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Revision as of 19:11, 29 January 2007
Getae (singular Geton) was the name by which ancient writers referred to a Thracian tribe living beside the Danube, especially south of the river in what is today northern Bulgaria, but also in the Muntenian plain and in Northern Dobruja.[1]
There is dispute among historians regarding the nature of the relations of the Getae with the Dacians. At a certain point in Romanian historiography[2], the expression "Geto-Dacians" was coined to suggest the existence of a common ethnical identity. One of the elements to support this theory was found in Strabo, who wrote in his Geographia about the two tribes speaking the same language[1]. Justin states the Dacians are the successors of the Getae.[3]. In his Roman history, Cassius Dio argues that the Dacians are "either Getae or Thracians of Dacian race" (51.22)[2] but also details he calls the Dacians with the name used "by the natives themselves and also by the Romans" and he is "not ignorant that some Greek writers refer to them as Getae, whether that is the right form or not". (67.6)[3].
The Romanian historian of ideas and historiographer Lucian Boia argues the ancient writers distinguished among the two people, treating them as two distinct groups of the Thracian ethnos.[1][2] Boia contends that it would be naive to assume Strabo knew the Thracian dialects so well.[1][2] He also stresses that other ancient authors cited Strabo indiscriminately.[2]
According to Herodotus (4.93), the Getae were "the noblest as well as the most just of all the Thracian tribes." When the Persians, led by Darius the Great, campaigned against the Scythians, the Thracian tribes in the Balkans surrendered to Darius on his way to Scythia, and only the Getae offered resistance (Herod. 4.93).
One episode from the history of the Getae is attested by several ancient writers (Strabo[4], Pausanias[5], Diodorus Siculus). When the king of Macedon, Lysimachus, tried to subdue the Getae living north of Danube he was defeated by them. The Getae king, Dromichaetes, took him prisoner but he treated him well and convinced Lysimachus there is more to gain as an ally than as an enemy of the Getae and released him.
The Getae's two principal[citation needed] gods were Zalmoxis and Gebeleixis.
- "This same people, when it lightens and thunders, aim their arrows at the sky, uttering threats against the god; and they do not believe that there is any god but their own." - Herodotus, 4.94.
Pliny the Elder in his Naturalis Historia mentions[6] a tribe called the Tyragetae, apparently a Daco-Thracian tribe[citation needed] who dwelt by the river Tyras (the Dniester). Their tribal name appears to be a combination of Tyras and Getae.
At the close of the fourth century CE, Claudian, court poet to the emperor Honorius and the patrician Stilicho, habitually uses the ethnonym Getae to refer poetically[citation needed] to the Visigoths. The Getae were also assumed to be the ancestors of the Goths by Jordanes in his Getica written at the middle of the 6th century.
See also
References
- ^ a b c Boia, Lucian (2004). Romania: Borderland of Europe. Reaktion Books. pp. p.43. ISBN 1-86189-103-2.
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has extra text (help) - ^ a b c d Boia, Lucian (2001). History and Myth in Romanian Consciousness. Central European University Press. pp. p.14, 184. ISBN 9639116971.
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has extra text (help) - ^ Justin, Epitome of Pompeius Trogus: "Daci quoque suboles Getarum sunt" (The Dacians as well are a scion of the Getae)