"Goth" (Dates)

[X99Lynx at aol.com]

In a message dated 12/14/2000 3:48:07 AM, JoatSimeon at aol.com writes:

<< -- there were no Goths just north of the Danube in 250 BCE.  At that time
the ancestors of the Goths were in eastern Germany and Poland.

My mistake.  And sorry for the confusion.  I should have written 250AD.  It
is not at all clear where the Goths were or if they were at all in 250BC.

It is Ptolemy who places the Gythones east of the Vistula circa 100AD.
Archaeologist have associated these "Goths/Gythones" with the Wielbark
culture in this area in that time.  Wielbark which arises between 100BC and
1AD shares characteristics with the somewhat later Cernjachov culture, found
in a wide area in the Ukraine and south of the Carpathians, and generally
associated with the historical Goths.

The theory that the Goths migrated from the area of the Go:te in Scandinavia,
not accepted by all, would probably have them moving about 100BC.

But less than 150 years between Wielbark and Cernjachov (they actually
overlap) does seem like a short time in which such a large migration and
transformation to have occurred.

<<The first historical attestation of the Goths has them in the Vistula valley
in the first few centuries CE, after which they moved into the Ukraine and the
Danube valley. >>

It seems general historical consensus that people called "Goths" first come
definitively into history when they make major incursions by land and sea
into the eastern Roman Empire starting in 238AD, sacking the city of Histria
at the mouth of the Danube. (Dexippus).   Peter Heather in "The Goths" (1996)
documents the extensive raiding and warfare attributed to the Goths during
the following years, including raids on Attica and Asia Minor and the burning
of the Temple to Diana in Ephesus, all culminating at the important battle of
Naissus in the northern Balkans in 272AD, at which Claudius reputedly earned
the honorary appelate, "Gothicus".

Regards,
Steve Long