TIRAS

Tiras was the ancestor of the Thracians. Herodotus declared of them in his day:-POTE 265.2

“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 Getæ, the Trausi, and those who dwell above the people of Creston.”-Book v, chap. 3.POTE 265.3

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 Mæsia to 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 b. c. 429 the king of one of the tribes, the Odrysæ, re-enforced by the Pæonians, invaded Macedonia, at the head of 150,000 men, of whom 50,000 were cavalry. In the time of Strabo, who lived from b. c. 57 till 21 a. c., 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.POTE 265.4

The most notable of their tribes were, the Odrysœ 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 and which was conquered by the Romans in a war of five years and reduced to a province a. c. 104, but was afterward abandoned to the Goths, a. c. 272; the Mœsi who inhabited the country immediately south of the Danube, which from them was called Mæsia and corresponded to what is now Servia and Bulgaria, and was made a Roman province about 16 b. c. Besides these, and most notable of all, were the Getœ 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 Getæ were encountered and their country crossed before he reached the Danube. As early as the days of Cyrus the Great a branch of the Getæ called Massagetæ, that is “greater Getæ”-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 Thyssagetœ, that is, “lesser Getæ”-lesser Goths. In the time of Herodotus the principal seat of the Thyssagetæ 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-Thyssagetœ and Massagetœ-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, Gepidæ-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.POTE 266.1

This completes the list of the sons of Japheth himself, but to get a full view of the part of the earth peopled by Japheth, we must look at the list of his grandsons. Japheth’s son Gomer had three sons, Ashkenaz, and Riphath, and Togarmah.POTE 267.1

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.” Jeremiah 51:27. 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 Axenus, and then Euxine, by which it is known in ancient history. The name of Ashkenaz still remains in the name of the Lake Ascanius in the northeastern part of Asia Minor.POTE 267.2

Riphath is found in his descendants, in the neighborhood of the Riphæan 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 Galicia. 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 clear 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 east 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, and to their descendants the apostle Paul wrote the epistle to the Galatians.POTE 268.1

The Gauls-Celts-also peopled Britain, Ireland, Scotland, and the islands roundabout, it is not known at what date.POTE 269.1

It will be remembered that in the account of Gomer himself, we stated 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 after a while. We must now follow these onward; if we had done so before, the narrative would not have been so clear. 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 writers as Gauls. In the time of Alexander the Great all Western Europe above the River Po and the Pyrenees Mountains, from the plains of the Drave and the Save to the Baltic Sea, was possessed by these two peoples, the 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.”POTE 269.2

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 Teutseh, Deutschen, Germans, finally 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 Anglo-Saxons, who participated in the ruin and division of Western Rome.POTE 269.3

From the Cimbric Chersoneus-Danish peninsula-the Cimbri crossed the sea to Britian and took possession of a great part of the country, which before them had been filled by the Gallic Celts, and their name is still borne to us in the English county of Cumber-land. Then when, in a. d. 449, the Angles, the Saxons, and the Jutes, the German people, from the mouth of the Elbe and the Danish peninsula, following the same course that the Cimbri had gone before them, crossed the sea and took possession of Britain, such of the Cimbri as escaped their savage rage, fled across the channel to Brittany where they still speak the Cimbric language, or 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 Cambia 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, the Germans, from Ashchenaz, the son of Gomer.POTE 270.1

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, about a. d. 450, 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.” (Ezekiel 38:6; 27:14.) 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, Lesghiaus, Mingrelians, and Caucasians, are all descended from one common progenitor, Thargamas, who is Togarmah, the son of Gomer, the son of Japheth.POTE 271.1

There yet remain of the people of Japheth the sons of Javan to be noticed. Javan had four sons, the first of whom,POTE 271.2

Elishah, was the father of the Æolians, who inhabited parts of Thessaly, Bœotia, Ætolia, Locris, Elis, and Messene, and formed the first great body of Grecian colonists that established themselves on the coast of Asia Minor.POTE 271.3

Tarshish. The people and country of Tarshish were far off from Palestine and toward the west. For we read that under Solomon “the king’s ships went to Tarshish with the servants of Huram; every three years once came the ships of Tarshish bringing gold, and silver, ivory, apes, and peacocks.” Huram was Hiram, king of Tyre. Tyre lay on the Mediterranean, and for ships to go from Tyre to Tarshish in a voyage of three years they would have to go west. Again, Jonah was commanded to go from Palestine to Nineveh, which was on the Tigris away to the northeast. But Jonah refused to go, and rose up to flee “from the presence of the Lord.” As his purpose was to escape going to Nineveh, it would be the most natural thing to flee in the opposite direction as far as possible. So we read that “Jonah rose up to flee unto Tarshish, from the presence of the Lord, and went down to Joppa; and he found a ship going to Tarshish; so he paid the fare thereof, and went down into it, to go with them unto Tarshish from the presence of the Lord.” Joppa also was on the Mediterranean and was then the principal port of Palestine. In Isaiah 66:19 Tarshish is named with other places and isles, that were “afar off.” In the fairs of Tyre, Ezekiel 27:12 says, Tarshish “was thy merchant by reason of the multitude of all kind of riches; with silver, iron, tin, and lead, they traded in thy fairs.” Psalm 48:7; Isaiah 2:16; 23:1, 1, 14; 60:9, and Ezekiel 27:25, all speak of the “ships of Tarshish.”POTE 271.4

These evidences all make it positive that Tarshish was “afar off.” to the west from Palestine; that it was reached by ships; and that it was so largely devoted to shipping that it was almost proverbial. All this makes it certain that Tartessus, that lay at the mouth of the Guadalquivir in Spain, was the chief seat of Tarshish, the son of Javan. Thus the ships of Tartessus-Tarshish-could gather silver from the rich mines of Spain; tin from the mines of Cornwall in Britain; ivory, apes, and peacocks from Africa; and make the voyage once in three years from Tyre and back again. Lenormant allows that the Tyrrhenians of Italy may also have been the children of Tarshish. It is certain that they were the descendants of Javan, that is, the people of Greece.POTE 272.1

Kittim or Chittim, the third of the sons of Javan inhabited the islands of the Grecian archipelago, Cyprus, and even others of the Mediterranean Sea, and Corea at the southeast corner of Asia Minor. Isaiah 23:1, 12 shows that Chittim was a resting place for the ships of Tarshish; Jeremiah 2:10 and Ezekiel 27:6, speak of “the isles of Chittim;” and Daniel 11:30 speaks of “the ships of Chittim;” all showing that Chittim was in the isles of the Mediterranean Sea.POTE 273.1

Dodanim was the ancestor of the Dardanians, one portion of whom dwelt in a tract, called from them Dardania, in the neighborhood of ancient Troy on the southern coast of the Sea of Marmora. Another, and the main body, peopled Illyria or Illyricum, the country bordering on the Adriatic Sea opposite Italy. From there some of their tribes went into Italy, of whom the Liburni, and the Veneti are particularly mentioned. “The celebrated name of Venetia was diffused over a large and fertile province of Italy, from the confines of Pannonia to the River Addua, and from the Po to the Rhætian and Julian Alps.”-Gibbon, chap. xxxv, par. 13. When Attila invaded Italy, a. d. 453, spreading devastation everywhere, “many families of Aquileia, Padua, and the adjacent towns, who fled from the sword of the Huns, found a safe though obscure refuge in the neighboring islands.”-Id. And there and by these, the city of Venice was afterwards built. And so closes the list of the people of Japheth.POTE 273.2