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.