[gothic-l] Re: Names of Heruls

[Tore Gannholm]

>> And the statement; "Thus, in Procopius eyes Thule was just fine for
>> the animal-like Heruls".
>
>>
>> I am not sure here. Was this statement(the last one) made by;
>>
>>   a. A. Cameron?
>>   b. Procopius?
>>   c. Are you making this statement?
>>   d. Someone else?
>
>
>That is obivously my own statement. As Cameron stated, for Procopius
>the barbarians should be used and anihilated in wars with other
>barbarians or they should go to the end of the earth, which is synonym
>for Thule at the time. In Procopius view, who described the Heruls as
>sodomistic, drunken traitors, the unattractive conditions in Thule
>will likely have been seen befitting for the Heruls.
>
>But let me ask you a question. Do you think that Procopius'
>description of the Heruls as 'mating with donkeys', 'notorious
>traitors and drunkards', are not casting some doubts on him as to his
>reliability as neutral reporter? His dislike of the Heruls might
>easily have affected his whole reporting about them. He clearly made
>up one bit of information about them, he might have made up more or
>most of it. We just don't know, meaning that we cannot built futher
>histories on this report. And therefore, as I said earlier, no serious
>book on Swedish history and archaeology regards a migration of Heruls
>or other East Germanic groups as a viable theory.
>
>cheers,
>Dirk
>


Dirk,
If I understand you right if somebody has written something that seems
dubious we must consider everything that this person writes as dubious.
If you study newspapers today you might find completely different accounts
of a specific happening in one paper compared with another.

If you find something in Financial Times that you consider spectacular the
result is that Financial Times must be considered a spectacular paper not
trustworthy!!

What you are missing is comparison with other things at the same time.
You only look at one writer in isolation.
If you compare other writers, archaeological excavations and so on and
judge them together Procopius might be more interesting.

You write yourself: "As Cameron and Goffart have shown  we need to be a bit
more carefull with this kind of pick and choose scholarship."


I fully agree but it does not say that everything that Procopius says is
not worth looking at.

Tore








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