Yanakieva, Svetlana The Thracian Language PDF

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Orpheus Journal of Indo-European and Thracian Studies Volume 25 2018 Publication of the Institute of Balkan Studies & Centre of Thracology Bulgarian Academy of Sciences Sofia Editors: Svetlana Yanakieva (Editor-in-chief), Rumyana Georgieva, Dobriela Kotova, Ruja Popova (Editorial Secretary) Edit...

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Orpheus Journal of Indo-European and Thracian Studies

Volume 25 2018 Publication of the Institute of Balkan Studies & Centre of Thracology Bulgarian Academy of Sciences Sofia

Editors: Svetlana Yanakieva (Editor-in-chief), Rumyana Georgieva, Dobriela Kotova, Ruja Popova (Editorial Secretary) Editorial Board: Dilyana Boteva (Sofia) Oleg Gabelko (Moskow) Elwira Kaczyńska (Łódź) Bilyana Mihailova (Sofia) Dragi Mitrevski (Skopje) Ulrike Peter (Berlin) Aurel Rustoiu (Cluj-Napoca) Mustafa Sayar (Istanbul) Mirena Slavova (Sofia) Maya Vassileva (Sofia) Editorial Address Centre of Thracology 13 Moskovska Street BG-1000 Sofia Bulgaria Tel: +359 2 981 58 53 [email protected] [email protected] ORPHEUS Journal of Indo-European and Thracian Studies 25 (2018) Publication of the Institute of Balkan Studies & Centre of Thracology Bulgarian Academy of Sciences Secretariat of the International Council of Indo-European and Thracian Studies ISSN 0861-9387 Sofia

CONTENTS Sorin Paliga Re-reading Skok and Rostaing. Old and New Perspectives on the Linguistic Stratification in Europe ............................................5 Bilyana Mihaylova On the Etymology of ΕΛΕΓΧΩ.....................................................18 Krzysztof Tomasz Witczak The Plant Name ἄμετρος ‘Rubus’ as a Palaeo-Balkan Term .......23 Svetlana Yanakieva The Thracian Language.................................................................26 Ruja Popova Antonia Tryphaena: a Hellenistic Queen in the Network of the Roman Imperial System ................................................................69 Kaloyan Pramatarov Extra-Urban Necropolises in the Thracia Province (1st‒3rd Centuries AD): the Problem of Their Settlement Attribution......103

ORPHEUS 25 (2018)

The Thracian Language Svetlana Yanakieva The study summarises the author’s long years of research in the sphere of Thracian linguistics. The Thracian linguistic material is presented briefly – glosses and onomastics, the stages in research for more than one hundred years are outlined, the current stage of research and the issues raised in the sphere of the methodology of analysis, phonology, morphology, lexical material and historical phonetics. The issues of linguistic homogeneity and the fate of the Thracian language until the end of Antiquity are addressed. The views of different scholars are presented and the author’s positions on debatable issues are argumented.

Introduction

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ilhelm Tomaschek’s book Die alten Thraker (Tomaschek 1894) is fundamental in the sphere of the research on the Thracian language and in its second part the Austrian scholar has gathered in one corpus the entire Thracian linguistic material known in his time, and has analysed it so as to outline the linguistic situation in the Thracian lands, identifying also some links with other Indo-European languages. During subsequent decades that material served as the foundation for the emergence of new studies on individual issues, chapters of books summarising encyclopaedic articles (Solmsen 1897; Kretschmer 1896; Младенов 1915; 1921; Jokl 1929; Brandenstein 1936). The Thracian linguistic material increases: many new Greek and Latin inscriptions containing Thracian personal and settlement names and epithets of deities came to light. During that period, the Bulgarian scholars G. Kazarow, D. Detschew, V. Beševliev, the French scholar G. Seure, the Romanians G. Mateescu, V. Părvan, H. Mihăescu and many others had a great contribution.1 The two most important books by Dimiter Detschew, Charakteristik der thrakischen Sprache and Die thrakischen Sprachreste (Дечев 1952; Detschew 1957; Detschew 1960), marked the completion and culmination of that stage. On the basis of the two sources – the inscriptions and the ancient authors – D. Detschew doubled the Thracian linguistic material that had been gathered earlier by W. Tomaschek, and thus Die thrakischen Sprachreste became the principal corpus for For more details on that earliest period, see Георгиев 1977: 7–8.

