On the Name and Nation of the Dacian King Decebalus, With Notices of the Agathyrsi and Alani
Read Before the Philological Society, April 17th 1854
The text of Herodotus places the Agathyrsi in Transylvania (there or thereabouts). (See F. W. Newman On Scythia and the surrounding Countries, according to Herodotus, Philological Society’s Proceedings, vol. i. p. 77.)
The subsequent authors speak of them as a people who painted (tattooed?) their bodies; the usual epithet being picti.
The same epithet is applied to the Geloni; also a population of the Scythia of Herodotus.
For accurate knowledge the locality of the Agathyrsans was too remote—too remote until, at least, the date of the Dacian wars; but the Dacian wars are, themselves, eminently imperfect in their details, and unsatisfactory in respect to the authorities for them.
There is every reason, then, for a nation in the locality of the Agathyrsi remaining obscure—in the same predicament (say) with the Hyperborei, or with the occupants of Thule.
But there is no reason for supposing the obliteration of the people so called; nor yet for supposing a loss of its name, whether native or otherwise.
Hence, when we get the details of Dacia we may reasonably look out for Agathyrsi.
How far must we expect to find their name unmodified? This depends upon the population through whom the classical writers, whether Latin or Greek, derived it. Now it is submitted, that if we find a notice of them in the fifth century A. D., and that in an account relating to Dacia and Pannonia, the medium has, probably, been different from that through which Herodotus, amongst the Greek colonies of the Black Sea, obtained his accounts. The details of this difference of medium are not very important, and the discussion of them would be episodical to the present paper, if not irrelevant. It is enough to remark, that a difference of medium is probable; and, as a consequence thereof, a difference in the form of the name.
This is preliminary and introductory to the notice of the following passage of Priscus, to whom we owe the account of one of the embassies to Attila—Ὁ πρεσβύτερος ἧρχε τῶν Ἀκατζίρων καὶ τῶν λοιπῶν ἐθνῶν νεμομένων τὴν πρὸς τὸν Πόντον Σκυθικέν. Another form (also in Priscus) is Ἀκατίροι. They are specially called Akatiri Hunni. Jornandes’ form is Acatziri.
Place for place, this gives us the Agathyrsi of Herodotus as near as can be expected; and, name for name it does the same: the inference being that the Akatziri of Priscus are the descendants of the Agathyrsi of Herodotus. Of course, evidence of any kind to the migration, extinction, or change of name on the part of the population in question would invalidate this view. Such evidence, however, has not been produced, nor has the present writer succeeded in finding, though he has sought for it.
Descendants then of the Agathyrsi, and ancestors of the Akatziri may have formed part of the population of Dacia when Domitian and Trajan fought against Decebalus; a part that may have been large or small, weak or powerful, homogeneous with the rest of Dacia or different from it. Assuming it to have been different, it may still have supplied soldiers—even leaders. Decebalus himself may as easily have belonged to the Agathyrsan part of Dacia as to any other. A very little evidence will turn the balance in so obscure a point as the present.
Now, no German and no Slavonic dialects give us either the meaning of the name Decebalus or any name like it. It stands alone in European history. Where does it appear? In the history of the Turks. The first known king of the Turks bears the same name as the last of the Dacians. Dizabulus (Διζαβούλος) was that khan of the Turks of Tartary to whom Justinian sent an embassy when the Avars invaded the Eastern empire.
This (as is freely admitted) is a small fact, if taken alone; but this should not be done. The cumulative character of the evidence in all matters of this kind should be borne in mind, and the value of small facts measured by the extent to which they stand alone, or are strengthened by the coincidence of others. In the latter case they assume importance in proportion to the mutual support they give each other; the value of any two being always more than double that of either taken singly.
On the other hand, each must rest on some separate substantive evidence of its own. To say that Decebalus was an Agathyrsan because the Agathyrsans were Turks, and that the Agathyrsans were Turks because Decebalus was one of them, is illegitimate. There must be some special evidence in each case, little or much.
Now the evidence that the Agathyrsi were Turks lies in the extent to which (a) they were Scythians (Skoloti), and (b) the Scythians (Skoloti) were Turks;—neither of which facts is either universally admitted or universally denied. The present writer, however, holds the Turk character of the Agathyrsi on grounds wholly independent of anything in the present paper; indeed, the suggestion that the Acatziri are Agathyrsi is, not his, but Zeuss’.—(See Die Deutschen and die Nachbarstämme, v. Bulgari, p. 714.)
If Agathyrs- be Akatzir- in some older, what is the latter word in any newer form?—for such there probably is. Word for word, it is probably the same as Khazar, a denomination for an undoubtedly Turk tribe which occurs for the first time in Theophanes:—Τοῦρκοι ἀπὸ τῆς ἐώας οὓς Χαζάρους ὀνομάζουσιν. This is A. D. 626. Whether, however, the same populations were denoted is uncertain. There are certain difficulties in the supposition that they were absolutely identical.
