Getae and Dacians? Are they the same? Or is this unknowable?

[Rumo]

BUT the Thracians and Dacians were NOT TRYING TO FIT INTO GREEK SOCIETY. They were only INFLUENCED by the Greeks. There is a huge difference. As opposed to this, the "joiners" (and there were many!) into Gothic society wanted to, HAD to, fit into the gens. The gens was the all. If you couldn't navigate within the politics and economics of the gens, you lost. You never went anywhere in that society. For this reason, just as my grandparents did, the newcomers needed to learn the language of the dominent (call it "royal") clique. I think we are talking about two different causes and effect, Influence and Absolute Need.

Greek cultural influence in Thracian space is much more consistent than "Germanic" (for ancient history I consider the term valid just in linguistics) cultural influence in Eastern Europe, so I can only wonder on what grounds do you assess how hard those people tried to fit in. What is the evidence these ?ernjachov inhabitants tried to learn a Germanic idiom, what is the evidence they attempted to fit in a sterotypical "Germanic gens"? As I already pointed out ?ernjachov is a heterogenous culture. Those biritual cemetaries rather suggest people with quite different religious views and consequently different perspectives of life.

And why compare the non-Germanic Goths with some of your ancestors and not with all those (proto-)Albanians resisting Latin, with all those Vlachs resisting Magyar or Greek? If that axiom of three generations would be true in Roman Empire there would have been only two languages - Latin and Greek, in Byzantine Empire only Greek, in Kingdom of Hungary only Hungarian, in Ottoman Empire only Turkish, etc. Languages like Romanian and Albanian should have not existed, because for more than three generations their speakers were part of other empires, of other dominant cultures.

Actually my tongue was in cheek when I mentioned why Ulfilas' bible was written in Gothic. He was trying to reach All the Goths, not just the hierarchy. Primarily he was an evangelist; and the many presbyters who preached north of the Danube attest to this philosophy. He wanted not to preach to the choir, but to all of "his" people, the very and only reason he translated the bible from Greek.

Ulfilas' "all Goths" were small groups near the Danube. What did Ulfilas know of those on Dniester and Dnieper, where we have clusters of settlements? Even the most erudite Roman authors were hopelessly confused about north-Danubian geography and ethnography, should we think Ulfilas or any Christian preacher knew better?

This was not an isolated phenomenon but a full scale evangelism, just as Bishop Amantius later conducted with the Alans in Pannonia. In Gothia itself, we find two persecutions aimed at stamping out Christianity, first by Aoric and later by his son Athanaric. This latter purge appears to have been the reason that Fritigern recieved help from Valens and the riparian troops stationed at the Danube in the very early 470s. This purge was a hot one, and it attests to a growing Christian populace within Gothia. We had torchings, one church (tents really) burned with its presbyter, another torched with the entire laity perishing. We find drownings and stonings. So the bible of Ulfilas was written for a "mass" audience (pardon the pun :lol: ), even though most Goths were illiterate. It was the tool of evangelistic presbyters.

These late 4th century events happened near the Danube which is further evidence the spread of Christianity in Gothia was restricted to some regions (near the Roman frontier). And I'm not sure if we can prove these persecuted Christians were those converted by Ulfilas and his disciples.

But the fact is many Goths could read, perhaps both Latin and Greek. Both Athanaric and Fritigern navigated through negotiations with the Romans on several occasions. Even Aoric (who lived for some years in Constantinople) may have been literate. Both Safrax and Alatheus were at least versed in Latin (perhaps even Persian), and Alaric was fluent in it. We tend to think of them as "barbarians" but there was a sizable Gothic population living in Constantinople prior to the 5th century, and Constantine's royal guard (the Scholae) was made up of Tyrfingi.

Speaking Latin is not reading or writing it. Some Goths from the Empire learnt to read and write, but they were few. When Dacia fell from Romans to Goths and other tribes from Barbaricum that meant the end of its written culture and the end of its urban life. This is one of the many reasons why Goths are commonly regarded as "barbarians".

An entirely seperate group of links arrived from Scandia itself! How can this be explained, if the Goths had no old cultural ties to the north? (an idea that is only a theory) I have mentioned the Old Edda and the Gotsaga, both of which were formed within a barbarian society outside Romano-Greek influence. In fact neither Greeks or Romans, nor Cassidorus, nor Jordanes, had access to these old legends. They were local in origin and stayed localized (much like Beowulf).

These legends were written down in the Middle Ages. They certainly rely on some local traditions, too, but they were not formed outside Graeco-Roman influence, as by this time many works in Latin, including Getica, were available.

In the Hervar Saga (fm the Old Edda), we find the sword Tyrfing-- the same sword worshiped by the Tryfingi Goths who named themselves after it. This is a direct cultural link between the Geats and the Goths. And it is totally outside the Romano-Greek sphere. It's not theory. It's folk record. And it cannot be ignored or disputed, or even refutiated. It doesn't matter whether Hervar or her father Argantar were real people or not. We cannot dismiss Tryfing (one of which was probably Excalibur).

Can you bring some analogies of populations named after mythical swords because I can't find any.