The Dacians: Rome\'s Greatest Enemy?

[diegis]

Sorry, but that's incorrect, as has been shown here so many times already. This 'denetification' only rests on the names used by ancient authors, who often used older names for later peoples: The Huns were named 'Scythians', and medieval armies from Western Europe were still styled 'Celts'. Should we take those identifications literally too? Of course not. Goths aren't Getae (let alone Dacians).
Alaric styled himself 'Rex Gothorum', not 'Rex Getae'.
The Goth language is undeniably Germanic and not Dacian.

No, it rest on archaeology too. The majority of artefacts found in Santana de Mures/Cerneahov culture (the Goths culture) is of Dacian origin.

That's not what the majority of archaeologists agrees upon.

Getae and Dacians are the same (is like Alemani and Franks, they are both Germans)

Boldly stated, but very wrong. The dacians may have belonged to a much larger group labelled Getae, but that does not mean that every Geta is a Dacian. Therefore, even IF the Goths had been the same as the Getae, they could have been but one member of that group, but different.
Likewise, The Alamanni and Franks are both part of the Germanic group, but Franks are not Alamanii, they are not 'the same'. Similarli, Dacians and Getae are not 'the same'. But that does not matter, because they used a different language:

The so called Gothic language is know mostly from Codex Argenteus, but I doubt that Codex is a Gothic one, but probably it belonged to Longobards, so there is Longobard language. Goths back then was already Romanized and used Latin.

What ARE you taliking about? The 'so-called' Gothic language? Soory Diegies, but that the conclusion of eminent linguists, not some amateur. The Goths were Romanised and used latin? What, as their prime language? And you have proof of that? We know the differences between Lombard and Gothic, and the Gothic Bible is not a mislabelled Lombard manuscript, even if that would suit your theories of 'Goths=Dacians=Rumanians' much better.

Either way Goths wasnt for sure a homogenous people, but a mix of people. And more then sure they didnt migrated from Scandza either, nor wandered some 2 mileniums until arrived at Danube. Majority of modern historians reject now that tale of Jordanes

Well, no-one is claiming that, so please set up your straw men somewhere else. The Goths were indeed not homogenous, and nobody still believes they trotted from Scandinavia all the way to Rome. Time for you to stop claiming that 'the Goths were Dacians', too.

Well, I will reply here as the quotes are messed up

About Goths, Jordanes and archaeology (I found this randomly and surprisingly on an interesting discussion page on wikipedia)

Arne Søby Christensen, Cassiodorus, Jordanes and the history of the Goths: studies in a migration myth (2002)
<<Christensen 2002, p. 343: This study has shown that neither the Greeks nor the Romans had any original knowledge whatsoever of a people called the Goths. They might possibly have been mentioned in some geographical and ethnographical works dating from the first century AD, but the similarity in the names is not significant, and no antique author later considers them to be the forefathers of the Goths. No one tells of how the Γούτωνες (Strabo), Gutones (Pliny), Gotones (Tacitus), or Γύτωνες (Ptolemy) wandered southwards and became the fearsome Gothi. No one sees this connection, even during the Great Migration. [...] The Goths surface in the Graeco-Roman historiography in various unrelated notes from the middle of the third century, in the area around the lower reaches of the Danube. Before this time we cannot say with any certainty that a people existed whom we routinely refer to as Goths.>>

<<Christensen 2002, p. 349: When confronting a text such as the Getica, and when we are able to conclude that it is not what it purports to be - namely a history of the Goths - we naturally find our options reduced to a single logical course of action: we must reject the text as a source of Gothic history. [...] Today we are able to conclude that this narrative is fictitious, a fabrication in which the omnipotent author himself has created both the framework and the context of the story.>>

Guy Halsall, Barbarian Migrations and the Roman West, 376-568 (2007)
<<Halsall 2007, pp. 132-3: The Černjachov culture is a mixture of all sorts of influences but most come from the existing cultures in the region. It has been argued that it evolves directly from the Wielbark culture of the lower Vistula and that the spread from Wielbark to Černjachov is archaeological proof of the Goths’ migration from the shores of the Baltic. This notion should not be entirely rejected but it needs considerable modification. The source for the Gothic migration from Scandinavia is Jordanes’ Getica, which is deeply problematic and certainly cannot be used as evidence for migration. The Wielbark culture begins earlier than the Černjachov but its later phases cover the same period as the latter. There is thus no chronological development from one to the other. Furthermore, although the Wielbark culture does spread up the Vistula during its history, its geographical overlap with the Černjachov is minimal. These facts make it improbable that the Černjachov culture was descended from the Wielbark. Although it is often claimed that Černjachov metalwork derives from Wielbark types, close examination reveals no more than a few types with general similarities to Wielbark analogues. Migration from the Wielbark territories is also proposed from the supposedly distinctive mix of cremation and inhumation. However, burial customs are rarely static and more than one area of barbaricum employed, at various times, a mixture of rites. The fourth century, in particular, saw widespread change in such practices. This evidence will not support the idea of a substantial migration.>>

