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Two Notes on Germanic Antiquity Today

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  29 July 2016

Walter Goffart
Walter Goffart*
Affiliation:
University of Toronto
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Extract

The history of the early Germans is controversial terrain. This is known, though not invariably admitted. A few years ago, Klaus von See summed up the underlying predicament:

Germans (Deutsche) have it hard with the origins of their national past. The oldest texts are not indigenous; they stem from Latin and Greek authors — Tacitus, Ammianus Marcellinus, Procopius. If stone vestiges are sought, one mostly has to be content with Celtic and Roman remains…. Supplementary efforts are made to unearth authentic Germanic monuments in large parts of Old Norse [literature]… — it being readily overlooked that the Edda and the sagas bear witness not to Germanic antiquity, but to the Scandinavian early and high Middle Ages, [and were] only written long after Christianization. As a result, studies of the early Germans are a difficult terrain for historical science….

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Articles
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Traditio , Volume 50 , 1995 , pp. 9 - 30
Copyright
Copyright © 1995 by Fordham University 

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References

1 Klaus von See, “Kulturkritik und Germanenforschung zwischen den Weltkriegen,” Historische Zeitschrift 245 (1987): 343–62, at 343. I am very grateful to my Toronto colleagues Alexander C. Murray and Michael I. Allen for help with an earlier version of this article. The remaining blemishes are my doing.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

2 On the early Germans as a branch of “Germanistik,” see Hachmann, Rolf, Die Goten und Skandinavien, Quellen und Forschungen zur Sprach- und Kulturgeschichte der germanischen Völker, N.F., ed. Kunish, H. et al., 34 (Berlin, 1970), 212–13; František Graus, Volk, Herrscher und Heiliger im Reich der Merowinger. Studien zur Hagiographie der Merowingerzeit (Prague, 1965), 16–17. For applications of philology to history, see Wolfram, Herwig, History of the Goths, rev. from 2d German ed., tr. Dunlap, Thomas J. (Berkeley, 1988), chap. 1, “The Names,” and 89–116 (hereafter H. Goths).Google Scholar

The following additional works by Herwig Wolfram are cited by abbreviated titles, listed alphabetically here: “Got. Stud. I, II, III” — “Gotische Studien I, II, III,” Mitteilungen des Instituts für österreichischer Geschichtsforschung (hereafter MIöG) 83 (1975): 1–31, 289–324, and 84 (1976): 239–61; Goten 2 — Geschichte der Goten. Von den Anfängen bis zur Mitte des sechsten Jahrhunderts. Entwurf einer historischen Ethnographie, 2d ed. (Munich, 1980); “Hist. Ethnography” — “Gothic History and Historical Ethnography,” Journal of Medieval History 7 (1981): 309–19; “Methodische Fragen” — “Methodische Fragen zur Kritik am ‘sakralen’ Königtum germanischer Stämme,” in Festschrift für Otto Höfler, ed. Birkan, H. and Gschwantler, O. (Vienna, 1968), 2:479–82; “Origo et religio” — “Origo et religio: Ethnic Traditions and Literature in Early Medieval Texts,” Early Medieval Europe 3/1 (1994): 19–38; Reich u. Germanen — Das Reich und die Germanen. Zwischen Antike und Mittelalter, Siedler Deutsche Geschichte, vol. 1 (Berlin, 1990); “Theogonie” — “Theogonie, Ethnogenese und ein kompromittierter Großvater im Stammbaum Theoderichs des Großen,” in Festschrift für Helmut Beumann, ed. Jäschke, K.-U. and Wenskus, R. (Sigmarigen, 1977), 80–97; Treasures — Treasures on the Danube. Barbarian Invaders and Their Roman Inheritance, ed. Langthaler, G. (Vienna, 1985) (and original German ed.); “Überlegungen I.” — “Einige Überlegungen zur gotischen Origo gentis,” in Studia linguistica Alexandro Vasilii filio Issatchenko, ed. Birnbaum, H. et al. (Lund, 1978), 487–99; “Überlegungen II.” — “Einleitung oder Überlegungen zur Origo Gentis,” in Wolfram, H. and Pohl, W., ed., Typen der Ethnogenese unter besonderer Berücksichtigung der Bayern, Teil 1, Denks. Akad. Vienna 201 (1990), 19–31.Google Scholar

