[gothic-l] Eruli in the West

[Bertil Haggman]

That did not answer my question.

I have noted your view as to the arrival of the Eruli
and the Goti. Certainly we are in the timeframe conerning
the Eruli and the Goti north of the Black Sea that is
making a common migration and origin probable.

It is of course very likely that the Eruli, who choose to go
to Thoule instead of settling in Illyricum returned to a land
they knew before and reagarded as ancestral home.
Along in this remigration (my term) were
according to Prokopios many of the royal family. Obviously
this royal family set up a kingdom in Scandinavia and it was
to this kingdom they sent an embassy to Scandinavia
to choose a new king instead of the one they had killed.

In my view the arguments for an Eruli-Scandinavian connection
is of more weight than some oneliners underneath can prove.

As for the Gothic and Eruli ability to master the ships on the
Black Sea it is asserted in the sources we have. There
are a number of sources which attest to the pre-Viking nature
of the Black Sea raids. Of course your view is of interest
but it proves nothing. If the Goti and the Eruli had been
void of sailing and shipping knowledge they would not
have been able to undertake the massive raids at the end
of the third century AD that took them all the way to
the easterm Mediterranean from the bases on the Black
Sea.

It would thus be fully within the range of possibility that
the Goti and the Eruli, who settled in the Black Sea area
are related and came from the same area. They cooperated
during the sea raids in a fashion that points to kinship.
Believing for instance that the Eruli originated at the Sea
of Azov is based on a mistaken etymology of their name
and I note that your are not suggesting that or any other
area in Europe as alternative to Scandinavia.

Most important too is the fact that some authors class
the Eruli with the Goths. In _Scriptores Historiae Augustae_
probably written 400 AD we can find "Scytharum diversi
populi: peuci, Greuthungi, Austrogoti, Tervingi, Visi,
Gipedes, Celti etiam et Eruli" (25-6).

Based on the above I think I choose to rely on Marvin Taylor
rather than some oneliners on this list.



> the Eruli at the Maeotis turned up at 268, those at the Rhine 286.
> Every debate about a possible expulsion usually centres around
> those two dates. But the expulsion itself is usually based on Jord.
> Get.23 and this is a wrong application of this text and its chronology.

> They did not turn up at the same time.
>
> No source calls the journey of the Eruli to the Gauts a remigration.
> That there were connections in the fifth century between
> Scandinavia and Bohemia is testified by archeology (see Tejral and
> Arrhenius) and the Longobardic kings from the Gausi.

> Look at the literature on the raids from Rappaport onwards till my
> own contribution and Maciej Salamon's article in Eos. Then you will
> find that the Goths used firsst local ships and sailors and then the
> infrastructure of the Bosporan Kingdom before they ventured forth
> on their own. The Eruli both in the West and in the Black Sea seem
> to have used ships at once, those in the West seem to have come to
> the Rhine in their own ships.

> This is not born out by archeology. Look at the anthropological and
> archeological analysis in Tejral's articles. The connections are there
> in grave goods in princely graves and it is not clear in what direction
> import and export went.

> The relations are there in the fifth and sixth century and after 512
> according to Procopius and Jordanes we have to reckon with Eruli
> in Scandinavia. In the third century the Western Eruli started with
> the Chaibones from somewhere on the North sea coast. Their
> localization before 268 depends upon that of the Chaibones and
> those are a bit better testified by similar names in Ptolemaios and
> Strabon. From there or the Baltic the Maeotis Eruli could have
> started, too, but hat is only a reasonable guess. The sources give us
> no information about them before 268,



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