plik

Australian Association for Byzantine Studies

Byzantina Australiensia 16

Y Z A N T I N E

A R R A T I V E

Papers in Honour of Roger Scott

Edited by John Burke

with Ursula Betka, Penelope Buckley,

Kathleen Hay, Roger Scott & Andrew Stephenson

Melbourne 2006

C/- Centre for Early Christian Studies

Australian Catholic University
P.O. Box 456

Virginia, Queensland 4014
Australia

ISSN

0725-3079

ISBN-13 978-1-876503-24-6
ISBN-10 1-876503-24-6

Melbourne 2006

Cover design by Stephen Cole of the Graphic Design Unit, The

Australian National University
Design and layout by John Burke
Printed by the University Printing Service,
The Australian National University, Canberra ACT 0200, Australia

Published and distributed by the Australian Association for

Byzantine Studies

Publication of this volume was assisted by a publication grant from

the University of Melbourne. All papers in this publication have
been refereed anonymously.

Byzantine Narrative. Papers in Honour of Roger Scott. Edited by J. Burke et
al. (Melbourne 2006).

Andrew Gillett

The Goths and the Bees in Jordanes: A Narrative of No Return

‘…one characteristic of sixth-century literature…is its confidence
in attempting something new, even where the novelty consists in
reworking the old.’

Roger Scott, ‘Malalas and His Contemporaries.’

Jordanes  was  a  mid-sixth  century  Constantinopolitan  author  who  wrote  a
breviary of Roman history and a far better-known narrative of the Goths, a group
that  exercised  Byzantine  minds  greatly  in  his  time.  In  the  latter  text,  Jordanes
twice  interrupts  his  narrative  to  compare  his  barbarian  subjects  to  bees.  Why
bees?

Jordanes is not an author much perused for such literary flourishes. Scholarly

interest in Jordanes, indeed, tends to be selective. Jordanes lived and wrote in
Constantinople during the reign of Justinian, and his works reflect certain aspects
of that emperor’s war-time propaganda.

Nevertheless, his writings have been of

interest  less  to  Byzantinists  or  Classicists  —  scholars  of  his  chronological,
geographic, and generic contexts — than to students of the western Middle Ages
and  of  Germanic  antiquity.  Medievalists  have  valued  Jordanes  as  a  supposed
witness to ‘Germanic’ traditions more than Byzantinists have exploited him as a
window  on  literary  traditions  or  on  his  times.

Yet Jordanes is not an artless

writer or one incidental to his time. Especially through his use of narrative
structure, he offers a sophisticated and significant discourse that arguably says

R. Scott, ‘Malalas and His Contemporaries’ Studies in John Malalas ed. E. Jeffreys,
B. Croke & R. Scott. ByzAus 6 (Sydney 1990) 85.

For Jordanes: PLRE III,  ‘Iordanes 1’ 713–14. Recent brief introductions: B. Croke,
‘Latin  Historiography  and  the  Barbarian  Kingdoms’  Greek  and  Roman
Historiography  in  Late  Antiquity  ed.  G.  Marasco  (Leiden  2003)  358–75;  J.M.
Pizarro,  ‘Ethnic  and  National  History  ca.  500–1000’  Historiography  in  the  Middle
Ages  ed.  D.M.  Deliyannis  (Leiden  2003)  47–51;  H.  Wolfram,  ‘Origo  Gentis:  The
Literature  of  Germanic  Origins’  Early  Germanic  Literature  and  Culture  ed.  B.
Murdoch  &  M.  Read  (Rochester  2004)  44–50.  Fundamental  to  all  current  work  on
Jordanes  is W. Goffart, The Narrators of Barbarian History: Jordanes, Gregory of
Tours,  Bede,  and  Paul  the  Deacon  (Princeton  1988,  rp.  with  new  preface  Notre
Dame  Ind.  2005)  20–111;  and  B.  Croke,  ‘Cassiodorus  and  the  Getica  of  Jordanes’
CPh 82 (1987) 117–34. Also important are idem, ‘Jordanes and the Immediate Past’
Historia 54 (2005) 473–94; P. Heather, Goths and Romans, 332–489 (Oxford 1991)
34–67; and especially P. Amory, People and Identity in Ostrogothic Italy, 489–554
(Cambridge 1997) 291–307.

E.g. monographs on  Jordanes have all been  written by Germanists or  Medievalists,
not Byzantinists: J. Svennung, Jordanes und Scandia: Kritisch-Exegetische Studien
(Stockholm  1967);  N.  Wagner,  Getica:  Untersuchungen  zum  Leben  des  Jordanes
und  zur  frühen  Geschichte  der  Goten.  Quellen  und  Forschungen  zur  Sprach-  und
Kulturgeschichte der germanischen Völker n.s. 22 (Berlin 1967); Goffart, Narrators;
A.S. Christensen, Cassiodorus, Jordanes and the History of the Goths: Studies in a
Migration Myth tr. H. Flegal (Copenhagen 2002).

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Andrew Gillett

more  about  his  contemporary  milieu  than  his  actual  textual  content  says  about
the past. The two brief but strategically-situated apian interruptions to his Gothic
narrative serve a precise communicative function. They contribute to one of the
main themes of Jordanes’ meta-narrative: that the Goths were not a problem that
could  be  ‘sent  back’  whence  they  had  (allegedly)  originated.  The  seemingly
quaint  image  of  the  bee  grants  access  to  two  important  aspects  of  Jordanes’
writing:  his  deployment  of  classical  ethnography,  a  living  rhetorical  and
intellectual resource in Justinianic Byzantium; and the participation of his text in
current  reflections  on  the  aims  and  desirable  outcomes  of  Justinian’s  western
military campaigns.

Jordanes presents himself in his text (our only source of information on him) as a
former  military  notarius  who  subsequently  underwent  some  form  of  religious
conversio. In the early 550s, Jordanes wrote his two short historical narratives, in
Latin,  at  the  request  of  friends

(the texts are most commonly cited by their

modern editorial titles, the Romana and the Getica

). Both works provide

information  about  events  and  attitudes  in  Justinian’s  Byzantium,  but  neither  is
primarily  thought of in modern scholarship in  that context.  The slimness of  the
Romana and the derivation of much of its information from earlier handbooks of
Roman  history  generally  consign  the  work  to  a  very  minor  place  in  surveys  of
early  Byzantine  literature,  and  an  even  more  lowly  position  in  the  hierarchy  of
sources  for  Roman  history.

The Getica, on the other hand, has traditionally

commanded far greater swathes of scholarly attention; not however in Byzantine
Studies, but in the study of Germanische Altertumskunde, ‘Germanic Antiquity.’
The Getica has been regarded since the sixteenth century as the first work
dedicated to the history of one of the major ‘Germanic’ peoples, the product of

The date of composition of the Getica remains contested: W. Goffart, ‘Jordanes’
Getica and the Disputed Authenticity of Gothic Origins from Scandinavia’ Speculum
80 (2005) 379–98 (after 552); Croke, ‘Jordanes and the Immediate Past’ 473–94
(before 31 March 551).

