The Antes or Antae () were an early Slavic tribal polity of the 6th century CE. They lived on the lower Danube River, in the northwestern Black Sea region (present-day Moldova and central Ukraine), and in the regions around the Don River (in Middle and Southern Russia). Scholars commonly associate the Antes with the archaeological Penkovka culture.
First mentioned in the historical record in 518, the Antes invaded the Byzantine Empire in the area of the Diocese of Thrace sometime between the years of 533 and 545. Thereafter, they became Byzantine and received gold payments and a fort (named "Turris" – the Latin word means 'tower') somewhere north of the Danube at a strategically important location to prevent hostile barbarians from invading Byzantine lands. Thus from 545 to the 580s, Antean soldiers fought in various Byzantine campaigns. The Pannonian Avars, the Bulgars and the Khazars attacked the Antes in the 7th century, causing disappearance of the Antes as a group and of the Penkovka culture phenomenon.
Origin Historiography Scholars have studied the Antes since the late 18th century. Based on the literary evidence provided by Procopius (c. 500–560 CE) and Jordanes (fl. c. 551), the Antes, along with the Sclaveni and the Venethi, have long been viewed as the constituent proto-Slavic peoples ancestral to both medieval Slavic ethnicities and modern Slavic nations. At times, debate over the origins and the descendants of the Antes has been heated. The tribe has been variously regarded as the ancestors of, specifically, the Vyatichi or the Rus (from a medieval perspective), and, in terms of extant populations, of the Ukrainians versus other East Slavs. Additionally, South Slavic historians have regarded the Antes as the ancestors of the eastern South Slavs.
Ethnolinguistic affinities Although the Antes are regarded as a predominantly Slavic tribal union, numerous other theories of their ethnic components have arisen. The origins of their core ruling class have drawn particular attention, including theories that this ruling nobility was ethnically Iranic, Gothic, Slavic, or some mixture thereof. Much of this dispute has arisen from the scantness of the literary evidence: little is known of the Antes apart from the tribal name itself and a handful of anthroponyms. The name Antes itself does not appear to be Slavic, and is often held to be an Iranian word. Omeljan Pritsak, citing Max Vasmer, argues that because anta- means "frontier, end" in Sanskrit, *ant-ya could mean "frontiersman" or "that which is at the end"; and in Ossetian att'iya means "the last, behind". F.P. Filin and Oleg Trubachyov shared this opinion. In contrast, Bohdan Struminskyj considered the etymology of Antes unproven and "irrelevant". Struminskyj analyzed the personal names of Antean chiefs and offered Germanic etymological alternatives to the commonly accepted Slavic etymologies that had first been proposed by Stanisław Rospond.
Although the first unequivocal attestation of the Antes tribe is from the 6th century CE, scholars (e.g. Vernadsky) have tried to connect the Antes with a tribe rendered as Yancai 奄蔡 (< LHC *ʔɨamA-sɑC < OC (125 BCE) *ʔɨam-sɑs; compare Latin Abzoae,Pliny the Elder, Natural History IV page 365 identified with the Aorsi (Ancient Greek Αορσιοι)Yu Huan, Weilüe. draft translation by John E. Hill (2004). Translator's Notes 11.2 quote: "Yăncài, already mentioned in the text as a country northwest of Kāngjū (at that time in the region of Tashkend), has long been identified with the Aorsoi of western sources, a nomadic people out of whom the well-known Alans later emerged (Pulleyblank [1962: 99, 220; 1968:252])".) in the Records of the Grand Historian, a 2nd-century-BCE Chinese source.Shiji, "Dayuan liezhuan" quote: " 奄蔡在康居西北可二千里，行國，與康居大同俗。控弦者十餘萬。臨大澤，無崖，蓋乃北海云。" translation: "Yancai is located possibly 2,000 li to the Northwest of Kangju. It is a nomadic nation; its customs largely resemble Kangju's. [It has] over 100,000 bowstring-drawers [archers]. It borders a great shoreless lake, possibly [what is] also called the North Sea."Book of the Later Han, 118, fol. 16r Pliny the ElderNatural History VI, 35 mentions some Anti living near the shores of the Azov Sea, and inscriptions from the Kerch Peninsula dating to the 3rd century CE bear the word antas. Based on documentation of "Sarmatian" tribes inhabiting the north Pontic region during the early centuries of the Common Era, presumed Iranic loanwords in Slavic languages, and Sarmatian "cultural borrowings" into the Penkovka culture, scholars such as Paul Robert Magocsi, Valentin Sedov, and John V.A. Fine Jr. maintain earlier proposals by Soviet-era scholars such as Boris Rybakov, that the Antes were originally a Sarmatian–Alan frontier tribe that become Slavicized but preserved their name. Sedov argues that the ethnonym referred to the Slavic–Scythian–Sarmatian population living between the Dniester and Dnieper Rivers, and later to the related Slavic tribes who emerged from this Slavic–Iranian symbiosis.
However, more-recent perspectives view the tribal entities named by Graeco-Roman sources as fluctuant political formations that were, above all, etic categorizations based on ethnographic stereotypes rather than on first-hand, accurate knowledge of the barbarian language or "culture." Bartłomiej Szymon Szmoniewski argues that the Antes were not a "discrete, ethnically homogeneous entity" but rather "a highly complex political reality". Linguistically, contemporary evidence suggests that Proto-Slavic was the common language of an area that extended from the eastern Alps to the Black Sea and was spoken by peoples of varying ethnic backgrounds, including Slavs, provincial Romans, Germanic tribes (such as the Gepids and Lombards), and Turkic peoples (such as the Avars and Bulgars).
