The reference is unambiguous because of the geographical setting: he cannot possibly be referring to the Caucasian Albanians who also make an appearance in his works: «the kings of both the Iberians and of the Albanians [...] did bring in the Alani against Artabanes by allowing them free transit through their own territory after throwing open the Caspian Gates» (Jewish Antiquities 18:97, in the Loeb translation).

Josephus knew both of these peoples, one in Scythia, the other in the Caucasus, and he did not confuse one with the other. But how recent was the appearance of the name Alani in his days? We will look at his contemporary, Lucan, for clues.

The Spanish born Lucan was a favourite of Nero but when the artistic emperor became jealous of his subject's talents -- so we are told -- Lucan joined Piso's conspiracy. Condemned to death for sedition in 65, he took his own life. He was not quite 26 years old. He left behind an unfinished epic poem, known to posterity variously as Bellum civile or Pharsalia, which his young widow Polla Argentaria preserved and published after the death of Nero. Lucan mentions the Alani twice:

si uos, o Parthi, peterem cum Caspia claustra

et sequerer duros aeterni Martis Alanos,

passus Achaemeniis late decurrere campis

(8:222-224)

[...] quem non violasset Alanus,

non Scytha, non fixo qui ludit in hospite Maurus

(10:454-455).

Susanna Braund offers this free verse translation based on the editions by Housman and Shackleton Bailey:

Do this if, when I headed for the Caspian Gates and chased

the hardy ever-warring Alani, I ever let you freely

race across the Achaemenid plains and never drove you

trembling into Babylon's safety, O Parthians (8:222, page 159).

The man whom the Alan would not have outraged

nor the Scythian nor the Moor who ridicules the wounded stranger (10:454-455, page 219).

The Alani mentioned in these two passages from Lucan apparently dwell in the Caucasus, neighbours of the Parthians. They are specifically not Scythians: in the second passage, Lucan lists the Northern Scythian, then the Southern Moor -- so that we expect his third example, the Alan, to be an Easterner. The Caucasian Albani would fit the context; the name Alan does not meet here the requirements of symetry which ruled ancient literature (Nisbet ...)

Did Lucan mean here, like Cassius Dio, the Alani who are the Massagetae? Not probable: he does refer to the Massagetae as a transdanubian people. «Massageten Scythicus non adliget Ister» (2,50). «Longaque Sarmatici solvens ieiunia belli // Massagetes quo fugit equo» (3,281-283). The first passage is very specific concerning the geography of the Massagetae; the second refers to wars with the Sarmatians who were Danubian neighbours of the Romans. On the other hand, in the invocation by Pompey, a Caucasian environment is indicated.

In the first passage, Lucan's Alani are associated with the Caspian Gates. We know from many authors and we have just seen in Josephus that the Caspian Gates lay somewhere in the territory of either the Albani (modern Daghestan) or the Iberians (Georgians), or perhaps on the confines of both. The Caspian Gates were a favourite point of entry for Scythian bands raiding the Parthian empire, Syria, Cappadocia; therefore the words Caspia claustra evokes the name Alani, not because they lived there, but because they crossed it on their marauding expeditions.

But are we reading Lucan correctly? Standard editions all have Caspia claustra but some manuscripts have Caspia regna. The word claustra has been accepted unquestioningly by editors; if regna should turn to be the correct reading, then Caspia regna could only apply to the Albani, not to the Alani.

Before returning to the Alani/Albani issue, let us consider more closely claustra/regna. While editors agree on Alani (as opposed to Albani), they seem to flounder over Caspia claustra. According to his apparatus, Cornelis Francken found the following variants:

porti a correction in the Montepessulanus

regna in the Ashburnhamensis, Bernensis and Taurnensis, with a correction in the Montepessulanus and the Gemblacensis

claustra: a correction in the Ashburnhamsensis.

We might assume that the remaining manuscripts (E, K D, etc) have the reading claustra -- except that Francken relies primarily on A, B, T and G, or so he says. According to Genthe, who collated it, the Erlangensis has regna, with claustra as a gloss.

While Schrevelius' first two references are not particularly useful, the third is valuable and convincing. In Agesilas and Pompeius, Plutarch refers to the same event as Lucan, namely Pompey's campaign against Mithridates § 32-41. The campaign takes place in the Caucasus only, and Plutarch describes the Albani's lands as «facing east and the Caspian sea» (§ 34,2). This reference supports an emendation from Alani to Albaniin Lucan.

Inspite of their own credible argument to emend Alani to Albani, the Schrevelius edition retains Alani in its text, as do all modern editors. The reason is not mysterious; the manuscript tradition is unanimous: Alani. Could it be unanimously wrong? Or have the editors not examined the manuscript tradition sufficiently?

Five early Lucan manuscripts survive -- all from the Carolingian Renaissance. Except for a few palimpsest fragments from the fifth century, and commentaries based on undatable sources, they constitute our earliest evidence for the text of Lucan. Closely related, they are treated as one witness by editors, yet «each of these five is a source of independent information, stored in some cases in the text, in some cases between the lines and in the margins» (Gotoff 1). Nevertheless, the genetic similarities struck Housman: «the true line of division is between the variants themselves, not between the manuscripts which offer them ... The manuscripts group themselves not in families but in factions; their dissidences and agreements are temporary and transient» (vii).

These fundamental manuscripts are all dated to the ninth century -- some 700 years after the death of Lucan. Yet historians of this epic have little to say concerning the intermediate period. Medieval commentaries, based on Late antique originals, attest «the interest scholars in the fifth and sixth centuries had in Lucan» (Gotoff 1). So do our palimpsest fragments (Bick, Detlefsen, Bourgery and Ponchont xi). But we know that the Gallo-Roman aristocracy of the fifth century loved Lucan, and copied his words for posterity. Did the so-called Caroligian Renaissance truly save Lucan from the wreckage of antiquity? Or was the salvage operated much earlier by the Gallo-Romans -- bequeathing a wealth of manuscripts for the Carolingian scribes to copy? This is a question for historians of Latin literature. For our purpose, a brief overview of some key events of the fifth century will suffice.

The late fourth century witnessed a flowering of letters amongst the Roman aristocracy -- brutally interrupted in 410 when Alaric sacked Rome. The tribulations of St Melania the Younger illustrate the dislocation suffered especially by the cultured classes. This was not an auspicious period for the preservation of literary codices. In Gaul, however, a different relationship developped between the old Gallo-Roman aristocracy and the invaders -- a sort of partnership. As a result, Latin literature survived in Gaul, while it practically perished in Italy.

Without straying from the authors under study, we find echos of Valerius Flaccus «dans le poème dit Hylas de Dracontius, chez Sidoine Apollinaire et, peut-être, dans l'Alethia de Marius Victorinus» (Liberman civ).

Sidonius was a leader of this movement. Sidonius on Lucan. Rutilius, see Pichon.

The posterity who deeply appreciated Lucan's epic and copied it over and over again may have introduced unintended readings from a very early stage. One of Lucan's admirers was the Gallo-Roman Sidonius Apollinaris writing in the fifth century -- when the Alans together with the Huns and other Eastern nations had overrun Gaul -- who declared his literary allegiance by openly imitating Lucan: «Vandalicas turmas et iuncti Martis Alanos» (... 2:364). Did Sidonius find Alanos in his manuscript or did he find Albanos and alter this word to a much better known people -- who indeed were camping in his backyard as he wrote?

