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Medieval Baltic Tribes
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 07 August 2018
Extract
The Neuri (Neuroi) and Aesti of classical scholarship are the earliest names which recent research has attempted to gloss as Baltic (K. Būga's “Aestic”), but since nothing beyond conjecture, unsubstantiated by linguistic evidence, can establish the equation, it is better to begin more soberly with names about which there can be less doubt. The oldest known authority on these is Ptolemy (c. 100-78), who says in his De geographia “Ypo men tous Ouenedas, [Tacitus's Vencti, Wends, Slavs] Palin Galindai, [or Galindanoi, Calindians] kai Loudinoi, [or Loudênoi, Sudinians, Sudavians].” After a lapse of more than a millennium Peter von Dusburg (i.e., Duisburg) numbers these tribes among the Prussians, and two centuries later (1545), Meletius, archipresbyter Ecclesie Liccensis in Prussia, offers meager and obviously corrupt fragments of Sudavian or Yatvingian speech (e.g., moy ’,my,‘ cf. Pr. fem.
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- Copyright © Association for Slavic, East European, and Eurasian Studies 1949
References
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