Jordanes

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Jordanes (also: Jornandes , Jordanis and Iordanes , Iordanis ; † after 552) was a late antique Roman - Gothic scholar and historian of the 6th century who wrote a history of the Goths .

Life

Little is known about Jordanes' life. He apparently came from the Balkans and mastered Latin as well as Greek . From his work it can be seen that he had contacts with the senatorial upper class of the Eastern Roman Empire . Before he began to write down his works, he worked as a secretary (notarius) of a high-ranking Roman general, the magister militum per Thraciam .

Works

The Ostrogoth king Theodoric the Great , who ruled Italy in the early 6th century, commissioned the Roman senator Cassiodorus to write down the history of the Goths around 520 . This work in 12 books was published only after Theodoric's death (526). Knowing this work, which he said he was only able to see for three days, Jordanes wrote his own, greatly abridged version in Constantinople around the middle of the century and added some other sources (including Ablabius ) and current events - meanwhile the Eastern Roman Emperor Justinian had waged two wars against the Goths, and the conquest of Italy was nearing completion. Jordanes' version, De origine actibusque Getarum ( Theodor Mommsen ), Getica for short , was preserved for posterity; Cassiodor's Gothic story, however, was lost.

Jordanes' Getica written in Latin (apparently completed by March 31, 551 and published in 551/52) is one of the most important sources of Gothic history. However, there are several problems associated with the work. When evaluating the Getica , for example, it should be noted that political reasons played a role in its writing: On the one hand, the monopoly of Gothic history by the Amal Ostrogoths, which was probably already laid out by Cassiodorus . On the other hand, the attempt to let Gothic history become part of Roman history; In this sense, Jordanes wrote not from a Gothic, but rather from an (Eastern) Roman perspective. Modern scholars, especially Arne Søby Christensen, Peter J. Heather and Michael Kulikowski, have pointed out the difficulties of using the Getica as a source for Gothic history, especially for the early days.

Jordanes claims, for example, that the Goths originally came from Scandinavia (probably based on Cassiodorus). However, it is a topos ; archeologically, his presentation, according to which there has been a major migration and which has also been accepted by modern research for a long time, finds no support according to the current state of science. Jordanes also says that the Goths are identical to the Geten (a Thracian tribe ) , who have long been familiar with the ancient civilizations . Such derivations were typical of Greco-Roman ethnography . This obvious error also explains the title Getica (on the myth of origin see also Origo gentis ). Furthermore, Jordanes, like many other Greek and Roman historians, was of the opinion that the Goths belonged to the Scythian people , but this was also due to the tradition of ancient historiography, according to which the term Scythians was applied to almost all barbaric peoples who lived in the area of ​​the Appeared in the Black Sea. The Amal family tree ( Getica , 79) is also a learned construction that probably goes back to Cassiodorus. Jordanes' account of the later phases of Gothic history, however, is often rated more positively in more recent research than in the past. However, the work undoubtedly contains some factual errors here too.

In research it is also controversial, among other things, to what extent the Getica reproduce the content of Cassiodor's historical work. Walter A. Goffart takes the point of view that the Getica is largely a product of the Jordanes, who used Cassiodorus and other sources, but changed the material and enriched it with his own evaluations, so that a new work was created. This is countered by other researchers that this contradicts the self-assertion of the Jordanes and that there is no compelling reason to doubt the content of the fact that Jordanes primarily served the historical work of Cassiodorus as the main model, although he obviously uses other sources (directly or indirectly) in addition Has. In the latest research, it is assumed, mainly on the basis of style comparisons with the extant texts of Cassiodorus, that Jordanes stuck to his model more closely than he claims in the Getica . However, it is not always possible to make unambiguous statements, especially since it is often uncertain whether borrowings from other authors (such as perhaps from the works of Dexippus ) go back to Jordanes himself or whether this was already to be found in the work of Cassiodorus.

Before the Getica , Jordanes also wrote a world chronicle, which was followed by a Roman story from the time of Augustus to the 24th year of the reign of the Eastern Roman emperor Justinian (the so-called Historia Romana ). The latter also had a somewhat older model, presumably (but not definitely) the work of the same name by the younger Symmachus , which, like the Gothic story of Cassiodorus, is lost today and which Jordanes also referred to in the Getica . It is considered likely that the Historia Romana should form a conceptual whole with the Getica .