The  convenient  and  familiar  short  titles  were  embedded  in  scholarly  usage  by
Mommsen’s  edition;  the  actual  manuscript  titles  are:  De  summa  temporum  vel
origine actibusque gentis Romanorum and De origine actibusque Getarum (the latter
title  is  confirmed  by  Jordanes’  usage  in  the  preface  to  Romana  4;  in  Getica  1,
Jordanes refers to the Romana as adbreviatione chronicorum). Jordanes conflates the
Goths with the ancient Getae (and other earlier peoples) as had other authors before
him, hence the ‘classicising’ title Getica. Editions: Jordanes, Romana et Getica ed. T.
Mommsen, MGH AA 5:1 (Berlin 1882); Iordanes, De origine actibusqe Getarum ed.
F. Giunta & A. Grillone. Fonti per la Storia d’Italia 117 (Rome 1991). Mommsen’s
edition  is  followed  here,  with  reference  to  readings  from  Giunta  and  Grillone
(hereafter ‘GG’). English translation: C.C. Mierow, The Gothic History of Jordanes
(Princeton  1915);  French  translation:  O.  Devillers,  Jordanès:  Histoire  des  Goths
(Paris 1995).

Lowly: e.g. M. Manitius, Geschichte der lateinischen Literatur des Mittelalters
(Munich 1959) 211–12; lowest: C. Rapp, ‘Literary Culture under Justinian’ The
Cambridge Companion to the Age of Justinian ed. M. Maas (Cambridge 2005) 390
(‘now lost’).

The Goths and the Bees in Jordanes: A Narrative of No Return

151

an author presumed to have been a member of that barbarian group.

It holds a

venerable place in modern European scholarship and culture as one of four main
pillars  carrying  the  burden  of  evidence  for  the  antiquities  of  the  Germanic  and
Slavic peoples of Europe —  its companions being the fourth, Scythian book of
Herodotus’ Histories; Tacitus’ Germania; and Constantine VII Porphyrogenitus’
De  administrando  imperii.

Jordanes has been mined as a window onto the

proto-history of northern European peoples: for the remote  history of the Goths
before  contact  with  the  Mediterranean  world  —  their  supposed  origins  in
Scandinavia  and  the  Baltic

— or, more recently, for putative Germanic

ideological traditions preserved in the Getica.

The dynamics of modern

European cultural identity and a rather heady scholarly optimism have sustained
belief that this Late Antique ethnographic text, heavily and often explicitly
dependent on earlier classical sources, preserves significant quantities of ancient
‘Germanic’ tradition and oral history.

The assumption that Jordanes identifies himself  as  a Goth, accepted from  medieval
times  through  early  modern  to  contemporary  scholarship,  rests  on  the  shaky
grammatical grounds of Getica 316 and  the  force of the word quasi  there. In early
modern  scholarship,  not  only  Jordanes  but  also  his  lost  sources  Cassiodorus  (on
whom,  below)  and  Ablabius  were  all  assumed  to  be  Goths:  e.g.  Johannes  Magnus,
De  omnibus  Gothorum  Sueonumque  regibus  (Rome  1554)  3–4,  16–17;  Olaus
Magnus,  Description  of  the  Northern  Peoples  (1555)  ed.  and  tr.  P.  Foote  et  al.
Hakluyt  Society  ser.  2,  vols  182,  187,  188  (London  1996–8)  Preface,  vol.  182,  6;
Hugo  Grotius,  Historia  Gotthorum  Vandalorum  et  Langobardorum  (Amsterdam
1655)  62–3.  For  interpretation  of  Getica  316:  Wagner,  Getica,  5–17  (esp.  at  6  and
13; asserting Jordanes’ Gothic identity); Devillers, Jordanès: Histoire des Goths xvi–
xviii (ambivalent); A. Gillett, ‘Jordanes and Ablabius’ Studies in Latin Literature and
Roman History, vol. 10 ed. C. Deroux. Collection Latomus 254 (Brussels 2000) 482–
4 (rejecting Gothic identity).

For modern scholarly attitudes to Jordanes: S. Brough, The Goths and the Concept of
Gothic in Germany from 1500 to 1750 (Frankfurt 1985) 18–62; K. von See, Barbar,
Germane,  Arier:  Die  Suche  nach  der  Identität  der  Deutschen  (Heidelberg  1994);
E.H.  Jacobs,  Accidental  Migrations:  An  Archaeology  of  Gothic  Discourse
(Lewisburg 2000) 33–57; Christensen, Cassiodorus, Jordanes, 7–14. Cf. for Tacitus:
D. Kelley, ‘Tacitus noster: The Germania in the Renaissance and the Reformation’
Tacitus and the Tacitean Tradition ed. T.J. Luce & A.J. Woodman (Princeton 1993)
152–67; rp. The Writing of History and the Study of Law (Aldershot 1997) paper II.

For dismissal of the Gothic ‘migration’ from Scandinavia, either as historical fact or
as genuine Gothic legend: R. Hachmann, Die Goten und Skandinavien (Berlin 1970)
451–74; Christensen, Cassiodorus, Jordanes; Goffart, ‘Jordanes’ Getica and
Scandinavia’ 379–98.

10.

For  debate  over  current  deployment  of  Greco-Roman  sources  as  evidence  for
‘Gothic’  and  other  barbarian  ideologies  in  the  study  of  Germanic  Antiquity:  A.
Gillett,  ed.,  On  Barbarian  Identity:  Critical  Approaches  to  Identity  in  the  Early
Middle  Ages  (Turnhout  2002):  papers  by  Bowlus,  Gillett,  Goffart,  Kulikowski,
Murray,  and  Pohl;  Pizarro,  ‘Ethnic  and  National  History’  43–7;  A.H.  Merrills,
History  and  Geography  in  Late  Antiquity  (Cambridge  2005)  109–12;  A.  Gillett,
‘Ethnogenesis: A Contested Model of Early Medieval Europe’ History Compass 4.2
(2006)  241–60  at  http://www.blackwell-compass.com/subject/history/;  idem,  ‘The
Mirror  of  Jordanes:  Concepts  of  the  Barbarian,  Then  and  Now’  The  Blackwell
Companion to Late Antiquity ed. P. Rousseau (in press).

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Andrew Gillett

The actual circumstances of the work’s composition in mid-sixth century

Constantinople,  meanwhile,  have  often  been  regarded  at  best  as  a  distraction
from the true value of the Getica. A serious impediment to the study of Jordanes
in  his  own  context  has  been  scholarly  preoccupation  with  the  extent  of  his
dependence  on  an  earlier,  lost  History  of  the  Goths  written  by  Cassiodorus
Senator, an Italian aristocrat who held several of the most senior magistracies at
the  quasi-imperial  Ostrogothic  court  of  Italy  between  507  and  537.

Jordanes

himself stresses that his text, though it had used Cassiodorus’, varied
significantly from that of his Italian predecessor in length, style, and structure,
and by extensive use of other Greek and Latin sources.

Recent scholarship has

confirmed that even the few extant testimonia to Cassiodorus’ lost work confirm
Jordanes’ claims to divergence not only in form and content, but also in aim.

