PART
7 –
Ch.XLI.7
The
great Pelasgian empire
(The
Pelasgian language)
XLI.
7. The language of the Getae and the Dacians.
The language of the
Getae and the Dacians before the Roman conquest presents a particular importance
for the history of the countries from the lower
We find most of the
notes regarding the characteristics of the barbarian language spoken at the
lower
In his “Epistulae
ex Ponto” and “Tristia”, Ovid mentions often the mode of speaking of the Getae
and the Sarmatians, a language which he had learned so well in 6 years that he
often attributes himself even the title of a Dacian and Sarmatian poet.
“And neither you
should wonder”, says he towards his friend Carus, “if you found errors in the
poems which I compose, and which are almost the work of a Getic poet. And oh!, I am ashamed, but I wrote a poem in the Getic language,
and I constructed in our meters the barbarian
words; but you must congratulate me, they liked the poem and I began to make
for myself the name of a poet, among these inhuman Getae. You shall maybe ask me, what subject have I treated. I sang
praises to the emperor Augustus and good God has helped me again in this new
venture. I have shown in these verses that the body of our emperor and father
Augustus was been mortal, but that his divine essence has gone to the celestial
abodes, and that his son (Tiberius), who has taken into his hands the running
of the empire, although he has refused it a number of times, is like his father
in virtues… After I read to the Getae this poem, written not in the language of
my country, and I reached the last page, all of them moved their heads, their
quivers full of arrows echoed, and a long sigh issued from their mouths; and
one of them told me: “You, because you write these things about the emperor,
you have to return to his empire” (Ex Ponto, I. IV. 13. v. 16-22).
In another elegy Ovid writes: “It seems to me that I
myself have forgotten the Latin language
and I have learned to speak like the Getae
and the Sarmatians” (Trist. V.
12. v. 57 seqq).
And in another
place: “Why should I take so much care to polish my verse? Should I fear maybe
that it would not please the Getae?
It is possible that I want too much, but I congratulate myself that in this
land at the Istru, there is no bigger genius than me. In this land, where I
shall spend my days, it is enough if I were considered a poet among the inhuman
Getae” (Pont. I. 5. 62 seqq). “I myself, Roman poet, am forced to speak often
in the Sarmatic mode. And I am
ashamed to admit that through a long disuse the Latin words but barely come into my mind. I do not doubt that also
in this letter not a few barbarian
words have sneaked in. The guilt is not of the man, but of the place. But, so
that I won’t lose entirely my use of the Latin language, and in order that my
voice could utter the sounds of my mother language, I speak with myself and
repeat the words which I had forgotten (Trist. V. 7. 55; III. 14. 47seqq).
The Getae, as Ovid
tells us, had a great power of assimilation. The Greek element of Tomis had
been almost completely absorbed in the great mass of the Getic people (Trist.
V. 7. 51-52).
“If somebody”,
writes Ovid in a letter, “had forced
Homer to live in this country, I assure you that he would have also become a Get” (Pont. IV. 2. 21 – 22).
As we see, there
was a great similarity between the language of the Getae and the Latin
language. The essence of both languages was common.
The language of the
Getae was, according to Ovid, a barbarian language, but a Latin barbarian language. We saw above how he himself tells us that
many barbarian words, Getic and Sarmatic, had sneaked in his Tristia
and Epistulae ex Ponto; that his Latin
poems, written near the mouths of the Danube, were almost the work of a Getic poet; that in 6 years
he had become so accustomed with this language that now Latin words came with
difficulty in his mind; and finally, that he had even composed a longer poem
(libellus) in the language of the Getae, with which he had made a name for
himself among them.
The language of the
Dacians had a Latin character also
according to Horace, Ovid’s
contemporary. In one of his odes, dedicated to Mecenas, he says the following:
“I, who am a child
born of poor parents, and whom you Mecenas, honor with your love, I shall not
die … In a short time, and even faster than Icarus, the son of Dedalus, I shall
see the bellowing shores of the Bosporus,
and like a fine singing bird I shall fly over the sandy desert of the Getulii and over the plains of the Hyperboreans. I shall be recognized by
the inhabitants of Colchis and by
the Dacians, who pretend that they
do not fear our weapons, as well as the Gelonii
from the extremities of Europe; I shall be taught by the clever Iberians, who drink water from the
Rhodan” (Od. II. 20. v. 13 seqq).
We have here a list
of the barbarian peoples who still spoke a rustic Latin language in the times
of Augustus: the dwellers of the Cimmerian Bosporus, the Getullii, Hyerboreans,
Colchii, Dacii, Galii from near the Rhodan and the Iberii from the western
peninsula!
The plains of the Hyperboreans, mentioned by Horace in
this ode, were the vast plains of the lower
A particular
importance for the matter treated here, regarding the language of the Getae, is
presented by two bas-reliefs from the Column of Trajan.
One of this
presents a deputation of Dacian peasants (Comati), who, threatened by the
legions of the powerful
A second relief
shows the most important moment of the first war. Three kings of the Dacians,
followed by a huge deputation (pilophores and comates) present themselves
before the emperor in order to solemnly declare their submission. All of them
lay down their weapons. Some kneel, stretching their hands towards the emperor,
pleading for peace, others stand with their hands hold together in front of
them, or at their back, in the mode in which prisoners of war are represented
on antique monuments. This time, the column of Trajan presents again the
Dacians addressing the emperor directly, without any interpreter (Ibid,
This latter scene
is illustrated even clearer by the following passage from the history of Dio Cassius. After the ending of the
first war, writes he, Trajan had sent a number of representatives of the
Dacians to the Senate, to confirm the peace. “The ambassadors of Decebal were
introduced to the Senate, where after they laid down their weapons, they hold
together their hands in the way of the captives, spoke some pleading words, after which they accepted the peace and
took their weapons from the ground” (lib. LXVIII. c. 8, 9).
The Dacian
deputation has spoken therefore in front of the Roman Senate in the national
language of the country, which certainly many of the senators understood,
especially those who had occupied high positions in the peripheral provinces,
and were used with the popular language. In fact, it cannot be admitted in any
way, from the point of view of the public law, that the Roman Senate could have
considered binding some promises of submission spoken in a language which they
did not understand.
The language of the
Getae had extended in the more ancient times over the entire eastern part of the
In Mesia, the fundamental stratum of the
population was formed by the Getae, and their language dominated the entire
lower Mesia (Ovid, Tris. III. 9.
3-4; Dio Cassius, lib. 41. 27).
Ovid called the whole western shore of the
According to Herodotus, the Thracians were of the same nationality as the Getae (lib. IV); and
according to Strabo, the language of
the Thracians was identical with that of the Getae (Geogr. Lib. VII. 3. 10). As
Capitolinus writes, Maximinus the
old, born in a village close to