Australian Association for Byzantine Studies

Byzantina Australiensia 16

B

Y Z A N T I N E

N

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

© 2006 Australian Association for Byzantine Studies

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.’

1

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.

2

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.

3

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

1.

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

2.

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.

3.

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

4

(the texts are most commonly cited by their

modern editorial titles, the Romana and the Getica

5

). 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.

6

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

4.

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).

5.

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).

6.

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.

7

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.

8

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

9

— or, more recently, for putative Germanic

ideological traditions preserved in the Getica.

10

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.

7.

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).

8.

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.

9.

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.

11

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.

12

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.

13

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).

14

Jordanes’ Romana is intermittently studied for its relationship to other

examples of the genre of breviaria,

15

and the Getica has been exhaustively

scrutinized for relations with classical geographic texts.

16

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)

17

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).

18

That is all Jordanes has to say about bees.

19

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.

20

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.

21

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,

22

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;

23

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.

24

A

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)

2.

‘Pre-history’ to 376 (Getica 25–130)

3.

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

4.

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

Conclusion (Getica 315–6)

25

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,

26

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,

27

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).

28

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.

29

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.

30

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).

31

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.

32

Such a non-sequitur is

uncharacteristic of Jordanes’ structured and orderly writing.

33

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.

34

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.

35

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.

36

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.

37

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

38

) 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.

39

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

40

) and

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

41

). 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.

42

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.

43

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.

44

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.

45

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.

46

Bees, their swarms, and

their honey played their small role in classical culture.

47

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.

48

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.

49

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.

50

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.

51

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,

52

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.

53

(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.

54

) 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.

55

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.

56

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.’

57

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).

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

58

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).

59

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.

60

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.

61

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.

62

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

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.