The vicissitudes of Lucan's text did not end with the turmoils of Late Antiquity, or the Middle Ages. Lucan's modern editors and scholars make few, if any references, to the history of one fundamental manuscript, the Parisiensis olim Ashburnhamensis (siglum A). Stolen from ... by Guillaume Libri in 1840?, it was bought by Bertram Lord Ashburnham in ... See also Jean Baptste Joseph Barrois.

When he died in June 22, 1878, Lord Ashburnham's son inherited the collection, and proceeded to dispose of it. Delisle.

The history of Lucan's text in modern times is dominated by the colourful figure of A. E. Housman who disdained manuscript studies, as he wrote in his edition (1926/corrected 1927): «an idle yet pretentious game ... Ueberlieferungsgeschichte ... a longer and nobler name than fudge» (xiii). But Housman himself admitted later having dropped three verses from his edition of Lucan, not because he thought they were not by Lucan, but because he did not know where they fitted into the text; he also failed to mention this deletion in his notes (1932). These same verses do not appear in the Bourgery-Ponchont even though they claimed to have collated their manuscripts themselves (Souter 132). Did Shackleton Bailey restore these three verses?

Hamblenne reported on ancient damage done to the Bruxellensis olim Gemblacensis (siglum G), one of the fundamental Carolingian manuscripts of Lucan. Describing the losses, unmentioned by editors, Hamblenne commented: «Aucun éditeur de Lucain n'a collationné directement le ms de Bruxelles, BR 5330» (195).

None of the ninth century mss is complete. How was the Davatriensis used? Our best editions are at best approximate.

Bibliography:

Chavannes, Edouard. «Les pays d'Occident d'après le Wei Lio.» T'oung Pao. NS 6 (1905) 519-571. Wei lio = Tien lio. Author: Yu Houan, qv.

Hirth, Friedrich. China and the Roman Orient. 1885. Tr: ... New York, 1966. DS 6 H6. Description of West in Wei-lio.

Yu Houan. Wei lio = Tien lio. Ed: Chavannes. Unofficial history closing with Emperor Ming (227-239). Survives incorporated in later histories. «le royaume de Yen-ts'ai qu'on appelle aussi A-lan; ils ont tous les mêmes moeurs que le K'ang-kiu [Sogdiane]; à l'Ouest, ils touchent au Ta-ts'in [Rome]; au Sud-Est, au K'ang-kiu; dans ćeš royaumes il y a beaucoup de martres réputées; (les habitants) sont pasteurs et vont à la recherche des eaux et des pâturages; ils sont voisins de grands marais; précédemment ils ont parfois été quelque peu soumis au K'ang-kiu, mais maintenant ils n'en dépendent pas» (558f).

Bibliographic Appendix on Flavius Josephus:

When preparing his Latin Josephus, Blatt provided a detailed descriptions of manuscripts, but his list of early editions was skeletal (p...). In my reference list, I have flagged the editions mentioned by Blatt; he used them in his edition, and this is evidence for their importance. Schreckenberg prepared the most exhaustive bibliography of Josephus available; however he displayed little interest in the history of the Latin translations and the incunabular editions (1968:1-30). The list of incunabular and post incunabular editions which follows is meant as a supplement to standard bibliographies.

I have documented the early editions of Josephus using standard reference works, in particular the Illustrated Incunabula Short Title Catalogue (IISTC). I have left out early translations of Josephus in the vernacular, not because they are not valuable in their own right, but because they could not provide answers to my ethnographic questions. For these, and for editions from the 17th to the 19th century, the reader is advised to turn to Engelmann, Schreckenberg, Feldman, and to reference works of sixteenth century printing (Verzeichniss, etc) which are included in my general bibliography.

Some controversial or merely obscure issues remain. For instance, one of the earliest editions of Josephus was printed before 1475 (IISTC §ij00482000); the date is not in doubt because one copy of that press run was accessioned in 1475 by an English purchaser (evidence from BMC ...). Many scholars have followed Goff who attributes it to an unknown printer in the Southern Netherlands (§J-482). Others have accepted Haebler's argument that it was printed by another anonymous printer, in Paris. No summary of research were provided to support those attributions.

A number of scholars support a third attribution, namely to Jean Mentelin of Strasbourg, with credible arguments (Freiman, etc). In 1475, briefly after IISTC §ij00482000 was produced, Lucas Brandis of Lübeck published the works of Josephus (IISTC § ij00483000). Brandis was educated at Leipzig and he trained as a printer in Strasbourg before settling down in Lübeck and operating his own presses. Comparisons between IISTC §ij00482000 and IISTC § ij00483000 could help determine if Brandis used the IISTC §ij00482000 as his prototype. This would provide pointers to the place of printing for IISTC §ij00482000.

All known editions of Josephus from the princeps in 1470 to the late sixteenth century have this in common: they were produced by publishers with deep pockets, who could capitalize such a voluminous author (10 volumes of the Loeb edition). They were expensive for printers to produce, and for clients to purchase. «Books represented a substantial outlay for many customers ... Sometimes they might be allowed to pay by installments: thus the Strasbourg priest Johannes Kuon was allowed to purchase Johann Mentelin's first Latin Bible (GW 4203), printed in 1460, in three installments of four guilders each» (Flood 145).

Whether they were the foremost publishers in their period like Sébastien Gryphe in Lyon, or whether they were funded by a rich and powerful government like Minutianus of Milan, they had the resources to handle such a large project. Mentelin, not a poor man himself, was backed by the then powerful archdiocese of Strasbourg. Printing in Paris starts in 1470, and this makes it a narrow fit for the Josephus which was a major production requiring months of labour. Regarding Goff's attribution, there may be technical and/or artistic reasons to deny this edition to Mentelin but the economics of book production rule out some anonymous jobbing printer in a nameless small town, especially at such an early phase of the art of printing. If Mentelin did not print the pre-1475 edition of Josephus, it should be attributed to someone of equal stature -- provided he can be found.

Bibliographic Appendix on Lucan:

Four hundred manuscripts of Lucan survive from the middle ages, but they do not all have a comparable importance. Here I list those of which I make mention in my text, with leads to studies on them. Since I write for both classical scholars and ethnographers of the Central Asiatic nations, I use modern names of cities and libraries, with references to the traditional Latin names of codices.

Paris, Bibliothèque nationale, fonds latin 10314 (ninth century): Pharsalia by Lucan. Siglum: Z. From the Abbey of Epternach. For damages, see description by Lejay.

Like any other historical investigation, the etymology of an ethnic name requires signposts, such as dated documents. One of the links in the chain of evidence concerning the Hsiung-nu / Khyôn is provided by the Ancient Sogdian Letters; Henning dates these documents to AD 313, based on a mention of the destruction of the city of Lo-yang by the Hsiung-nu, which took place in AD 311 (1947/48:603f). Because we have sources in both languages, Chinese and Sogdian, which refer to the same datable event, we can be confident that the Hsiung-nu of the Chinese histories are the same people as the Xwn of the Ancient Sogdian letters.

At the beginning of the Christian era, in the days of Pliny the Elder and Agrippa, the Khyôn held sway on China’s North West border, and are only known to us at present by way of the Chinese sources who call them Hsiung-nu, and the Ancient Sogdian Letters who call them Xwn. The Descriptio orbis terrae provides evidence that they migrated sometime before AD 348, almost a century before Orosius put pen to paper, and two centuries after Agrippa crafted his world map. Whatever source Orosius used, it was later than the migration of the Khyôn from China’s northern border to the Hindu Kush which took place sometime between AD 315 and 345.

