"Gothi" (timeline)

[X99Lynx at aol.com]

In a message dated 2/21/2001 6:44:50 PM, dlwhite at texas.net writes:
<< That did indeed sound not quite right, since it would put the earliest
appearance of the Goths in Latin near the earliest attestation of Latin
itself. >>

Just a recap.

The word <Gothi>, with that spelling, does not appear in Latin until after
Tacitus, who uses <Gotones> if in fact he was referring to the same word that
later emerges.  Ptolemy uses <Gythones> to refer to a "minor" tribe located
east of the Vistula in the 2d century AD.  I don't have Pliny's spelling from
around the same time in front of me.

Claudius given the epithet "Gothorum" sometime soon after the battle of
Naissus (270AD), which appears to be among the first mentions of the word in
that form in Latin.  Around the same time there is a piece in which "Gothi"
is used, but taken as synonymous with "Getae".

I have not been able to find the actual spelling used by Dexippus, who wrote
in Greek after 250AD and appears to be the first to actually write about the
historically identifiable "Goths" of the invasions of the 3d century.  His
work survives only in fragments.

Inscriptions from the very early 3d century AD from a legion post in Arabia,
written in Greek, use <<gouththa>> and in the late 3 century AD, a Sassinid
Greek inscription used <<gouththton>> ("...tes romaion arches gouththton te
kai germanon ethnon.")

The first time I believe we hear from someone who might be Gothic using the
word is in the second half of the 4th centuryAD when Ulfila's biographer and
nephew writes in Latin of the <Gothi>.  It seems Ulfila himself uses <go:th>,
<go:dei>, <guth> and <guda> in Gothic but not to refer to Goths but to
goodness, to heathen gods and to the Christian God.

Throughout this time, <Gothi> and <Getae> are often taken by contemporaries
to be alternative versions of the same name for the same people, although
Getae is a much older form used by Herodotus, Strabo and others to refer to
peoples north of the eastern Danube taken to be Thracian or Dacian or even
Scythian at different times.  The Goths themselves are also often referred to
as Scythians, according to Heather.

Because all of the manuscripts mentioned above actually date from a later
period, it is difficult to say if they were redacted to conform the spelling
to the period after 400AD when <Gothi> or <Gothini> became standardized.

Regards,
Steve Long