<<Halsall 2006, p. 279: In his excellent Goths and Romans, Peter Heather demolished the idea that the Getica's picture of Gothic history could be projected further back than about 376 for the late Visigoths, or beyond the break-up of the Hunnic Empire for the Ostrogoths. However, Heather seems to have retreated slightly from his earlier position. Partly this is because he wishes to show that archaeology might indeed prove that Jordanes was right to trace Gothic origins to the Baltic. [...] His analyses irreparably damaged the Geticas value for Gothic 'prehistory' yet, to reinstate the Gothic migration from the Baltic, he has to accept the value of at least a kernel of Jordanes' account; he accepts this on the basis of a reading of archaeological data which is itself driven by the uncritical 'pre-Heatherian' interpretation of Jordanes. The problem, as with many readings of late antique Origines Gentium is the 'pick and mix' approach. The Getica contains all sorts of nonsense about Amazones, Goths at Troy, borrowings and manipulations of classical sources about the earlier Getae and so on. It is illogical to weed out these episodes for rejection, while accepting other clearly mythical elements, many similarly deriving from classical ethnography, as Heather acknowlegdes.>>

<<Halsall 2006, p. 281: The movement of artefacts is interpreted in line with apriori notions drawn from Jordanes (for which see above). Thus the spread of artefacts up the Vistula (i.e. in the 'right' direction) is used as proof of migration, the movement of Černjachov artefacts from the Ukraine to the Baltic (i.e. in the 'wrong' direction) is presented as evidence of trade or exchange. [...] Rightly, Heather queries previous attempts to make 'precise ethnic attributions on the basis of individual artefacts'. Yet that is exactly his own approach. Grave 36 at Leţcani is 'presumably Gothic' because of a pot with a runic inscription in spite of the presence of other artefacts of quite different, Danubian origin. Why one pot with runes outweighs four Danubian wheel-turned pots is unclear. This is, though, an example of precise ethnic ascription being made on the basis of an individual artefact.>>

Michael Kulikowski, Rome's Gothic Wars: from the third century to Alaric (2007)
<<Kulikowski 2007, p. 63 sqq: The argument has been made most explicitly by Volker Bierbrauer: the Sântana-de-Mureş/Černjachov archaeological culture is Gothic; some of its characteristics – particular brooch and ceramic types, a tendency not to place weapons in graves – are similar to those of the Wielbark culture, which was centred on the Vistula river and lasted from the first to the fourth century A.D.; the Wielbark culture must therefore also be Gothic. [...] The Wielbark elements in the Sântana-de-Mureş/Černjachov culture are no more numerous than other elements, so there is no archaeological reason to privilege them over others. [...] More importantly still, the closeness of the artefactual connections between the two cultures is not as great as is usually asserted. Indeed, their chief point of intersection is not particular artefacts, but the fact that weapon burials are absent from the Wielbark and rare in the Sântana-de-Mureş/Černjachov zones. In purely logical terms, a negative characteristic is less convincing proof of similarity than a positive one, and the fact that weapon burials are commonest where archaeological investigation has been most intensive suggests that our evidentiary base is anything but representative. Given this, why should the Wielbark–Sântana-de-Mureş/Černjachov connection seem so self-evident to so many scholars? One answer is an old methodology that seeks to explain changes in material culture by reference to migration. The other is Jordanes. [...] If we did not have Jordanes, that connection would not seem self evident. Taken on purely archaeological grounds, without reference to our one piece of textual evidence, there is no reason to interpret the Wielbark and the Sântana-de-Mureş/Černjachov cultures as close cousins. [...] How are we to interpret the origins of the Sântana-de-Mureş/Černjachov culture and the Gothic hegemony with which it coincides chronologically? Is there such a thing as Gothic history before the third century? The answer, at least in my view, is that there is no Gothic history before the third century. The Goths are a product of the Roman frontier, just like the Franks and the Alamanni who appear at the same time. That is clearly demonstrated by contemporary literary evidence, and indeed all the evidence of the fourth and fifth centuries – everything except the sixth-century Jordanes. [...] The rise to prominence of a few strong leaders created a stable political zone in which a single material culture came into being, synthesized from a variety of disparate traditions. None was more important than the others – as the material evidence clearly shows – and there is no need to look for ‘original’ Goths coming from elsewhere to impose their leadership and their identity on others. There were, of course, immigrants into the region where the Sântana-de-Mureş/Černjachov culture arose, from elsewhere in northern and central Europe and from the steppe lands to the east as well. But none of them need themselves have been Goths, because there is no good evidence that Goths existed before the third century.>>

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chernyakhov_culture

<< The culture probably corresponds to the Gothic kingdom of Oium as described by Jordanes in his work Getica, but it is nonetheless the result of a poly-ethnic cultural mélange of the Gothic, Getae-Dacian (including Romanised Daco-Romans), Sarmatian and Slavic populations of the area.[4][5]>>

<<Today, scholars recognize the Chernyakov zone as representing a cultural interaction of a diversity of peoples, but predominantly those who already existed in the region,[13] whether it be the Sarmatians,[14] or the Getae-Dacians (some authors espouse the view that the Getae-Dacians played the leading role in the creation of the Culture).[15] >>

So when we talk about Goths we can say that a large part of them was indeed Getae/Dacians, even if we can't equate Goths=Getae 100%