[gothic-l] Re: Analogy between fate of Eruli and Burgundians?

[george knysh]

--- "Troels Brandt <trbrandt at post9.tele.dk>"
<trbrandt at post9.tele.dk> wrote:
> --- In gothic-l at yahoogroups.com, george knysh
> <gknysh at y...> wrote:
> > --- "Dr. Dirk Faltin <dirk at s...>"
> > <dirk at s...> wrote:
>
> >
> > >
> > > One (hopefully) final point. The Herulic armies
> > > which figured 3,000
> > > and 1,500 respectively may at that time already
> have
> > > attracted new
> > > followers of the regions where they were
> stationed.
> > > We know that the
> > > Visigoths were several times in their history
> > > supplemented by large
> > > numbers of slaves, Roman peasants and miners who
> > > became Visigoths.
> > > Similarly, a unit of Heruls does not have to
> include
> > > only the
> > > remnants of the once powerful Herulic tribe.
> >
> > GK: That is a good point. How many such "new
> > recruits" are to be counted among the 1500+3000 is
> of
> > course difficult to say, but this goes some way
> > towards revising your earlier view of the Eruli as
> an
> > insignificant and dilapidated people after 509.
>
> >
>
> (Troels)I am not sure this point is so good. First
of all no
> other people
> would join the weak people Dirk describes as you
> also indicate,

*****GK: Your counter point is good if Dirk has not in
fact changed his mind about the insignificance of the
Illyrian Eruli. In any case one needs not assume that
the number of "joiners" was important.*****

and
> secondly Procopius used so many words on describing
> their general
> character as the lowest of all low in the society,
> that they must
> have been regarded as a separate ethnical group at
> that time.

*****GK: Procopius might be taken as referring to the
dominant segments of the Eruli. Again, this would not
in principle prevent others from "joining". I don't
remember BTW whether anyone pointed out that had the
Illyrian Eruli degenerated into such an insignificant
tribal unit as Dirk earlier posited, this would hardly
have created much incentive among the Scandinavian
Eruli to send a king and others to them when requested
to do so.*****

 I would
> rather think that the Heruls going north were
> followed by other pagan
> Germanic people being defeated or threathened at
> this time of the new
> Christian groups as Franks and Lombards. Alamans is
> one example as
> they were pressed from 498 AD - Thuringians is maybe
> another

*****GK: When you say "followed" do you mean to say
that these Alamans and Thuringians joined the original
trekkers or that they went north on their own?*****

- and if
> Wolfram is right that the letter of Cassiodorus was
> to the Western
> Heruls before 507 AD, where did this group disappear
> when Theodorics
> alliance against the Franks fell apart in 507 AD? We
> never heard
> about these Heruls again though they by Cassiodorus
> were put at the
> same level as the Thuringians and the Varni.
>
> Troels
>
>


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