Bavarians

Jordanes is considered the earliest surviving source in which the natio of the Bavarians is mentioned, namely as neighbors of the Suebi (i.e. Alamanni ), east of the Lech .

Editions / translations

  • Theodor Mommsen (Ed.): Auctores antiquissimi 5.1: Iordanis Romana et Getica. Berlin 1882 ( Monumenta Germaniae Historica , digitized version )
  • Francesco Giunta , Antonino Grillone: Iordanis de origine actibusque Getarum . Istituto Storico Italiano per il Medio Evo, Rome 1991 (Fonti per la Storia d'Italia, 117).
  • Hans-Werner Goetz , Steffen Patzold , Karl-Wilhelm Welwei : The Teutons in the Migration Period. Excerpts from the ancient sources about the Germanic peoples from the middle of the 3rd century to the year 453 AD . Selected sources on German history in the Middle Ages, Freiherr-vom-Stein commemorative edition. Part I. Darmstadt 2006; Part II Darmstadt 2007. [extensive excerpts with German translation]
  • Alexander Heine (Ed.): Jordanis Gotengeschichte with excerpts from his Roman history. Translated by Wilhelm Martens. Dunker, Leipzig 1884; Dyk, Leipzig 1913; Phaidon, Essen / Stuttgart 1985/1986, ISBN 3-88851-076-7 .
  • Jordanes: The Gothic Story . Translated, introduced and explained by Lenelotte Möller . Marix, Wiesbaden 2012, ISBN 978-3-86539-288-6

literature

  • Kai Brodersen : Kings in the Carpathian Arch: On the historical significance of Jordanes' list of rulers. In: Zeitschrift für Siebenbürgische Landeskunde 36, 2013, pp. 129–146, ISSN  0344-3418 .
  • Arne Søby Christensen: Cassiodorus, Jordanes and the History of the Goths. Studies in a Migration Myth . Museum Tusculanum Press, Copenhagen 2002.
  • Brian Croke: Cassiodorus and the Getica of Jordanes . In: Classical Philology 82, 1987, pp. 117ff.
  • Brian Croke: Jordanes and the immediate past . In: Historia 54, 2005, p. 473ff.
  • Walter A. Goffart : The Narrators of Barbarian History (AD 550-800). Jordanes, Gregory of Tours, Bede, and Paul the Deacon. Princeton University Press, Princeton 1988.
  • Peter J. Heather : Goths and Romans . Clarendon, Oxford 1991, pp. 3ff.
  • Michael Kulikowski: Rome's Gothic Wars . Cambridge University Press, Cambridge 2007, p. 49ff.
  • John HWG Liebeschuetz : Making a Gothic History: Does the Getica of Jordanes preserve genuinely Gothic Traditions? . In: Journal of Late Antiquity 4, 2011, pp. 185ff.
  • Johannes Weißensteiner: Cassiodor / Jordanes as historian . In: Anton Scharrer, Georg Scheibelreiter (Eds.), Historiography in the Early Middle Ages . Vienna / Munich 1994, pp. 308-325.

Web links

Wikisource: Jordanes  - Sources and full texts

Remarks

  1. ^ Arne Søby Christensen: Cassiodorus, Jordanes and the History of the Goths . Copenhagen 2002.
  2. ^ Arne Søby Christensen: Cassiodorus, Jordanes and the History of the Goths . Copenhagen 2002, p. 51f.
  3. ^ Arne Søby Christensen: Cassiodorus, Jordanes and the History of the Goths . Copenhagen 2002, p. 230ff.
  4. ^ Arne Søby Christensen: Cassiodorus, Jordanes and the History of the Goths . Copenhagen 2002, p. 124ff.
  5. ^ Walter A. Goffart: The Narrators of Barbarian History. Princeton 1988, p. 64.
  6. ↑ Overview with Johannes Weißensteiner: Cassiodor / Jordanes as historian . In: Anton Scharrer - Georg Scheibelreiter (Ed.), Historiography in the Early Middle Ages . Vienna / Munich 1994, pp. 308-325.
  7. ^ Gunther Martin: Dexipp of Athens. Edition, translation and accompanying studies. Tübingen 2006, p. 63.
personal data
SURNAME Jordanes
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Jornandes; Jordanis; Iordanes; Iordanis
BRIEF DESCRIPTION Eastern Roman historian
DATE OF BIRTH 5th century or 6th century
DATE OF DEATH after 552