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Leo Diaconus and the Ethnology of Kievan Rus'

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  27 January 2017

Victor Terras
Victor Terras*
Affiliation:
University of Illinois, Urbana
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Extract

Today, no less than in the days of Lomonosov and Schlozer, the question of the ethnic identity of the early Kievan rulers is a controversial one. The late Adolf Stender-Petersen's criticism of the Normanist school, “that it replaced a real, well-founded historical view of the course of things by an a priori plan, in which things were arranged as well as possible,” also applies—mutatis mutandis, of course—to the historical-sociological method of the contemporary Soviet anti-Normanist school. What is needed in the field are good editions, with detailed, objective commentary, of all the sources known to us. Eventually these may lead to the “comprehensive edition of all the sources from which we can acquire knowledge as regards the Varangian problem” envisaged by Stender-Petersen. The edition of Constantine Porphyrogenitus, De Administrando Imperio by Gyula Moravcsik and R. J. H. Jenkins and the commentary edited by the latter may be cited as an important step toward this goal.

Type
Articles
Information
Slavic Review , Volume 24 , Issue 3 , September 1965 , pp. 395 - 406
Copyright
Copyright © Association for Slavic, East European, and Eurasian Studies. 1965

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References

1 Stender-Petersen, Varangica (Aarhus, 1953), p. 9.

2 Ibid., p. 20.

3 Constantine Porphyrogenitus de Administrando Imperio, Vol. I, Greek text edited by Gyula Moravcsik, English translation by R. J. H. Jenkins (Budapest, 1949; “Magyar-Görög Tanulmányok,” Vol. XXIX); Vol. II, commentary by F. Dvornik, R. J. H. Jenkins, B. Lewis, Gyula Moravcsik, D. Obolensky, and S. Runciman; edited by R. J. H. Jenkins (London, 1962).

4 The edition used is Leonis diaconi Caloensis historiae libri decern et liber de velitatione bellica Nicephori Augusti e recensione Caroli Benedicti Hasii (Bonn, 1828). For the few facts known about Leo Diaconus and his work, see Gyula Moravcsik, Byzantinoturcica I: Die byzantinischen Quellen der Geschichte der Türkvölker (2d ed.; Berlin, 1958; “Berliner byzantinische Arbeiten,” Vol. X).

5 Wilhelm Thomsen, in his basic work Der Ursprung des russischen Staates (German ed. revised by the author; Gotha, 1879), failed to discuss this source, although he was well aware of it. Henryk Paszkiewicz, perhaps the most prominent exponent of the Normanist school today, in his book The Making of the Russian Nation (London [c. 1963]), does not discuss the evidence contained in Leo Diaconus, although he is also familiar with it. Anti-Normanists seem to be more interested in it; see, for instance,, pp. 267-69.

6 Moravcsik, Byzantinoturcica, p. 399.

7 Such as the fact, reported by Scylitzes-Cedrenus, that the Greeks, when despoiling the dead Rhos at Dorystolum, found among them women who had fought in the battle dressed and armed like men (Georgius Cedrenus Ioannis Scylitzae ope ab I. Bekkero suppletus et emendatus [Bonn, 1839], II, 406).

8 Scylitzes-Cedrenus, II, 384.

9 (2 vols.; Moscow and Leningrad, 1950), I, 23-24, 33-34.

10 All quotations from Leo Diaconus are given in my own translation from the text cited in note 4 above.

11 See, for example, Shetelig, Haakon and Falk, Hjalmar, Scandinavian Archaeology, trans. Gordon, E. V. (Oxford, 1937), pp. 277, 342.Google Scholar

12 (St. Petersburg, 1870), p. 93 (hereafter cited as Harkavy).

13 See Lubor Niederle, Rukovět’ slovanskÝch starožitnosti (Prague, 1953), pp. 236-44.

14 For example, Ibn Fadlān (Harkavy, pp. 91, 98), Ibn Hauqal (ibid., p. 221), and Ibn Rusta (ibid., p. 269).

15 See Shetelig and Falk, pp. 393-95.

16 To quote from Shetelig and Falk, “Men's costume [in the Viking age] is characterized otherwise by weapons, which generally follow the international forms of the time; an exception is the battle-axe, which was specially characteristic of Scandinavia in Viking times” (p. 277). According to Niederle (pp. 406-7), the sekyra was not as popular a weapon with the Slavs. For more details see Niederle, Život starÝch slovanů (Prague, 1921), II, 541-45.