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studying the Thracian language, which is indispensable to this day. In turn, Charakteristik der thrakischen Sprache is the first attempt at systematic description of the Thracian linguistic facts, as well as for making comparisons on that basis with other Indo-European languages, and for determining the place of the Thracian language in the Indo-European linguistic family. In spite of some weaknesses, the publication of the two works by D. Detschew played an enormous role and the next – third – stage in the second half of the 20th century was marked by flourishing of the studies on the Thracian language. At the same time, the finding of new epigraphic monuments continued to result in a growing number of Thracian proper names, especially of personal names. The corpus of Greek inscriptions from Bulgaria (IGBulg.), published by G. Mihailov, became an excellent prerequisite for new studies. A large number of monographs, studies and papers were published. Two principal tendencies can be outlined: continuation and development of the trends in D. Detschew’s works and of their assessment and criticism, whereby some researchers combine the two approaches. There is no doubt that the studies from that period were dominated by the figure of Vladimir Georgiev,2 who launched the idea of the existence of two languages in the space between the Carpathians and the Aegean Sea – Thracian and Dacian-Moesian – in numerous articles and in his summarising monograph The Thracians and Their Language (Георгиев 1977), with several differences between them.3 With the appearance of new epigraphic monuments from the Bulgarian and neighbouring lands, and often from further away, the Thracian names and the examples connected with them constantly multiplied, personal names being most numerous, of course. The publication of a new corpus of personal names by D. Dana is very useful in this respect because it has gathered and commented upon the names known from D. Detschew’s corpus with its several additions, as well as those included in new epigraphic corpora, and in the numerous scattered editions so far (Dana 2014). The fourth stage in the history of Thracian linguistics can be outlined in the last twenty years approximately, with the change in the generations. Studies of Thracian linguistic relicts in various spheres appeared, seeking and applying different methods through which to avoid the uncertainty of the etymologies of proper names. Several monographs are indicative of For more details on V. Georgiev’s contribution in the sphere of Indo-European linguistics, and more specifically of the Thracian language and the pre-Greek substrate, see Михайлова 2018. 3 See below the section The Issue of the Linguistic Homogeneity. 2

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the use of non-etymological methods (Димитров 1994; Boïadjiev 2000; Славова 2007; Янакиева 2009). The constant increase of Thracian linguistic material and the accumulation of corrections concerning the different categories of names, as well as of new studies on the Thracian language in the recent decades, necessitated the compiling of a new corpus of Thracian linguistic relicts. In 2010, the Institute of Thracology of the Bulgarian Academy of Sciences started implementing the project Glotta. Database on the Thracian Language (Янакиева 2014), which – unfortunately – was frozen after the completion of the first stage in 2012 for lack of financing. In the concrete case that was not merely digitalisation of the available linguistic material, it also meant creating new search opportunities in the computer programme, and hence new research opportunities, especially in the sphere of areal linguistics and linguistic geography. It would have enhanced the contribution of linguistics to the comprehensive study of Thracian antiquity. We would have had a modern instrument for work, which would stimulate and facilitate technically both new research on concrete particular issues and generalising works. This project needs to continue. Boundaries and Chronology The Thracian language was spoken by the tribes in Southeastern Europe in the lands from the Carpathians to the Aegean Sea and from the Black Sea to the basins of the Morava and Vardar rivers. These borders are considered to be reliable for the time from the second millennium BC onwards (Mihailov 1986: 380). In addition to the European territory, the Thracian linguistic space should comprise Northwestern Asia Minor as well (above all Bithynia and part of Mysia) due to the evidence in the ancient authors on the passage of Thracian tribes from European Thrace into Asia Minor (Hdt. 1. 28; Str. 7. 3. 2; 12. 3. 3, etc.) and to the existence of onomastic material of Thracian origin from that territory. The map of the Thracian hydronyms (it is generally accepted that the names of the big rivers belonged, in principle, to the most ancient onomastic layer) identifies in most general lines the Thracian linguistic space (Янакиева 2009: 142). The existence of the Thracian language is positioned chronologically in the period between the settling of Thracian tribes in the Balkan Peninsula and the end of Antiquity. As no other earlier Indo-European layer has been identified in the territory outlined above, the earliest stage should probably be assumed to have been the coming to the Peninsula of the Indo-European tribes bearing the dialect from which the Thracian language attested in later sources