Despite their shared topic, radical differences in the approach of the two authors
should  come  as  no  surprise:  Cassiodorus  wrote  in  Italy  in  the  late  520s/early
530s, explicitly to praise the Ostrogothic royal dynasty ruling in Italy; Jordanes’
work  was  composed  in  Constantinople,  a  tumultuous  generation  later,  not  only
towards  the  close  of  the  Byzantine  destruction  of  the  Ostrogothic  regime  but
explicitly  in  celebration  of  it.  Quite  different  milieux  produced  the  two  works.
Yet  much  modern  scholarship  has  looked  past  this  problem,  preferring  to  see
Jordanes as a relatively translucent medium for Cassiodorus’ text, in order to lay
claim  to  genuine  royal  Germanic  historical  memory  to  which  Cassiodorus
conceivably had access (despite his protestations to the contrary).

Jordanes’ Romana is intermittently studied for its relationship to other

examples of the genre of breviaria,

and the Getica has been exhaustively

scrutinized for relations with classical geographic texts.

It is rarer, however, for

Quellenforschung of the Getica to be directed towards not ethnography but
literary style. Jordanes has been more characteristically perused for intimations
of the medieval Icelandic Edda than for the shadow of Virgil. But in fact Virgil

11.

For Cassiodorus and his lost History of the Goths: Cassiodorus, Variae IX 25.4–6;
Anecdoton Holderi (Ordo generis Cassiodorum); Jordanes, Getica 1–3; PLRE II,
‘Cassiodorus 4’ 265–9.

12.

Jordanes, Getica 1–3.

13.

Croke, ‘Cassiodorus and the Getica of Jordanes’; Goffart, Narrators 23–31, 58–62.

14.

Modern  expectations  notwithstanding,  Cassiodorus’  lost  work  seems  to  have  had  a
high content of classical ethnography, and little genuine Gothic ‘oral  tradition’;  the
same is true for Jordanes’ Getica. Goffart, Narrators 31–42; idem, ‘Jordanes’ Getica
and  Scandinavia’;  Amory,  People  and  Identity  295–98;  Gillett,  ‘Jordanes  and
Ablabius’ 484–5 nn. 9, 12; Christensen, Cassiodorus, Jordanes 54–83, cf. 250–300
(sees some oral material in Cassiodorus, lost in Jordanes). A qualified version of the
traditional view in favour of oral sources is defended in Heather, Goths and Romans
3–6,  61–7;  fuller  reassertions  in  J.  Weissensteiner,  ‘Cassiodor/Jordanes  als
Geschichtsschreiber’  Historiographie  im  frühen  Mittelalter  ed.  A.  Scharer  &  G.
Scheibelreiter  (Vienna  1994)  308–25;  and  H.H.  Anton,  ‘Origo  gentis  —
Volksgeschichte’ in the same volume, 262–307.’

15.

E.g. S. Ratti, ‘Les Romana de Jordanès et le Bréviaire d’Eutrope’ L’Antiquité
classique 65 (1996) 175–87.

16.

E.g. Hachmann, Goten und Skandinavien 15–143; Christensen, Cassiodorus,
Jordanes 21–53; Merrills, History and Geography 132–62.

The Goths and the Bees in Jordanes: A Narrative of No Return

153

does help provide context for understanding one of the literary allusions in
Jordanes’ Getica, the comparison of the Goths with bees.

The image of bees occurs in two passages in the early pages of the Getica

(cc.  9,  19).  Innocuous  in  themselves,  if  a  little  odd,  it  is  the  location  of  the
passages  that  gives  them  significance.  Immediately  before  the  first  passage,
Jordanes enumerates the islands in the north-west of Oceanus (i.e. the Atlantic),
including  Thule.  Jordanes  continues  (he  is  addressing  Castalius,  his  frater,
presumably in a religious sense, who had commissioned the work):

This  very  same  boundless  sea  has  also  in  its  arctic  —  that  is,
northern — region an extensive island named Scandza, whence my
narrative,  if  God  bids  it,  shall  commence;  for  the  people  whose
source  you  demand  to  know,  bursting  forth  like  a  swarm  of  bees
from  the  heart  of  this  island,  came  into  the  land  of  Europa;  how
and in what way we shall make clear, if the Lord grants it, in what
follows. (Getica 9)

The second passage, shortly after, also concerns the island of Scandza:

There the honey-making throng of bees is nowhere to be found on
account of the excessive cold. (Getica 19).

That is all Jordanes has to say about bees.

Read in isolation, the first passage is

a striking enough image. It underscores the permanency of the Goths’ ancient
departure from their distant homeland, for a swarm (examen) of bees is not
merely a massed flight, but a permanent relocation of the whole group to a new
dwelling place.

Examined in their narrative context, however, the two passages

reveal a structural function.

Jordanes’ Getica is a highly structured text, its sections clearly demarked by

authorial sign-posts.

After the opening address to the friend who had

commissioned the work, the Getica comprises four distinct sections: a
geographical survey, mainly of the islands of western and north-western
Oceanus; a narrative of the ‘pre-history’ of the Goths, from their departure out of

17.

Habet quoque is ipse inmensus pelagus in parte arctoa [sic GG], id est septentrionali,
amplam insulam nomine Scandzam [GG: Scandiam], unde nobis sermo, si dominus
iubaverit, est adsumpturus, quia gens, cuius originem flagitas, ab huius insulae
gremio velut examen apium erumpens in terram Europae advinit: quomodo vero aut
qualiter, in subsequentibus, si dominus donaverit, explanavimus. (Translations are
my own, with grateful reference to those of Mierow and Devillers.)

18.

Apium ibi turba mellifica ob nimium frigore [sic GG] nusquam repperitur.

19.

Mierow,  perhaps  perceiving  the  significance  of  the  image  of  bees  associated  with
Scandza in Getica 9 and 19, introduced a third reference in his translation of Getica
25,  a  description  of  Scandza  as  quasi  officina  gentium  aut  certe  velut  vagina
nationum:  ‘as  from  a  hive  of  races  or  a  womb  of  nations.’  There  seems  to  be  no
support  for  Mierow’s  attractive  translation  of  officina  as  ‘hive’  (cf.  ThLL  IX.2  s.v.
officina;  searches  on  CETEDOC  and  the  Bibliotheca  Teubneriana  Latina)  but
Mierow was right to emphasise the narrative link between Getica 9 and 25.

20.

Virgil, Georgica II.452–3, cf. IV.21–2; Pliny XI.17.54 (migraturo examine);
Columella, Res rustica IX.8–9, 12, 14.5.

21.

For structure: Mommsen, ‘Conspectus Geticorum’ in Mommsen, ed., Jordanes
Getica, ‘Prooemium’ xviii–xx.

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Andrew Gillett

the island of Scandza, some two millennia earlier according to Jordanes’
chronology,

until the eve of the entry into the Roman empire of a large body of

Goths in 376; an account of the ‘Visigoths’ from the battle of Adrianople in 378
through to the establishment of the Gothic kingdom in south-western Gaul c. 418
and the later destruction of this kingdom by the Frankish king Clovis in 507;

and an account of the ‘Ostrogoths’ from their conquest by the Huns in the late
fourth century to the establishment of the Ostrogothic kingdom in Italy from 489
and the ultimate destruction of that state by Justinian’s general Belisarius.

brief  conclusion  makes  explicit  what  this  narrative  pattern  implies:  the  overt
purpose  of  recounting  the  past  deeds  of  the  Goths,  however  heroic,  was  to
highlight  the  even  greater  victoriousness  of  Justinian  and  his  general.  In
summary:

Preface (Getica 1–3)
1.