17 See Max Vasmer, Russisches etymologisches Wörterbuch (Heidelberg, 1950), III, 121 and 309.

18 See Shetelig and Falk, p. 395. In Russia in later centuries the topor was the weapon of the peasant, who worked as well as fought with it; for information to this effect (twelfththirteenth century) see ΓpeKOB, p. 205.

19 See Shetelig and Falk, pp. 403-4; Niederle, Rukovět’ slovanskÝch starozitnosti, pp. 410-14; Život starÝch slovanů, II, 518-25.

20 The Greek text: Trj Se “The javelin throwers I shall place behind the armored men, and behind the javelin throwers the archers. For if somebody decided to place these men in front, why, they themselves admit that they would not stand up in any kind of hand-to-hand fighting. But, with the armored men covering them in front, they will fight, both the javelin throwers, and the archers…” As to synaspismos, see the article “Testudo” in Pauly-Wissowa, Real-Encyclopädie der classischen A Itertumswissenschaft.

21 Shetelig and Falk, p. 400.

22 ibid., p. 399.

23 Niederle, Život starÝch slovanů, II, 583-87.

24 Thomsen, p. 144.

25 .

26 , II, 189.

27 Thomsen, p . 149.

28 Scylitzes-Cedrenus, II, 464.

29 Thomsen, p. 149.

30 See Acta antiqua Academiae Scientiarum Hungaricae, I (1951-52), 225-33.

31 , p. 283.

32 Vasmer, I, 578.

33 ibid. See also the entry (St. Petersburg, 1893), 1,1390.

34 Moravcsik (see note 30 above) essentially confirms the interpretation already found in Du Cange's glossary, which calls this form an “error proclivis” (for kombendos = Lat. conventus).

35 Shetelig and Falk, pp. 277-81; Niederle, Rukovtf, pp. 216-26; Život starÝch slovanů, I, 224-40. Archaeological evidence is confirmed by reports of Arab travelers.

36 Shetelig and Falk, p. 422.

37 Ibid., p. 282; Eric Graf Oxenstierna, Die Nordgermanen (Stuttgart, 1957), p. 128; Niederle, Život starÝch slovanů, I, 248-49. (Toronto, 1961), pp. 595-96, suggests that graves of the Kiev period in which a warrior was buried together with his wife (who had been put to death) or concubine and his horse are different in their construction from the graves containing no such sacrificial victims and definitely belong to Varangians rather than to the local Slavic population. If Pasternak is right, we may have here a piece of evidence favoring the Normanist theory.

38 See Oxenstierna, pp. 61, 131 (Ragnar Lodbrok hangs 111 prisoners on an island of the Seine in 845).

39 , I, 56.

40 See, for instance, Ebert, Max, Südrussland im Altertum (Bonn and Leipzig, 1921), pp. 110 ff.Google Scholar; and Pasternak, pp. 322 ff. and passim.

41 The Diaconus passage in question (IX, 6) reads as follows: “When night had fallen, there being a full moon, they [the Rhos] came out into the plain and collected their dead. Having gathered them in front of the city wall, they set fire to numerous funeral piles and burnt them, having sacrificed a large number of captives, men as well as women, upon these piles according to their native custom. And, having completed the funeral rites, they suffocated [or: drowned] sucking infants and cocks in the Danube, having submerged them in the water of the river” (quoted in Niederle, Život starÝch slovanů, I, 230).

42 For quotations see Niederle, Život starÝch slovanů, I, 230-32, 249 ft.; Karl Dieterich, Byzantinische Quellen zur Lander- und Volkerkunde (Leipzig, 1912), II, 67.

43 For the Vikings, see Shetelig and Falk, pp. 430-32. For Hungarians and others, see Gyula Moravcsik, “Zum Bericht des Leon Diakonos iiber den Glauben an die Dienstleistung im Jenseits,” Studia antiqua Antonio Salad septuagenario oblata (Prague, 1955), pp. 74-76.

44 In Byzantium social differentiation as regards clothing was, of course, very sharp. See Phaidon Koukoules, Byzantinon bios kai politismos (Athens, 1948), II, Part 2, 10 ff.