History
Early history According to historians who argue for a connection between the Antes and the Sarmatians, the Antes were a subgroup of the Alans, who dominated the Black Sea and North Caucasus region during the Late Sarmatian Period. The Antes were based between the Bug and lower Dnieper in the 1st–2nd centuries CE. In the 4th century, their center of power shifted northward toward the southern Bug. In the 5th and 6th centuries, they settled in Volhynia and subsequently in the middle Dnieper region near the present-day city of Kyiv. As they moved north from the open steppe to the forest steppe, they organized the Slavic tribes, and the name Antes came to be used for the mixed Slavo–Alanic polity.
Whatever the exact origins of the tribe, Jordanes and Procopius both appear to suggest that the Antes were Slavic by the 5th century. In describing the lands of Scythia,Getica. 35 Jordanes states that "the populous race of the Venethi occupy a great expanse of land. Though their names are now dispersed amid various clans and places, yet they are chiefly called Sklaveni and Antes." Later, in describing the deeds of Ermanaric, the mythical Ostrogothic king, Jordanes writes that the Venethi "have now three names: Venethi, Antes, and Sklaveni".Get. 119 Finally, he describes a battle between the Antean king Boz and Ermanaric's successor Vinitharius after the latter's subjugation by the Huns. After initially defeating the Goths, the Antes lost the second battle, and Boz and 70 of his leading nobles were crucified (Get. 247). Scholars have traditionally taken the accounts of Jordanes as face-value evidence that the Sklaveni and (the bulk of the) Antes descended from the Venedi, a tribe known to historians such as Tacitus, Ptolemy, and Pliny the Elder since the 2nd century CE.
However, the utility of Getica as an accurate work of ethnography has been questioned. Walter Goffart, for example, argues that Getica created an entirely mythical story of Gothic and other peoples' origins.The very purpose of Jordanes' narrative, especially with regard to the alleged Scandinavian origin of the Goths, was to show that there was no place for the Goths in Roman territory. Together with his enumeration of other barbarian tribes in Scythia and around Dacia, Jordanes was stating that Scythia is overpopulated with barbarians, and the Goths should belong to the frozen wastelands of the North. Jordanes only feigned his own Gothic roots, and his work is designed to celebrate the destruction of the Gothic kingdom by the Byzantines. (Goffart, 2006) Florin Curta further argues that Jordanes had no real ethnographic knowledge of "Scythia," despite claims that he himself was a Goth and was born in Thrace. He borrowed heavily from earlier historians and only artificially linked the 6th-century Sklaveni and Antes with the earlier Venethi, who had otherwise long disappeared by that century. This anachronism was paired with a "modernizing narrative strategy" whereby Jordanes retold older events – the war between the Ostrogothic Vithimiris and the Alans – as a war between Vinitharius and the contemporary Antes. In any case, no 4th-century source mentions the Antes, and the "Ostrogoths" did not form until the 5th century – inside the Balkans.Heather, The Goths 52–55.Kulikowski 111. Some scholars related to the Antes the Anthaib (mentioned in Origo Gentis Langobardorum of the 8th century History of the Lombards), a land which Lombards had to pass through and ruled before reaching modern day Austria in the 5th century.
Apart from the influence of older historians, Jordanes' narrative style was shaped by his polemical debate with his contemporary Procopius. While Jordanes linked the Sclaveni and Antes with the ancient Venedi, Procopius states that they were both once called Sporoi.Procopius. History of the Wars. VII 14.29The term Spori is a hapax, but might have been inspired by the tribe "Spali" (curta, 1999. FN 36)
Location in 6th century Jordanes and Procopius have been seen as invaluable sources in locating the Antes with greater precision. Jordanes (Get. 25) states that they dwelt "along the curve of the Black Sea" from the Dniester to the Dnieper. Paul M. Barford questions whether this implies they occupied the steppe or the regions further north, although most scholars generally place the Antes in the forest steppe zone of right-bank Ukraine. In contrast, Procopius locates them just beyond the northern banks of the Danube (Wars V 27.1–2) (i.e., Wallachia). The lack of consistency in geography demonstrates that the Antes stretched well across Sarmatian Scythia, rather than being a small and distant polity.Eg Jordanes states Scythia extends as far as the "Tyras" and "Danaster", although they are two names for the same river (Dniester). Procopius thought the Caucasus mountains extended as far as Illyricum. (Curta, 199, p. 327-8)
6th and 7th centuries The first contact between the Byzantines and the Antes was in 518 CE. Recorded by Procopius,Wars VII 40.5–6 the Antean raid appeared to coincide with the Vitalian' revolt, but was intercepted and defeated by the magister militum per Thraciam Germanus. Germanus was replaced by Chilbudius in the early 530s, who was killed three years later during an expedition against the various Sklavenoi. With the death of Chilbudius, Justinian appears to have changed his policy against Slavic barbarians from offense to defense, exemplified by his grand program of refortifying garrisons along the Danube.Curta, 2001. p. 78.