3 For a summary of its teachings, see Schneider, Reinhard, Das Frankenreich, Oldenbourg Grundriß der Geschichte 5 (Munich, 1982), 126–35. Schneider refers to a new “school”: “Sie zielten in die Richtung einer stärkeren Herausarbeitung des adligen wie auch herrschaftlichen Elementes innerhalb der frühmittelalterlichen Welt.” The issues of the nobility and free status are singled out as most actively debated since the 1960s. Schneider does not mention sacral kingship as a teaching of the school, but see nn. 5 and 10 below, and Eve Picard, Germanisches Sakralkönigtum? Quellenkritische Studien zur Germania des Tacitus und zur altnordischen Überlieferung, Skandinavistische Arbeiten, ed. von See, K., 12 (Heidelberg, 1991), 26–30. For another, briefer account, see Murray, Alexander C., “From Roman to Frankish Gaul: ‘Centenarii’ and ‘Centenae’ in the Administration of the Merovingian Kingdom,” Traditio 44 (1988): 59–100, esp. 59–64; some writings (to the 1970s) in which the old interpretation is still espoused are listed (ibid., 60 n. 3). Also idem, “The Position of the Grafio in the Constitutional History of Merovingian Gaul,” Speculum 61 (1986): 787–805, esp. 788–90.Google Scholar

4 Graus, , Volk, Herrscher, 14–18; Karl Kroeschell, Deutsche Rechtsgeschichte, 3 vols., (Reinbek bei Hamburg, 1972), 1:104–06. In the foreword to Vorgeschichte der deutschen Stämme: Germanische Tat und Kultur auf deutschem Boden, 3 vols., ed. Reinerth, Hans (Leipzig, 1940), 1:vi, the “Chefideologe” of the NSDAP, Alfred Rosenberg, cheered the downfall of “die nichtachtende Darstellung der Urgermanen, in der sich Mittelalter und Liberalismus brüderlich begegneten.”Google Scholar

5 Picard, , Germanische Sakralkönigtum? 34–36; Klaus von See, Kontinuitätstheorie und Sakraltheorie in der Germanenforschung (Frankfurt, 1972), 41–48; Paul Koschaker, Europa und das römische Recht, 3d ed. (Munich, 1958), 321–22 (Otto Höfler and the Holy Spear); Karl Hauck, “Lebensnormen und Kultmythen in germanischen Stammes- und Herrschergenealogien,” Saeculum 6 (1955): 211, 218–21.Google Scholar

6 Werner, Karl Ferdinand, Les origines, Histoire de France, ed. Favier, J. (Paris, 1984), 1:339: “un ‘roi d'armée’ imaginé par certains historiens allemands.” More than an isolated concept, the “Heerkönig” forms part of a wide complex, as spelled out by Karl Bosl, in B. Gebhart, Handbuch der deutschen Geschichte, 9th ed. (Stuttgart, 1970), 1:710: “[Magic conceptions were] der geistig-religiöse Untergrund der frühen germanischen Heerkönigtum …; diese stammten aus einer sakrale Sphäre, sie banden die Herrschergewalt an eine götterentstammte Königssippe mit besonderen ‘heile.’ ” E. Kaufmann (“König,” in Handwörterbuch zur deutsche Rechtsgeschichte [Berlin, 1978], 2:1007) grants that the term “Heerkönig” first occurs in late Old Norse sources.Google Scholar

7 For all quotations since the previous note: Picard, Germanisches Sakralkönigtum? 15, 17, 37; the extracts about Scandinavia are quoted from von See. Picard underscores the flawed methodology: “prinzipiell können alle kontinentalgermanischen Quellen erst mit Hilfe der an skandinavischen Material entwickelten Vorstellungen erschlossen werden” (14).Google Scholar

8 Werner, Karl Ferdinand, Das NS-Geschichtsbild und die deutsche Geschichtswissenschaft (Stuttgart, 1967), 78–80; on Höfler and “germanische Kontinuität,” 29. Von See, Kontinuitätstheorie, 42–43. Murray, “‘Centenarii’ and ‘Centenae’ in the Merovingian Kingdom,” 62: the “interest [of the new constitutional history] was still, like the old teaching it replaced, Germanic continuity and the fundamental character of the Germanic constitution.” Schneider (Frankenreich, 127) stresses the “surprising many-sidedness” of the new teaching.Google Scholar

Continuity from classical antiquity to the Middle Ages had been long discussed. The concept of “Germanic” continuity was first expounded by Otto Höfler (1938), a leader in the exposition of Germanic sacral kingship (1934). About Höfler's theory, Klaus von See, “Das ‘Nordische’ in der deutschen Wissenschaft des 20. Jahrhunderts,” Jahrbuch für internationale Germanistik 15 (1984): 8–38, at 34; Koschaker, Europa u. d. röm. Recht, 321–24; Picard, Germanisches Sakralkönigtum? 17–21. Cf. “Methodische Fragen,” 479–82.Google Scholar

