On the Original Extent of the Slavonic Area
Read Before the Philological Society, February 8, 1850
The current opinion, that a great portion of the area now occupied by Slavonians, and a still greater portion so occupied in the ninth and tenth centuries, were, in the times of Cæsar and Tacitus, either German, or something other than what it is found to be at the beginning of the period of authentic and contemporary history, has appeared so unsatisfactory to the present writer, that he has been induced to consider the evidence on which it rests. What (for instance) are the grounds for believing that, in the first century, Bohemia was not just as Slavonic as it is now? What the arguments in favour of a Germanic population between the Elbe and Vistula in the second?
The fact that, at the very earliest period when any definite and detailed knowledge of either of the parts in question commences, both are as little German as the Ukraine is at the present moment, is one which no one denies. How many, however, will agree with the present writer in the value to be attributed to it, is another question. For his own part, he takes the existence of a given division of the human race (whether Celtic, Slavonic, Gothic or aught else) on a given area, as a sufficient reason for considering it to have been indigenous or aboriginal to that area, until reasons be shown to the contrary. Gratuitous as this postulate may seem in the first instance, it is nothing more than the legitimate deduction from the rule in reasoning which forbids us to multiply causes unnecessarily. Displacements therefore, conquests, migrations, and the other disturbing causes are not to be assumed, merely for the sake of accounting for assumed changes, but to be supported by specific evidence; which evidence, in its turn, must have a ratio to the probability or the improbability of the disturbing causes alleged. These positions seem so self-evident, that it is only by comparing the amount of improbabilities which are accepted with the insufficiency of the testimony on which they rest, that we ascertain, from the extent to which they have been neglected, the necessity of insisting upon them.
The ethnological condition of a given population at a certain time is primâ facie evidence of a similar ethnological condition at a previous one. The testimony of a writer as to the ethnological condition of a given population at a certain time is also primâ facie evidence of such a condition being a real one; since even the worst authorities are to be considered correct until reasons are shown for doubting them.
It now remains to see how far these two methods are concordant or antagonistic for the area in question; all that is assumed being, that when we find even a good writer asserting that at one period (say the third century) a certain locality was German, whereas we know that at a subsequent one (say the tenth) it was other than German, it is no improper scepticism to ask, whether it is more likely that the writer was mistaken, or that changes have occurred in the interval; in other words, if error on the one side is not to be lightly assumed, neither are migrations, &c. on the other. Both are likely, or unlikely, according to the particular case in point. It is more probable that an habitually conquering nation should have displaced an habitually conquered one, than that a bad writer should be wrong. It is more likely that a good writer should be wrong than that an habitually conquered nation should have displaced an habitually conquering one.
The application of criticism of this sort materially alters the relations of the Celtic, Gothic, Roman and Slavonic populations, giving to the latter a prominence in the ancient world much more proportionate to their present preponderance as a European population than is usually admitted.
Beginning with the south-western frontier of the present Slavonians, let us ask what are the reasons against supposing the population of Bohemia to have been in the time of Cæsar other than what it is now, i. e. Slavonic.
In the first place, if it were not so, it must have changed within the historical period. If so, when? No writer has ever grappled with the details of the question. It could scarcely have been subsequent to the development of the Germanic power on the Danube, since this would be within the period of annalists and historians, who would have mentioned it. As little is it likely to have been during the time when the Goths and Germans, victorious everywhere, were displacing others rather than being displaced themselves.
The evidence of the language is in the same direction. Whence could it have been introduced? Not from the Saxon frontier, since there the Slavonic is Polish rather than Bohemian. Still less from the Silesian, and least of all from the Bavarian. To have developed its differential characteristics, it must have had either Bohemia itself as an original locality, or else the parts south and east of it.