Geographical survey (Getica 4–24)

‘Pre-history’ to 376 (Getica 25–130)

Visigoths: western kingdom and destruction (Getica 131–245)

Ostrogoths: western kingdom and destruction (Getica 246–314)

Conclusion (Getica 315–6)

Within these main divisions, subsections are set out and advance in a clear
sequence.

The two passages about bees occur in the opening, geographical section. This

section in turn has clearly marked subsections. An opening survey of the islands
in Oceanus works outward from the Mediterranean center to the furthest western
island, the legendary Thule, and concludes with the equally distant northern
island of Scandza (Getica 4–9). The first passage quoted above constitutes the
last sentence of this survey. The great distance of Scandza,

its role as the origo

22.

Jordanes, Getica 313.

23.

The  ‘destruction’  of  the  Visigothic  kingdom  explicitly  echoes  the  ‘fall’  of  the
western  Roman  empire  in  476  (Getica  243,  245),  a  Byzantine  historiographic
construct;  B.  Croke,  ‘476:  The  Manufacture  of  a  Turning  Point’  Chiron  13  (1983)
81–119.  In  fact,  the  Visigothic  kingdom  survived,  re-centred  from  Aquitania  in
southern Gaul to Spain and Narbonne, as Jordanes later tacitly acknowledges: Getica
302–303. Cf. following note for a parallel anticipation.

24.

In fact, Jordanes anticipates the final downfall of the Ostrogothic state, by
misleadingly casting the surrender of the Gothic king Vitiges to Belisarius in 540 as
the end of the Gothic war, and passing in silence over the prolonged later struggle
under Vitiges’ successors, Totila and Teia, which constituted considerably more than
a ‘mopping-up’ campaign. This is in contrast to Romana 378–383, which continues
the narrative of the Italian war to 550.

25.

This structure has had an enduring influence on modern scholarship. Its anachronistic
retrojection  of  sixth-century  conditions  —  the  political  groupings  and  (Byzantine
ethnographic)  names  ‘Visigoths’  and  ‘Ostrogoths’  —  onto  earlier  periods  has
generated  a  wholly  false  construct  of  clearly  identified  Gothic  identities  from  pre-
historic  periods;  Heather,  Goths  and  Romans  7–33;  W.  Goffart,  ‘The  Supposedly
‘Frankish’  Table  of  Nations’  Rome’s  Fall  and  After  (London  1989)  161;  Gillett,
‘Jordanes and Ablabius’ 497–500.

26.

For literary role of distant islands: Merrills, History and Geography 164–6.

The Goths and the Bees in Jordanes: A Narrative of No Return

155

of the Goths,

their permanent departure from there,

and the analogy of Goths to

bees are all introduced simultaneously as the conclusion of this section. The
narrative turns to a detailed account of another northern island, Britain: first a
topographical description, then an ethnographic survey of its inhabitants (Getica
10–15).

Jordanes then returns to Scandza, which is treated under the same

headings  as  Britain:  first  topography,  then  ethnography  (Getica  16–24).
Immediately  following  this  ethnographical  description,  Jordanes  shifts  to
historical  mode  to  commence  the  narrative  of  the  Goths’  deeds  after  their
departure from Scandza. In summary:

1. Survey of islands in Oceanus (Getica 4–9) (bees: 9)
2. Britain:

topographical description (Getica 10–13)

ethnographical description (Getica 13–15)

3. Scandza:

topographical description (Getica 16–18)

ethnographical description(Getica 19–24) (bees: 19)

commencement of historical narrative (Getica 25 onwards)

It is at the opening of the ethnographic account of Scandza that the second

reference to bees occurs, and it will be useful to quote in full the first three
sentences of this section:

In  the  island  of  Scandza,  whence  my  narrative  will  commence,
although  there  remain  many  and  varied  nations,  yet  Ptolemy
mentions  the  names  of  (only)  seven  of  them.  There  the  honey-
making  throng  of  bees  is  nowhere  to  be  found  on  account  of  the
excessive cold. In its arctic region dwell the people of the Adogit,
who are said to have constant light for forty days and nights in the
middle of summer, and likewise  in winter not  to know the clarity
of light for the same number of days and nights. (Getica 19).

A  short  account  of  the  movement  of  the  sun  in  extreme  latitudes  follows,
explaining  this  phenomenon,  then  an  account  of  other  tribes  of  Scandza.
Altogether,  the  ethnographical  account  of  Scandza  forms  a  short  systematized
catalogue of ‘barbarian’ typologies:  they  live in  lands where the laws of nature
are  turned  upside  down  (the  Adogit);  they  are  pre-agrarian;  they  produce  only
primitive  primary  goods,  horses  and  fur;  and  their  multitudinous  numbers
present  a  vast  series  of  tribes  which  pressure  one  another  like  a  long  series  of
dominos.

This taxonomy is drawn from classical ethnography. The selection of

27.

For the geographic sense of origo: R.F. Thomas, Lands and Peoples in Roman
Poetry: The Ethnographical Tradition (Cambridge 1982) 2–3, 127. With the possible
but unlikely exception of Cassiodorus, Jordanes is the first source to suggest a
provenance for the Goths further than the Roman frontiers on the Danube or Euxine
Sea; cf. Procopius, Wars 3.2.6, 8.5.5.

28.

Jordanes’ sources are no more recent than Tacitus, Strabo, Pomponius Mela, and Dio
Chrysostom; he offers no information on contemporary Britain, not even to note its
lapse from imperial control. Cf. Procopius, Wars 4.2.31, 38; 6.6.28.

29.

Jordanes, Getica 19–24; Gillett, ‘Introduction: Ethnicity, History, and Methodology’
On Barbarian Identity, 16–17 n. 32 for comparanda. The scholarly tradition that this
section is drawn from two different sources, one giving specific details for the first

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Andrew Gillett

arctic days and nights to stand as the first defining characteristic of the far north
follows  descriptions  of  Thule  by  Jordanes’  geographical  sources  Pomponius
Mela,  Pliny,  and  Solinus,  though  it  may  in  fact  be  borrowed  directly  from
Jordanes’  contemporary  Procopius.

This choice perhaps also invokes the

description in Homer’s Odyssey of the Cimmerians, who likewise live at the
farthest shores of Oceanus where the sun cannot reach (the last human settlement
before the entry to Hades).

What is striking about the sentence on bees is that it appears out of place

here.  Having  announced  his  intent  to  recount  the  peoples  of  Scandza,  Jordanes
immediately  interrupts  himself  with  an  entomological  comment  that  seems
irrelevant,  before  again  resuming  his  enumeration.

Such a non-sequitur is

uncharacteristic of Jordanes’ structured and orderly writing.

But it makes sense

with  reference  to  the  simile  of  the  Goths  as  a  swarm  of  migrating  bees  given
shortly before. Its purpose becomes clearer at the end of the geographic section
and the shift to the historical narrative of the Goths’ migration to Europe (Getica
25).  Here  there  is  a  narrative  lacuna  between  the  geographical  and
ethnographical  account  of  the  Goths’  origo  and  their  first  acta:  although
Jordanes had foreshadowed explaining ‘how and in what way’ the Goths ‘burst
forth’  from  Scandza  into  Europa  (Getica  9),  he  in  fact  never  explains  why  or
under what  circumstances  the Goths departed  their origo.  The shift in  authorial
modes  from  the  timeless  description  of  the  topography  and  ethnography  of
Scandza  to  the historical record of Gothic actions  immediately  after  arriving  in
Europa  conceals  a  narrative  ellipsis.