9 Hachmann (Goten u. Skandinavien, 152) indicates that Grimm and Müllenhof cautiously denied historicity to the legends of Jordanes and other literary sources. Heinrich von Sybel (De fontibus libri Jordanis [Berlin, 1838], 35–36) agreed with Kaspar Zeuß that historical study could do without the origin myths.Google Scholar

10 Jarnut, Jörg, “Zur Frühgeschichte der Langobarden,” Studi medievali, 3d ser., 24 (1983): 1–16, at 2–3. For similar approval, starring the same scholars, see Moisl, Hermann, “Anglo-Saxon Royal Genealogies and Germanic Oral Tradition,” Journal of Medieval History 7 (1981): 217–31.Google Scholar

11 Wenskus, Reinhard, Stammesbildung und Verfassung. Das Werden der frühmittelalterlichen Gentes (Cologne, 1961). I do not know whether the 2d ed. (1977), not available to me, is changed or just a reprint; the paging seems stable. For severe criticism of Wenskus's book, see Hachmann, Rolf, review in Historische Zeitschrift 198 (1964): 663–74; idem, Goten u. Skandinavien, 3–14.Google Scholar

12 Goten 2, 32–33.Google Scholar

13 Hauck, Karl, “Lebensnormen” (n. 5 above), 186–223. Other studies by him on these themes: “Haus- und Sippengebundene Literatur mittelalterlicher Adelsgeschlechter,” MIöG 62 (1954): 121–45, and “Carmina antiqua. Abstammungsglaube und Stammesbewußtsein,” Zeitschrift für bayerische Landesgeschichte 27 (1964): 1–33. For a list of his works touching on Germanic sacral kingship, see Graus, , Volk, Herrscher (n. 5 above), 314 n. 27. Hauck, “Lebensnormen,” 187: “The author sees his new assessment of these monuments [origin legends] primarily as the consequence of the working out of the results of comparative religious history in interpreting the oldest historical information about our antiquity.” Kaufmann's fair and moderate discussion of sacral kingship likewise appeals to comparative religion: “König” in Handwörtb. z. deut. RG 2:1003–04.Google Scholar

14 See n. 10 above.Google Scholar

15 Reich u. Germanen, 41; a few lines later: it would be “ein schwerer methodischer Fehler, alle Überlieferung auschließlich als Literatur der Zeit ihrer Niederschrift zu begreifen….” In practice, “auschließlich” means “at all.”Google Scholar

16 “Origo et religio,” 25.Google Scholar

17 Graus, , Volk, Herrscher, 20–25, 200–06, 313–34, and passim. Graus pursued his attack in other writings.Google Scholar

18 Definition by blood, e.g., Reinerth, H., ed., Vorgeschichte der deutschen Stämme, 1:viii (Reinerth's foreword): “für die Zugehörigkeit zu einem Stamm oder Volk nicht vorübergehende, fremde kulturelle Bindungen, sondern ausschließlich das Blut entscheidend ist.” To the contrary, Wenskus, Stammesbildung, 1–3, and passim. His service to the discipline, Goten 2, 3.Google Scholar

19 Schneider, H., ed., Germanische Altertumskunde (Munich, 1938), 2d ed. (1951); cf. von See, “Das ‘Nordische,’ ” (n. 8 above), 12.Google Scholar

20 Werner, , NS-Geschichtsbild, 11. Cf. von See, “Das ‘Nordische,’” 12–13. Hachmann's account of the effect on scholarship of Gustav Kossinna's ideas is a thoroughly non-political indictment of the resulting changes and the methods (often sheer sloppiness) that brought them about: Goten u. Skandinavien, 172–80. The quotation refers originally to German prehistory: Gustav Kossinna, Die deutsche Vorgeschichte, eine hervorragend nationale Wissenschaft, Mannus Bibliothek 9 (Würzburg, 1912), 7th ed. (1936).Google Scholar

21 Reich u. Germanen, 35.Google Scholar

22 On the relations of racist thinking to the “Germanenbild” in the 1920s, see von See, “Das ‘Nordische,’ ” 20–29. He emphasizes restraints.Google Scholar

23 Reich u. Germanen, 278. Von den Steinen (d. 1967) obtained his Habilitation in the early 1930s at the University of Basle, where he spent the rest of his career.Google Scholar