Before they were driven out by the Chinese, the Hsiung-nu ruled for centuries over a rich and powerful state; they could have been known by name and reputation to Augustan Rome. In fact, they may be the mysterious people called Choamani by authors of the Principate (Mela 1,2,11; Pliny 6,47). In his edition of Mela, Silberman comments on the Choamani: *Peuple de Bactriane (cf Pline VI,47): Commani, Comani, Choamani), entre les Chomarae et les Propanisadae; il n’est pas autrement connu+ (1988:107n7). Surviving manuscripts of Pliny have mostly commani in this passage; the Codex Leidensis Vossianus has comani. In his edition of Pliny (1892-1909), Mayhoff restored Choamani on the basis of Mela’s text. This emendation has a long history; the probability that Pliny’s commani were Mela’s Coammani was suggested in the fifteenth century by the noted humanist Ermolao Barbaro (ed: Pozzi, vol 2, page 477). It has now been accepted by the Budé editors of Pliny who, like Silberman, describe the Choamani as otherwise unknown (André and Filliozat, 1980:62n4).

Because Mela lists the Choamani amongst the nations of Bactria, Silberman assumes that they were one of the Bactrian nations. This is a natural assumption but it founders upon an unresolved problem of ancient geography. True to classical teaching, Mela starts his description of the world with the Ocean. On the shore of this mythical world river, he places the Scyths to the North, the Seres next to them, to the East, and the Indians next in line, that is South of the Scyths: *Tribus hanc e partibus tangit oceanus, ita nominibus ut locis differens, Eous ab oriente, a meridie Indicus, a septentrione Scythicus+ (I,1/8). *In ea primos hominum ab oriente accipimus Indos et Seres et Scythes. Seres media ferme Eoae partis incolunt, Indi et Scythae ultima … + (I,2/11).

The Seres are normally equated with the Chinese, although there are reasons to doubt this attribution. The Greeks and the Romans knew correctly that North and East from India there was a world class empire, bordering on the Ocean but they knew almost nothing about it, the people, the culture, the history. As summarized pithily by McHugh: *Mention of the Seres is not rare … but the most that can be affirmed of them with any certainty is that they are remote easterners+ (1986:341). Even the name is uncertain.

Janvier has shown in a major article on the Far East (1984) that the name Seres applied to the great power in the Far East was not that of the Chinese themselves but possibly an Iranian name of Western neighbours of the Chinese. It was not until the fourth century AD that the name Sina or Tsinista, or some variant of this name became known to the Greco-Roman world (Marcian of Heracleia, Cosmas Indicopleustes). This is not an uncommon problem in the study of geographic names: the Romans used the name of the neighbouring Graeci for the Hellens and this misnomer has endured to the present. Fortunately, even under the misnomer Seres, we can recognize China, however imperfectly known.

The Greeks and the Romans were no less ignorant of the vastness of Eurasia. In Mela’s scheme, there is nothing between European Russia and Northern China; Mela imagines that they are contiguous, and that China runs all the way from the Urals to the Himalaya. In reality of course, the Urals and China are separated by Siberia, Mongolia… immense territories, filled with a multitude of nations, including the Hsiung-nu, frequently mentioned by the Chinese in the same period as Pliny and Mela, as well as other Altaic speaking peoples. The vastness of Mongolia simply disappeared in the *thick fog of pernicious schematization+ which, according to Horsfall, characterized ancient geography (198).

Siberia’s invisibility affected all of ancient geography. It can be read clearly in Ammianus: *Beyond these regions of the two Scythias, toward the east, a circling and continuous barrier of lofty mountains fences round the Seres, who dwell thus secure in their rich and spacious plains+ (23,6). This follows earlier authors like Ptolemy who writes: *Serica is terminated on the West by Scythia beyond the Imaeus mountains … on the north is unknown land+ (6,16,1). Imaeus corresponds roughly with the Himalaya, considered by by the ancients to be one of the mountains of the great Asian chain which they called Taurus. Ammianus’ *lofty mountains+ are the Urals; they are indeed immediately beyond Scythia… but thousands of miles away from China, separated by the vast lands occupied by Mongols, Mandchou, and many Altaic speaking nations.

Just how *compacted+ a view of the East was held by the ancient writers can be seen in the Meteorologica of Aristotle: he believed that when a traveller had crossed the Paropamisus, i.e. the Hindu Kush, *the outer ocean, whose farther limit is unknown to the inhabitants of our part of the world, is already in sight+ (I,13,3). By the outer ocean, he means at this point what we call the Arctic and the Pacific oceans; for him, this was one body of water. A quick look at any map of Asia will show what vast regions were not even known to exist. To compound this *minimising+ of Asia, let us note also that Aristotle believed that both the Don River of Southern Russia and the Indus of India flowed out of the Hindu Kush.

This deficient knowledge suggested to the ancients that the Scyths were neighbours to the Indians; they had no factual information on this proximity. Their belief did not rest on the reports of travellers who had journeyed from the land of the Scyths to India, by crossing the Hindu Kush; their belief was the result of combining the itineraries of Northern travellers to the lands of the Scyths with totally unrelated itineraries of travellers to Afghanistan. Nowadays we have sufficient data to plot what was known and even more importantly what was unknown to the ancients, so that we can make accurate sense of what they did know.

This image of a *compacted+ Asia obtained until the end of the middle ages. After the fall of Constantinople cut off Mediterranean trade from the Black Sea, the quest for the Northern Passage revealed the Siberian immensity. To this period of Eastern exploration belong Russia’s struggle against the Golden Horde, Marco Polo’s journey to the court of the Mongol emperor, etc. The conquest and subsequent serious mapping of Siberia starts under Tsar Ivan IV (styled the Terrible, 1530-1584); crowned first Tsar of Russia in 1547, he spent most of his life recovering territories from the Livonians in the West, from the Tartars in the South and from the Mongols in the East. The first trans-Uralian expeditions begin in 1579. However this chapter of Siberian history belongs to a totally different research project.

Renaissance geographers working within the ancient tradition should have taken classical sources like Mela, and inserted into the old scheme the newly discovered territories, and their nations. They should have done the reverse of what I proposed above: they should have cut open the ancient maps and inserted the vast arc of land which stretches from the Urals to the Great Wall of China. They needed to fit in Siberia, Mongolia, and the Altaic people in the space between the Urals and China. It is specifically this failure of historical geography which has made it possible for modern historians to believe the Hsiung-nu neighbours of the Chinese were also the Huns of Southern Russia — because ancient sources believed mistakenly that China started at the Urals, and that there was only one, albeit immense, mountain chain in Inner Asia, which comprised the Caucasus and the Himalaya, and everything else in between.

In his influential article *Hunni+ in the Realencyklopädie, Kiessling writes: *Iordanes (c. 5) liest dieselbe Karte ab und ist besonders klar und anschaulich in seiner Angabe: Skythien hat an seiner Ostseite die Seres, in ipso sui (sc. Scythiae) principio ad litus Caspii maris commanentes, d. h. die Seren reichen im Norden bis an den Eingang und schmalen Hals des Kaspischen Golfes heran, der, ab Oceano euroboreo abzweigt+ (1913, vol 8, col 2596). Well, yes. Not only Jordanes but all ancient authors believed that China and Scythia were contiguous. Unfortunately they were all wrong, a point which Kiessling somehow overlooked.

