Готланд Эрманариха: остроготы в Восточной Европе на рубеже Древности и Средневековья

Situation in the Gothic studies started to change cardinally in 1980—90s, first of all — owing to the change of ideological directives and the progress in studying of Chernyakhov culture. By the end of XX^th century a weighty contribution in development of the Gothic studies has been made by European scholars, such as R. Hachmann, H. Wolfram, V. Bierbrauer, R Heather, J. Tejral, A. Kokowski, M. Maczynska, etc. It seems that for today’s generation of scholars the above-mentioned publications toghether with a fundam-etal book of Austrian scholar H. Wolfram drew a certain line in study of Goths. But the phenomenon of the Ermanaric’s lingdom still remains largely unexplored. It appears that it requires a different approach and, first of all, a higher level of historical analysis of the whole body of sources and historiographic heritage accumulated within two centuries.

Chronological framework of our study covers the IV^th century AD, when the south of Eastern Europe saw formation and heyday of Ermanaric’s kingdom. They correspond to Phases C2, C3, D1 of archaeological chronology of European Barbaricum. The Ostrogothic kingdom appeared at remote North-Western boundaries of Late Ancient oecumene in the beginning of the period, which may be defined as the turn of Antiquity and Middle Ages (IV—VI^th centuries AD). Its geographical framework include not only the main territory of Ermanaric’s domain between the Dniester and the Severski Donets (within the area of Chernyakhov culture), but also the whole sothern half of Eastern Europe, where Goths interacted with other peoples of this extensive region.

Our study has an interdisciplinary nature. In terms of age and several sources used (the work of Ammianus Marcellinus, etc.) it belongs to the problematics of contemporary classical studies. But in terms of subject (‘barbarian kingdom’) and other sources (Jordanes’ Getica, early medieval heroic epos, etc.) it enters the area of medieval studies. Our work is based on the analysis of various types of sources — written, linguistic, archaeological, as well as that of epic tradition with further correlation of obtained results. In order to extract authentic information we had to perform a repeated verification of the basic narrative sources. While studying archaeological materials we used not only traditional methods (comparative-typological, cartographic, stratigraphic, etc.), but also a civilization approach, which allowed us to define the development level of Chernyakhov culture creators without any prejudice. The obtained results were interpreted with the use of a historical-comparative method, as well as with regard to the latest achievements of historical politology.

Chapter I “Narrative sources about Goths of Ermanaric” is dedicated to analysis of literary evidences. Paragraph 1 is related to Res Gestae by Ammianus Marcellinus — the last outstanding Roman historian, for whom the kingdom of Ermanaric was a political reality, Paragraph 2 — to works of early Byzantine historians Eunapius and Zosimus, who described the final events of Ostrogothic history in Eastern Europe, Paragraph 3 — to Jordanes’ Getica containing the most complete information about the Ostrogothic kingdom, Paragraph 4 — to the Bible of Ulfila, Paragraph 5 — to a Christian hagiographie work Passio s. Sabae Gothi (these two sources reflected^ many fundamentals of Gothic society in the IV^th century AD allowing to estimate the level of its historical development), Paragraph 6 — to analysis of Germanic epic tradition, which saved the memory about the mighty Ostrogothic king Ermanaric, and Paragraph 7 to early medieval historical chronicles. The indicated sources cover the history of Ostrogoths and their kingdom in Eastern Europe in varying degrees. But notwithstanding the incompleteness of each of them, as a whole they create a quite certain information field allowing to cover the key issues of the Gothic history in IV^th century AD.