The Empires of the Bible from the Confusion of Tongues to the Babylonian Captivity
TIRAS
44. Tiras was the ancestor of the Thracians. “Thiras called those whom he ruled over, Thirasians; but the Greeks changed the name into Thracians.”—Josephus. 19 Herodotus declared of them in his day that “the Thracians are the most powerful people in the world, except, of course, the Indians [the people of India, he says, were “more numerous than any other nation with which we are acquainted”—iii, 94]; and if they had one head, or were agreed among themselves, it is my belief that their match could not be found anywhere and that they would far surpass all other nations. But such union is impossible for them, and there are no means of ever bringing it about. Herein, therefore, consists their weakness. The Thracians bear many names in the different regions of their country, but all of them have like usages in every respect, excepting only the Getae, the Trausi, and those who dwell above the people of Creston.” 20 EB 18.1
45. It is impossible to tell how many tribes there were of the Thracians, but more than fifty are known. They extended from the River Halys in Asia Minor over the greater part of Asia Minor, and westward over Thrace and Maesia to the Rivers Save and Drave in Europe. The Thynians and Bithynians, the Phrygians and Mysians, the Paphlagonians and Mariandynians of Asia Minor, were all of Thracian nationality. Of the Thracians in Europe, the tribes are too numerous to attempt to mention here. They were so powerful that in 429 B. C. the king of one of the tribes, the Odrysae, re-enforced by the Paeonians, invaded Macedonia at the head of 150,000 men, of whom 50,000 were cavalry. In the time of Strabo, who lived from 57 B. C. till 21 A. D., their military strength was estimated at 200,000 foot and 15,000 horse. This, in spite of the weakness caused by the disunion of which Herodotus speaks. EB 19.1
46. The most notable of their tribes were the Odrysoe already mentioned; the Triballi, with whom Alexander the Great warred before he started for Persia; the Daci, who peopled the country of Dacia, north of the Danube, which was conquered by the Romans in a war of five years and reduced to a province, A. D. 104, but was afterward abandoned to the Goths, A. D. 272; the Moesi, who inhabited the country immediately south of the Danube, which from them was called Maesia and corresponded to what is now Servia and Bulgaria. It was made a Roman province about 16 B. C. EB 19.2
47. Besides these, and most notable of all, were the Getoe, from whom came the Goths, who acted so great a part in the destruction of the Roman Empire. In the Scythian expedition of Darius Hystaspes, 515 B. C., the Getae were encountered, and their country was crossed, before he reached the Danube. As early as the days of Cyrus the great, a branch of the Getae, called Massagetoe, that is, “greater Getae”—greater Goths—pronounced by Herodotus “a great and warlike nation,” inhabited the Steppe country east of the Caspian Sea; and west of them dwelt another branch called the Thyssagetoe, that is “lesser Getae”—lesser Goths. In the time of Herodotus the principal seat of the Thyssagetae was west of the main stream of the Upper Volga. Several centuries before the Christian era, a body composed apparently of both the lesser and the greater Goths—Thyssagetoe and Massagetoe—migrated westward to the Baltic, and fixed their abode in the southern part of Sweden, where there remained a kingdom of Gothia until the twelfth century, when, in 1161, the crowns of both Sweden and Gothia were united on the head of Charles Swerkerson, “who assumed the title of King of the Swedes and the Goths, which his successors bear to this day.” The southern point of Sweden still bears the name of Gothland. It was from this Gothland, and about the beginning of the Christian era, that a large body of Goths crossed the Baltic, and as Ostro-(Eastern) Goths, Visi-(Western) Goths, Gepidae,—loiterers, because they lagged behind while crossing the sea,—and perhaps the Heruli and Vandals, settled about the mouth of the River Vistula, whence they spread to the Black Sea and overwhelmed the Roman Empire. EB 19.3
48. Of the people of Japheth there yet remain to be mentioned the three grandsons, Ashkenaz, Riphath, and Togarmah. EB 20.1
49. Ashkenaz is mentioned by Jeremiah, 595 B. C., among the kingdoms that should assist in the destruction of Babylon, and is named in a connection that would show that his place was in the neighborhood of Armenia. “Prepare the nations against her, call together against her the kingdoms of Ararat, Minni, and Ashchenaz.” 21 The people of Ashkenaz inhabited the country answering to the Bithynia of ancient times, on the southern coast of the Euxine, or Black Sea. The Euxine Sea received its name from the name Ashkenaz, and was called first the Sea of Ashkenaz, and from that, As-chunis, then Axenus, and lastly Euxine, by which it is known in ancient history. The name of Ashkenaz still remains in the name of the Lake Ascanius in the northwestern part of Asia Minor. EB 20.2
