Getica

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For other uses, see Getica (disambiguation).

Modern Istanbul, site of ancientConstantinople, capital of the easternRoman Empire, where Jordanes
wroteGetica.

De origine actibusque Getarum (The Origin and Deeds of the Getae/Goths[n 1]),[1] or the Getica,
[2]
written in Late Latin by Jordanes (or Jornandes) in 551,[3] claims to be a summary of a voluminous
account by Cassiodorus of the origin and history of the Gothic people, which is now lost.[4] However,
we cannot assess the extent to which Jordanes actually used the work of Cassiodorus (see the
discussion below on the sources also used by Jordanes). It is significant as the only remaining
contemporaneous resource that gives the full story of the origin and history of the Goths. Another
aspect of this work is its information about the early history and the customs of Slavs.
Contents
[hide]

1 Synopsis of the work

2 Importance and credibility

o

2.1 Similarities with Gutasaga

3 Editions

4 Sources
o

4.1 Jordanes himself

4.2 Cassiodorus

4.3 Authors cited by Getica

5 The late Latin of Jordanes

6 Citations

7 Annotations

8 References

9 External links

10 English translation

Synopsis of the work[edit]

The Getica begins with a geography/ethnography of the North, especially of Scandza (16-24). He
lets the history of the Goths commence with the emigration of Berig with three ships from Scandza
to Gothiscandza (25, 94), in a distant past. In the pen of Jordanes (or Cassiodorus),
Herodotus' Getian demi-god Zalmoxis becomes a king of the Goths (39). Jordanes tells how the
Goths sacked "Troy and Ilium" just after they had recovered somewhat from the war
with Agamemnon (108). They are also said to have encountered the Egyptian pharaoh Vesosis (47).
The less fictional part of Jordanes' work begins when the Goths encounter Roman military forces in
the 3rd century AD. The work concludes with the defeat of the Goths by the Byzantine
general Belisarius. Jordanes concludes the work by stating that he writes to honour those who were
victorious over the Goths after a history of 2030 years.

Importance and credibility[edit]

Because the original work of Cassiodorus has not survived, the work of Jordanes is one of the most
important sources for the period of the migration of the European tribes, and
the Ostrogoths and Visigoths in particular, from the 3rd century CE. Cassiodorus had claimed to
have the Gothic "folk songs" carmina prisca (Latin) as an important source; recent scholarship
regards this as highly questionable.[5][page needed] Its main purpose was to give the Gothic ruling class a
glorious past, to match the past of the senatorial families of Roman Italy.
Jordanes stated that Getae are the same as the Goths, on the testimony of Orosius Paulus.[2] A
controversial passage identifies the ancient people of Venedi mentioned byTacitus, Pliny the
Elder and Ptolemy, with the Slavs of the 6th century. As early as 1844,[6] it has been used by eastern
European scholars to support the idea of the existence of a Slavic ethnicity long before the last
phase of the Late Roman period. Others have rejected this view, based on the absence of concrete
archaeological and historiographical data.[7]
The book is important to some medieval historians because it mentions the campaign in Gaul of
one Riothamus, "King of the Brettones," who was a possible source of inspiration for the early
stories of King Arthur.
One of the major questions concerning the historicity of the work is whether the identities mentioned
are as ancient as stated or date from a later time. The evidence allows a wide range of views, the
most skeptical being that the work is mainly mythological, or if Jordanes did exist and is the author,
that he describes peoples of the 6th century only. According to the latter, his main source's credibility
is questionable for a number of reasons. First, the originality of his main source, Cassiodorus, is
debatable because large part of it consists of culling of ancient Greek and Latin authors for

descriptions of peoples who might have been Goths.[8] Not only that but it seems that Jordanes has
distorted Cassiodorus's narrative by presenting us a cursory abridgement of the latter, mixed with 6th
century ethnic names.[9][10]
Some scholars claim, that while acceptance of Jordanes at face value may be too naive, a totally
skeptical view is not warranted. For example, Jordanes says that the Goths originated in
Scandinavia 1490 BC. Austrian historian Herwig Wolfram, believe that there might be a kernel of
truth in that claim, if we assume that a clan of the Gutae left Scandinavia long before the
establishment of the Amali in the leadership of the Goths. This clan might have contributed to the
ethnogenesis of the Gutones in east Pomerania(see Wielbark culture).[11] Another example is the
name of the king Cniva which David S. Potter thinks is genuine because, since it doesn't appear in
the fictionalized genealogy of Gothic kings given by Jordanes, he must have found it in a genuine
3rd-century source.[12]
Danish scholar Arne Sby Christensen on the other hand claims that the Getica was an entirely
fabricated account, and that the origin of the Goths in the book is a construction based on popular
Greek and Roman myths as well as a misinterpretation of recorded names from Northern Europe.
The purpose of this fabrication, according to Christensen, was to establish a glorious identity for the
peoples that had recently gained power in post-Roman Europe.[13] Canadian scholar Walter
Goffart suggests another incentive: Getica was part of a conscious plan by emperor Justinian and
the propaganda machine at his court. He wanted to affirm that Goths (and their barbarian cousins)
did not belong to the Roman world, thus justifying the claims of the Eastern Roman Empire to the
western part of the latter.[14]