This problem was never resolved by historians of geographical science. Instead of recognizing the flaw, modern geographers inserted the recently discovered lands into the space between Scythia and China on their maps, but they filled this space with imaginary Asian Scyths, from ancient catalogues of nations, instead of the real Altaic people, mostly unrecorded in Greek and Roman sources. They stretched the word Scythia to include the newly discovered territories and applied the name Scythian to the newly discovered Altaic peoples… even though the nations of Siberia were not Scyths. If the ancient Greeks and Romans ever heard any report of nations from the Altaic group, they categorized them as either Seres or members of the Iranian or Indian groups because their schematic maps provided no other space to fit them in.

Not only were the immense territories between the Urals and the Great Wall of China lost to ancient geographers, Scythia was split erroneously into two regions, European Scythia and Asiatic Scythia… even though Scythia was known to them, indeed poorly known, but not terra incognita like Siberia. The geographers of the post-Renaissance were misled by the ancient concept of two Scythias which is, like the other difficulties we face, the result of pernicious schematization.

The Scyths occupied the lands between the Vistula and the Urals, ranging from the Baltic to the Black Sea and the Caspian Sea. Greek geographers established the Don (the Tanais) as a dividing line through this territory creating a European Scythia and an Asiatic Scythia separated by this river. This division rests upon a political concept, and has nothing to do with physical or human geography: the Don was the boundary between the Greek and Iranian zones of influence. The ancient authors compounded their misrepresentation of the Great North by utterly overlooking the vastness of Siberia, while they incorrectly placed China right on the other side of the Urals. Faithful to this erroneous tradition, post-Renaissance scholars have imagined that the Asiatic Scyths were these overlooked nations to the North and North West of China, East of the Urals, even though in the ancient scheme the Asiatic Scyths dwelled between the Don and the Urals, not east of the Urals, and they were called Asiatic by the Greek because they happen to fall into the Iranian zone of political and mercantile influence.

However we must not denigrate the ancients’ hopeless theories since they enable us to establish their actual knowledge on the subject of Eastern lands. *Was man aber in Wirklichkeit vom Don wusste, beschränkt sich einzig und allein auf das Mündungsgebiet des Tanais; sein Mittel- und Oberlauf waren gänzlich unbekannt+ (Beckers 1914:539).

There is only one significant chain of mountains in this Northern region: the Urals. Therefore, the Urals must be the Rhipaean mountains. True, ancient informants provided geographers with confused information on its location, which explains Strabo’s disbelief. However, even though they were ignorant of their location, ancient travellers knew correctly that some very important mountains existed in that general area.

Ancient geographers seemed to have imagined the world as a series of concentric circles, with the Ocean Stream on the outside. Since Scythia was as far north as one could go, and since the Rhipaean mountains were some distance away from the Pontic belt, they must have been very far north; within this framework, an Eastern location for the Rhipaean mountains would have made no sense to them. To Claudian, the North Pole was the Rhipaean Pole: *at si Phoebus adest et frenis grypa iugalem // Riphaeo tripodes repetens detorsit ab axe+ (Panegyricus de sexto consulatu Honorii augusti, edited by Dewar, verses 930-931).

Ancient geography was not in any way an exact science: consider that Herodotus imagined the Danube ran north-south, instead of west-east. And yet the Danube was exceedingly well known to Greek traders, judging from archaeological remains. But Herodotus did get some of the data right: he located the source of the Danube in the lands of the Celts, and its mouth in the Black Sea; he also understood the great significance of this river. In his description of the Scyths, he mentions the Danube as their western border; since however he imagined that the Danube ran North-South (like the Nile) and not West-East, his description still confuses his readers today. While discussing the Nile, Herodotus provides incidentally some information on the source of the Danube [the Ister] which has been misread since the days of Aristotle:

The Ister *flows from the land of the Celtae and the city of Pyrene through the very midst of Europe; now the Celtae dwell beyond the pillars of Heracles, being neighbours of the Cynesii, who are the westernmost of all nations inhabiting Europe. The Ister, then, flows clean across Europe and ends its course in the Euxine sea, at Istria, which is inhabited by Milesian colonists+ (2.33).

He repeats part of this information once more later in his Histories:

*for the Ister traverses the whole of Europe, rising among the Celts who, save only the Cynetes, are the most westerly dwellers in Europe, and flowing thus clean across Europe it issues forth along the borders of Scythia+ (4.49)

In his Meteorologica, a century later, Aristotle corrected what he thought was a mistake in Herodotus:

*From Pyrenê (this is a mountain range towards the equinoctial sunset in Celtice) there flow the Istrus and the Tartessus. The latter flows into the sea outside the Pillars of Heracles, the Istrus flows right across Europe into the Euxine+ (1,13).

Aristotle’s mistake was picked up over a hundred years ago by historians of the Celts: *Toutefois, il faut observer qu’Hérodote parle d’une ville de Pyrène, et non d’une montagne de će nom; il est donc possible qu’il n’ait pas commis l’erreur où l’auteur des Météorologiques est certainement tombé+ (Bertrand and Reinach 1894:8).

Pyrene, according to Herodotus, was a city close to the source of the Danube; therefore it must be sought in the Alps, possibly the archaeological site known today as Die Heuneburg. Excavated from 1950 to 1979 (Kimmig 1985), this ancient city was located on the west bank of the Danube between Sigmaringen and Ulm. Its location and its importance for trade make it a prime candidate for Herodotus’ Pyrene. By the days of Aristotle, the First Celtic Empire (known to archaeologists as the Hallstatt Culture) had come to an end; the Second Empire flourished (the La Tène Culture); Pyrene was now abandoned, and Aristotle did not know it had ever existed. He confused the name of a forgotten city with the name of a mountain range still current today.

The Cynesii or Cynetes who lived west of the Celts are difficult to locate if one assumes that Herodotus uses the locator west as we would today. But if we look at Europe in this period, the only large ethnic group beyond the Celts were the Northern Germans: Frisians, Angles, Saxons, Scandinavians. In our terms they were North-West of the Celts; since they were the only substantial ethnic group outside of Keltike, they must be the people Herodotus know as Cynesii/Cynetes. It is difficult to link them with nations known during the day of Roman domination over Western Europe because *their name disappears early from geography+ (How and Wells 1:178)

What was the land of the Celts in the days of Herodotus? Archaeology provides the answer: *the wholly or partially Celtic world from Iberia to the Carpathians+ (Piggott 220). That its flowering was contemporary with Herodotus is clear from the same author: *The last phase of Celtic culture in Europe, a mature stage of which constituted the Celts as known to the Greek, and soon the Roman world, begins in archaeological terms around 500 B.C. The date is determined by the Etruscan and Greek objects found in graves+ (215). It is also possible to determine its focus: *But with the chieftains’ chariot-burials and other graves with rich offerings including Etruscan and Greek imports (notably bronze wine-flagons) the archaeological phase of La Tène begins in the Rhineland and almost concurrently in the Marne+ (215f).

The Celts were the Scyths’ Western neighbours. In the days of Herodotus, the lower Danube and the Vistula formed the border of Scythia in the West. The Danube was known to him, but not the Vistula. These boundaries were later blurred by upheavals in the Celtic world, altered by Roman advances beyond the Danube, and later when the Goths gained power over the Pontic steppe. In the days of Orosius, Gothic power had fallen, and Attila had not yet established his rule over the region. To situate these chapters of Pontic history within the context of Mediterranean affairs, let us note that Roman advances in Dacia took place under Trajan (for his reign, see De la Berge); the loss of Dacia to the Goths happened under Aurelian (see Homo for this emperor).