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developed. That probably occurred at some time during the Early Bronze Age, i.e., during the third millennium BC. The extinction of the Thracian language took place after the Slav tribes settled in the Balkan Peninsula (6th century) and assimilated the Thracians, although it is possible that certain groups speaking the Thracian language may have survived longer. The Linguistic Material and Its Sources The available Thracian linguistic material is fragmented. There are no complete texts in Thracian, with the exception of several inscriptions. What we have are the Thracian linguistic relicts preserved in the texts of more than one hundred ancient authors and in hundreds of inscriptions in Greek and Latin. They were collected by D. Detschew (Detschew 1957), but a lot of new material was accumulated in the decades after that capital publication appeared. D. Dana’s corpus constitutes merely partial updating of D. Detschew’s thesaurus, because it covers only personal names (Dana 2014). There is a possibility for certain Thracian names to be present in Linear B tablets. In spite of the uncertainty of the identification generated by the syllabic character of the script, there exists a possibility for pe-ri-te-u and o-ro-ti-jo in the tablets from Pylos to be perceived as names of inhabitants derived from the settlement names Πέρινθος and Ὄλυνθος (Soesbergen 1979: 33; Duridanov 1984: 114–115; 1985a: 10). The oldest reliable information on Thracian toponyms can be found in Homer’s poems: river and settlement names in The Iliad and The Odyssey, followed by the evidence in Hesiod, Alcaeus and Hecataeus. These earliest data are related to toponyms along the Aegean coast and in Northwestern Asia Minor – territories that were well familiar to the Greeks, and only few of them were from the interior of European Thrace. The knowledge of the ancient authors about Thrace expanded considerably during the Classical period, especially with the evidence of Herodotus. The information on Thracian onomastics increased sharply during the Roman period and the Late Antiquity. The quantitative increase was also paralleled by the territorial scope of the data: more and more names become known from the interior of Thrace and from the lands beyond the Danube. The lexicographers (Hesychius, Stephanus Byzantinus and others) are the principal source for the Thracian glosses. Greek and Latin inscriptions are the other main source for Thracian onomastics. Unlike the literary sources, the settlement names in them are fewer (about 120 settlement names and derivatives from the names of settlement dwellers), but we learn from them an enormous number (hundreds) of personal

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names, as well as dozens of names and epithets of deities. Numismatic monuments are the source for a certain number of personal names. Methods of Analysis Etymological analysis The big successes of the etymological method in comparativehistorical linguistics in the reconstruction of unattested linguistic states and initial Indo-European sound forms and meanings led the first researchers of individual Thracian names – J. Grimm, R. Roesler, A. Fick and others – to apply the etymological method not only to the Thracian glosses (for which it is, of course, perfectly appropriate), but also to the onomastic material. Wilhelm Tomaschek, the author of the first corpus of Thracian linguistic relicts, uses that method rather sparingly for proper names – with reservations connected with the hypothetical nature and different possibilities for their etymologies (Tomaschek 1894: 1, 36–70; 2, 1–100). The etymological method became the principal method in studies on Thracian onomastics during subsequent decades, and especially during the second half of the 20th century with the expansion of Thracian linguistics. A number of names acquired several different etymologies, e.g., there are a total of six etymologies for the name of the Ἕβρος River (Tomaschek 1894: 2, 93; Fick 1909: 85-86; Младенов 1915: 53; Дечев 1954: 273–274; Георгиев 1960: 26; Георгиев 1977: 246), five of which are Thracian, and one – of Stefan Mladenov – assumes non-Indo-European origin; for another river name – Ἄψινθος – there are four different etymologies (Detschew 1957: 39–40; Gindin 1971: 241; Дури­данов 1976: 30; Dimitrov 2009: 122; 130), and those authors who associate the hydronym with the word ἀψίνθιον “wormwood” believe it to be Thracian (Gindin 1971; Янакиева 2009: 46– 47), Pelasgian (Mihailov 1986: 382) or Greek (Вене­диков 1982: 49). However, the problem does not consist in the large number of etymologies for one name. A large number of etymologies is debatable even for common names in contemporary languages and in ancient languages well attested with texts. The problem is that due to the lack of a massif of appellative lexical material, the authors of etymologies for Thracian proper names have no support for their possible semantics. Every researcher determines alone a semantic field believed to be suitable for a concrete proper name. Thus, the name Ῥῆσος, which is at the same time the name of a mythological Thracian king (and hero from the Trojan War), and the name of a small river in the Troad (where there are other Thracian names as well), is assumed to contain either the stem *rēs- “move quickly, flow”, OHG rasc,