The only explanation is given indirectly

three tribes, the later only briefly enumerating a longer list (cf. Merrills, History and
Geography 149–51 and studies cited n. 221), depends on the easy fall-back of textual
analysis, the image of the incompetent author who is incapable of recognising or
reconciling differences in his (now lost) sources. Read in terms of classical
ethnographic conventions, Jordanes’ presentation of information is understandable as
a purposeful schema of stereotypes.

30.

Pomponius Mela, III.57; Pliny, II.186; Strabo, II.5.8; Solinus, XXII.9 (11).
Procopius, Wars 6.15.6–15 alone includes the detail of forty-day periods of light and
dark.

31.

Homer, Odyssey XI.14–19.

32.

Svennung, Jordanes und Scandia 10 explains this reference to bees (like other
changes of topic) as an insertion from a different written source; Christensen,
Cassiodorus, Jordanes 252–3 notes its apparent incongruity.

33.

There is no manuscript evidence to suggest that this sentence is an interpolation, or
has been copied out of order.

34.

It  is  unclear  whether  Jordanes  intends  his  list  of  thirty-odd  tribes  in  Scandza  (the
number is uncertain; cf. the readings of Mommsen and Giunta and Grillone of Getica
22–24)  to  represent  the  ethnographical  situation  before  the  Gothic  migration  from
Scandza, or afterwards, in his own time. The problem arises from the differences in
the  narrative  modes  of  the  genres  geographica,  which  is  an  essentially  timeless
description;  and  historia,  for  which  chronological  sequence  and  change  are
fundamental; K. Clarke, Between Geography and History: Hellenistic Constructions
of  the  Roman  World  (Oxford  1999)  4–22.  The  existence  of  tribal  names  with  the
element  ‘-goth’  (Vagoth,  Gauthigoth,  Ostrogoth;  possibly  also  Greutingi)  does  not
necessarily indicate the former; Jordanes never implies  that these  groups, which he
intersperses  among  others,  cumulatively  constitute  what  he  considers  to  be  ‘the

The Goths and the Bees in Jordanes: A Narrative of No Return

157

and  metaphorically:  the  climatic  conditions  that  preclude  bees  from  living  in
Scandza  also  bar  the  Goths.  The  location  of  the  references  to  bees  at  strategic
points  in  the  narrative  —  at  the  introduction  of  Scandza  and  at  the  head  of  the
island’s  ethnographical  account  —  determines  the  reading  of  the  following
passages and so substitutes for the need to introduce a specific narrative event to
explain  the  Gothic  departure  from  Scandza.  Jordanes  builds  into  his  reader’s
mind  the  assumption  that  an  absolute  condition,  climatic  environment,  lay
behind  the  removal  of  the  Goths  from  their  origo.  Climate  was  a  foundational
element  of  the  explanatory  models  of  Hellenistic  ethnography;  here  it  is
exploited by Jordanes as a narrative device.

There is a historiographic and perhaps political context for this literary

device.  Walter Goffart has suggested that Jordanes’ Getica  intersects at several
points  with  the  narrative  of  the  Wars  of  his  contemporary  Procopius,  not  only
with  regard  to  ‘set-piece’  scenes  such  as  Belisarius’  campaigns  against  the
Ostrogoths  in  Italy  (in  fact,  addressed  only  superficially  by  Jordanes),  but  with
topics  and  images  that  seem  to  reflect  issues  of  debate  in  contemporary
Constantinople.

Procopius presents barbarians in Roman territories returning

(or potentially returning) to their original homelands or other northern territories;
Jordanes reverses these narratives, showing the same barbarians settled in former
Roman territories and underscoring the epic distance separating them from their
legendarily-distant starting points.

Goffart reads these narrative reversals as a

Goths’  who  constitute  the  actors  of  his  later  historical  narrative  (other  fragmentary
and  side-lined  Gothic  groups  appear  throughout  his  text:  Getica  27,  267).  Neither
does he record any vacuum left in Scandza by the departure of the Goths, as he and
contemporaries  do  in  descriptions  of  other  barbarian  movements,  with  the
assumption  that  the  same  or  other  barbarians  could  return  to  reclaim  those  spaces
(e.g. Jordanes, Getica 50–2, 96–100; Procopius, Wars 3.22, 4.14.24, 6.15.1–4 and 26;
Gregory  of  Tours,  Histories  V.15);  cf.  Christensen,  Cassiodorus,  Jordanes  283.
Jordanes describes the Gothic origo timelessly, as a land in which Goths, like bees,
do not dwell; there is no space to which they can return.

35.

Climate in ethnography: e.g. F. Hartog, Memories of Odysseus: Frontier Tales from
Ancient Greece tr. J. Lloyd (original French ed. Paris 1996, tr. Edinburgh 2001) 92–
4; W. Nippel, ‘The Construction of the ‘Other’’ tr. A. Nevill, Greeks and Barbarians
ed.  T.  Harrison  (Edinburgh  2002)  279–310;  R.V.  Munson,  Telling  Wonders:
Ethnographic and Political Discourse  in the Work of Herodotus (Ann Arbor 2001)
87–8;  R.F.  Thomas,  Herodotus  in  Context:  Ethnography,  Science,  and  the  Art  of
persuasion (Cambridge 2000) 86–98, 103–14; Thomas, Lands and Peoples 3, 51–5,
79 (Scythians and bees); cf. F. Curta, The Making of the Slavs (Cambridge 2001) 44.

Immediately before the ethnographical survey that opens with noting the absence of
bees, Jordanes’ topographical survey of Scandza concludes with a similar animal
example demonstrating climatic hostility: wolves that travel by ice floes to the small
islands to the north of Scandza go blind there: ita non solum inhospitalis hominibus,
verum etiam beluis terra crudelis est; Jordanes, Getica 18.

36.

Goffart, Narrators 92–6.

37.

I.e.  compare  Procopius,  Wars  6.6.28  (Goths  offered  Britain  in  exchange  for  Italy)
with Jordanes, Getica 10–15 (distance and population of Britain; cf. n. 34 above on
the  theme of demographic vacuums which could be  reclaimed: there  is no room in
Jordanes’  Britain);  and  Procopius,  Wars  6.14.1–15.4  (Heruli  migrate  from  Thule
under king Rodolf; some  later return) with Jordanes, Getica 24 (Rodulf’s departure

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Andrew Gillett

form of historiographic debate (also involving Agathias

) on how the Goths of

Italy  should  be  dealt  with  following  their  military  defeat:  acceptance  of  the
historical fact of their presence as opposed to futile attempts at expulsion. Other
images also develop this theme. Jordanes states that when the ancient Goths first
entered  Scythia,  soon  after  their  departure  from  Scandza,  a  bridge  that  half  the
Gothic  force  had  crossed  collapsed  behind  them;  he  states  explicitly  that  the
Goths were thus cut off from retracing their steps or rejoining those left behind.
The  collapsed  bridge  is  a  synecdoche  of  their  irreversible  movement  into  the
known  classical  world.

