[gothic-l] Re: Daco-Getic

[Francisc Czobor]

Hi, Sunny,

This discussion begins to be off-topic. What is relevant for the 
Gothic list is whether the Getae are identical with the Goths or not.
Anyway, I'll try to give you some answers, although I have to rely 
only on what I remember, because I don't have history books at hand 
now, so I can not indicate references from the specialty literature.

--- In gothic-l at yahoogroups.com, "Sunny" <sunnyjat12002 at y...> wrote:
> ...
> According to Leake, the area around Thrace was called "Little-
> Scythia" by the classical writers, is this true?

Little Scythia (Scythia Minor) was in the late antiquity the name of 
the area between the Lower Danube and the Black Sea, that is called 
now Dobrudja (In Romanian: Dobrogea) and is shared between Romania 
(the northern part) and Bulgaria (the southern part). Before "Scythia 
Minor", this area was called "Moesia Inferior", and this was its name 
also as a province of the Roman Empire. Later, when some Scythian 
tribes settled there coming from North-East (the "great" Scythia, 
where today is Ukraine), the region used to be called also "Little 
Scythia".

> I agree that the Dacians were the same or similar to the Getae.  
> Leake writes, "From Strabo's time on, the Getae and Daci were 
> considered to the same people and their names were used 
> interchangeably (Leake 1967: 22)."  Mircea Elaide, in his book 
> Zalmoxis, equates the Dacians with the Dahae branch of Sakas:
> 
> According to Strabo (304: 7, 3, 12), the original name of the 
Dacians 
> was daoi
certain nomadic Scythians to the east of the Caspian Sea 
> were also called daoi.  The Latin authors called them Dahae, and 
some 
> Greek historians daai
At first the name "Dacians" were referred to 
> one of the Thracian tribes in Northwestern Dacia (Strabo 304: 7. 3. 
> 12).  In general the name "Getae" occurs more commonly toward the 
> Black Sea, from the Balkans to the Dniester, whereas, the 
> name "Dacians" is more frequent in the northwest, west, and the 
> south
. (Eliade 1970: 1-2,12).

This is exactly what I also wrote. The Daci and Getae were considered 
the same people, the name "Daci" being applied more commonly to the 
tribes of NW Dacia (todays Transylvania) and "Getae" to those along 
the Lower Danube and towards the Black Sea.

> Now Arnold Toynbee, believed the Thracian Getae to be an early 
> splinter groups of the Eastern Scythians, he wrote, "It is, 
however, 
> perhaps more likely that the European Getae and Davi (Daci), like 
> their homonyms east of the Volga, were a pair of the original 
Iranian 
> speaking hordes who gradually became assimilated to the sedentary 
> Thracian-speaking populations whom they conquered (Toynbee 1934: 
435 
> (vII))."
> 
> So were the Daco-Getans originally the Dahae and Massagetae found 
> east of the Caspian Sea?  Regards,
> 

In the past, it was this view that the Daco-Getae where related to 
some eastern Iranic tribes, based on name ressemblances like Daci - 
Dahae and Getae - Massagetae - Thyssagetae. In the XIXth century it 
was generally considered that the Thracians were very close 
linguistically to the Iranic language group, or even members of this 
group. Based on such name ressemblances, some considered that even 
the African Getuli were related to the Getae. But today sych views 
are no more shared, at least by the mainstream of the Romanian 
historians and linguists.
As far as I remeber, the name Dahae is put in connection with the 
Sanskrit word dasa "slave" and with the Modern Persian word 
deh "village". The name of the Daci is considered to be derived from 
a putative Thracic word *dak = "wolf", based also on the fact that 
the wolf was a sort of totemic animal for the Daci (the war banners 
of the Daci represented an animal with a wolf head and a snake body).
But, as far as I know, the name Getae, both in the case of the proper 
Getae and in the case of Iranic tribes like Massagetae, Thyssagetae, 
remains unexplained (I have read somewhere that Massagetae could be 
interpreted as "fish eating Getae", Massa- being put in connectin 
with the Sanskritic word matsya "fish").

With best regards,
Francisc



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