On the subject of Scythian geography, most ancient sources are so deficient on the Rhipaean mountains that they merely report on their existence, and their association with the Scyths. Orosius’ near contemporary, the ecclesiastical historian Philostorgius testifies that these mountains were associated with the Huns of Scythia: *eien d’an hoi Ounnoi hous hoi palaioi Neurous erônomazon, kai para ta Rhipaia katôkêmenoi orê, ex hôn ho Tanaïs eis tên Maiôtida limnên kata suromenos to rheithron ekdidôsin+ (9,17). The geographical markers which Philostorgius provides for the Huns, known to the ancients as Neuroi, are the Sea of Azov (Palus Maiotis), the Don river and the Rhipaean Mountains. Later authors, including the poet Avitus, cited above, were not as scientific as Strabo, but they had better information on the geography of the Pontic steppe.

Other sources agree with them, such as Justin, Histories: *Scythia autem in orientem porrecta includitur ab uno latere Ponto, ab altero montibus Riphaeis, a tergo Asia et Phasi flumine. Multum in longitudinem et latitudinem patet. Hominibus inter se nulli fines+ (11,2,1-3). Justin (or his source Trogus Pompeius) makes correctly the Rhipaean mountains the limit of Scythia, even if he is a little off in his orientation.

With our knowledge of Chinese sources, it is impossible for us, as it was for Strabo, to place China on the border of the Massagetae; the historical records likewise demand that we remove the mysterious Soanes/ Thoanes/ Choanes from the immediate vicinity of the Roman empire. Strabo’s scheme for Asia requires a northern location for these people. Any argument concerning the Soanes/ Thoanes/ Choanes must respect these fixed points.

Furthermore, we can compare the Soanes/ Thoanes/ Choanes with the Hsiung-nu of the Chinese sources for points of contact and similarity. They are numerous: a powerful empire, indeed an empire of the first rank, rich in gold and fighting men, in a northern location. The rivers which bear gold nuggets could be those from the Altai mountains. Another detail: the Hsiung-nu lived in well padded tents in a very inhospitable climate; they had neither city baths nor warm streams or lakes for the daily ablutions so dear to the fastidious Greeks, Persians and Chinese. This probably accounts for the strictures on the personal hygiene of the Hsiung-nu by the Chinese, and on the Soanes/ Thoanes/ Choanes by Strabo.

Pliny, Mela, Strabo… another author from the Principate may also be reporting on the Khyôn / Hsiung-nu: Dionysius Periegetes. Writing under Emperor Hadrian (AD 117-138), he lists the following Northern nations: *Primi sunt enim Scythae, quiqui cronium prope mare maritimam oram incolunt ad ostium Caspii maris; deinceps Hunni; post hos Caspiorum natio, ac deinde feroces Albani, quique super asperam terram habitant Cadusi; prope Mardi, Hyrcanii, Tapyri…+ (Bernhardy’s translation, verses 727-734).

Bunbury comments on Dionysius: *A still more celebrated name is found for the first time in this little poem — that of the Huns — if indeed an obscure tribe mentioned by our author on the east side of the Caspian, under the name of Unni, be correctly identified with that far-famed people+ (2:486). We cannot agree entirely with Bunbury: if the Unni mentioned here had been totally obscure and insignificant, Dionysius would not have mentioned them in a school text.

The chief difficulty in dealing with Dionysius is that he places his Unni east of the Caspian Sea. In the notes to his edition of Dionysius, Bernhardy deemed this confusion to be a problem of text transmission (514f). However, perhaps this is correct, and Dionysius’ Unni were not the Huns of the Maeotic region but the Hsiung-nu neighbours of the Chinese. Whoever his Unni were exactly, he includes them in the same Caucasian list as Strabo’s third region, where the Choanes/ Soanes/ Thoanes dwell.

Ptolemy, dated AD 172, mentions a nation bearing a similar name, the Khounoi (Geographia 3,5,25); they lived between the Bastarnae and the Rhoxolani, north of the Crimea; the Rhoxolani are presumably the Alans of the Volga, Rha being an older name for that river: *between the Basternae and the Rhoxolani are the Chuni, and below the mountains named from these are the Amadoci and the Navari+ (page 80 in Stevenson). These Khounoi must be Attila’s ancestors: the location just north of the Sea of Azov is attested by many writers of the fourth century, Ammianus, Jerome, Claudian, etc.

It should be noted that Dionysius and Ptolemy wrote after the conquest of Dacia by the Romans; this brought the Empire closer to the nations of the Pontic steppe, one of which was that of the Huns. Conquests benefited geographical science as Strabo testifies (I,2,1). Pliny the Younger counted this expertise as one of Trajan’s merits: *Dix ans sous les drapeaux t’ont permis d’apprendre les moeurs des peuples, la géographie des régions, les opportunités des lieux et les différences de température des eaux et des climats+ (Panegyric of Trajan 15,3, in Durry’s elegant translation).

The readings I propose are possible if one accepts that the Choamani or Choani may have been the Hsiung-nu. I do not wish to persuade my audience that this hypothesis is proven, only that it exists. Pelliot writes concerning the well-known Türki medieval nation of the Comans: *au milieu du XIe siècle … les Petchénègues unis aux Ouz sont pour la première fois désignés par les écrivains byzantins sous le nom inexpliqué de Komanoi… au XIIe siècle, Edrisi parle des Qoman … aussi Michel le Syrien+ (1920:133). Pelliot evaluated and rejected the identification of the Hsiung-nu with the Comans for reasons which are not fully articulated. Since both nations demonstrably spoke Türki languages, this hypothesis deserves consideration.

On the face of it, it seems unlikely that a name might be recorded by Strabo, Pliny and Mela, and then disappear from the historical record for a thousand years, which is what may have happened to the Choamani / Comani / Hsiung nu. However, we do have the example of Paktyïkê, recorded in Herodotus for the region around the Kabul river (3,202; 4,44), a very ancient name which has left only a faint trace throughout the centuries and survives today for the Pashtun. This identification was made a century ago and is recorded in How and Wells’ commentary on Herodotus: Pactyice *perhaps survives in Pushtoo, the Afghans’ name for themselves+ (1928:1:289; 1:319).

These issues require much more research. For the purpose of this particular piece on Orosius, however, I simply want to establish that the political evolution of the nations listed in his Geography have a bearing on the date of his sources. If the Choamani known to Pliny and Mela, and the Choanes possibly described by Strabo can be proven to be the Hsiung nu known to the Chinese, then they are the same nation known as Chyonitae, Khyon, etc in the days of Orosius, except that they (or at least an important contingent of them) have now migrated from Siberia or the Chinese Turkistan to Peshawar.

Were the Chyonitai of Peshawar the Huns whom Attila made famous? Janvier considered this unlikely. The Chyonitai who established themselves at Peshawar during the mid fourth century soon became a rich, powerful and famous people who eventually conquered vast regions of India and traded with their Chinese and Iranian neighbours. Ammianus mentions them and their king Grumbates as allies of the Persians at the siege of Amida in 369 (19,1,7) But the Chyonitai cannot be the people who raided Palestine in the days of Jerome, and incidentally cost Prefect Rufinus his job and his life. As one of the most educated people of his days, Jerome is quite specific about the raiders who disturbed his scholarly solitude at Bethlehem, and their movements.

Jerome describes the raids in two letters. His Huns did not come from Peshawar, traversing the whole of Iran; they came from north of the Crimea, over the Caucasus. *The East, it is true, seemed to be safe from all such evils: and if men were panic-stricken here, it was only because of bad news from other parts. But lo! in the year just gone by [AD 395], the wolves (no longer of Arabia but of the whole North) were let loose upon us from the remotest fastnesses of Caucasus and in a short-time overran these great provinces+ (Letter 60,16).

