Page:Dictionary of Greek and Roman Geography Volume I Part 2.djvu/356

 HUNNi: ihan the rest has been reserved, AeaJbdri. What Priaciis found, od his Tint to AttiU's court or carop^ nspectiiig these Acatsirij has been abraadj noticed. We most remomber when thef lay, m. in the moun- tain districts of the parts about Hnngaiy, (say) in Transylvania. Gontxast this locality with that of the Avars, who^ in their origbial locality, seem to have been the most northern of Hons; aiid who (we must remember) an distinctly designated by that name. So are the AeatshH, Now, between these limits lay the Scythia of Herodotus. That the Scythians of Herodotus belonged to the great Turk fiunily is, in the present article, a postnUte ; but evidence will be given of this fiust in the articles Sctthab, Sctthia. And theHnns,with their allied popaktions, were Turk alaou Neither, however, were mdigenous to Europe : bat, on the ooctraxy, each intrusive, each originally Asiatic ; each, under an a prion view of their pro* bable origm, from the north-western parts of Inde- pendent Tartary. Now, whatever may be the actual Htta of the Hun history, there is no need of any mimtions later than that of the Scythae (Skolod) to bring them into Europe, and there it no evidenee ^miek. And, whatever may have been the actual facts in the histoiy of the Sqrthae, there is no evi- diefioe of their having either been ejected from their European ooeupancietj or eaUngmshed ae popuUuione, The on^ definite fiict is a change of the names by which the populations of a certain portion of Europe are known. It is suggested, then, that the histoiy of the populations akin to the Hun, from the 6th century forwards, is, in the ffiotii, a continuance of the history of the Scythae of the 4th century b. c. But is there any evidence of such continuity? It is submitted that there is tome. The Kariapoi of Herodotus are, probably, the Cw- <^iiri of later writers. The Huns of Attila are not only called Scythae, but more specifically Boyal Scgthae. (Priscus, de LegaL 8. 1.) Lastly, comes the notice of the Xovroi (yid, ettp.) by Ptolem. But what if XYieAoalburis^Agathgrti t llr. New- man, in a paper on the Scgthia of Herodotut, places them in Transylvania. So much for the coincidence of pboe and phu». What as to name and name ? There is a certain amount of difierence we must expect it priori. The two words have come to us through diflforent routes, and at diffierent times. Aga&grn is Greek — early, chusical Greek ; as (as Greek) Boman also. It was taken by our early Greek authorities at second-hand ; perhaps even less directly than that. This means, that it was not taken from the Agathgrti themselvn, but that it passed through an intermediate language, becoming thereby liable to change. But the Greeks of the time of Priscus got it either first-hand, or through the Goths, and their fofms are, Aicdenpot and *Aicar{Ipoc, Acatziri (in certain MSS., Aeazeiri). It would be strange if the words were liker than they are. There has been a difierence of medium, and a difierence of form is the natural result. The present writer makes no secret of Uying great stress on these words, Aealsiri and Agathgrti, even at the risk of being accused of uidulging in etymo- kgies. He will, ere long, strengthen it by another ; ■nbmitting that the two combined are more than twice as strong as one standing alone : they confirm each other. At present he sums up with the inference, that if the Acatziri were Huns, and the Agathyrsi Scythae, and each occupied the same locality at times so distant as the ages of Herodotus and Priscus, some member of the Hun name, at least, was ta $itu HUNNL 1097 in Transylvania six centuries before Attila*s tune, — tome Scythisns coincided with tome Huns. It is now suggested that the history of thete parts be read backwards. For the parts between the Aluta and the Dniester, it was the Romans of Trajan who disphued the descendants of the Scythae of Herodotus, fragments of whom remained in Tran- sylvania as Acaiairi in the time of Attila. And why not the Huns of Attiht be what the Acatziri were ? No evidence hringt them from aag point east of the AlvteL All that evidence does is to say that certain Huns fought against certam Akns on the Maeotis; that certain Huns ejected certain Thervings from Bessarabia ; that certain Huns occupied the country betweenthe Aluta and Theiss. All beyondisti^/erence; and the inference of the present writer is, that the Huns of Attila were no new comers in Hungary. Where was Attila*8 court or camp ? Not in Roman Dacia, nor yet in Boman Pannonia : but just in that part between the two that was never Romanised ; a likely spot for the remains of such independence as the Scythian portion of Dada might preserve, but not a lilrely spot for a new invader from the Don or Volga. Part, then, of Dacia was Scythian or Turk ? Cer- tainly. No man can say how much. And the sub- jects of Decebalus may have been Scythian or Turk, descendants of the Agathyrd, ancestors of the Acat- ziri, does kinsmen of the Huns of Attila. Such is the inference. If soldiers, why not captains ? why not Decebalus himself ? There are those who may think that the notion of Decebalus being a Turk supplies a rednetio ad ahanrdum. Yet it is only our preconceived notions that are shocked. No facts are agamst it Why should not the Agathyrtii of Dacia have supplied a leader as well as any other? Decebalus is a word strange to Gothic, strange to Slavonic, not strange to Turk hittorg.. When the proper and specific Turks first appear in the field of Ustory, as they do in the reign of Jus- tinian, the name of the first Turk khan is that of the last Dacian king—- Disbu],in Gibbon; AiC(a€a6hetf in Menander (p. 301). The true historical character of Attila will, per^ haps, never be recognised ; but, if we must have extremes, the doctrine that he was tiie reconstmctor of an impaired nationality, and the analogue of Pela- gius in Spain rather than of TamerUne in Asia, is as little removed from the probable truth as the notion that he was the Scourge of God and the sjrmbol of barbarism. The ejection of the Goths seems to have a simple detail in the history of Dacia, — possibly the first great event in the recon- struction of a Scythic (or Scytho-Sarmatian) king- dom as opposed to a Romano-Germanic one. At any rate, it is much more certain that the Goths were the intruders than it is that the Huns were. WHmc Hums (OSvyoi Ac^oi), Cidaritae, Nbpthalitab, Ephthautab. — Cidriate is the name in Priscus ; white^ the epithet of Proco- pius. Their locality was the south-western port of Turkestan: their aflbiities, probably Turk; the present Turcomans being their likeliest descoidants. They appear in history as being engaged in a war against Piroaes, king of Persia, in the sixth cen- tury. (Prooop. B. P. L 3.) They are distinctly stated by Prooopius to have agreed with the Huns chiefly in name ; to have been designated by the epithet vfhite, because their complexion was fair; to have been comparatively civilised, settled, and agricultural. Chioihtax.— Neumann considered that a popu-