24 Geary, Patrick, Before France and Germany: The Creation and Transformation of the Merovingian World (New York, 1988), 42; cf. Reich u. Germanen, 34 with n. 27. The passage continues: “While this attempt to exploit a mythic German past for modern propaganda purpose has been overwhelmingly rejected in the aftermath of World War II, those with whom the European wars of the past century have left a residue of suspicion and hostility toward Germany and Germans still often see in the ancient negative judgments on Germanic ferocity, sloth, quarrelsomeness, drinking, and faithlessness, explanations for much of recent German history.” Geary evokes war victims drawing on Tacitus to nourish their hostility toward Germans. Von See, Kontinuitätstheorie, 4, scoffs at the idea that “irgendeine politische Bewegung der Gegenwart ein Interesse hätte, sich des Germanentums zu bedienen.”Google Scholar

25 Quoted by Werner, NS-Geschichtsbild, 79. Cf. von See, Kontinuitätstheorie (n. 5 above), 42.Google Scholar

26 See, Von, “Kulturkritik und Germanenforschung” (n. 1 above), 359–62, esp. 361–62 (about policy declarations in 1935): “der Nationalsozialismus es nicht nötig habe, ‘überholte und tote Begriffe aus grauer Vorzeit wieder heranzuholen, die in keiner Weise den harten, politischen Kampf der Gegenwart unterstützen können.’ ” Idem., “Das ‘Nordische,’ ” 11: “die Machthaber des Dritten Reiches wissen sich auch sonst — und mitunter sehr entscheiden — von allem zu trennen, was im Geruch einer politikfernen Germanenschwärmerei steht ….” For “German-omaniacs,” see “Origo et religio,” 25; similarly, Werner, NS-Geschichtsbild, 29, refers to “Germanomane im Amte Rosenbergs.” Foreigners need help in understanding precisely what is meant.Google Scholar

27 Illustrations in Hachmann, Goten u. Skandinavien, 183–84 with n. 4. Germans basically resembled other Europeans. For an appropriate case of chauvinistic Anglo-Saxon “continuity,” see MacDougall, Hugh A., Racial Myth in English History. Trojans, Teutons, and Anglo-Saxons (Hanover, N.H., 1982), 77–78. The Anglo-Saxonism cultivated in 19th-century England (often in a context of superiority to the Irish, MacDougall, 97–99) crossed the Atlantic to help convince Americans to become imperialists: Richard Hofstadter, The Paranoid Style in American Politics (New York, 1967), 181–82.Google Scholar

28 “Got. Stud. I,” 23.Google Scholar

29 E. G. Stanley, The Search for Anglo-Saxon Paganism (Cambridge, 1975), 91 [originally, with different paging, in Notes and Queries 209 (1964) and 210 (1965)]. Stanley's comment is in connection with a study by R. I. Page that subverts the “Germanentum” approach, by rejecting the practice of explaining Anglo-Saxon artifacts by “supporting evidence … from Scandinavia.” Graus, Volk, Herrscher, 16–17: “[To nineteenth-century legal history] all fundamentals, in particular the constitution, were common well into the Middle Ages. In the nineteenth century, of course, this ideal image of Germandom was … first worked out by … Germanic philology (Germanistik); only then was it taken over by historians”; further (23): “der Begriff ‘germanisch’ völlig unbestimmt ist und auf eine rein gelehrte Konstruktion der Germanistik zurückgeht.”Google Scholar

30 Third-century Roman announcements of victory over the barbarians of the lower Danube refer to Germans until the 260s, when “Victoria Gothica” appears, without wholly dislodging obsolete references to Germans (or to Persians as Parthians): Cambridge Ancient History, ed. Cook, S. A. et al., vol. 12 (Cambridge, 1939), 145, 148 with n. 2, 322.Google Scholar

31 “Origo et religio,” 22–23.Google Scholar

32 See, Von, Kontinuitätstheorie, 8.Google Scholar

33 “Überlegungen II,” 29; earlier, “Theogonie,” 90–92. Graus (Volk, Herrscher, 318 n. 86) discusses with approval evidence for tribes derived from a god; he holds that, where such ideas prevailed, they blocked belief in the divine origins of the tribal king.Google Scholar

34 Picard, , Germanisches Sakralkönigtum? 36, also 38. Cf. “Got. Stud. III,” 252–54.Google Scholar

35 Heather, Peter, “Cassiodorus and the Rise of the Amals: Genealogy and the Goths under Hun Domination,” Journal of Roman Studies 79 (1989): 103–28, at 110, “Gapt … is met elsewhere as a personification of Woden.” “Elsewhere” in surviving evidence demands a jump of a half millennium.Google Scholar

36 See my review of Goten 2, in Speculum 57 (1982): 444–47. Jordanes, Getica, ed. Mommsen, T., MGH Auctores antiquissimi 5, part 1 (Berlin, 1882), 53–138. Mommsen's edition is not superseded by that of Francesco Giunta and Antonino Grillone, Fonti per la storia d'Italia, 117 (Rome, 1991); see my review in Gnomon 67 (1995): 227–29.Google Scholar