50. Riphath is found, in his descendants, in the neighborhood of the Riphaean Mountains, now the Carpathians. From Riphath, the son of Gomer, came one branch of the Celts known as Gauls, who peopled the country of Gaul. From Gaul they spread into the northern part of Spain, where their memory long remained in the name Gallicia. They also made two great invasions of Italy; the first in the fifteenth century B. C., and the second in the sixth and fifth centuries B. C., when they took possession of all the northern part of the country to the River Po. This part of Italy was then, from them, called by the Latins Gallia Cisalpina—Gaul within the Alps; while Gaul itself was called Gallia Transalpina—Gaul beyond the Alps. In 387 B. C. they took Rome, and burnt it to the ground. A division of these from the north of Italy went on eastward around the head of the Adriatic into the countries between that sea and the River Danube. In 279 B. C. a great body of them swept over Macedonia and northern Greece, on through Thrace and across the Hellespont, 277 B. C.; and finally settled in the country which from them was called Galatia. To their descendant, the apostle Paul wrote the Epistle to the Galatians. EB 20.3
51. The Gauls (Celts) also peopled Britain, Ireland, Scotland, and the islands round about: it is not known at what date. EB 21.1
52. It will be remembered that in the account of Gomer himself, it was stated (page 7) that when the Scythians, 650-600 B. C., dispossessed the Cimmerians of the country of the Ukraine, the Cimmerians went toward the west, where we should find them again. We must now follow these onward. They took possession of the country that is now northern Germany and Denmark, and afterward accompanied their kindred of the children of Riphath in their invasions of Italy. The Cimbri (for so the Cimmerii were then called) and the Gauls form the two branches of the great Celtic race, and both are often referred to by Roman writes as Gauls. In the time of Alexander the Great all western Europe above the River Po and the Pyrenees Mountains, and from the plains of the Drave and the Save to the Baltic Sea, was possessed by these two branches of Celts. And when Alexander the Great held, at Babylon, “the States-general of the world,” there came ambassadors from the Celts among those who desired “to propitiate his favor, to celebrate his greatness, or to solicit his protection.” EB 21.2
53. Somewhere about two or three hundred years before Christ, another great migration from the East brought to the coast of the Baltic the Teutons and Scandinavians, the descendants of Ashchenaz. Part of them crossed the Baltic, and gave the name of Ashchenaz, As-chunis, Scandia, Scandinavia, to the peninsula of Norway and Sweden. The Teutons remained on the south coast of the Baltic, and became the Teutsch, Deutschen, the Germans. Finally they filled all the country between the Baltic and the Upper Danube; and crowded the Cimmerians into the peninsula of Jutland (Denmark) which from them was called the Cimbric Chersonesus. In 113 B. C. a host of Cimbri and Teutons, numbering 300,000 fighting men, carried terror into Italy and southern Gaul, defeated the Romans three times, and compelled the Roman army to pass under the yoke, 107 B. C., but were finally annihilated by the Romans under Marius, 101 B. C. From these Germans came the Franks, the Alemanni, the Burgundians, the Lombards, the Suevi, and the Anglo-Saxons, who participated in the ruin and division of Western Rome. EB 22.1
54. From the Cimbric Chersonesus—Danish peninsula—the Cimbri crossed the sea to Britain, and took possession of a great part of the country, which before them had been filled by the Gallic Celts, and their name has descended to us in the name of the English county of Cumber-land, Cimbri-land, Cimbr-land, Cumber-land. In A. D. 449 the Angles, the Saxons, and the Jutes, from the mouth of the Elbe and the Danish peninsula, following the same course that the Cimbri had taken before them, crossed the sea and took possession of Britain. Then of such of the Cimbri as escaped their savage rage, some fled across the channel to Brittany, where they still speak the Cimbric language; while the rest drew back into Wales, where they still remain and call themselves not Welsh but Cymry, and call their country not Wales but Cambria. Thus the Irish, the Scotch Highlanders, and the people of the Isle of Man, are Gallic Celts descended from Riphath, the son of Gomer; the Welsh are Cimric Celts, descended through the Cimmerians from Gomer himself; and the English proper, the Anglo-Saxons, are descended through the Teutons, from Ashchenaz, the son of Gomer. EB 22.2
55. Togarmah, the last of the sons of Gomer, is found in the country and the nation of the Armenians. All the legends and the histories of the Armenians show them to be the descendants of Togarmah. Moses of Chorene, a native Armenian, and who, in A. D. 481, wrote a history of Armenia, says the name of their progenitor was Thargamas. The Armenians “still call themselves ‘the house of Thorgom,’ the very phrase used by Ezekiel.” 22 The house of Togarmah traded in the fairs of Tyre with “horses and horsemen and mules,” and Armenia “was famed of old for its breed of horses.” Under the Persian rule “the satrap of Armenia sent yearly to the Persian court 20,000 foals for the feast of Mithras.” Besides the Armenians proper, the Georgians, Lesghians, Mingrelians, and Caucasians, are all descended from one common progenitor, Thargamas, who is Togarmah, the son of Gomer, the son of Japheth. EB 23.1
And so closes the list of the people of Japheth. EB 23.2