Page:Dictionary of Greek and Roman Geography Volume II.djvu/935

 SARJIATIA. wards being also inordinate. He carries it as far as the countrj of the Bastarnae. The Germany of Tacitus is bounded on the east by the Sannatae and Daci. The Sarraatae here are the population of a comparatively small area between the Danube and Thetss, and on the boundaries of Hungary, Moldavia, and GalUcia. But they are something more. They are the type of a large class widely spread both eastward and northward ; a class of equal value with that of the Germani. This, obviously, subtracts something from the vast extent of the Germania of Strabo (which nearly meant Northern Europe); but not enough. The position of the Bastarnae, Peucini, Venedi, and Finni, is still an open question. [Scythia.] This prepares us for something more systematic, and it is in Ptolemy that we iind it. The Sarha- TiAE of Ptolemy fall into (1) the European, and (2) the Asiatic. I. SAKMATIA EUROPAEA. The western boundary is the Vistula ; the nor- thern the Baltic, as far as the Venedic gulf and a tract of unknown country; the southern, the country of the Jazyges Metanastae and Dacia; the eastern, the isthmus of the Crimea, and the I)07i. This gives us parts of Poland and Gallicia, Li- thuania, Esthonia, and Western Russia. It in- cludes the Finni (probably a part only), and the Alauni, who are Scythians eo nomine (^AXavvot. 'SicvOai). It includes the Bastarnae, the Peucini, and more especially the Venedi. It also includes the simple Jazyges, as opposed to the Jazyges Jletanastae, who form a small section by them- selves. All these, with the exception of the Finni, are especially stated to be the gi-eat nations of Sar- matia (to which add the Rosolani and Hamasobii), as opposed to the smaller ones. Of the greater nations of Samatia Europaea, the Peucini and Bastarnae of Ptolemy are placed further north than the Peucini and Bastarnae of his pre- decessors. By later writers they are rarely mentioned. [Venedi.] Neither are the Jazyges, who are the Jazyges Sarmatae of Strabo. These, along with the Roxolani, lay along the whole side (oAtji/ T^v vXevpav^ of the Maeotis, say in Kherson, Tauris and Ekaterinoslav. [Roxolani.] Ha- maxobii is merely a descriptive term. It probably was applied to some Scythian population. Pliny writes Hamaxobii aut Aorsi, a fact of which fur- ther notice is taken below. The Alauni, notwith- standing an 'AXawov opos, and other complica- tions, can scarcely be other than the Alani of Cau- casus; the aAK7]evTis "AKavvoi 'of the Periegesis (1. 302) are undoubted Scythians. Nestor, indeed, has a ])opulution otherwise unknown, called Ulicz'i, the czi being non-radical, which is placed on the Dniester. It does not, however, remove the difficulty. The Peucini were best known as the occupants of one of the islands at the mouth of the Danube. They may also, however, have extended far into Bessarabia. So manifold .ire the changes that a word with Sarmatian or Scythian inflexion can undergo, that it is not improbable that Peuc-ini may be the modem words Budjack and Bess, in £e.s.?-arabia. The following are the actual forms which the name of the Pate-inacks, exactly in the country of the -Pewc-ini, undergoes in the mediaeval and Byzantine writers. Tiar^ivaKiTai, Pecenatici, Pizenaci, Pincenales, Postinagi, Peczenjezi (in Slavonic), Petinei, Pecinei (the nearest approach to SARMATIA. 9i; Peucini.) Then, in the direction of Budziah and Bessi, Behnakije, Petschnakije, Pezina-jx (in Norse), Bisseni and Bessi, (Zeuss, Die Deutschen,^-c. s. vv. Pecinaci and Cumani). The Patzinaks were Scythians, who cannot be shown to be of recent origin in Europe. They may, then, have been the actual descendants of the Peucini ; though this is not necessary, for they may have been a foreign people who, on reaching the country of the Peuc- iui, took the name ; in such a case being Peuc-mi in the way that an Englishman is a Briton, i. e. not at all. The difference between the Peucini and Bastarnae was nominal. Perhaps the latter were Moldavian rather than Bessarabian. The Atmoni and Siaones of Strabo were JJastamae. The geography of the minor nations is more obscure, the arrangement of Ptolemy being some- what artificial. He traces them in two parallel columns, from north to south, beginning, in both cases with the country of the Venedi, and taking the eastern bank of the Vistula first. The first name on this list is that of the Gythones, south of the Venedi. It is not to be understood by this that the Venedi lay between the Gythones and the Baltic, so as to make the latter an inland people, but simply that the Venedi of the parts about Memel lay north of the Gythones of the parts about Elbing. Neither can this people be separated from the Guttones and Aestyii, i. e. the populations of the amber country, or East Prussia. The Finni succeed (Vvdaiv^s iira ^ivvoi). It is not likely that these Finns (if Finns of Finland) can have laid due south of East Prussia ; though not impossible. They were, probably, on the east. The Bulanes (Sulones ?), with the Phrugun- diones to the south, and the Avareni at the he.ad of the Vistula, bring us to the Dacian frontier. The details here are all conjectural. Zeuss has identified the Bulanes with the Borani of Zosinius, who, along with the Goths, the Carpi, and the Urugundi, attacked the empire under Gallus. In Nestor a population called Sul-iczi occupies a locality between the Dnieper and Dniester : but this is too far east. In Livonia, Henry the Lett gives pro- minence to the nation of the Selones, a likelier iden- tification. For Bulanes (supposing this to be the truer reading) the word Polyane gives us the most plau- sible signification. Nestor uses it frequently. It is Pole, primarily meaning occtijjants of plains. Wherever, then, there were plains they might be I'olgane; and Nestor actually mentions two divi- sions of them ; the Lekhs, or Poles of the Vistula, and the Polyanc of the Dnieper. The Phrugundiones of Ptulemy have always been a crt/x geographica. Name for name, they are so like Burgundiones as to have suggested the idea of a migration from Poland to Burgundy. Then there are the Urugundi and Burgunui of the Byzantine writers (see Zeuss, s. vv. Burani, Uru- gundi), witii whom the Ptolemaean population is, probably, identical. The writer wlio is unwilling to assume migrations unnecessarily will a.sk whether the several Burgundys may not be explained on tho principle suggested by the word Polyane, i. e. whether the woid may not be the name of more than one locality of the same physical conditions. Probably, this is the case. In the Gennan, and also in the Slavonic languages, the word Fairguni, Ferqund, Vergunt, Virgunda, Virgimndia, and Viraunnia, mean hiU-raiige, forest, elevated tract. 3n 2