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The History channel doing something rare by actually showing history ..lol.. and is showing The Barbarians (The Goths) show today at 10.00 A.M. EST and again at 4.00 P.M. EST. Although i've seen this show before i always enjoy watching it as the Goths first battle the Eastern Roman Empire and kill Emperor Valens in 378 A.D. and then in 410 A.D. they sack Rome of the Western Roman Empire of Emperor Honorius and then finally form the Visigothic kingdom in Spain.
Speaking of Honorius... his sister, Galla Placidia was interesting...she was kidnapped by Athaulf, a Visigoth leader..they married and she had a son by him..who actually would be in line to be Emperor.Sadly the child died young and was buried in a silver coffin in Barcelona. Honorius wanted her back...she was returned and married to Constantius..they had a daughter, Honoria..who was pretty wild.. she had an affair with Busmar and became pregnant..she was sent off to a nunnery but escaped..Eventually she was forced to marry an elderly senator...she was bored and un-happy, so she wrote to Attilla and sent him a ring offering herself to him in marriage...It never happened, but did provide Attilla an excuse to attack Rome...Kind of sounds like a soap opera
Yeah, it's refreshing when they aren't doing In Search of UFOs or the enchanting saga of some car company.
I thought their piece on the Goths (saw it last time around) was pretty good, so I recommend this series. It neglected some of the details on origin and development that I think matter; for example, I don't recall it making any effort to sort out the difference between Tervingi and Greuthungi.
One particular interest of mine is Gothic pre-Christian religion, which is not something we know a hell of a lot about given that so many adopted Arian Christianity fairly soon after they showed up in circumstances where the civilized world documented them. We do have enough understanding of their cultural tendencies (with a people as loosely amalgamated and widely spread as the Goths, no one can refer to a unified culture without qualifiers) to generalize somewhat. By and large, they seem more similar than different to their central Germanic cousins.
The idea of them all as a bunch of inherently vicious savages, of course, is pretty silly, but the evidence readily attests that Goths fought willingly and fiercely. A difference that shows up between them and other Germans is that loyalty to a reiks (essentially, chieftain or magistrate) was more greatly prized. You might call them a little better organized and easier to maneuver as a group, once organized as a military force. Certainly more so than Vercingetorix's Gauls, for example, who were far less centralized or unified.
The tendency to compare them with Vikings must be resisted for one simple reason: the very earliest Roman references to Goths (in Tacitus) come long, long before Lindisfarne. Seven centuries back then was just as long as seven centuries today. Put another way, look at the difference between 1100 (one year after the first Crusade showered Jerusalem with Christian love) and 1800 (by which time wars are fought mainly with gunpowder, the Industrial Age is figuring out how to gather steam, and most of the world's populous nations have decided or are deciding just what and who they really are). Thus, most pre-Romulus Augustulus references to Goths are contemporary with pre-Viking archaeology, not with the Vikings as most of us know them. It is a bit like comparing modern Milan with 1300s Sicily.
One thing i've haven't figure out is where did they go once the Moors overan Spain in 711 ? Maybe some stayed and converted to islam or maybe some scattered out into southern France and the Holy Roman empire as i wish we could trace their DNA and see what current country today has some of their bloodline.
They became culturally submerged, especially with the Islamic conquest. They remain a strain of the fabric of French and Spanish culture. It would, however, be interesting to see how widely their genetics have spread. I am guessing that they're one good reason a blond Spaniard isn't a terribly rare phenomenon.
They became culturally submerged, especially with the Islamic conquest. They remain a strain of the fabric of French and Spanish culture. It would, however, be interesting to see how widely their genetics have spread. I am guessing that they're one good reason a blond Spaniard isn't a terribly rare phenomenon.
Thanks J K K .......as your take was interesting. I kinda thought that many stayed as like you stated as there are many blonde hair and blue eye spanards. I find it interesting that the Goths shedded their germanic language for latin or vulgar latin which is the early foundations of spanish although i'm sure there are moorish words in there also.
yep interesting poor people they got work ethic family ethic, church ethic and they take over law enforcement and military of a fat rich host country that has gotten soft lazy and gutless very corrupt & highly disfunctional.
does any of this sound familiar.
Thanks J K K .......as your take was interesting. I kinda thought that many stayed as like you stated as there are many blonde hair and blue eye spanards. I find it interesting that the Goths shedded their germanic language for latin or vulgar latin which is the early foundations of spanish although i'm sure there are moorish words in there also.
That was informative about the Arabic language in Spanish especially all the words that begin with ''al'' i.e. alchemy and algebra etc...So from 376 when the Goths first entered the Roman empire to around 412 when they finally entered Spain so in about 35 short years the Visigoths became romanized and were speaking Latin as that is super quick in historical times as no wonder why no Gothic words are hardly found in Spanish. They must have really admired the Roman traditions and cultures etc. even though they were treated terrible by them.
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