Help with Spanish text about Sextus Propertius

I don't read Spanish and I've found a potentially interesting article in Spanish (few pages long - about 7 pages):

http://dialnet.unirioja.es/servlet/articulo?codigo=2039484

Click "Texto completo" to download full text.

Author of the article claims that Roman poet from times of Augustus - Sextus Propertius (50 BC - 15 BC) - described Slavic people.

But I don't understand much. Could someone who reads Spanish read it and describe briefly what are its author's findings ???

If true then this would be perhaps the first known certain description of Slavic people.

 

Here is the poem in question by Sextus Propertius:

http://www.thelatinlibrary.com/propertius1.html#12

http://blog.bestamericanpoetry.com/...to-sextus-propertius-erin-burkes-version.html

"Tam multa illa meo diuisa est milia lecto, quantum Hypanis Veneto dissidet Eridano."

"This is as many miles far away from my bed, as Venetian Hypanis is from Eridano."

Hypanis is Southern Bug, a river in Ukraine:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Southern_Bug

Sextus Propertius calls it Venetian Hypanis.

And Eridanus (or Eridano) is Po River: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eridanus

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Po_(river)#History

So why did he call a river in Ukraine "Venetian" ???

 

No. It's all about the Veneti, whom the author describes as proto-Slavic. (Which in itself is a hypothesis.)

Not really. See above.

 

These particular Veneti mentioned by this article, lived in Ukraine. Venedic / Venetic could originally be a separate family of IE languages, some part of speakers of which took part in the ethnogenesis of Slavic speakers. However, in this case they could be already genuinely Slavic people, because we are talking about the 1st century BC, and Proto-Slavic language emerged between 1500 BC and 500 BC according to most linguists (Atkinson - 1400 BC; Novotná & Blažek - 1400–1340 BC; Sergei Starostin - 1210 BC; Chang et. al. - 600 BC: http://www.linguisticsociety.org/files/news/ChangEtAlPreprint.pdf).

Check also this map: http://postimg.org/image/tbsbpd6l7/full/

 

Chang 2015 suggests that Slavic emerged around year 600 BCE (see the graph below):

 

So from protoslavic we're now into confirmed hypothesis about Slavic? Things are certainly moving fast... The usual procedure is find facts first, hypothesize later.

 

I think you don't know what "Proto-Slavic" means.

Proto-Slavic is Slavic, not Non-Slavic. Non-Slavic would be Pre-Slavic.

Pay attention to the meaning of words. Proto =/= Pre.

It is called Proto because it was neither Russian, nor Polish, nor Slovene, etc.

 

It is not a description at all, it is just two lines in which Propertius expresses his sorrow that he is separated from his beloved Cynthia. Cynthia must have been quite attractive and poor Propertius must have desperately fallen in love with her.

Who made the translation? My former Latin teacher would rotate in his grave.

This She is as many miles far away from my bed, as Venetian Hypanis is from Venetian Eridano

It is illa, not illud, and Veneto belongs to Eridano (Ablativ Singular).

(ah, I've found a better translation for it:https://books.google.de/books?id=nL...antum Hypanis Veneto dissidet Eridano&f=false)

 

OK , but the article is titled "La referencia histórica más antigua a los veneti protoeslavos".

So where does its author - Juan Antonio Álvarez-Pedrosa Nunez - see those Proto-Slavs and why ???

=================================

Or maybe there is a typo - shouldn't that be "quantum Hypanis Veneta dissidet Eridano"?

In such case Veneta would refer to Hypanis. Veneto can also refer to Hypanis if the latter is not a river (not feminine), or not?

But apparently you are right that Veneto refers to Eridano, unless there is a typo there.

 

Author of that map says that it is based on Tacitus and Ptolemy.

