[gothic-l] Re: Tracing the Heruli

[Troels Brandt <trbrandt@post9.tele.dk>]

--- In gothic-l at yahoogroups.com, åÇÏÒÏ× ÷ÌÁÄÉÍÉÒ <vegorov at i...> wrote:
> Hi, Troels!
> 
> After an involuntary vacation, I'd like to return 
> to the problem of Heruls around the sea of Azov.

Sorry - You missed a few mails about the Heruls.

> 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).

Agree - if the Borani were Heruls.

> Moreover, I never heard about 
> big armies regarding Gothic activities in the Bosporan 
> realm.

I am afraid I am not able myself to substantiate the relative 
expression "big". According to Dexippos the Goths and Heruls used 
2.000 ships at Byzans and 3.000 Heruls were said to be killed in the 
group attacking Thessaloniki in 268 AD. Dexippos headed the defense 
of Athens making at least the number of ships unreliable - he was 
probably boasting. Under all circumstances they divided in 3 groups - 
one group attacking around Thessaloniki being met by the emperor 
himself - one group attacking Attica and ravaging Athens - and one 
group ravaging Asia Minor. These tellings can't be due to a small 
group of confused Herulian warriors, who would never have been 
mentioned at all.   

> 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, 

Some of them probably were, but I agree with George that the Herulian 
people was established at that time consisting of several people. 

> 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.

That could be a possible explannation of the events in 255 AD.

> 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.

It was my impression that the connection between Scandinavia and the 
Black Sea was established along Dnestr/Vistula later also Dnepr, 
while the more easterly routes were established after the 
disappearence of the Goths at Vistula - but I may be wrong. 

> 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

Troels


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