Similarities with Gutasaga[edit]

The migration of the Goths from Scandinavia however bears some similarities with the story of
the Gutasaga, which tells of an emigration, that is associated with the historical migration of
the Goths during the Migration period:
This Thielvar had a son called Hafthi. And Hafthi's wife was called Whitestar. Those two were the
first to settle on Gotland. The first night they slept together she dreamt that three snakes were coiled
in her lap. And it seemed to her that they slid out of her lap. She told this dream to her husband
Hafthi. He interpreted it thus:
"All is bound with bangles, it will be inhabited, this land, and we shall have three sons."
While still unborn, he gave them all names:
"Guti will own Gotland, Graip will be the second, and Gunfiaun third."
These later divided Gotland into three parts, so that Graip the eldest got the northern third, Guti the
middle third, and Gunfjaun the youngest had the south. Then, over a long time, the people
descended from these three multiplied so much that the land couldn't support them all. So they
selected every third person by lot to leave, with the right to keep and take away with them everything
they owned except for their land. They were unwilling to leave then, but went to instead Torsburgen
and settled there. But afterwards the country (i.e. Gotland) would not tolerate them, and drove them
away.
Then they went away to Fr and settled there. They couldn't support themselves in that place, so
they went to a certain island off the coast of Estland, called Dag, and settled there and built a town
that can still be seen. But they couldn't support themselves there either, so they went up the river
Dvina, up through Russia. They went so far that they came to the land of the Greeks (i.e. the
Byzantine empire). They asked leave of the Greek king to stay there while the moon waxed and
waned. The king granted that, thinking it was just for one month. Then after a month, he wanted to
send them away, but they answered that the moon waxed and waned for ever and always, and so
they said they were allowed to stay. Word of this dispute of theirs reached the queen. She said, "My
lord king, you granted them permission to dwell while the moon waxed and waned; now that's for

ever and always, so you can't take it off them." So they settled there, and live there still, and still
have something of our language.
That the Goths should have gone "to the land of the Greeks" is consistent with their first appearance
in classical sources: Eusebius of Caesarea reported that they devastated "Macedonia, Greece,
the Pontus, and Asia" in 263.
The emigration would have taken place in the 1st century AD, and loose contact with their homeland
would have been maintained for another two centuries, the comment that the emigrant's language
"still has something" in common shows awareness of dialectal separation. [citation needed] The events would
have needed to be transmitted orally for almost a millennium before the text was written down.
The mention of the Dvina river is in good agreement with the Wielbark Culture. Historically, the
Goths followed the Vistula, but during the Viking Age, the Dvina-Dniepr waterway succeeded the
Vistula as the main trade route to Greece for the Gutes (or Gotar in standard Old Norse), and it is not
surprising that it also replaced the Vistula in the migration traditions.[15]

Editions[edit]
A manuscript of the text was rediscovered in Vienna in 1442 by the Italian humanist Enea Silvio
Piccolomini.[16] Its editio princeps was issued in 1515 by Konrad Peutinger, followed by many other
editions.[17]
The classic edition is that of 19th-century German classical scholar Theodor
Mommsen (in Monumenta Germaniae Historica, auctores antiqui, v. ii.). The best surviving
manuscript was the Heidelberg manuscript, written in Heidelberg, Germany, probably in the 8th
century, but this was destroyed in a fire at Mommsen's house on July 7, 1880. Subsequently,
another 8th-century manuscript was discovered, containing chapters I to XLV, and is now the 'Codice
Basile' at the Archivio di Stato in Palermo.[18] The next of the manuscripts in historical value are
the Vaticanus Palatinus of the 10th century, and the Valenciennes manuscript of the 9th century.
Jordanes' work had been well known prior to Mommsen's 1882 edition. It was cited in Edward
Gibbon's classic 6 volumes of The History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire (1776), and
had been earlier mentioned by Degoreus Whear (1623) who refers to both Jordanes' De regnorum
ac temporum successione and to De rebus Geticis.[19]

Sources[edit]
In his Preface, Jordanes presents his plan
"...to condense in my own style in this small book the twelve volumes of [Cassiodorus]
Senator on the origin and deeds of the Getae [i.e. Goths] from olden times to the present
day."
Jordanes admits that he did not then have direct access to Cassiodorus's book, and could not
remember the exact words, but that he felt confident that he had retained the substance in its
entirety.[20] He goes on to say that he added relevant passages from Latin and Greek sources,
composed the Introduction and Conclusion, and inserted various things of his own authorship.
Due to this mixed origin, the text has been examined in an attempt to sort out the sources for the
information it presents.

Jordanes himself[edit]
Main article: Jordanes
Former notarius to a Gothic magister militum Gunthigis, Jordanes would have been in a position
to know traditions concerning the Gothic peoples without necessarily relying on anyone else.

However, there is no evidence for this in the text, and some of the instances where the work
refers to carmina prisca can be shown to depend on classical authors.[5]