From: Torsten
Message: 65113
Date: 2009-09-24
>True, Vannius' war would have given the spectacle of Germani joined in common operations with Pannonian Sarmatians.
> --- In cybalist@yahoogroups.com, george knysh <gknysh@> wrote:
> >(TP) This is what Lucan has Caesar say on his arrival in Rome after having crossed the Rubicon in 49 BCE.
> > ''tene, deum sedes, non ullo Marte coacti
> > deseruere uiri? pro qua pugnabitur urbe?
> > di melius, quod non Latias Eous in oras
> > nunc furor incubuit nec iuncto Sarmata uelox
> > Pannonio Dacisque Getes admixtus: habenti
> > tam pauidum tibi, Roma, ducem fortuna pepercit,
> > quod bellum ciuile fuit.'
> > Pharsalia, Book III
> > http://www.thelatin library.com/ lucan/lucan3. shtml
> > which Riley
> > http://tinyurl. com/ls8exo
> > translates as
> > " And have there been men, forced by no warfare, to
> > desert thee, the abode of the Gods! For what city will they fight?
> > The Gods have proved more favouring in that it is
> > no Eastern fury that now presses upon the Latian shores,
> > nor yet the swift Sarmatian in common with the Pannonian,
> > and the Getans mingled with the Dacians. Fortune, Borne,
> > has spared thee, having a chief so cowardly [Pompey], in that the
> > warfare was a civil one."
> >
> > GK: Does nothing for your thesis. Merely "supports" Harmatta's
> > view that the Sarmatians were across from Pannonia (he thinks),
> > although frankly, it doesn't even do that.
>
> ****GK: Lucan may simply have projected the situation of 59/60 CE
> (when Sarmatians were indeed located just across Pannonia on the
> Danube) back to 49 BCE.
> Poetic license which Harmatta interpreted as historical proof.*****No, historical hint.
> I stand by my evaluation of your "expertise".I never claimed they did.
>
> ****GK: Neither Eusebius nor Lucan prove that the Sarmatians were
> regular inhabitants (as against occasional raiders) of Illyria.
> Nor does Harmatta (who provides this dubious evidence) support yourTrue.
> notion.
> Nor do any of the other sources you have adduced.Not to the exclusion of other scenarios, no.
> Nor in fact any sources whatsoever.I didn't claim they did. But if Vannius' infantry cooperating with Sarmatian cavalry was understood as a one-off by the contemporaries, I don't think Lucan writing at the same time would have Caesar imagining it as a generic threat.
> You've simply "sucked this from your finger" to use an oldThe problem with you in this field is that you don't get the concept of nomads setting up shop among sedentary farmers. If a sedentary population neighboring a nomadic population suddenly develops an upper class showing many characteristics of the nomadic population next door, in your interpretation it has to be local. At least in Europe.
> Ukrainian expression. Par for the course for you.****