Indeed, the whole geographical section predicates the

theme of  irreversibility, framed as it  to convey how very far removed from  the
contemporary  Roman  world  the  Gothic  departure  from  their  homeland  was,  in
both  time  (the  history  of  the  Goths  commences  well  before  the  Trojan  war,  so
predating  the  conventional  beginnings  of  Graeco-Roman  historiography

) and

space (emphasized by repeated references to Oceanus, the barrier at the edge of
the world

). In both regards, Jordanes deftly exploits paradigms of Hellenistic

historia and geographia in order to intimate by sheer scale the unlikelihood that
the Goths of the western kingdoms could be ‘sent back’ to the far north.

Whether Jordanes’ intertextual ploys responded directly and exclusively to

Procopius, or to a broader discussion current in contemporary Constantinople, is
a  question  that  awaits  further  research.  This  historiographic  discussion  had
precedents.  In  the  late  fourth  century,  when  the  emperor  Theodosius  I  first
introduced  the  policy  of  large-scale  cooption  of  barbarian  groups  and  their
settlement as quasi-autonomous allies on Roman territory with his Gothic treaty
of 382, a debate opened on military policy, arguing the merits of such cooption
or  the  more  traditional  forced  exclusion  of  barbarian  intruders.  This  debate
registered in literary works, in particular those associated with the imperial court,
including  Themistius  and  Synesius  of  Cyrene,  as  well  as  in  other  authors
including  Ammianus  Marcellinus:  literary  manifestations  of  shifts  in  imperial
policy.

The differing representations of Procopius and Jordanes likewise seem

from  Scandza,  which  is  contemptus,  to  the  kingdom  of  the  Ostrogothic  king
Theoderic  in Roman territory;  the  word gremium here  echoes the Gothic migration
from  Scandza  in  Getica  9).  Note  also  Procopius,  Wars  3.22:  the  Vandals  retained
rights  to  space  in  their  original  homeland,  but  failed  to  exercise  them  in  order  to
avoid their imperial defeat.

38.

Agathias: Goffart, Narrators 96.

39.

Jordanes, Getica 27; Goffart, Narrators 92.

40.

Trojan  war:  introduced  at  Jordanes,  Getica  59.  For  Troy  as  conventional  starting-
point  in  fifth-  and  sixth-century  eastern  historiography:  Zosim.  1.2,  cf.  Jordanes,
Romana  38;  Malal.  5.  Cf.  Jordanes,  Getica  313  (the  two-thousand  year  span  of
Gothic history underscored in the work’s conclusion).

41.

Jordanes, Getica 4–12, 16–18, esp. 5; cf. J.S. Romm, The Edges of the Earth in
Ancient Thought (Princeton 1992) 21–3.

42.

As Jordanes mentions in passing (Getica 266–7), many other Goths lived in the
eastern half of the empire, serving loyally in the imperial army or otherwise
harmlessly settled in imperial territories — models perhaps for the Goths of Italy.

43.

Works  intended  for  presentation  or  circulation  at  the  eastern  imperial  court,  in
support  of  cooption:  Themistius,  Oratio  XVI;  in  support  of  military  exclusion:
Synesius  of  Cyrene,  De  regno;  De  rebus  bellicis.  Other  literary  works  supporting

The Goths and the Bees in Jordanes: A Narrative of No Return

159

to  refract  contemporary  discussion,  in  the  wash  up  of  the  Byzantine  campaign
against  the  Gothic  regime  in  Italy,  on  what  would  constitute  the  most  practical
resolution of the conflict: absorption or expulsion of  the defeated but  tenacious
Goths.

Jordanes’ simile of the bees contributes modestly to this historiographic

interchange. Bracketing his account of the origo of the Goths, the simile sets up
an assumption: even before reading Jordanes’ ethnography of Scandza, the idea
has been established that the Gothic departure from there is permanent.

The

bees are not symbolic but a device of ellipsis, intended to lead the reader to
presuppose, rather than to question, the permanency of the Gothic departure from
their original clime. Jordanes often uses devices that mislead (rather than
misinform) his reader into false conclusions.

Why bees? Read in isolation, the simile is disruptive; the imagery seems to

skip  out  of  the  register  of  Jordanes’  chorographic  and  historical  narration,
derailing  the  function  of  the  two  passages.  But  the  trope  and  narrative  strategy
make  sense  when  read  against  earlier  ethnographies,  a  literary  hinterland  that
Jordanes  vigorously  invokes  throughout  the  early  sections  of  the  Getica  by
repeated citations of named Greek and Roman authors.

Bees, their swarms, and

their honey played their small role in classical culture.

Swarms of bees

infesting military camps and other public places were significant prodigies,
although, as is often the case with these things, of what was usually unclear until
after the event.

More obliging were those swarms that settled on the lips of

military exclusion: Ammianus Marcellinus, Res gestae especially 16.8, cf. T.D.
Barnes, Ammianus Marcellinus and the Representation of Reality (Ithaca 1998) 185–
6); Zosim. 5–6. See now M. Kulikowski, Rome’s Gothic Wars from the Third
Century to Alaric (Cambridge 2006).

44.

Noted also by Merrills, History and Geography 148.

45.

E.g.  in  his  presentation  of  literary  authorities,  regularly  construed  as  if  they  had
composed narratives of Gothic history  (e.g.  Josephus; Getica 29,  cf. Romana 264);
and in his chronology of events (e.g. his attribution to the reign of the Visigothic king
Euric of earlier events leading to the collapse of the western Roman empire; Getica
235–44;  and  his  anticipation  of  the  destruction  of  both  the  Visigothic  and  the
Ostrogothic  kingdoms;  above,  nn.  23–4);  Gillett,  ‘Jordanes  and  Ablabius’  487–9;
idem, ‘The Accession of Euric’ Francia 26.1 (1999) 33–4.

46.

Cf. Giunta and Grillone, ‘Auctores antiqui’ to Iordanes, De origine actibusqe
Getarum 155.

47.

An  ancient  overview  is  given  by  Columella,  Res  rustica  IX.2.  For  bees  in  ancient
thought:  F.  Olck,  ‘Biene’  RE  III  (Stuttgart  1899)  431–50;  A.B.  Cook,  ‘The  Bee  in
Greek Mythology’ JHS 15 (1895) 1–24; H.M. Ransome, The Sacred Bee in Ancient
Times  and  Folklore  (London  1937);  J.A.  Kelhoffer,  ‘John  the  Baptist’s  “Wild
Honey”  and  “Honey”  in  Antiquity’  GRBS  45  (2005)  59–73.  In  late  antique  and
medieval thought: M. Misch, Apis est animale — apis est ecclesia: Ein Beitrag zum
Verhältnis  von  Naturkunde  und  Theologie  in  spätantiker  und  mittelalterlicher
Literatur  (Bern  1974);  E.  Wimmer,  Biene  und  Honig  in  der  Bildersprache  der
lateinischen Kirchenschriftsteller (Vienna 1993). In modern thought: C. Preston, Bee
(London 2006).

48.

E.g. Pliny, Natural History XI.18.55; Livy, XXVII.23.2; Cicero, De divinatione I.73;
Tacitus, Annales XII.64.1; Valerius Maximus, I.6.12; Appian, Civil War II.68;
Aelian, Natura animalum XVII.35; Scriptores Historiae Augustae, III.3.5; Amm.