We will now take what is either an undoubted Slavonic locality, or a locality in the neighbourhood of Slavonians, i. e. the country between the rivers Danube and Theiss and that range of hills which connect the Bakonyer-wald with the Carpathians, the country of the Jazyges. Now as Jazyg is a Slavonic word, meaning speech or language, we have, over and above the external evidence which makes the Jazyges Sarmatian, internal evidence as well; evidence subject only to one exception, viz. that perhaps the name in question was not native to the population which it designated, but only a term applied by some Slavonic tribe to some of their neighbours who might or might not be Slavonic. I admit that this is possible, although the name is not of the kind that would be given by one tribe to another different from itself. Admitting, however, this, it still leaves a Slavonic population in the contiguous districts; since, whether borne by the people to whom it was applied or not, Jazyg is a Slavonic gloss from the Valley of the Tibiscus.
Next comes the question as to the date of this population. To put this in the form least favourable to the views of the present writer, is to state that the first author who mentions a population in these parts, either called by others or calling itself Jazyges, is a writer so late as Ptolemy, and that he adds to it the qualifying epithet Metanastæ (Μετανάσται), a term suggestive of their removal from some other area, and of the recent character of their arrival on the Danube. Giving full value to all this, there still remains the fact of primary importance in all our investigations on the subject in question, viz. that in the time of Ptolemy (at least) there were Slavonians on (or near) the river Theiss.
At present it is sufficient to say that there are no à priori reasons for considering these Jazyges as the most western of the branch to which they belonged, since the whole of the Pannonians may as easily be considered Slavonic as aught else. They were not Germans. They were not Celts; in which case the common rules of ethnological criticism induce us to consider them as belonging to the same class with the population conterminous to them; since unless we do this, we must assume a new division of the human species altogether; a fact, which, though possible, and even probable, is not lightly to be taken up.
So much for the à priori probabilities: the known facts by no means traverse them. The Pannonians, we learn from Dio, were of the same class with the Illyrians, i. e. the northern tribes of that nation. These must have belonged to one of three divisions; the Slavonic, the Albanian, or some division now lost. Of these, the latter is not to be assumed, and the first is more probable than the second. Indeed, the more we make the Pannonians and Illyrians other than Slavonic, the more do we isolate the Jazyges; and the more we isolate these, the more difficulties we create in a question otherwise simple.
That the portion of Pannonia to the north of the Danube (i. e. the north-west portion of Hungary, or the valley of the Waag and Gran) was different from the country around the lake Peiso (Pelso), is a position, which can only be upheld by considering it to be the country of the Quadi, and the Quadi to have been Germanic;—a view, against which there are numerous objections.
Now, here re-appears the term Daci; so that we must recognise the important fact, that east of the Jazyges there are the Dacians (and Getæ) of the Lower, and west of the Jazyges the Daci of the Upper Danube. These must be placed in the same category, both being equally either Slavonic or non-Slavonic.
a. Of these alternatives, the first involves the following real or apparent difficulty, i. e. that, if the Getæ are what the Daci are, the Thracians are what the Getæ are. Hence, if all three be Slavonic, we magnify the area immensely, and bring the Slavonians of Thrace in contact with the Greeks of Macedonia. Granted. But are there any reasons against this? So far from there being any such in the nature of the thing itself, it is no more than what is actually the case at the present moment.
b. The latter alternative isolates the Jazyges, and adds to the difficulties created by their ethnological position, under the supposition that they are the only Slavonians of the parts in question; since if out-lyers to the area (exceptional, so to say), they must be either invaders from without, or else relics of an earlier and more extended population. If they be the former, we can only bring them from the north of the Carpathian mountains (a fact not in itself improbable, but not to be assumed, except for the sake of avoiding greater difficulties); if the latter, they prove the original Slavonic character of the area.
The present writer considers the Daci then (western and eastern) as Slavonic, and the following passage brings them as far west as the Maros or Morawe, which gives the name to the present Moravians, a population at once Slavonic and Bohemian:—“Campos et plana Jazyges Sarmatæ, montes vero et saltus pulsi ab his Daci ad Pathissum amnem a Maro sive Duria... tenent.”—Plin. iv. 12.