Some sources which mention eastern Venedi:

Pliny the Elder, Naturalis Historia, IV-97
Ptolemy, Geography, III-5.1 - 5.10
Tacitus, Germania, 46
Jordanes, Getica, 34-36, 119, 246-247

Here is what Tacitus wrote about the eastern Venedi:

"Venedi multum ex moribus traxerunt; nam quidquid inter Peucinos Fennosque silvarum ac montium erigitur latrociniis pererrant."

And Ptolemy wrote about the Peucini, that they lived north of Dacia.

Also Pliny the Elder wrote about the eastern Venedi:

"Quidam haec habitari ad Vistlam usque fluvium a Sarmatis, Venedis, Sciris, Hirris."

 

Àlvarez claims that Propertius made a word game. Propertius knew about the different tribes with the name Veneti and by positioning Veneto next to Hypanis he linked these words:

quantum Hypanis Veneto dissidet Eridano. Veneto Eridiano is the river Po (near Venice which is derived from the Veneti). But at the same time Hypanis Veneto refers to the "other" Veneti upon the river Hypanis.

There is one later source the so-called Tabula-Peutingeriana who provides additional information:

The Tabula Peutingeriana (2nd to 4th century AD) situates some Venedi Sarmatae in the north of Dacia, but states again that the ethnical Veneti are around the mouth of the Danube, very near the the mouth of the river Hispanis.

 

Veneto cannot refer to Hypanis for Veneto is either Dativ or Ablativ and Hypanis is Nominativ or Genitiv. Latin Grammar has a system of http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Latin_declension (I was tortured for many years in school leaning Latin, first I hated it then I loved it.)

Veneta is not possible for Hypanis is masculinum (according to http://de.pons.com/übersetzung/latein-deutsch/Hypanis), so it had to be Hypanis Venetus.

 

One more thing concerning Proto-Slavic / Pre-Slavic:

And even Pre-Slavic was still represented by some people who were ancestors of Slavs.

Just like in case of Pre-Germanic:

"Germanic Parent Language (GPL) is a term used in historical linguistics to describe the chain of reconstructed languages in the Germanic group referred to as Pre-Germanic Indo-European (PreGmc), Early Proto-Germanic (EPGmc), and Late Proto-Germanic (LPGmc). It is intended to cover the time of the 2nd and 1st millennia BCE."

Also Slavic Parent Language, Pre-Slavic Indo-European, etc. existed before Proto-Slavic.

===========================

Edit:

Really? I thought it was femininum... Fluvius is femininum, right?

 

The wiki-article says:

quoting Gołąb, Zbigniew (1992). The Origins of the Slavs: A Linguist's view. Columbus: Slavica Publishers, 1992. (the same person is also quoted by Álvarez-Pedrosa Nuñez)

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vistula_Veneti#cite_note-11

 

In the late 5th century AD Slavs lived around the mouth of the Danube:

We have quite a precise description of the area inhabited by Slavs in Byzantine neighbourhood around year 500 AD from Procopius (VII: 14, 30) - who wrote that they lived north of the Danube - and Jordanes (V: 30-37) - who provided more details. He wrote (V: 34-35):

"(34) Within these rivers lies Dacia, encircled by the lofty Alps as by a crown. Near their left ridge, which inclines toward the north, and beginning at the source of the Vistula, the populous race of the Venethi dwell, occupying a great expanse of land. Though their names are now dispersed amid various clans and places, yet they are chiefly called Sclaveni and Antes. (35) The abode of the Sclaveni extends from the city of Noviodunum and the lake called Mursianus to the Danaster, and northward as far as the Vistula. (...) The Antes (...) dwelling above the curve of the sea of Pontus, spread from the Danaster to the Danaper, rivers that are many days' journey apart."

Marek Dulnicz, "The Lombard Headman Called Ildigis and the Slavs" (in English), identifies those geographical locations as follows:

http://opac.regesta-imperii.de/lang_en/autoren.php?name=Dulinicz,+Marek



1) Noviodunum - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Noviodunum_(castra)

2) lake Mursianus (citation from M. Dulnicz):

"Lake Mursianus was in fact, according to the majority of researchers, the vast marshes at the juncture of the Drava and the Danube; (...) the lake or marshes in question might have extended as far as to the juncture of the Tisza and the Danube. The lake’s name was derived from the town of Mursa (present-day Osijek)."

