Pages: 327-332

The author of Getica uses double geographical names, e. g. Tyras–Danaster or Viscla–Vistula. What was the reason for such inconstancy: the author’s desire for diversity, slavish adherence to the source text, or attention to the specific connotations peculiar to each form? To answer this question some places of the text of Getica were investigated. The text of Cassiodorus is characterized by a bizarre alternation of various rhythms and almost verse sizes, pretentious style and clausulae, sometimes put in two or three in a row. Jordan’s interpolations, who retrospectively stitched the extracts he once made from the work of Cassiodorus, lack metre and any poetry, clausulae are random and absent exactly in those places where their presence is considered mandatory. The difference in the form of the name of the Vistula river (Vistula-Viscla) corresponds not only to the stylistic context, but also to the reconstructed sources of Cassiodorus: the Classical and Gothic ones, respectively. Cassiodorus deliberately uses the Gothic form of Viscla where its text should arouse listeners’ associations with the realities of Gothic traditions.

Keywords: Eastern Europe, 6th century, Сassiodorus, Jordannes, Getica, Viscla, textology, cursus, Gothic legends, Menippean satire, Slavs

Information about author:

Petr Shuvalov (Saint Petersburg, Russian Federation). Candidate of Historical Sciences. Saint Petersburg State University. Universitetskaya Emb., 7/9, Saint Petersburg, 199034, Russian Federation
E-mail: [email protected], [email protected]