Warrior Class

[Michael Erwin]

I suppose western Goths - in Spain, Aquitaine or Italy - going into  
the High Middle Ages might use the terms interchangibly - but eastern  
Goths - in the Balkans and especially in Ukraine - would need to  
distinguish between light cavalry, heavy cavalry, and the nobility.

Fourth-century Goths probably wouldn't associate mounted fighting  
with much greater status than dismounted fighting. Sixth-century  
Goths would; Gothic heavy cavalry appears to have expanded its  
importance in the fifth century just as Roman heavy cavalry did.

I'd suggest either *kaballareis or *katafraktareis for the heavy  
cavalry in the sixth century.

On Feb 6, 2008, at 2:27 PM, llama_nom wrote:
> Another possibility would be to invent a Gothic *aihva-raida-manna to
> match Old English 'éoredmann'. I'm thinking of Tom Shippey's comments
> in The Road to Middle Earth about the survival in Old English of this
> old word 'éored' for cavalry in spite of the lack of such a fighting
> force among the Anglo-Saxons, perhaps harking back to traditions of
> cavalry warefare as practiced by the Goths. But that's a bit of a
> mouthful... I think my favourite so far is *kaballareis, for the
> reasons Ualarauan's has suggested. It seems very credible alongside
> the other Latin military vocabulary. We could still used *reidands
> "rider" as synonym for knight where the context makes it clear.
>
> LN
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