of self and of devotion to empire to survive the chaos of conflicting loyalties in the collapsing empire (cf. the hagiography of St. Maurice
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/St._Maurice
). Also note the city of Batavis or Batavia,
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Passau
There are to my knowledge no account of Batavi being settled here.
The Pannonia to Netherlands story of the Franks of course occurs also in Trithemius' 'De origine gentis Francorum compendium' which has been translated now
http://tinyurl.com/lfrkvd
Maybe one should check that 'Cronyke van Hollandt, Zeelandt ende Vriesland'.
Torsten