Scythians or Goths or Getae or Dacians

We are now arrived at the last, and most important part of this Dissertation ; and a subject upon which the whole modern history of Europe depends. Sensible of its prodigious weight, I shall examine it with all the sedulous care, and minute accuracy, which my purpose permits.

The Scythians or Goths have been followed to their Eastern Settlements in Asia, and to their Southern in Europe. Let us now trace their western progress, or that of our progenitors. If English, Scotish, Irish; if French, Spaniard, Italian, German, Dutch, Swiss, Swede, or Dane, let the reader attend with reverence, as he pursues the sacred steps of his ancestors. Here every European is personally interested, save the Sarmatians of Russia and Poland; save the Celto- Welch of England, and the Celt-Irish of Ireland and of the Highlands of Scotland ; and save the Fins of Hungary, Finland, and the Laplanders.

The reader will recollect that the Getae, who extended all over the west of the Euxine, are shewn to have been the same identic people with the Parental Scythians or Goths. On the north-west the Baster- nae, a German nation, as Pliny and Tacitus shew, bordered on the Getaj. On the south-west that division of the Getaj, called Daci, bordered with Germany. Pliny, IV. 12. says, GetcE, Daci Romanis dicti, ” those Getae called Daci by the Romans.” Strabo, lib. VIII. r«l«5 Tok Aaxoif o/tofxtTloue; ” the Getae and Daci have one and the same speech.” Steph. de Urbibus also says the Daci are the same with the Geta;: and to this all ancient and modern writers assent. Therefore the Germans bordered, on the east, with the Getae or Parental Goths. So Pliny, VIII. 15. Germania Scythian contermina.

Thus we are come to the very crisis of our research. If we cannot shew the Germans to have been originally Scythae, this Dissertation is inept. If we can, a field of wide curiosity and enquiry opens to the learned of Europe, For the origin of government, manners, laws, in short, all the antiquities of Europe, will assume a new appearance; and instead of being only traced to the woods of Germany, as Montesquieu, and the greatest writers have hitherto done, may be followed through the long descriptions of the manners, &c. of the Scythians and Thracians given us by Herodotus. Nay, even up to the Aboriginal Scythic empire in Persia, beyond which there is no memorial of human affairs, save in Egypt alone ; the history of which begins with Menes, the first king, about 40OO years before our era; while the earliest appearance of the Scythians in history is about 400 years after, when Vexores (Vesosis, Sesostris, nn) was king of Egypt, and Tanaus of the Scythae. Not to mention the collateral light to be derived from the whole history of the Greeks and Romans, who were Scythae, as just shewn..

“An enquiry into the history of Scotland: preceding the reign of Malcom III”, (fragment) by John Pinkerton