[gothic-l] Tracing the Heruli

[Егоров Владимир]

Hi, Troels!

After an involuntary vacation, I'd like to return
to the problem of Heruls around the sea of Azov.

You have written:
 "The people who suddenly sent a big army far away with
 the Bosporanian navy were not nomads from the steppes,
 but people knowing boats - being newcomers or people
 without access to the Black Sea and seagoing vessels
 themselves from their settlements. Starting such raids
 they probably already knew the possibilities and the
 Bosporanians - making the most likely possibility to be
 a people at the Cc-river-outposts at the Dnepr just
 having to cross 150 km of steppe before reaching the
 sea of Asov".

I share your position as a whole but with some essential
corrections. The Heruls did not send suddenly a big army.
At first there were very modest and unsuccessful attacks
(e.g. Pitiuntus at 255 AD). Moreover, I never heard about
big armies regarding Gothic activities in the Bosporan
realm. Everything looks like the Heruls were that time
neither a powerful people nor a "sea people". Maybe they
knew rowing boats but not sailing vessels, not sea ships.
I'm still stuck to the meaning that the Heruls were
relatively wild peripheral tribes, which did not consist
in the Hermanaricus' power having led a semi-nomadic life
among the Alans along the shores of the Blak sea and sea
of Azov. In the striving southeastward some of them
penetrated Crimea and found themselves in a trap. There
was no land way further. But the Taman peninsula looks so
close to Panticapeum from the Mitridatus hill! And ships
in harbors beneath look ready to depart. The Heruls
embarked the ships and forced Bosporanian sailors to carry
them to new conquests. I doubt Heruls' primordial knowing
possibilities of the Bosporanians and sea ships, but they
estimated all merits of sea attacks very soon and, having
been apprentices to Bosporanian sailors, rapidly turned
to experienced pirates.

The Heruls did not know anything about the Bosporan
kingdom, but we do. This formation was very specific
within the ancient Greek and Roman world. Unlike other
Greek settlements on the Pontus, which lived separately
one from another and rivaled, a few settlements around
the Cimmerian Bosporus united voluntary, and this union
kept alive very long time. The explanation was "pure
economical". The united realm created a unique monopoly
on trading with East Scythia and North Caucasus. Greek
merchant ships were forbidden to cross the Cimmerian
Bosporus. All goods and wares overloaded onto Bosporan
vessels in Pontus harbors of the realm for further
travel on the sea of Azov, Don and Kuban rivers.

* BTW I guess it were the Bosporanians who created and
spread a great deal of "tall stories" on innavigability
of the sea of Azov naming it Swamps, about Androfagi
(Man-eaters) and other horrors of the Inner Scythia. *

So, the Bosporan sailors were "rivermen" not less than
seamen. This allows us to conjecture the Gothic pirates,
as Bosporanians' apprentices, to become familiar with
river ways across the Russian plain (something like
the future "the Way from Varyags to Greeks" of the
old Russian Chronicles) to the Baltic sea. This way
to Scandinavia would be a most short cut for the Heruls,
which could be used already in 3rd - 4th cc. But here
we break away from the "legal" history of the Heruls
and open a quite new its branch on a vague soul of
suppositions and speculations. And I do not intend
to overload the Gothic list with this "illegal history"
as absolutely indemonstrable (though not obligatory
wrong).

Vladimir


You are a member of the Gothic-L list.  To unsubscribe, send a blank email to <gothic-l-unsubscribe at egroups.com>.

Your use of Yahoo! Groups is subject to http://docs.yahoo.com/info/terms/