CHAPTER IX

. THE NORDIC FATHERLAND

213 : 1–23. _Cf._ O. Schrader, 2 and 3; Mathæus Much; Hirt, 1, 2; Zaborowski, 1, pp. 109–110; Peake, 2, pp. 163–167; Feist, 1, p. 14; Taylor, 1; Ripley, p. 127; Ridgeway, 1, p. 373 and the notes to pp. 239 : 16 _seq._, and 253 : 19 of this book. D’Arbois de Jubainville, 4, t. I, pp. ix and 214, gives the date when the Indo-Europeans were united as 2500 B. C. Feist, 5, believes the Nordics were still in their homeland between 2500 and 2000 B. C. This was the transition period from Stone to Bronze in north-middle and eastern Europe. Breasted, _Ancient Times_, says: “It has recently been scientifically demonstrated on the basis, chiefly, of the Amarna tablets and other cuneiform evidence, that the Aryans had by 2000 or 1800 B. C. begun to leave a home on the east or southeast of the Caspian, where they divided into two branches, one going southeast into India, the other southwest into Babylon.” “The first occurrence of Indo-European names is in the Tell-el-Amarna (Egyptian) correspondence,” says Myres, _Dawn of History_, p. 153, “which gives so vivid a picture of Syrian affairs in the years immediately after 1400. They represent chieftains scattered up and down Syria and Palestine, and they include the name of Tushratta, king of the large district of Mitanni beyond Euphrates.... But this is a minor matter; nothing is commoner in the history of migratory peoples than to find a very small leaven of energetic intruders ruling and organizing large native populations without either learning their subjects’ language or improving their own until considerably later, if at all. The Norman princes, for example, bear Teutonic names, Robert, William, Henry; but it is Norman French in which they govern Normandy and correspond with the king of France. All these Indo-European names (mentioned in the tablets), belong to the Iranian group of languages, which is later found widely spread over the whole plateau of Persia.”

214 : 1 _seq._ See pp. 158–159 of this book.

214 : 7 _seq._ Herodotus, IV, 17, 18, 33, 53, 65, 74, etc., for notes on the Scythians. Wheat was cultivated in the southern part of Scythia. Corn was an article of trade, and the loom was used. See also Zaborowski, 1; Ripley; Feist, 5.

214 : 10. Scythians. According to Zaborowski, 1, the Scythians were the earliest known Nordic nomads of Scythia, or southern Russia, from whom no doubt came the Achæans, Cimmerians, etc., and later the Persian conquerors, the leaders of the Kassites and Mitanni, etc. The Sacæ were an eastern branch of the Scythians (and likewise the Massagetæ), who threw off branches into India. Possibly the Wu-Suns and the Epthalites, or White Huns, were eastern offshoots. Owing to the fact that Scythia has been swept time and again by various hordes moving east and west, and has served no doubt as a meeting-ground for Alpines, Nordics and Mongols, these may all, at some period or another, have been called Scythians because they inhabited this little-known territory. But the indications are strongly in favor of the original Scythians being Nordics. It is in this sense that the name is here applied. Minns, _Scythians and Greeks_, and D’Arbois de Jubainville, 4, t. I, are two other authorities who have discussed the Scythians at length.

214 : 11. Cimmerians. See the note to p. 173. On the Persians, see the notes to p. 254. For the Sacæ, the note to p. 259 : 21; for the Massagetæ, the same; for the Kassites, that to p. 239 : 13. These last are Non-Aryan, according to some authors, including Prince, but Hall, _The Ancient History of the Near East_, says they are undeniably Aryans. For the Mitanni see the note to p. 239 : 16.

214 : 26–215 : 3. See p. 161 of this book.

215 : 15. See p. 160 of this book.

215 : 25. Dante Alighieri. It is interesting to know that the name Aligheri is Gothic, a corruption of Aldiger. It belongs to such German names as those which include the word “_ger_,” spear, as in Gerhard, Gertrude, etc. This name came into the family through Dante’s grandmother on the father’s side, a Goth from Ferrara, whose name was Aldigero. With regard to the origin of his grandfather and mother, the attempt to connect him with Roman families is known to be a pure fiction on the part of the Italian biographers, who thought it more glorious to be a Roman than anything else; but his descent from pure Germanic parentage is practically proved, since the grandfather was a warrior, knighted by the emperor Conrad, and Dante himself declares that he belonged to the petty nobility. Even to the beginning of the fifteenth century many Italians are described in old documents as Alemanni, Langobardi, etc., _ex alamanorum genere_, _legibus vivens Langobardorum_, etc. Though the majority of them had adopted Roman law, whereby the documentary evidence of their descent usually disappeared, they were thoroughly Germanic in blood, especially those to whom Rome owes much. See Franz Xaver Kraus, Dante, pp. 21–25, and Savigny, _Geschichte des römischen Rechte im Mittelalter_, I, chap. III.

216 : 1. See the notes to p. 254 : 13–15.

216 : 4. Nordic Sacæ. See the notes to p. 259 : 21.

216 : 9. See the notes to pp. 70 and 242 : 5.

216 : 12. Gibbon, especially vols. III and IV, which contain numerous references, and the note to p. 135 : 25.

216 : 17. Tenney Frank, _Race Mixture in the Roman Empire_, pp. 704 _seq._

217 : 3. Plutarch’s _Life of Pompey the Great_, and his _Life of Cæsar_; also Ferrero, _The Greatness and Decline of Rome_, vol. II, “Cæsar,” chap. VII.

217 : 12. Decline of the Romans and the Punic Wars. Livy, I, XXI _seq._, and Appian, _De rebus hispaniensibus_, and _De bello Annibalico_. Also Pliny, I, and Polybius, I. D’Arbois de Jubainville, 1, section entitled “Les Celtibères pendant la seconde guerre punique,” pp. 44 _seq._, says that Hannibal’s success in Rome was due to the aid of the Celts and the Celtiberians. Hannibal gained much of his army from the Celts of Spain, Gaul, and Cis-Alpine Gaul, as he marched toward Rome.

217 : 16. Social and Servile Wars. Plutarch’s _Lives_ of Fabius Maximus and of Sylla.

217 : 26. See the note to p. 51 : 18.

218 : 16. Tenney Frank, 1 and 2; Dill, 2, book II, chaps. II and III; and 1, book II, chap. I; Myers, _Ancient History_, pp. 498–499, 523–525. Bury, in _A History of the Later Roman Empire_, vol. I, chap. III, makes slavery, oppressive taxation, the importation of barbarians and Christianity the four chief causes of the weakness and failure of the Empire.

Gibbon, vol I, at the end of chap. X, says, in speaking of the extinction of the old Roman families, that only the Calpurnian gens long survived the tyranny of the Cæsars. See the last three or four pages of the chapter. Also Frederick Adams Woods, _The Influence of Monarchs_, p. 295.

219 : 11–220 : 19. Frank, 1, p. 705.

220 : 21. See p. 216 of this book.

221 : 25. Gibbon; Lecky, _The History of European Morals_; and the note to p. 218 : 16.

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