Castor skrev:I Rome's Gothic Wars av Michael Kulikowski (2008) kan man bl.a. läsa följande:
Jag vidhåller att Suehans, Suetidi och Gauthigoth verkligen var tre skilda grupper och att Beowulf hörde hemma i den sistnämnda gruppen. Att det samtidigt fanns Gaut-/Geat-/Got-/Gut-folk på bl.a. Jylland och Östersjö-Gotland förändrar egentligen ingenting.The three words Greek and Roman sources most often use to describe barbarian groups are gens, natio and ethos (gentes, nationes, and ethne in the plural). The first two words are Latin, the third Greek [...]
Theoretically, in etymological terms, the word gens refers primarily to an extended family, the word natio to a community of such gentes, but in practice the words were interchangeable and their Greek equivalent is ethos.
There is no good English word which we can use to translate any of the three terms. ‘Tribe’ (equivalent to the modern German Stamm) is useful because it implies a sense of community and perhaps a blood relationship (real or fictive), but it also connotes the primitive in a way that only the Latin gentes conveys [...]
Modern scholars have settled on the boring, but deliberately neutral, word ‘group’ as the safest way of translating gens, natio, or ethnos in the context of late antique barbarians. [...]
It is very important for us to realize that when the Greek and Roman sources on which we must rely use the words gens, natio, or ethnos, they do indeed mean to imply a coherent, interrelated group of non-Greeks and non-Romans that can be identified as different and which share a sense of belonging together [...]
Charles Anthon
Som sagt, det här har redovisats tidigare och alla nu aktiva deltagare har tagit del av detta, men vissa tycks glömma precis det som talar emot deras egen tro. Debatten finns ju tillgänglig i alla delar och dör kan man ta del av ett otal exempel på just detta.Populi, Gens &c. Gens is the root or stock containing many families (familiae) or even nations (nationes). It is the generic term in respect to natio and familia. Thus the Germans may be called gens, te Saxi natio; or if we rise it higher, the Europeans may be called gens, the Germans natio. Gens is even sometimes applied to the whole human race; as, "Gens hominum est huic belluae adversa"