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infants of promise in their cradle, such as Plato and St Ambrose.

Honey, a key

preservative  for  embalming,  was  known  as  a  potent  and  sometimes  dangerous
substance;  Jupiter  was  nurtured  on  it,  but  Xenophon’s  Ten  Thousand,  relaxing
after  their cries of ‘Thalatta, thalatta,’ overindulged on the  honey of Trebizond
and went mad.

Bees also had a specific association with ethnography in Roman times. In a

variety  of  literary  works,  perceived  characteristics  of  the  communal  society  of
bees  were  paralleled  with  human  communities:  division  of  labour  and
organization  of  work  in  food-gathering,  construction  of  communal  homes,
militaristic organisation, patterns of behaviour approximating social  mores,  and
particularly  a  monarchial  social  structure  under  the  authority  of  a  rex,  who
received the devotion attributed to oriental royalty.

In works on natural history,

most notably Pliny’s Natural History, bees’ behaviour could be explained in
terms of human activities. Conversely, bee society could be used as an analogy
for Hellenistic and Roman public life. Examples appear in Varro and Cicero,

but  the  most  fully  developed  is  the  fourth  book  of  Virgil’s  Georgics,  which
includes  a  lengthy  description  of  bee  society  in  the  terminology  of  classical
ethnography.  Georgics  IV,  with  its  discussion  of  leadership,  civil  war,  and
regicide,  is  recognized  as  commentary  on  Augustan  society,  although  in  so
allusive  a  form  as  to  evade  absolute  interpretation.

(It is striking but perhaps

Marc. XVIII.3.1; Claudian, Bellum Geticum 241. Cf. Herodotus, V.114. Olck,
‘Biene’ 448; D. MacInnes, ‘Dirum ostentium: Bee Swarm Prodigies at Roman
Military Camps’ Studies in Latin Literature 56–69.

49.

Cicero, De divinatione II.66; Pliny, Natural History XI.18.55 (Plato); Paulinus, Vita
Ambrosii 3. Similarly visited were Homer, Hesiod, Pindar, Sophocles, Menander,
Virgil, Lucan; references at Olck, ‘Biene’ 447–8; Cook, ‘The Bee in Greek
Mythology’ 7–8, nn. 53–60.

50.

Jupiter: Virgil, Georgica IV.149–52. Xenophon, Anabasis IV.7.24, 8.20–1;
Kelhoffer, ‘John the Baptist’s

“

Wild Honey

”

’ 65–8.

51.

E.g.  Pliny,  Natural  History  XI.4.11–12.  Cf.  Varro,  Res  rusticae  III.16.4;  XI.9.1,  6,
11.2;  Virgil,  Georgica  IV.1–7,  148–209,  cf.  Aeneid  I  421–37  (as  simile  for
construction of cities, Dido’s new Carthage and Aeneas’ hoped-for Rome); Aelian,
Natura animalum I.9, 59–60, V.10–13. Oriental monarchy: Pliny XI.17.52–4, 18.56;
Virgil,  Georgica  IV.210–18.  Olck,  ‘Biene’  446–8.  Cf.  the  less  anthropomorphising
discussions  of  Aristotle,  Historia  animalum  V.21,  Generation  animalum  IV.10.  On
gender of ‘kings’: R. Mayhew, ‘King-Bees and Mother-Wasps: A Note on Ideology
and Gender in Aristotles’ Entemology’ Phronesis 44 (1999) 127–34.

52.

Varro, Res rusticae III.16 (natura…ut homines); Cicero, De officiis I.157. Even
Pliny’s descriptive account adopts a moralising tone: Natural History XI.4.12.

53.

Virgil,  Georgica  IV.4–5,  67–87  (civil  war)  88–90  (regicide)  153–5  (urbs,  leges,
patriae, penates);  cf. Servius, Comm. in Verg. Georg. ad  IV.1  (dicens apes habere
reges,  praetoria,  urbes,  et  populos);  ad  IV.219  (quia  est  in  apibus,  sicut  etiam  in
hominibus, namque metuunt, cupiunt, dolent, gaudentque). Cf. Virgil, Aeneid I.430–
6, XII.587–92.

For the ethnographic basis of the Georgics: Thomas, Lands and Peoples esp. 70–92;
see also W.R. Johnson, ‘Vergil’s Bees: The Ancient Romans’ View of Rome’ Roman
Images ed. A. Patterson (Baltimore 1984) 16–20; D.O. Ross, Virgil’s Elements:
Physics and Poetry in the ‘Georgics’ (Princeton 1987) 188–233; W. Batstone,
‘Virgilian Didaxis: Value and Meaning in the Georgics’ The Cambridge Companion

The Goths and the Bees in Jordanes: A Narrative of No Return

161

coincidental that Jordanes cites the Georgics as a source for the island of Thule,
immediately before the first reference to Scandza and the bees.

) Seneca recast

Virgil’s image as an allegorical justification of Roman imperial monarchy in De
clementia, a device in turn employed frequently under the Christian empire, by
Lactantius, Jerome, Augustine, and Ambrose of Milan among others.

Given this conventional context, in which bees serve as analogies for human

societies,  Jordanes’  simile  ceases  to  appear  incongruous.  It  presupposes
familiarity not with a specific text, but with a common trope. Like the survey of
lands by compass direction or lists of peoples, comparison of human groups with
the  behaviour  of  bees  was  part  of  the  conventions  of  ethnographic  and
geographic  discourses.  Its  familiarity  facilitated  its  function,  leading  Jordanes’
reader  to  accept  that  the  Goths,  like  bees,  had  relocated  permanently  from
impossible climes.

Though the image invokes a convention rather than a specific text, was the

simile suggested by a particular source? The positioning of the second reference
to  bees,  noting  their  absence  from  Scandza,  may  have  been  suggested  by
Solinus,  one  of  Jordanes’  main  (though  unnamed)  geographical  sources.  In  a
survey of islands near Britain, Solinus mentions that in Ireland, ‘[there are] bees
nowhere.’  The  phrase  is  echoed  in  Jordanes;  moreover,  Solinus  discusses  both
peoples  and  animals  of  this  northern  island.

But the parallel is not very close

either  in  informational  content  or  in  structure.  Solinus  does  not  attribute  the
absence  of  bees  to  climate,  but  lists  it  as  one  of  his  mirabilia;  he  continues:
‘Should  anyone  sprinkle  dust  or  pebbles  from  there  [sc.  Ireland]  on  bee-hives,
the  swarms  abandon  their  honey-combs.’

His discussions of animals and

to Virgil ed. C. Martindale (Cambridge 1997) 139–41; C. Nappa, Reading after
Actium: Vergil’s ‘Georgics’, Octavian, and Rome (Ann Arbor 2005) 12–16
(overview of scholarship) 160–86.

The image of bees as Romans had an afterlife: Sylvia Plath, ‘The Arrival of the Bee
Box’ Collected Poems ed. T. Hughes (New York 1981) 212–13, stanzas 4–5.

54.

Virgil, Georgica I.30 apud Jordanes, Getica 9 [8 GG].

55.

Seneca, De clementia I.19.2–4; Ambrose, Hexameron V.21.67–72. Misch, Apis est
animale 34–51; Wimmer, Biene und Honig 26–32.

