Does the Getica of Jordanes Preserve Genuinely Gothic Traditions?*,1

chapter 7 Making a Gothic History: Does the Getica of Jordanes Preserve Genuinely Gothic Traditions?*,1 The nature of the gentes that destroyed or, as some would prefer, transformed the Roman Empire has been the object of much recent scholarly discussion. How far were these peoples actually created within the Roman world? It is clear that once they entered the empire they took up very many elements of the culture of the empire, most obviously religion and language. An alterna- tive and older view is that the gentes had much longer histories, and that their identities, that is their consciousness of being respectively Goths or Vandals, or Franks, or whatever, had developed well before, in some cases centuries before, they had contact with the Romans, and that their history within the boundaries of the empire was merely a continuation of much longer, scarcely documented history. In this view, the size, importance, and composition of a gens might change a great deal under the impact of historical exigencies. But the cohesion and solidarity of the group was preserved by a body of customs and core traditions that was passed from generation to generation.2 This study is intended to support the second view, that the Goths were a gens when they entered the empire. The nature of these core traditions has been much discussed and their very existence denied. The problem is that that before they entered the empire the gentes were illiterate, and that even after they had come into contact with the Romans and settled inside the empire, our information about them is over- whelmingly derived from Roman sources, which tell us what the Romans thought and felt about these barbarian people, but not what they felt about themselves. This is what makes the Gothic History of Jordanes so interest- ing: it is a history of the Gothic people written by someone who was almost * This article was previously published in Journal of Late Antiquity 4.2 (2011), pp. 185–216. * 1 Although I do not agree with many of his conclusions, W. Goffart’s “Jordanes and his Three ** Histories,” in The Narrators of Barbarian History, Jordanes, Gregory of Tours, Bede and Paul the Deacon (ad 550–800) (Princeton, 1988), 20–111, is basic. 2 So R. Wenskus, Stammesbildung und Verfassung, das Werden der frühmittelalterlichen gentes (Cologne/Graz, 1961). © koninklijke brill nv, leiden, ��5 | doi ��.��63/9789004�895�9_008 102 chapter 7 certainly a Goth.3 Here, if anywhere, we can expect to find traces of the core traditions of the Goths. Goffart and his school, however, have produced plau- sible arguments that we should have no such expectations, that the Getica do not in fact include any core traditions. Against that view, this study argues that some genuine traditions about the history of the Goths before they entered the empire can indeed be found in the Getica. But first there is a question: Where did Jordanes find his material? How Close is Jordanes’ Getica to the Origines of Cassiodorus? Jordanes tells us that he has been asked to condense in his own style, in a small book, the twelve books4 of a history of the Getae written by Cassiodorus Senator, which describes the origins and deeds of the Goths from the earliest times to the present day descending through the generation of kings. A very hard task.5 We have a text that gives a brief summary. According to this source, Cassiodorus told of the origins, habitations (loca), and character (mores) of the Goths.6 These three themes do indeed run through Jordanes’ Gothic history. The question remains whether Jordanes was in a position to produce a summary that was close to the original. He tells us that he did not have a copy of 3 It has been questioned whether Jordanes was of Gothic descent. But his claim that he has not included inauthentic material favoring the people that he was writing about (“praedictae gentis quasi ex ipsa trahenti originem”) must surely mean that he has written without favorit- ism about his own people. For quasi in sense of ut pote without any implication of condition- ality see also Getica 103. Alanoviiamuth, the name of Jordanes’ father (unless corrupted), and the fact that Jordanes’ grandfather was notarius of Candac, a leader of the Alans, and that Jordanes himself had been notarius of a nephew of Candac (Getica 266), show that he also had close links with the Alans. 4 How long were the twelve books? Goffart, “Jordanes,” 39, points out that if the books were of the same length as the ten books of Eutropius, Cassiodorus’ Origins would have been four times as long as the Getica. If his books were as long as the books of Livy, Cassiodorus’ work would have been very much longer still, and Jordanes’ task of abbreviation correspondingly harder. 5 “Getica ut nostris verbis duodecem volumina Senatoris de origine actusque Getharum ab olim et usque nunc per generationes regesque coartem.” On the identification of Getae and Gothi see below nn. 73–77. Jordanes accepts this identification. His history is indeed entitled De origine actibusque Getarum or short Getica, but he himself generally describes the gens as Gothi. 6 Ordo generis Cassiodori, CCSI. 96 (Turnhout, 1973), vi; tr. in S.J.B. Barnish, Cassiodorus: Variae (Liverpool, 1992) xxxvi–xxxvii..

Load more