The evidence as to the population of Moravia and North-eastern Hungary being Dacian, is Strabo’s Γέγονε... τῆς χόρας μερισμὸς συμμένων παλαιοῦ· τοὺς μὲν γὰρ Δάκους προσαγορεύουσι, τοὺς δὲ Γέτας, Γέτας μὲν πρὸς τὸν Πόντον κεκλιμένους, καὶ πρὸς τὲν ἕω, Δάκους δὲ τοὺς εἰς τἀνάντια πρὸς Γερμανίαν καὶ τὰς τοῦ Ἴστρου πήγας.—From Zeuss, in vv. Getæ, Daci.
In Moravia we have as the basis of argument, an existing Slavonic population, speaking a language identical with the Bohemian, but different from the other Slavonic languages, and (as such) requiring a considerable period for the evolution of its differential characters. This brings us to Bohemia. At present it is Slavonic. When did it begin to be otherwise? No one informs us on this point. Why should it not have been so ab initio, or at least at the beginning of the historical period for these parts? The necessity of an answer to this question is admitted; and it consists chiefly (if not wholly) in the following arguments;—a. those connected with the term Marcomanni; b. those connected with the term Boiohemum.
a. Marcomanni.—This word is so truly Germanic, and so truly capable of being translated into English, that those who believe in no other etymology whatever may believe that Marc-o-manni, or Marchmen, means the men of the (boundaries) marches; and without overlooking either the remarks of Mr. Kemble on the limited nature of the word mearc, when applied to the smaller divisions of land, or the doctrine of Grimm, that its primary signification is wood or forest, it would be an over-refinement to adopt any other meaning for it in the present question than that which it has in its undoubted combinations, Markgrave, Altmark, Mittelmark, Ukermark, and the Marches of Wales and Scotland. If so, it was the name of a line of enclosing frontier rather than of an area enclosed; so that to call a country like the whole of Bohemia, Marcomannic, would be like calling all Scotland or all Wales the Marches.
Again, as the name arose on the western, Germanic or Gallic side of the March, it must have been the name of an eastern frontier in respect to Gaul and Germany; so that to suppose that there were Germans on the Bohemian line of the Marcomanni, is to suppose that the march was no mark (or boundary) at all, at least in an ethnological sense. This qualification involves a difficulty which the writer has no wish to conceal; a march may be other than an ethnological division. It may be a political one. In other words, it may be like the Scottish Border, rather than like the Welsh and the Slavono-Germanic marches of Altmark, Mittelmark and Ukermark. At any rate, the necessity for a march being a line of frontier rather than a large compact kingdom, is conclusive against the whole of Bohemia having been Germanic because it was Marcomannic.
b. The arguments founded on the name Boiohemum are best met by showing that the so-called country (home) of the Boii was not Bohemia but Bavaria. This will be better done in the sequel than now. At present, however, it may be as well to state that so strong are the facts in favour of Boiohemum and Baiovarii meaning, not the one Bohemia and the other Bavaria, but one of the two countries, that Zeuss, one of the strongest supporters of the doctrine of an originally Germanic population in Bohemia, applies both of them to the firstnamed kingdom; a circumstance which prepares us for expecting, that if the names fit the countries to which they apply thus loosely, Boiohemum may as easily be Bavaria, as the country of the Baiovarii be Bohemia; in other words, that we have a convertible form of argument.
Addenda (1859)
(1)
Too much stress is, perhaps, laid on the name Jazyges. The fact of the word Jaszag in Magyar meaning a bowman complicates it. The probability, too, of the word for Language being the name of a nation is less than it is ought to be, considering the great extent to which it is admitted.
(2)
The statements respecting Bohemia are over-strong. Some portion of it was, probably, Marcomannic and German. The greater part, however, of the original Boio-hem-um, or home of the Boii, I still continue to give to the country of the Boian occupants—Baio-var-ii=Bavaria; the word itself being a compound of the same kind as Cant-wære=inhabitants of Kent. (See Zeuss in v. Baiovarii).