The apogee of the bee as Christian model was the thirteenth-century monastic moral
analogy of Thomas of Camtimpré, Les Exemples du ‘Livre des abeilles’: Une vision
médiévale  [Bonum  universale  de  apibus],  ed.  and  tr.  H.  Platelle  (Turnhout  1997);
Misch,  Apis  est  animale  70–103.  For  allegories  of  bees  in  later  thought,  note  their
early  eighteenth-century use  ‘as symbol of morally unbridled  economic  activity’ in
B. Mandeville, The Fable of the Bees ed. E.J. Hundert (Indianapolis 1997) xxii.

56.

Solinus,  Collectanea  rerum  memorabilium  XXII.4  (6):  apis  nusquam;  cf.  Jordanes,
Getica 19: apium ibi  turba mellifica…nusquam  repperitur. Cf.  Jordanes’ relocation
of arctic nights from Thule to Scandza; at n. 30 above. Incidentally, the collocation
apium…turba  appears  to  be  unique  to  Jordanes  (so  CETEDOC  and  Bibliotheca
Teubneriana Latina).

57.

Solinus, XXII.4 (6): apis nusquam: advectum inde pulverem seu lapillus si quis
sparserit inter alvearia, examina favos deserent (cf. Isidore, Origines XIV.6.6).

162

Andrew Gillett

(unnamed) peoples, here and elsewhere, are intermixed, not structured as an
ethnographic survey as in Jordanes.

A closer analogy is a passage in Herodotus, Histories: cold climate, to which

bees are intolerant, also precludes human settlement from northern Europa (here
of lands north of Thrace and the Danube).

The observation forms part of a

discussion of the limits not only of human settlement but also of human
knowledge; the lands beyond the Danube were ‘true terra incognita’ to
Herodotus.

Bees, barbarians, and climatic limitations are all associated here, as

in  Jordanes.  Jordanes  does  not  name  Herodotus  as  a  source,  an  odd  omission
given  his  proclivity  to  listing  an  imposing  number  of  eminent  Greek  and  Latin
writers  (sometimes  misleadingly),  and  in  view  of  the  frequent  citation  of
Herodotus  by  late  antique  authors.

But whereas Jordanes flags his use of

sources that often have only superficial impact on the content of his work (such
as Virgil and Josephus), he tends not to acknowledge texts that have a
determining effect on his structure, including Solinus and Ammianus
Marcellinus, who shape the geography, ethnography, and history of the Getica.

There is no argument e silentio that Jordanes necessarily used Herodotus, but it
should perhaps be considered an open possibility.

Small but not insignificant, Jordanes’ references to bees serve to reinforce his
description of the Goths as permanent émigrés from a distant land. The image is

58.

Several discussions on bees do mention the effects of cold, but with regard to the
impact of seasonal change, not climatic limits; e.g. Virgil, Georgica IV.35–6, 156–7,
239–42; Pliny XI.5.13, 15.43; Columella, Res rustica IX.5.1. See following note.

59.

Herodotus,  Histories  V.10.  On  the  passage:  Thomas,  Herodotus  in  Context  150.
Herodotus  is  explicitly  contradicted  by  Aelian,  Natura  animalum  II.53.  Cf.  also
Pytheas, apud Strabo, IV.5.5 (honey occurs in some parts of Thule; Herodotus is not
cited).

60.

D. Asheri, ‘Herodotus on Thracian Society and History’ Hérodote et les peuples non
Grecs ed. W. Burkert et al. (Geneva 1990) 166. On Herodotus, Histories V.9–10:
Romm, Edges of the Earth 35–6; T. Harrison, Divinity and History: The Religion of
Herodotus (Oxford 2000) 27 n. 111, 63.

61.

Misleading  naming  of  authors:  see  n.  45  above.  Citations  of  Herodotus:  the  list  of
fourth-  to  sixth-century  authors  is  extensive;  examples  include  e.g.  rhetoricians
(Themistius,  Libanius,  Synesius,  John  Lydus,  Ausonius,  Macrobius),  ecclesiastics
(Eusebius,  Athanasius,  John  Chrysostom,  Jerome),  and  historians  (Ammianus
Marcellinus, Theodoret, Zosimus, Evagrius, Procopius, Agathias); Thesaurus linguae
Graecae; CETEDOC.

62.

E.g.  Jordanes,  Getica  126–9,  131,  134–8;  cf.  Amm.  Marc.  XXXI.2,  4,  5,  11,  12;
Mommsen,  ‘Prooemium’  to  Jordanes,  Getica  xxxi  (Solinus),  xxxiii–xxxiv
(Ammianus).  Mommsen  attributes  such  lack  of  named  citation  to  transmission  via
Cassiodorus’s  lost  Gothic  History,  but  there  is  little  evidence  of  Ammianus’  text
circulating  in  Italy,  despite  the  possible  original  declamation  of  parts  of  the  text  in
Rome; J. Matthews, The Roman Empire of Ammianus (Baltimore 1989) 8–13; but see
Barnes,  Ammianus,  54–8.  Besides  Jordanes,  however,  Ammianus  is  independently
attested in early sixth-century Constantinople by Priscian (Barnes, Ammianus 30 and
n. 41). Direct use of Ammianus by Jordanes seems more probable.

A significant exception to Jordanes’ tendency not to name major sources is the fifth-
century historian Priscus, used extensively on Attila and the Huns.

The Goths and the Bees in Jordanes: A Narrative of No Return

163

tributary  to  his  fundamental  meta-narrative:  the  Goths,  if  once  alien  to  the
Mediterranean  world,  were  now  so  far  removed  in  time  and  space  from  any
original  homeland,  and  for  so  long  intimately  tied  to  the  Roman  military  and
political  system,  that  any  realistic  resolution  of  the  Italian  situation  could  not
afford to indulge in the idea that the barbarians would ‘go home.’ At the level of
composition,  the  coordination  of  imagery  and  narrative  structure  to  create  the
analogy  is  an  indication  of  the  author’s  literary  skill;  not  high  art,  perhaps,  but
the  pursuit  and  achievement  of  purposeful  aims  through  careful  narrative
strategy.  To  construct  his  effect,  Jordanes  drew  on  a  long  established  and
widespread  trope  from  classical  ethnography,  without  reference  to  which  the
image  is  meaningless.  In  doing  so,  he  assumed  his  audience’s  familiarity  with
the  common  analogy  of  bee  and  human  societies.  Ethnography  was  a  ready
intellectual  and  rhetorical  resource  in  Justinianic  Constantinople  as  in  earlier
times, an old facility  available  to be reworked into something novel. It was not
restricted  to  formal  literary  compositions  but  was  a  fundamental  way  of
describing  the  world  that  could  contribute  to  a  range  of  discourses  and
discussions. In Jordanes’ time, it was a tool of historiographic and perhaps public
discussion,  but  it  was  to  have  a  long  afterlife  in  modern  constructions  of  the
barbarian world.

63.

My thanks to Kavita Ayer for research assistance, and to Walter Goffart, Antonina
Harbus, Michael Kulikowski, Alexander Callander Murray and the anonymous
reader for advice; all views and errors are, of course, my own.

The slightness of this paper is in inverse proportion to my debt of gratitude and
admiration for its honorand.