3) Danaster = Dniester river

4) Danaper = Dnieper river

5) "Alps" = Carpathians

Source of the Vistula is located close to the present-day Bielsko-Biała: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bielsko-Biała

And "the curve of the sea of Pontus [Black Sea]" was the coastline (which forms a nice curve) in the region of present-day Odessa.

Basing on that info I made a map showing the extent of Slavs in 500 AD (or rather 2 of their 3 branches - Sclaveni and Antes):

There was also a mixed territory inhabited by both Sclaveni and Antes and they migrated to the Balkans together (archaeological evidence shows this; Zofia Kurnatowska in her book "Słowianie Południowi" distinguishes between settlements of Sclaveni and those of Antes - though differences were minor):



AFAIK neither Procopius nor Jordanes wrote where did the third of Slavic branches - the Venedi - live at that time.

Or maybe the Veneth(d)i was just a general name for all Slavic (perhaps even all Balto-Slavic), not one of their branches.

 

Slavs frequently raided the Balkans from 500 to 540 AD.

But they started to settle in the Balkans only after 545 AD.

 

In the article by Álvarez-Pedrosa Nuñez he mentions three principal theories for the original homeland of the Slavic people:

1. Western between the rivers Oder and Vistula
2. Eastern around the middle course of the river Dniepr
3. Southern in the upper course of the southern river Bug

Gołąb proposes a succession of the geographical areas from the East to the West what makes sense as to the antiquity of Iranian loan-words and the more recent caracter of loanwords from Germanic.

 

Non est.

Fluvius is masculinum. Normally words ending in -us are masculinum and part of the o-declension. There are some exceptions such as manus which are feminum and u-declension.

Even in modern Spanish and French it is still la mano and la main. "La" (derived from Latin illa) is the article in French and Spanish for the Femininum.

I've just looked up Hyalis in my Latin-Dictionnary (the so-called Stowasser by the Austrian-Silesian Latin teacher http://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Joseph_Maria_Stowasser): according to Stowasser it is masculinum.


I haven't done Latin for many years. Thanks to this thread I will have some nightmares on my Latin teacher (very strict guy). But I learnt a lot.

 

Both proto- and pre- slavic means 'not yet' Slavic. So I'm not quite sure who doesn't understand what here. And having worked as a translater I'm usually quite attentive to words, thank you.

 

Nope. AFAIK, Proto-Slavic means already Slavic - with all basic linguistic features common to Slavic languages.

Just like Proto-Germanic means already Germanic. Owen Glyndwr (who is a linguist) wrote a nice essay on Proto-Germanic here:

http://forums.civfanatics.com/showpost.php?p=12014427&postcount=104

In my previous posts I quoted sources which say that Proto-Slavic emerged between 1500 BC and 500 BC.

So how could Proto-Germanic break off from Slavic around 2000 BC, when Slavic did not yet exist? Perhaps he meant Balto-Slavic?

I think Owen confused something here. Maybe he will see this thread and explain what did he mean by that.

But Germanic is related to Baltic and Slavic. Many linguists even assume that they had a common ancestor language, Balto-Slavo-Germanic.

However, the graph from Chang et. al. that I posted above does not seem to support this view (take a look how it branches off into Balto-Slavic and Italo-Celto-Germanic in that graph, instead of branching off into Balto-Slavo-Germanic and Italo-Celtic, as many other linguists assume).

I wonder if Owen Glyndwr supports the Balto-Slavo-Germanic + Italo-Celtic theory, or the Balto-Slavic + Italo-Celto-Germanic theory ???

Perhaps he supports the Balto-Slavo-Germanic theory, given what he wrote above.