[gothic-l] Re; Andreas

[Andreas Schwarcz]

On 21 Jul 2003 at 16:53, sunnytjatsingh wrote:

> 
> Here's the big problem – Every classical writer who actually 
> witnessed the Gothi or Goths believed they were Scythian or Getae – 
> not one, let me repeat, not even one classical writer has even 
> suggested that the forerunners of Goths were the Guttones, or Butones 
> (Strabo)?  

Hi Sunny,
that is one of the problems with generalizing statements ("every classical writer") that 
they are not true. If you look at the sources about the Goths,  you will find that the 
classification of Goths as "Scythian" is not an ethnological one, it is a geographical one 
because the Goths, who emerged in the beginning of the third century and were 
noticed then by the Greek and Roman writers, were then located in Scythia and . 
Ethnically and politically, by that time there did not exist any longer any Scythians. 
Their space north of the Black Sea coast had long been filled by Sarmatian and Alan 
gentes by then. So Herodian and Cassius Dio speak generally of "northern" tribes 
causing the upheavels of the Marcomannic war without giving any names. Dexippus 
called his lost account "Skythika", because the invaders in Greece came from Scythia. 
so the Goths came to be called Scyths, like the west germanic gentes sometimes in 
Greek were called Keltoi, as a geographical and historizing classification. When the 
Goths moved into today's Rumania in the fourth century, they took the room formerly 
occupied (and still inhabited)  by the Daci and Geti and  therefore poets like Claudian 
called them also Geti, the way he called the Franci Sugambri and mixed in his poetry 
obolete and contemporary gentes for literary reasons. Historiographical sources like 
Ammianus Marcellinus, our most important contemporary source for the the Goths in 
the fourth century, on the other hand continuously use the name of the Goths without 
mixing them up with Scyths or Getae. Prokopios in the sixth century speaks of 
"Gotthika ethne", a group of peoples to which he counts Ostrogoths, Visigoths, Vandali 
and Gepidi, and they are bound together by their looks. their arianic christian faith and 
the gothic language. The  oldest epigraphic evidence from the third century gives for 
individuals the name form Gouththa and for the gens the form "gouththon ethnon".
The connection with the Guthones or Gothones of Tacitus and Plinius (by the time of 
Pytheas they did not exist yet and Pytheas does not name them) is of course a modern 
one, based on the linguistic connection of the oldest name forms from the third century 
cited above  with those names given by Plinius and Tacitus, and the identification of 
Goths as germanic is of course a linguistic one based on the linguistic definition of the 
germanic languages from the nineteenth century.
But there is also the archeological connection between the Wielbark cuture, to which 
the Gothones belonged, and the Chernyakhov culture of the thrid and fourth century, 
whose main bearers were the Goths, as is now unanimously acknowledged (see f.i. 
Bierbrauer, Kokowski, Mahomedow, Ajbabin and many others more, references in the 
archives of this list). And this linguistic and archeological evidence is the basis for the 
connection between the Guthones and the Goths.
Archeology tells us that the Chernyakhiv culture emerged out of the southernmost 
development of the Wielbark culture  and expanded north of the Black Sea coast 
during the third century from West to East, then in the first half of the third century from 
the region of today's Moldavia ito the Capathian basis and southwards to the lower 
Danube. Any suggstion of a move from East to West is totally against the material 
evidence.
But I really see no need to spread out all the accumulated evidence in one email. You 
can read all the references in this email and my last one and will find this evidence 
there. I for my part will be on holidays till the end of August far away from my library 
and my computer and read up the discussion after that.
Kind regards and have a nice summer
                         Andreas Schwarcz

Ao.Univ.Prof.Dr.Andreas Schwarcz
Institut für österreichische Geschichtsforschung
Universität Wien
Dr.Karl Lueger-Ring 1
A-1010 Wien
Österreich
Tel.0043/1/42-77/272-16
Fax 0043/142-77/92-72



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