Recollecting these traumatic events a few years later, Jerome adds: *For news came that the hordes of the Huns had poured forth all the way from Maeotis (they had their haunts between the icy Tanais and the rude Massagetae where the gates of Alexander [i.e. the Caspian Gates], keep back the wild peoples behind the Caucasus); and that, speeding hither and thither on their nimble-footed horses, they were filling all the world with panic and bloodshed+ (Letter 77, dated AD 400).

There is considerable agreement amongst authors contemporary with the events, not only on the geography but on the ethnography of the Huns. In his commentary on the Prophet Isaiah, Jerome points out that the Assyrians and the Chaldeans are no longer the instruments of God’s wrath but *feras gentes et quondam nobis incognitas, quarum et vultus et sermo terribilis est, et femineus incisasque facies praeferentes virorum+ (In Isaiam 7,21). It has long been recognized that this passage refers to the Huns: ritual scarification and the newness of the exposure seal the identification.

The barbarian threat was a powerful commonalty. In his De Regno, Synesius of Cyrene mocks the once powerful Empire now trembling from the menace of barbarians crossing the rivers which form its borders. In the commentary on his translation of Synesius, Lacombrade realizes the Huns are included amongst the dangerous nations, but he fails to factor in all the information. He translates Synesius: *ćeš derniers … ont … parfois même altéré leurs traits par artifice afin de simuler je ne sais quelle horrible race nouvellement sortie de terre+ (1951:54f). Lacombrade notes: *Au mépris de la vérité ethnographique, l’orateur ići attribue à l’artifice će que la physionomie des Huns a de repoussant+ (55n92). Here Synesius is referring to the same feature which was noted by Jerome: ritual scarification. Lacombrade missed it, and charged Synesius with ethnographic incompetence.

Jerome agrees with his contemporaries. I have already mentioned Claudian’s notorious invectives and their allusions to the Huns: the pagan poet is in agreement with St Jerome the great Christian scholar. The recent raids in Cappadocia, the Cimmerian marshes (i.e. the Sea of Azov), the reference to the Riphaean mountains, the invasion over the Caucasus, all these point unambiguously to the Huns though they are not named. There is nothing in Claudian which would place the Huns on the confines of India.

The raids of 395 took the Romans by surprise but the Huns were not unfamiliar with the Near East. Writing shortly before these raids, Ammianus notes on the Pontic people: *In their plundering and hunting expeditions [the Halani] roam here and there as far as the Maeotic Sea and the Cimmerian Bosporus, and also to Armenia and Media+ (31,2,21). In the sources, the Alani and the Huns are often cited in the same breath; the mountain trails of the Caucasus seemed to have been well known to the nomads of the steppe who coveted the riches of the Orient.

Moreover, the Huns had considerable familiarity with the Roman empire since they frequently served as mercenaries. Bishop Synesius of Cyrene describes some military action against nomads from the Sahara in which the Roman commander used some Marcoman troups, and much valued cavalry, the Unnigardae. Synesius discusses this military campaign in his two Catastases and in his Letter 78 to Duke Anysios. The origin of these documents composed by Synesius is unclear: they may be extracts from an official speech in praise of the military governor since katastasis is the rhetorical term for *narrative+ but the letter to the military governor provides the historical context. *Synésius ne cesse de demander à Constantinople … des renforts Unnigardes, cavaliers hors de pair .. à identifier … avec les Hunigari de Jordanès+ (Lacombrade 1951a:106). This may be the earliest written record of the name Hungarian, unless the Ourgoi/Oungroi (spelling uncertain) whom Strabo places at the mouth of the Danube be the same as the Unnigardae (7,3,17).

Philostorgius, an ecclesiastic historian belonging to a sect most inimical to Jerome, supports this statement: *eien d’an hoi Ounnoi hous hoi palaioi Neurous erônomazon+ (9,17). Philostorgius claims that the Huns were descended from the Neuroi *of old+, i.e. the Neuroi of Herodotus. Neither man needed to consult Herodotus directly; this information had lasting currency. Ptolemy (second century of the Christian era) also placed the Huns and the Neuroi (Navaroi) in the same region (3,5,25). Now I cannot prove that these authors were correct; but I can demonstrate that they are in agreement on the Huns, whether Pagans or Christians, and amongst Christians, Orthodox, schismatics, and heretics. Before we can reject their testimony, we need evidence, not some unsupported hypothesis. Palanque fails to provide any.

The Mongolian hypothesis is refractory to evidence. According to Kingsmill, one of its most passionate supporters, Dr Hirth, *sought to find additional evidence in favour of the long exploded error of Deguignes that the Hiung Nu of the old Chinese writers were to be identified with the Hunni of Ammianus Marcellinus. Deguignes confessed that his surmise arose only from the superficial and apparent resemblance of their names+ (1901/02:136). What Kingsmill did not add is this: the Hsiung-nu correspond not to the Hunni in Ammianus, but to the Chyonitai in the same author. Any hypothesis which would make the Huns and the Chionitae two branches of one nation, separated in the fourth century, must founder on the evidence of Ammianus who reports on both… without any indication that he thought them to be related.

In the above cited article *Hunni+, Kiessling presents the case made by Deguignes and Hirth in favour of the Mongolian hypothesis, but not the rebuttals by Klaproth, Kingsmill, etc (2584f). A fair survey of the scholarship requires presenting both sides by someone who has mastered both the Eastern nor the Western sources, or takes care to rely upon those who have done so. Kiessling does not present a fair survey. There are many problems connected with the *Mongolian+ hypothesis, one being the absence of the Siberian regions from ancient maps, which would make the Huns of Southern Russia neighbours of China, and the migration plausible. Other aspects require attention.

Historical linguistics provides tools to assist the recovery of the pre-history of the steppe nations. To illustrate: if we look at the British Isles today, we can see that Celtic is a marginal language group (at the risk of offending my Irish, Scottish, Cornish, and Welsh readers); but when we look at evidence from the past, for instance place names, we can see that, once, Celtic must have dominated the islands. London (Lugdunum) is only one of many thousands such survivals. The Celtic groups became marginalized when new comers, mostly Germanic (Angles, Saxons, Frisians, Danes, etc), invaded Britain, gained power and drove out or assimilated the older population. There is nothing unique about this: the phenomena are found all over the world.

The ancient dwellers of the Pontic steppe did not use writing, at least not in their own language; however, their linguistic remains point in one direction — Finno-Ugrian. Ancient toponyms such as Rha for the Volga, pre-Slavic names such as Kiev, Neva, Moskva, are Finno-Ugrian; many Hunnish names, like Uldin, the trans-Danubian native prince who delivered Gainas’ head to Emperor Arcadius, are Finno-Ugrian (Zosimus 5,22). The same ruler’s name turns up also in the Annotations of Ekkehart in a manuscript of Orosius under the passage 7,37,15: *atque in nostros] milites Honorii et Huldin et Saron+ (edited by Clark 1932:35).

Decisive evidence for the language of the Scyths is found in Hungarian whose bearers migrated to the West in the late ninth century from the Pontic steppe. The tenth century chronicler Regino of Prüm reports on this and he is supported by ninth century sources such as the Bavarian Geographer, the Anonymous Cosmographer of Ravenna, and the Old English translation of Orosius, made under King Alfred, who all place Onogoria in the Pontic belt (for sources and references, see Pétrin 1998:49ff).