It is not, however, necessary that they should be so. There might be more than one division of a great stock, like the Turk so called. Nay, they might have been populations other than Turk so designated, provided only that there were some Turk population in their neighbourhood so to call them. More than this. The word may be current at the present moment, though, of course, in a modified form. Suppose it to have been the Turk translation of pictus; or rather, suppose the word pictus to be the Latin translation of Agathyrs- (Akatzir-): what would the probable consequence be? Even this, that wherever there was a painted (or tattooed) population in the neighbourhood of any member of the great Turk stock, the name, or something like it, might arise. Be it so. If the members of the same Turk stock lay wide apart, the corresponding painted or tattooed populations lying wide apart also might take the same name.
The details suggested by this line of criticism may form the subject of another paper. In the present, the author hazards a fresh observation—an observation on a population often associated with the Agathyrsi, viz. the Geloni. Seeing that we have such forms as Unni (the Greek form is Οὖννοι, not Οὗννοι) and Chuni (=Huns); Arpi and Carpi; Attuarii and Chattuari, &c.; and seeing the affinity between the sounds of g and k; he believes that the word Geloni may take another form and begin with a vowel (Elôni, Alôni). Seeing that their locality is nearly that of the Alani of a latter period; seeing that the middle syllable in Alani (in one writer at least) is long—ἀλκήεντες Ἀλαῦνοι; seeing that Herodotus, who mentions the Geloni, knows no Alani, whereas the authors who describe the Alani make (with one exception about to be noticed) no mention of the Geloni, he identifies the two populations, Geloni and Alani, or vice versâ. He deduces something more from this root l—n (λ—ν). Let the name for the Alans have reached the Greeks of the Euxine through two different dialects of some interjacent language; let the form it took in Greek have been parisyllabic in one case, whereas it was imparisyllabic in the other, and we have two plurals, one in -οι, as Γέλωνοι, Ἄλαυνοι, Ἄλανοι, and another in -ες, as Γέλωνες, Ἄλαυνες, Ἄλανες,—possible, and even probable, modifications of the original name, whatever that was. Now, name for name, Αλανες comes very near Ελληνες; and in this similarity may lie the explanation of the statement of Herodotus as to the existence of certain Scythian Greeks (ἑλληνες Σκυθαι)—iv. 17. 108.
If so these Scythian Greeks were Alans.
The exception, indicated a few lines above, to the fact of only one author mentioning both Geloni and Alani, is to be found in Ammianus Marcellinus (xxxi. 2. 13. 14). The passage is too long to quote. It is clear, however, that whilst his Alani are spoken of from his own knowledge, his Geloni are brought in from his book-learning, i. e. from Herodotus.
Notes
Note 1
Evidence of any kind to the migration, extinction or change of name on the part of the populations in question would invalidate this view. Such evidence has not been produced &c.—The fuller consideration of the question involved in this statement is to be found in Dr. W. Smith’s Dictionary of Greek and Roman Geography vv. Hunni, Scythia, and Sarmatia.
Note 2
The details suggested by this line of criticism &c.—These are to the effect that in the word Agathyrsi we get an early Turk gloss, of which the history is somewhat curious. It exists, at the present moment in England, having come via Hungary. It exists in Siberia, on the very frontier of the America.
It is the English word Hussar=Khazar. Here we have it in its abbreviated form.
It is the Siberian word Yukahir, Yukazhir, or Yukadzhir.
The “native name of the Yukahiri of Siberia is Andon Domni. The Koriaks call them Atal. Their other neighbours are the Turk Yakuts. Hence it is probable that it is to the Yakut language that the term Yukahir (also Yukadzhir) is referrible. If so, its probable meaning is the same as the Koriak Atal, which means spotted. It applies to the Yukahiri from their spotted deerskin dresses.
Now, south of these same Yakuts, who are supposed to call the Andon Domni by the name Yukahiri (or Yukadzhiri), live a tribe of Tungusians. These are called Tshapodzhir—but not by themselves. By whom? By no one so probably as by the Yakuts. Why? Because they tattoo themselves. If so, it is probable that Yukadzhir and Tshapodzhir are one and the same word; at any rate, a likely meaning in a likely language has been claimed for it.
Let it, then, be considered as a Turk word, meaning spotted, tattooed, painted,—provisionally. It may appear in any part of the Turk area, provided only, that some nation to which one of the three preceding adjectives applies be found in its neighbourhood. It may appear, too, in any state of any Turk form of speech. But there are Turk forms of speech as far distant from the Lena and Tunguska as Syria or Constantinople; and there are Turk glosses as old as Herodotus. One of these the present writer believes to be the word Agathyrsi, being provided with special evidence to shew that the nation so called were either themselves Turks or on a Turk frontier. Now, the Agathyrsi are called the picti Agathyrsi; and it is submitted to the reader that the one term is the translation of the other—the words Agathyrs (also Akatzir), Yukadzhir, and Tshapodzhir, being one and the same.”—From the author’s Native Races of the Russian Empire.