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:—[a]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 [a]Οὖννοι], not [a]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—[a]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 ([a]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 -[a]οι], as [a]Γέλωνοι, Ἄλαυνοι, Ἄλανοι], and another in -[a]ες], as [a]Γέλωνες, Ἄλαυνες, Ἄλανες],—possible, and even probable, modifications of the original name, whatever that was. Now, name for name, [a]Αλανες] comes very near [a]Ελληνες]; and in this similarity may lie the explanation of the statement of Herodotus as to the existence of certain Scythian Greeks ([a]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.