In their article on the ancestry of Odoacer, the fifth century ruler, Reynolds and Lopez addressed the confusion over the Pontic nations. Was Odoacer a Torcilingus, or a Scirus, or a Hun, or were these ethnic names equivalent, and were these people Germanic or something else — those were some of the questions they posed.

They wrote: *As far as etymologies go, however, it is not difficult at all to suggest them, if the starting assumption is that the Torcilingi were some sort of Turks+ (39). If by Turks, one means an Altaic people, the linguistic brothers of the present day Turks, descendants of the Ottoman Turks, that possibility does not exist.

The name Türki for Altaic speakers is recent; it is not attested before AD 700 (see Chavannes on the Chinese sources). It occurs in the Ienissei valley, not amongst the Khyôn of Inner Asia, or their Avar offshoots along the Danube. While the language of the Avars contains some vocabulary, such as Khagan, which belongs to the family we moderns know as the Altaic Türki, these people did not call themselves Türki but Khyôn or Obri, or Abares, or Hephthalites. The name Türki apparently did not exist in the mid sixth century when they emigrated; when it does appear, it is not on record for Inner Asia, but for Siberia. Concerning these, Parker writes *the recently discovered Turkish inscriptions of over a thousand years ago, deciphered by Professor Dr. Vilhelm Thomsen, of Copenhagen, and the Russian academician Dr. Radloff, of St. Petersburg, give as the national name the four letters T Ü R K, repeated over and over again, and in such a way as in meaning to correspond indubitably with the mutilated Chinese form t’u-küe, tut-kut, or tolkol, as they sound in different provinces to the ear of today+ (1896:433).

The Hsiung-nu, a powerful neighbour of China in the days of the Han dynasty, were known centuries earlier than the Turks of the Orkhon valley; they too spoke a Türki language (as we can tell from their linguistic remains), but the Hsiung-nu were not called by the name Türki. Turkic is the name which we moderns give this branch of Altaic languages on the basis of a usage unrecorded before the seventh century of the Christian era, but very common in our own days.

Torcilingus, the ethnic name applied to Odoacer, is connected with the Tauric peninsula. The name Tauros for the Crimea is attested since time immemorial, along with such variants as Toretai, Torkoi, Torkhoi. The Torks, already known to Pliny, are still mentioned in Medieval Russian chronicles and in the Slavic life of Constantine the Philosopher, also known as St. Cyril, who created the Slavic literary language. The name Tourkoi given to the Magyars by Constantine Porphyrogenitus in the De Administrando Imperio refers to this ancient Crimean nation and has nothing to do with the Altaic people whom we now know as the Turks, for instance the Ottoman Turks (for all references see Pétrin 1998). Some twelve centuries separate the earliest appearances of these two names, the Altaic Türki and the Torki from the Crimea.

The nations of the Pontic hinterland who supplied the Greek and Iranian city states with raw materials had many names besides Torkoi/Toretai; these occur in ancient sources: Scythi, Sciri, Neuroi/Nervi/Navaroi, etc. Aytek Namitok has surveyed what slivers of evidence can be found concerning them (40ff with an extensive bibliography of ancient sources, 112f for Slavic sources).

However varied, the ancient linguistic remains from the Pontic steppe, such as Rha for the Volga, are Finno-Ugrian. Our word rhubarb (Rhos barbaricon) is derived from this source. Then there are the mysterious Rhipaean mountains, located somewhere in Scythia, which were only known by hearsay to the Greeks and the Romans. Philostorgius testifies that these mountains were associated with the Huns (9,17). Avitus, cited earlier, also connects them with the Don (*De diluvio mundi+ 441-442).

As for the Sciri, one of the suggestions made by Reynolds and Lopez is that they might have been Iranians. Impossible. Iranian languages are marked by palatalisation: Shiri might be possible, Shchiri, or something along these lines. But such names would be rendered Siri by both Latin and Greek writers; see for instance how Shapur and Ardashir turn up as Sapor and Ardasir in classical authors. Sciri like Scythi and Scrithifinni cannot be Iranian: the consonant /k/ in both points to a different linguistic system.

Location also favours the Pontic steppe for the Sciri, as Reynolds and Lopez as indicated in a source which they provide: *At some time after 300 BC … „Galatae and Sciri” tried unsuccessfully to capture Olbia [Odessa]. That is all the Protogenes Inscription has to say about the Sciri+ (40). Well, not quite: it indirectly offers also information on geography.

The *Galatai+ in this inscription were probably migrants from Central Europe looking for a new home after the collapse of Keltikê, the great Celtic empire which was eventually absorbed by the Romans. They need not have been ethnic Celts. As noted by Ellis Minns, *For most Greeks a Scythian, Skythês, was any northern barbarian from the east of Europe, just as a Galatês was any such from the West+ (1913:35). These particular Galatai could be the Goths who later established an empire in the steppe region. Using a very ancient and widespread tactic, they would recruit local vassal people in order to gain control of a commercially significant stronghold in their new territory.

As for the Galatai who conquered Olbia, we know from the archaeological remains that this city, like the whole region, became Gothic during the third century. The Goths gained control of these city states, their trade and their wealth. For the history of Olbia under Roman rule, see Slavin 1959. See also Belin de Ballu, 1972, page 167 to the end, who dates this Gothic destruction to second century (182). The westward shift of gravity, from the Crimea to Moldova, brought about the economic collapse of the Crimean Bosphorus and its Greek and Iranian city-states (Gaidukevic 1949, especially chapter 12). After the imperial revival under Emperor Diocletian and his colleagues, the Romans were now able to keep Gothic raiders out of the Balkans and out of Asia minor but they could not restore their lost power over the steppes and the city-states.

The Sciri must have lived in Olbia’s hinterland: the Pontic steppe. Otherwise the joint campaign with the Galatai makes no sense. Other information on the Sciri points in the same direction, as Reynolds and Lopez write: *About 381 and again in 408 AD [the Sciri] were combined with the Carpi, Sarmatians and Huns in affrays along the Lower Danube+ (40). The Pontic steppe is clearly indicated as their permanent base. For scholarship on Olbia (ancient Odessa), see Belin de Ballu, Gaidukevich, Slavin, Wasowicz.

Reynolds and Lopez commented: *But if there was any substance under Pliny’s text, his Sciri lived in lands now postulated to have been the ancestral homes of Baltic or Slavic tribes, or even by Finns. Perhaps etymologizing with those languages should be attempted+ (42). Yes indeed, as the name of Uldin, the slayer of Gainas, shows: he is sometimes described as a Hun chieftain, sometimes as the ruler of the Sciri, and a relative of Odoacer; this name is still found today amongst Estonians, a Finno-Ugrian people. The geography is also congruent. We are told that Gainas left the Empire, crossed the Danube, and was killed by Uldin, the leader of the Huns, who sent his head to Arcadius; the death of Gainas is dated December 23, 400 (Zosimus 5,22).

Like Turkic languages, the Finno-ugrian group is characterized by vocalic harmony. But these two remain, nonetheless, totally separate families. Myself, as a linguist, I have observed untrained people who hear speakers of Italian and Serbian side by side, both melodious and highly vocalic languages, and claim that they sound the same. Indeed the words may *sound+ the same, but they don’t mean the same thing. The case for the Huns being a branch of the Türki needs more than mellifluous sounds; it needs the presence of such early attested words as Khagan, ordu, etc in their linguistic remains.

Greek, Latin, Chinese, Iranian… so many languages are required to sort out the fragments of the remains on the Huns and the Chyonitai. That nothing be spared the hapless linguist, Sanskrit also makes a contribution to this tangled web.