45 See Niederle, Rukovět', p. 235.

46 See Shetelig and Falk, pp. 343-44. Agathias (Hist. I, 3) reports as follows: “For it is a sacred custom for the Frankish kings never to cut their hair but to wear it long from childhood. And so their locks reach down to their shoulders, in neat fashion, for they part their hair in front and comb it back to both sides. Nor is their hair uncombed, squalid, and dirty or tied into an ungainly knot, as that of the Turks and Avars, but they plait it with colored ribbons and take care to keep it smooth. This is by law a mark of distinction and of honor reserved for their royal family; for their subjects cut their hair in a circle and are not allowed to wear it longer” (translated from Agathiae Myrinaei historiarum libri quinque cum versione latina et annotationibus Bon. Vulcanii; B. G. Niebuhrius C. F. graeca recensuit [Bonn, 1828], pp. 19-20). It is conceivable that the Byzantine image of a Germanic (or Slavic) prince featured long hair as an important trait and that our historian's remark that Sviatoslav's lone lock of hair indicated “his noble birth” was prompted by this circumstance.

47 Niederle, Život starÝch slovanů, I, 494-95; Dmitrij Zelenin, Russische (Ostslavische) Volkskunde (Berlin and Leipzig, 1927), p. 245.

48 Albrecht Goetze, Kulturgeschichte des alten Orients, Kleinasien (“Handbuch der Altertumswissenschaft,” Munich, 1957), p. 11. Incidentally, other warriors on the same relief (but not the one with the shaved head) are seen wearing an earring.

49 The Moslem have a specific reason for leaving one (or two) locks of hair while shaving the rest of the head. To quote from Thomas Herbert's Travels in Persia, 1627-1629, ed. Sir William Foster (New York, 1929), p. 230: “The Persians allow no part of their body hair except the upper lip, which they wear long and thick and turning downwards; as also a lock upon the crown of the head, by which they are made to believe their Prophet will at the Resurrection lift them into Paradise. Elsewhere their head is shaven, or made incapable of hair by the oil dowae [daway], being but thrice anointed. This had been made the mode of the Oriental people since the promulgation of the Alcoran, introduced and first imposed by the Arabians.” The same information can be found in the works of other authors, for example, Samuel K. Nweeya, Persia, the Land of the Magi (6th ed.; Philadelphia, 1916), pp. 164-65.

50 The Hungarians, for instance, shaved part of their head, but left three thick braids (J. Marquart, Osteuropäische und ostasiatische Streifzüge: Ethnologische und historischtopographische Studien zur Geschichte des 9. und 10. Jahrhunderts [Leipzig, 1903], p. 43). The Turkic peoples wore their hair long, or in braids. See ibid.; Dieterich, p. 9 (the Avars); Niederle, Život starÝch slovanů, Vol. I, Plate IV (showing a bearded Bulgar warrior); Harkavy, p. 185 (the Pechenegs are a “long-bearded people“).

51 Koukoules, IV, 352.

52 Such appears to be the interpretation of Karl Stählin, Geschichte Russlands von den Anfängen bis zur Gegenwart (Graz, 1961), I, 44.

53 Cf. Koukoules, IV, 356-61. For reproductions of miniatures, see Niederle, Život starjch slovanů, Vol. I, Plates III, V, and passim. For reproductions of coins see, e.g., (St. Petersburg, 1888), Plate 2.

54 See Pauly-Wissowa, Real-Encyclopädie der classischen Altertumswissenschaft, s.v. “Inaures“; Leopold Schmidt, Der Männerohrring im Volksschmuck und Volksglauben mit besonderer Berücksichtigung Österreichs (Vienna, 1947), pp. 15-20; and Koukoules, IV, 386. As to the Germanic tribes, Schmidt states clearly: “Für die Germanen sind nirgends Männerohrringe belegt” (p. 21). Schmidt also demonstrates how the custom for men to wear earrings came to central and northern Europe together with (and at the same time as) Romance chivalry, apparently from Spain, and so indirectly from the Orient (p. 25).

55 See illustrations in

56 Niederle, Život starÝch slovanti, Vol. I, Plate XXXII; Ruhoět', pp. 374, 436-37; (Moscow and Leningrad, 1948), pp. 335-39; T. J. Arne, La Suède et l'Orient (Uppsala, 1914), pp. 209-10.

57 Pasternak, pp. 326-27.

58 Schmidt, p . 17.

59 Mavrodin makes this observation, but in vague and general terms: “There is nothing Normannic about Sviatoslav's appearance. Much rather there is something from the East, from the Turkic peoples, about him than from the Scandinavians. And if we do speak of Sviatoslav's appearance, it makes him the first zaporozhets rather than the last Viking” (Mavrodin, p. 285).

60 An important fact being that the route to the East (down the Volga) was older than the route to Constantinople (down the Dnepr). See Mavrodin, pp. 209-20; and Stender- Petersen, pp. 246-48.