[gothic-l] Re: Goths and Vandals

[James Young]

Hail Llama Nom,

Sorry for the delay.

Did you say that there was no German word for "Greeks" before 350 CE?  Wow! Is that must from runic evidence? And that must be Scandanavian. Maybe that is too far west. Still, what a shocking omission. It disappoints me to learn that there were no German stories of Persians or Parthians, no references to Cyrus or Darius and their trans Danube forays. Is written Slavonic as old as Gothic (4th C)? Since it is more Eastern it might include some stories of Greeks and Persians. What sort of written language existed on the Eurasian plains?

I think the first Gothic intrusions into the Roman Empire occur during the reign of Decius, late third century in the part of Moesia that includes the Danube delta, King Cniva led the Goths. By then though they are also reported to have become established in the lower Dnieper valley (well within the Ukraine). They could have come down the Danube and up the Dnieper. By the time of Claudius II, Gothicus, the Gothic fleet he defeated had come from all along the Black Sea up the Danube to the Iron Gate as well as into the Mediterranean. Most of the city states along the Black Sea were established centuries earlier as Greek trading posts by the Agean city-state of Miletus in the time of Cyrus, and as such they had retained their Greek language. I suspect Claudius used scorpions as well as other weapons against his Gothic opponents much as Marcus Aulelius had used them against the Marcomanni.

Your comment about the military as a Latin bastion sounds convincing though; Marcelinus, a Greek in the Roman Army, wrote in Latin, didn't he. Maybe,however, the Latin influence is related to the fact that Wulfilas was using Greek biblical sources and somehow as part of the translation process he reverted to Latin grammars when Germanic failed him??? Yikes, thin ice!

Jim








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