37 Jordanes was definitely asked to abbreviate a history of the Goths by Cassiodorus. Because the Cassiodoran history is lost, the extent of Jordanes's dependence is uncertain and open to dispute. For the majority, maximalist view that Jordanes owes almost everything to Cassiodorus, see n. 48 below. Minimalist views in Walter Goffart, The Narrators of Barbarian History, A.D. 550–800: Jordanes, Gregory of Tours, Bede, and Paul the Deacon (Princeton, 1988), 31–42, 58–62. Brian Croke (“Cassiodorus and the Getica of Jordanes,” Classical Philology 82 [1987]: 117–34) also emphasizes the distinctiveness of the two authors.Google Scholar

38 Listed in my review (n. 36 above), 445. “Origo Gothica” appears to occur first in “Got. Stud. II,” 304, 307, etc.Google Scholar

39 Goten 2, 32Google Scholar

40 See, Von, Kontinuitätstheorie, 9: “die altertumskundlische Sichtweise die überlieferten Objekte nur als Mittel zur Rekonstruktion nicht überlieferter Objekte benutzt….”Google Scholar

41 The title appears to have been suggested by the Cassiodoran phrase quoted in n. 47 below.Google Scholar

42 S. J. B. Barnish, “The Genesis and Completion of Cassiodorus's Gothic History,” Latomus 43 (1984): 336–61; Croke, “Cassiodorus and the Getica” (n. 37 above); Heather, “Cassiodorus and the Rise of the Amals,” 103–28, and idem, Goths and Romans, 332–489 (Oxford, 1991), 3–47; Goffart, Narrators (n. 37 above). A list of earlier criticism is in the Giunta and Grillone edition (n. 36 above), xli–xlvii. I point out in Narrators (24 n. 19) that the teaching on Jordanes found in Wattenbach-Levison (Deutschlands Geschichtsquellen im Mittelalter. Vorzeit und Karolinger [Weimar, 1951], 75–81) merely copies the Wattenbach edition of 1885. Cf. “Überlegungen I,” nn. 20, 24, 44; H. Goths, 378 n. 22; “Überlegungen II,” 26 n. 47.Google Scholar

43 Cf. “Origo et religio,” 20 n. 7, 36; Reich u. Germanen, 41.Google Scholar

44 Goffart, , Narrators, 30–31, 38–39 (I do not try to specify oral sources). Different views: H. Goths, 324; Heather, Goths and Romans, 5–6, 61–67.Google Scholar

45 Reich u. Germanen, 58. For a theory of how Cassiodorus assembled his history, “Theogonie,” 80–81.Google Scholar

46 “Überlegungen I,” 490.Google Scholar

47 The assumption is that Jordanes equated the fate of the Goths with that of their ruling family. The final sentence of the extract, whatever it means, hinges on a line by Cassiodorus (n. 64 below) to the effect that “originem Gothicam historiam fecit esse Romanam.”Google Scholar

48 Similar, relaxed assessments are discussed in Goffart, Narrators, 23–26, 30–31. The notion that the Getica advocates “a compromise between the Gothic gens and the Roman Empire” retains luster from having been argued by Arnaldo Momigliano in a brilliant study, “Cassiodorus and the Italian Culture of His Time,” British Academy, Proceedings 41 (1955): 207–45, reprint Secondo Contributo all storia degli studi classici e del mondo antico (Rome, 1980), 191–231; cf. Goffart, Narrators, 25, 70–73, 97. Few still subscribe to this thesis; cf. H. Goths, 358; Giunta and Grillone develop a new variation (n. 36 above, xxxi, xv-xvi). Jordanes's history was written after the Gothic kingdom was suppressed (Jordanes dates the suppression 540; Totila, well known to Jordanes but not in the Getica, was disregarded as lacking legitimacy, like all Gothic kings after Vitiges — in keeping with Byzantine, not Gothic, notions of legality). Compromise was irrelevant because no one was left after 540 for Constantinople to compromise with.Google Scholar

49 Date of Cassiodorus's history, Goffart, Narrators, 32–35; date of Jordanes's dual history, 97–101. Cf. Heather, Goths and Romans, 47–49.Google Scholar

