The present writer considers the Daci then (western and eastern) as Slavonic, and the following passage brings them as far west as the Maros or Morawe, which gives the name to the present Moravians, a population at once Slavonic and Bohemian:—"Campos et plana Jazyges Sarmatæ, montes vero et saltus pulsi ab his Daci ad Pathissum amnem a Maro sive Duria ... tenent."—Plin. iv. 12.
The evidence as to the population of Moravia and North-eastern Hungary being Dacian, is Strabo's [a]Γέγονε ... τῆς χόρας μερισμὸς συμμένων παλαιοῦ·] [a]τοὺς μὲν γὰρ Δάκους προσαγορεύουσι, τοὺς δὲ Γέτας, Γέτας μὲν πρὸς τὸν Πόντον κεκλιμένους, καὶ πρὸς τὲν ἕω, Δάκους δὲ τοὺς εἰς τἀνάντια πρὸς Γερμανίαν καὶ τὰς τοῦ Ἴστρου πήγας].—From Zeuss, in vv. Getæ, Daci.
In Moravia we have as the basis of argument, an existing Slavonic population, speaking a language identical with the Bohemian, but different from the other Slavonic languages, and (as such) requiring a considerable period for the evolution of its differential characters. This brings us to Bohemia. At present it is Slavonic. When did it begin to be otherwise? No one informs us on this point. Why should it not have been so ab initio, or at least at the beginning of the historical period for these parts? The necessity of an answer to this question is admitted; and it consists chiefly (if not wholly) in the following arguments;—a. those connected with the term Marcomanni; b. those connected with the term Boiohemum.
a. Marcomanni.—This word is so truly Germanic, and so truly capable of being translated into English, that those who believe in no other etymology whatever may believe that Marc-o-manni, or Marchmen, means the men of the (boundaries) marches; and without overlooking either the remarks of Mr. Kemble on the limited nature of the word mearc, when applied to the smaller divisions of land, or the doctrine of Grimm, that its primary signification is wood or forest, it would be an over-refinement to adopt any other meaning for it in the present question than that which it has in its undoubted combinations, Markgrave, Altmark, Mittelmark, Ukermark, and the Marches of Wales and Scotland. If so, it was the name of a line of enclosing frontier rather than of an area enclosed; so that to call a country like the whole of Bohemia, Marcomannic, would be like calling all Scotland or all Wales the Marches.
Again, as the name arose on the western, Germanic or Gallic side of the March, it must have been the name of an eastern frontier in respect to Gaul and Germany; so that to suppose that there were Germans on the Bohemian line of the Marcomanni, is to suppose that the march was no mark (or boundary) at all, at least in an ethnological sense. This qualification involves a difficulty which the writer has no wish to conceal; a march may be other than an ethnological division. It may be a political one. In other words, it may be like the Scottish Border, rather than like the Welsh and the Slavono-Germanic marches of Altmark, Mittelmark and Ukermark. At any rate, the necessity for a march being a line of frontier rather than a large compact kingdom, is conclusive against the whole of Bohemia having been Germanic because it was Marcomannic.
b. The arguments founded on the name Boiohemum are best met by showing that the so-called country (home) of the Boii was not Bohemia but Bavaria. This will be better done in the sequel than now. At present, however, it may be as well to state that so strong are the facts in favour of Boiohemum and Baiovarii meaning, not the one Bohemia and the other Bavaria, but one of the two countries, that Zeuss, one of the strongest supporters of the doctrine of an originally Germanic population in Bohemia, applies both of them to the firstnamed kingdom; a circumstance which prepares us for expecting, that if the names fit the countries to which they apply thus loosely, Boiohemum may as easily be Bavaria, as the country of the Baiovarii be Bohemia; in other words, that we have a convertible form of argument.
ADDENDA (1859).
(1)
Too much stress is, perhaps, laid on the name Jazyges. The fact of the word Jaszag in Magyar meaning a bowman complicates it. The probability, too, of the word for Language being the name of a nation is less than it is ought to be, considering the great extent to which it is admitted.