In his article on the Ancient Sogdian letters, Henning comments that Sogdian xwn is *employed not of nomads of vague definition, but actually of the genuine Far-Eastern Hsiung-nu [...] well before the time when either the European Huns or the tribes that became known as Hûna to the Indians made their first appearance in history+ (615). Henning’s statement is correct on the subject of the Hûna in Sanskrit sources; for the rest, he was misled by the *Mongolian+ hypothesis: Hunni/Khuni are mentioned as early as Dionysius Periegetes and Ptolemy two centuries before the Ancient Sogdian Letters; this nation could have been the Pontic Huns, or they could have been the Hsiung-nu. Henning’s article also adds confusion on the subject of Sanskrit Hûna which seems so close to the name of the Attilanic Huns, a misleading impression.

Historians of the Huns see the Sanskrit word Hûna and jump to the conclusion that this means Attila’s Huns. However Hûna does not correspond to Hounnoi but to Chyon because the letter romanised as H in Sanskrit editions corresponds not to the soft /h/ but to the fricative /x, kh/ (Basham 506-508). While Sanskrit preserved the initial fricative /x/ of this name, it interpreted the vowel /ô/ as /û/; Sogdian had both an /u/ and an /o/ in its vocalic system (see Sims-Williams for a chart). There must be a reason why Sanskrit used /û/ for /ô/, and I will generously abandon the elucidation to scholars with a good grounding in ancient Iranian and Sanskrit.

I will however insist on this: Sanskrit Hûna is a later development, and has nothing to do with the Attilanic Huns. To the best of my knowledge, it first occurs in the early fifth century. The Hsiung-nu were driven out of China in the 310′s of the Christian era, and found a new address in the region of the Hindu Kush as allies, vassals or mercenaries of the Persian king Shapur II. However they soon ran into conflicts with their Sassanid sponsors and eventually gained control of Iran’s Eastern borders. By AD 455, greatly enriched with the colossal mineral wealth of the Hindu Kush, they had conquered a large part of India.

The earliest mention of the Hûna in Sanskrit is found in an undatable epic poem titled the Raghuvamça by a major Indian poet, Kalidasa. While engaged in this research, I ran into a group of Indian medical doctors in the university library; they were preparing themselves for qualifying examinations. I brought up the historical questions I was engaged in and they illustrated for me the massive importance of Kalidasa in their culture by mentioning that he is the author of their national anthem.

Therefore dating the Hûna on the basis of Kalidasa is like dating an ancient Mediterranean nation on the basis of Homer. In fact, the Raghuvamça itself is dated on the basis of this mention of the Hûna, to ca AD 400. Here is the relevant passage, in an English translation:

There he [Raghu] first demonstrated his power against the Huna kings; then, in their harems, Raghu’s attitude was by itself a command to the women’s cheeks to grow pale.+ (Tr: Antoine, Canto 4, 65-69, page 53).

Because of Kalidasa’s significance, there is a considerable literature on the question, and anyone interested may pursue it. Here are a few references: Bhat 1982:1-10; Narang, Kalidasa Bibliography, for the Hûna, see index. As stated pithily by one of these authorities: *The description of the Hunas in [the Raghuvamça] is too vague to be useful for exact chronological calculation+ (Mirashi 1960/61:315). The most solid linguistic argument shows *that Kalidasa composed the verses quoted above when the Hûnas were still in the Oxus valley and shortly before they invaded the Gupta empire in AD 455+ (Pathak 1912:267).

Unlike the poetic evidence, the Hûna conflicts of AD 455 and beyond are secured by datable royal inscriptions: Banerjee 1989, ’13-16. For the text of the inscriptions, with translations, see Fleet, ’13, 33, 34, 35. Those inscriptions are connected with the Hûna’s conquest of India’s North Western provinces. Note the date: AD 455. At that same time, Attila’s Huns were in Pannonia, terrorising the Roman Empire. They were not in Pakistan, conquering the Punjab.

The Hûna managed to conquer North Western India, but they failed to expand further. There is no possibility of establishing any congruence whatsoever between these Indian documents, and the sources on Attila who was a contemporary of the earliest invasions into India. It is however possible to establish a correspondence between the people known in Sanskrit as Hûna and the Hunnoi whom Cosma Indicopleustes describes as the rich lords of the lands between China and Persia (for a study, see Biswas). He writes *from Tzinitza to the borders of Persia, between which are included all Iounia [alternate spelling Hounnia, found in a Vatican manuscript]+ (Kordosis 1999:103).

The early linguistic evidence from the Pontic steppe is Finno-Ugrian. From the sixth century of the Christian era, that is at the time of the Avar migration from Central Asia, we begin to encounter traces of Altaic languages; in particular titles such as Khagan for the ruler of the Avars. It is not absolutely impossible that the Attilanic Huns were originally Altaic Turks; but before we can consider this hypothesis, we need evidence, such as Bazin adduced for the Hsiung-nu, with a suitable argument. Until then, the Finno-Ugrian evidence as we have it supports the thesis first propounded by Klaproth, that these two were quite separate people speaking unrelated languages (barring the Nostratic theory); this stands to this day as the most economical hypothesis, and the only one which respects all the evidence.

To round out these etymological issues, I will conclude with a philological note on the name Türki which is the source of the name Turk which we use nowadays for the members of this Altaic family of languages. Not only the words Hounnoi vs Khyôn present awkward similarities; Torks and Turks have confused scholars even more: specifically the Tauri/Torki after whom the Tauric Chersonese is named, and the Türki whom we call Turks today, as in the Ottoman Turks.

A closer analysis of the linguistics of Uralian and Altaic remains may help sort out the differences. The Tauri/Toretai/Torki show for the stem some variant of a back vowel or diphthong /au/ or /o/ or /u/; the Altaic people are normally recorded with a fronted vowel: Türki. In fact, for the purpose of clarity, I use Türki in my articles when referring to the Altaic people, and reserve Torki for the nations of the Tauric peninsula. The difference is important, especially from the Turkish angle because vocalic systems in that linguistic family are dominated by a front/back alternation, and problems of vocalic harmony. The homophony between these two ethnic names reflects our own linguistic systems, not the source languages.

How important is the fronting of this vowel? Even the Chinese sources, equipped with a writing system which is very poorly designed for transcription of foreign vocabulary, strive to show the fronting of Türki vowels: as a noted sinologist informs us *il n’y avait pas en chinois ancien de forme mouillée correspondant à *dwith non mouillé; mais la mouillure du second caractère de transcription fait foi pour l’ensemble. Les Chinois ont donc rendu de leur mieux će qu’ils croyaient entendre *Dürküt, pour un original *Türküt+ (Pelliot 1915:687). For the problems of adapting foreign scripts to Türki phonemes, in particular /ü/, see Maue 1997 mentioned above.

To conclude my argument: the Huns of the Pontic steppe and the Hsiung-nu of Inner Asia were quite separate people; the first probably spoke a Finno-Ugrian language and the second spoke a demonstrably Altaic language. The fourth century AD historian, Ammianus Marcellinus, a staff officer in the Roman army with considerable expertise in Oriental affairs, reports on both these nations, and shows no sign of confusing one with the other. The *Mongolian hypothesis+ formulated in the eighteenth century is unsupported by any evidence, and indeed can be proven wrong on the basis of the existing evidence. Much more work needs to be done on the early history of these two nations but this research needs a solid foundation, including expertise in the awesome difficulties of ancient geography, as well as the usual philological competence.