50 For Jordanes's relation to Cassiodorus's text, Goffart, Narrators, 25–31, 58–62. Instances of Jordanes very probably copying Cassiodorus can be shown; but, for lack of the original, omissions necessarily go undetected: they matter very much. Cf. Heather, Goths and Romans, 51. The difference made by twenty years: Narrators, 22, 28–29, 99–102; cf. Heather, 51. Jordanes reports the Italian situation after 540 in his Roman history. In the Getica (¶313), all interest in Italy evaporates after the initial conquest. Applause for the conquerors: Getica ¶314–15. The idea that Jordanes's Constantinopolitan enthusiasm did not affect the narrative of earlier Gothic history is implausible; his 550s bias stood in the way of a servile, self-effacing reproduction of Cassiodorus's account. Justinian had reason to be a more fervent Amal legitimist than the Goths were; Byzantium (disregarding the defunct Western Empire and the Roman senate) was the rightful successor of the Ostrogothic and Vandal rulers and therefore had a tangible interest in appropriating their past. The legitimism of Jordanes is Byzantine, unrelated to belief in Germanic sacral dynasties.Google Scholar

51 For the interpolation in brackets, Treasures, 36.Google Scholar

52 “Hist. Ethnography,” 310–11; also, Reich u. Germanen, 58–59.Google Scholar

53 Jordanes's full title is “De origine actibusque Getarum,” paralleling the title of the included Roman history, “De summa temporum vel origine actibusque gentis Romanorum.” Jordanes refers to “duodecem Senatoris [i.e., Cassiodori] volumina de origine actusque Getarum ab olim et usque nunc per generationes regesque descendentem” (ed. Mommsen, 1:53). Jordanes calls the Romans a “gens” but not the Goths; cf. Hans Meßmer, Hispania-Idee und Gotenmythos, Geist und Werk der Zeiten, 5 (Zurich, 1960), 42. The more authoritative title for Cassiodorus's work, namely, “historia Gothica,” is in the well known Anecdoton Holderi, MGH Auct. ant., 12:vi; cited here from Fridh, A. J., ed., CCL 96 (Turnhout, 1973), vi: “scripsit praecipiente Theoderico rege historiam Gothicam originem eorum et loca mores XII libris enuntians.”Google Scholar

54 Josephus, , Antiquitates Iudeorum 1.2.6; Amm. Marc. 15.9–12, 22.15–16. There were Greek ethnographies of undisputably civilized peoples, notably, the Persians, Babylonians, and Egyptians; being aliens, “barbarians,” vis-à-vis the Greeks did not exclude being civilized: Charles William Fornara, The Nature of History in Ancient Greece and Rome (Berkeley, 1983), 12, 14; Elias J. Bickerman, “Origines gentium,“ Classical Philology 47 (1952): 65–81, at 67–68 (origins of Rome!). Bickerman's article makes it obvious that Greeks inquired into the beginnings of all manner of Mediterranean peoples which were not “primitive” when written about (Cretans, Phoenicians, etc.).Google Scholar

55 Fornara (Nature of History, 12–16) recognizes only ethnography as a genre. Herbert Grundmann (Geschichtsschreibung im Mittelalter, 2d ed. [Göttingen, 1965], 12–17, 7) has “Volksgeschichte (Origo gentis)” follow directly after “Volkssprachliche Geschichtsdichtung”; and he derives the medieval “Gattung” from the ancient (see n. 57 below). There is a difference, perhaps overlooked by Grundmann, between a subject and a genre. Bickerman, (“Origines gentium”) did not claim to write about a genre and was not concerned with this aspect of the matter. About the four “rubrics” of ethnography in Hecateus, see Fornara, , Nature of History, 14. Cassiodorus's “loca” and “mores” (n. 53 above) precisely fit; the Hecatean equivalent of his “origo” seems to be “the dynastic succession of [the] rulers.”Google Scholar

56 Use of foreign information: Bickerman, “Origines gentium,” 68–76. The acceptance of foreign tales by Greek ethnographers is stressed by Formara (Nature of History, 15), without contradicting Bickerman's argument. Was the practice of Latin authors a “policy” (binding subsequent authors) or merely a pragmatic preference? I do not see a precedent compelling Cassiodorus or Jordanes to seek out native traditions and give them priority, or, for that matter, to keep them from doing so.Google Scholar