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Germ. rasch (Kretschmer 1925: 103), or IE *reg’- “command, rule”, Lat. rex and derivatives in many IE languages (Tomaschek 1894: 1, 53)4. The authors apparently start from semantics that seems to them appropriate for a river name in one case, and in the other – for the name of a king, while the two names probably have the same origin. The problem is also complicated by the absence of sufficient data on the morphological division of many of the proper names. For example, according to V. Georgiev, the settlement name Ἀνγισσός is composed of a hypothetical preposition αν “of” and a noun γισσός “stone” – which, however, is not attested for Thracian, only for Karian (Георгиев 1977: 64). On the other hand, I. Duridanov believes that it had the same stem as another settlement name – Ἀγγίτης (Дуриданов 1976: 29), i.е., that these are two names with one stem Ἀγγ-, formed with two different suffixes -ιτης and -ισσος (both attested in Thracian onomastics). It is not possible to determine which of the two assumptions concerning the division is true. With this situation – absence of sufficient appellative lexical material and of reliable data on the morphological division of many of the proper names – stipulating some hypothetical meaning in the etymologisation of the Thracian onomastic material proves to be similar in practice to the secondary semantic and morphological motivation, like the procedure in the case of the popular etymology.5 I do not believe that this approach is correct, being based on a methodological error. In view of these considerations, most etymologies proposed for Thracian proper names should be viewed as uncertain, and only a small part of them – as probable. The etymological method may be applied normally to the glosses, but etymologisation of the onomastic material should be done very cautiously, bearing in mind its hypothetical nature in most cases. Phonological analysis6 Studies on Thracian phonetics appeared in the past decade – not in historical, but in synchronous aspect, seeking phonetic characteristics of the The issue of the existence of the first root in more recent times is debatable. H. Rix has placed a question mark before it: “? *(h1)reh1s- ‘sich stürzen.’ Primäre Verbalformen nur alb. 3s ra, 1s rashë ‘fiel; schlug’, vgl. an. rás ‘Lauf’, rasa ‘sich stürzen, straucheln’, gr. ἐρωή ‘Andrang, Schwung’, ἐρωέω ‘eile’” (Rix et al. 2001: 501). According to R. Beekes, the ancient Greek forms are from root *(h)roh1s-eh2- (Beekes, van Beek 2010: 469). 5 For more details, see Янакиева 2017. 6 The term phonological analysis is preferred in view of the orientation to synchronous analysis, i.e., to studying the functional aspect of sounds in the Thracian language (see also Славова 2005). 4

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attested forms of Thracian proper names and glosses. The method of comparing different graphic variants is productive in synchronous descriptions (Славова 2007; Slavova 2007; Janakiewa 2007; Янакиева 2012). Owing to it, with a careful analysis that also comprises chronological and geographic data on the different variants, in many cases it is possible to determine the sound value of phonemes in Thracian names, recorded in different ways, as well as their subsequent development. Morphological analysis Due to the absence of entire texts, the morphological analysis of the Thracian linguistic material is with the most strongly limited tools. The conclusions about the existence of genders, declensions and some case forms are predominantly in the sphere of hypotheses. By comparing names with the same lexical stem, it is possible to identify a large number of suffix elements. In terms of structure, it is possible to distinguish names with one stem, with one stem extended with suffix and with two stems. Lexical analysis The large amount of onomastic material provides good opportunities for lexical analysis, especially in area terms. The lexical comparing of Thracian proper names with onomastic material (mostly toponyms) from the areas adjacent to the Thracian linguistic area: the western part of the Balkan Peninsula, Asia Minor and Greece, together with the Aegean islands – can outline the pattern of the closest Indo-European contacts of the Thracian language. Research on the propagation of lexical stems within the Thracian linguistic space is a good basis for substantiating hypotheses on its homogeneity or fragmentation. Finally, the data from onomastics (together with other evidence) can shed light for elucidating the issue of the last centuries of the existence of the Thracian language and ethnos prior to its assimilation. The Thracian Linguistic Material The Thracian Inscriptions There are several inscriptions in the Thracian language, written using Greek letters without intervals between the words, according to the practice during the Antiquity. The best known inscription is on a gold ring from a 5th century BC burial in the Ezero village near Plovdiv. The text is as follows: ΡΟΛΙΣΤΕΝΕΑΣΝ ΕΡΕΝΕΑΤΙΛ ΤΕΑΝΗΣΚΟΑ

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ΡΑΖΕΑΔΟΜ ΕΑΝΤΙΛΕΖΥ ΠΤΑΜΙΗΕ ΡΑΖ ΗΛΤΑ The first interpretations that were made soon after the ring was found in 1912 attempted to distinguish personal, settlement and tribal names in the ...