57 Although Grundmann and other commentators speak about medieval “Volksgeschichte” or “histoires nationales” as though they were a literary type (Gattung), their term is modern — sometimes useful to historiography, but by no means obligatory. C. van Caeneghem refers to “Nationalgeschichten der germanischen Stämme,” advising caution about their accounts of the past and recommending their testimony about recent times: Kurze Quellenkunde des westeuropäischen Mittelalters (Göttingen, 1964); he does not claim that they are a genre and indicates that some are akin to church history. Bernard Guenée, Histoire et culture historique dans l'Occident médiéval (Paris, 1980), 273: history of a people as a theme, not a genre. See also Goffart, , Narrators, 3–6. The genre of historia recently defined by Karl Ferdinand Werner better suits the works in question and, unlike “origo gentis,” the term had meaning for medieval historians: “Gott, Herrscher und Historiograph. Der Geschichtsschreiber als Interpret des Wirkens Gottes in der Welt und Ratgeber der Könige (4. bis 12. Jahrhundert),” in Hehl, Ernst-Dieter, Seibert, Hubertus, and Staab, Franz, eds., Deus qui mutat tempora: Menschen und Institutionen im Wandel des Mittelalters. Festschrift für Alfons Becker zu seinem Fünfundsechzigsten Geburtstag (Sigmarigen, 1987), 1–31.Google Scholar

58 Paul the Deacon in the eighth century is the first historian to use Jordanes's Getica. Those who did not include Gregory of Tours, the Fredegar chronicle and Liber historiae Francorum, Isidore, and Bede. Meßmer (Hispania-Idee, 86) also has Cassiodorus “found” national histories. Grundmann (Geschichtsschreibung, 14) claims that “Cassiodors Vorbild ist unverkennbar” in Isidore's history. No one who has actually consulted Isidore would endorse this opinion; the only resemblance — possibly significant, but I find it hard to think so — is that both write histories of “gentes.”Google Scholar

59 Cf. H. Goths, 4.Google Scholar

60 A fourth meaning in Reich u. Germanen, 289.Google Scholar

61 Fornara presents universal history as a particularly Greek genre, and holds that the only Roman history with universality is that of the Antiochene Greek, Ammianus Marcelinus: Nature of History, 42–46. Along these lines, Goffart, Narrators, 36–37 with nn. 73–74, 78.Google Scholar

62 “Hist. Ethnography,” 311.Google Scholar

63 E.g., Variae 1.3–4, 42–43, 2.2–3, 15–16, 8.9–10, 13–14, 16–17, 18–19, 21–22.Google Scholar

64 Ibid. 9.25.4–6, ed. Mommsen, , 291–93: “tetendit se etiam in antiquam prosapiem nostram, lectione discens quod vix maiorum notitia cana retinebat. iste reges Gothorum longa oblivione celatos latibulo vetustatis eduxit. iste Hamalos cum generis sui claritate restituit, evidenter ostendens in septimam decimam progeniem stirpem nos habere regalem. originem Gothicam historiam fecit esse Romanam, colligens quasi in unam coronam germen floridum quod per librorum campos passim fuerat ante dispersum. perpendite, quantum vos in nostra laude dilexerit, qui vestri principis nationem docuit ab antiquitate mirabilem, ut, sicut fuistis a maioribus vestris semper nobiles aestimati, ita vobis antiqua regum progenies inperaret. cedimus, patres conscripti, et si adhuc referre volumus, beneficia collata superantur.” My translation is adapted from that of Thomas Hodgkin, Italy and Her Invaders, 8 vols. (London, 1892–99), 1:26–27.Google Scholar

It is argued that the seventeen Amal kings mentioned by Cassiodorus are linked to the kings of Alba down to Romulus. See Wolfram, Herwig, Intitulatio, I. Lateinische Königs- und Fürstentitel bis zum Ende des 8. Jahrhunderts, MIöG Erganzungsband 21 (Graz, 1967): 98–103; also, “Überlegungen I,” 492; H. Goths, 324 with n. 451; Treasures, 42; Reich u. Germanen, 290; Heather, “Cassiodorus and the Amals,” 109, and Goths and Romans, 21. The Alban kings, however, do not number seventeen: see Holzapfel, Ludwig, Römische Chronologie (Leipzig, 1885), 259–80. For a comparison of the lists of Livy, Ovid, and Dionysius, see Smith, William, Dictionary of Greek and Roman Biography and Mythology, 3 vols. (rprt New York, 1967), 3:927, s.v. “Silvius.” Servius, Virgilii carmina Comment., ed. Thilo, Georg and Hagen, Hermann, 2 vols. (rprt Hildesheim, 1961), 2:107–10 (to Aen. 6.756): “Albanos reges, qui tredecim fuerunt de Aeneae et Lavinia genere” (the epic names only four). Cassiodorus, Chronicon, in MGH Auct. ant. 11:121–22; Jordanes, Romana ¶39, 51, ibid. 5: 5–7. Sixteen is the highest figure that anyone matching Alban and Amal kings could have had in mind; fourteen would have been preferred by readers of Ovid, thirteen by readers of Servius's Commentary to Virgil. The two aberrant texts cited in Intitulatio, 1:101, cannot have been widely known, and one of them, in fact, confirms a sixteen-king list.Google Scholar

65 Instead of Cassiodorus's silence being noticed and explained, the contrary is imaginatively conjured up: Norbert Wagner, “Germanische Namengebung und kirchliches Recht in der Amalerstammtafel,” Zeitschrift für deutsches Altertum und deutsche Literatur 99 (1970): 1–16, at 10, for the Amal genealogy, Cassiodorus used an “Amalatal” in Gothic language and script (cf. H. Goths, 325). According to Barry Baldwin (“Sources for the Getica of Jordanes,” Revue belge de philologie et d'histoire 59 [1981]: 141–46, esp. 144), Cassiodorus at Ravenna was surrounded by persons plying him with non-classical information. See also Reich u. Germanen, 290, and “Theogonie,” 90.Google Scholar

66 Roger Collins stresses that Cassiodorus explicitly mentions literary sources, rather than oral legends: Early Medieval Europe 300–1000 (London, 1991), 99. Cf. H. Goths, 30: regardless of what Cassiodorus may say in the letter, “he nevertheless relied on ‘songs and stories,’ ” i.e., the “carmina,” etc. in Jordanes; similarly, ibid. 324; an earlier position, “Überlegungen I,” 495. Heather (Goths and Romans 6, 63) emphasizes distinctive features of oral material without noticing that most of them also belong to written matter; he is ready (5–6, 61–67) to credit Jordanes's every invocation of native “carmina” or the like. For an illuminating instance of “carmina,” see Robert Curtius, Ernst, European Literature and the Latin Middle Ages, tr. W. R. Trask (New York, 1953), 162.Google Scholar

67 Pace Heather, “Cassiodorus and the Amals,” 127 n. 84, the flower simile is a hackneyed commonplace, not a sign of Jordanes's dependence on Cassiodorus; see Goffart, , Narrators, 38 n. 80.Google Scholar

68 Cassiodorus's letter may have escaped Grundmann (Geschichtsschreibung, 7, 13), who stoutly affirms that, from the “carmina,” Cassiodorus learned the Goths’ origin legend, their state creations between Baltic and Black Seas, and their royal ancestors.Google Scholar

69 Hauck, “Lebensnormen” (n. 5. above), 188, 190–91, 193–96; also, Reich u. Germanen, 40–41.Google Scholar

70 Getica 121–22; Amm. Marc. 31.2.2–12. Filimer earlier appears in Getica ¶26–28. He is a convenient, unsurprising king for this role. The next step in Jordanes's account involves the Huns finding a way out of their remote fastness and into the world of ordinary humans.Google Scholar

71 “Origo et religio,” 30–31.Google Scholar

72 Ibid., 23–24.Google Scholar

73 “Got. Stud. III,” 255–57: “würde es wohl zu weit gehen, die Geschichte von den Hexenweibern selbst als greutungisch-ostrogothische Spezialität aufzufassen. Vielmehr dürfte es sich dabei noch um eine gesamtgotische Überlieferung handeln. Hingegen kann die politischgeschichtliche Interpretation der Haliuru(n)ae als gotische Mütter der Hunnen allein schon aus zeitlichen Gründen nicht zum Motivationshorizont Wulfilas und seiner Helfer gehört haben.” Also (H. Goths, 257), the legend “combines three different chronological layers.”Google Scholar

74 “Origo et religio,” 31.Google Scholar

75 Presumably, Gothic had several words for “witch”; the choice of haliurunna was made to suggest how the Huns got their name.Google Scholar

76 Treasures, 42.Google Scholar

77 Goten 2, 32; earlier, “Theogonie,” 90. Belief in this case relates to the Scandinavian origin of the Goths. As far as I know, no testimony by Theoderic on this subject is recorded. Attachment to Scandinavia is an old story, richly documented for the present century by Hachmann, Goten u. Skandinavien, “Kossinna und der Skandinavientopos des 19. und 20. Jahrhunderts,” and the rest of his chap. 3. Hachmann shows how scholars were influenced not only to endorse Kossinna's long list of migrants from the north, but also added to it (e.g. Lombards: ibid., 175). French historians have been susceptible; e.g. Louis Halphen, “Migration,” in Encyclopaedia of the Social Sciences 10 (1933): 428. For a partial rehabilitation of Kossinna, see Veit, Ulrich, “Ethnic Concepts in German Prehistory: A Case Study on the Relationship between Cultural Identity and Archaeological Objectivity,” in Shennan, Stephen, ed. Archaeological Approaches to Cultural Identity (London, 1989), 35–56.Google Scholar

78 “Origo et religio,” 25; “Überlegungen II,” 27; Treasures, 42.Google Scholar