Getae and Dacians? Are they the same? Or is this unknowable?

[Alanus]

Goths identified themselves as ofsprings of Getae ( Dacians ), see what Cassiodorus wrote at Teodoric the Great request, and after him Jordanes, and independent of him Issidor from Sevilla. Anyway, before them mostly all the ancient writers ( i have somewhere a list ) name them either Goths either Gets ( Getae ), and i never heard any of them make any connection betwen them and Germanic peoples. Just much later this image was promoted, mostly in romantic times era, but in ancient times they wasnt see as Germanic people, but as a kind of Getae ones.

Of course we no longer have a copy of Cassiodorus, only that of Jordanes and Issidore. Jordanes states that they came from "Scandia," which is still occupied by Germanic people. The earliest writer to mention them was Pliny, who called them the "Gutones," living on the shores of the "Amalcian Sea" (the eastern Baltic) and he locates the isle of "Balcia." The terms can be conneted to the two royal Gothic families, the Amals and Balths, and Pliny got his info from Pythias of Massillia. (see Pliny, IV, xiii, 95; and XXXVII, xi, 35 to 37).

Then Tacitus mentions the Tyrfingi as living in what is now Poland. He called the western Goths the "Gothini" and speaking Gallic, "They are inferior by their submitting to pay tribute; which is levied on them, as aliens, partly by the Sarmatians, partly by the Quadi. The Gothini, to their additional disgrace, work iron mines" (Germania, c.43, Oxford Edition). He called the Greutungi the "Gothones, who live under a monarchy, somewhat more strict than that of the other Germanic nations." This statement reflects the early ascention of the royal Amals, the family of Theodoric the Great. Tacitus continues, "All of them live in filth and laziness. The intermarriage of their chiefs with the Sarmatians have debased them by a mixture of the manners of that people... yet even these (eastern Goths) are to be referred to as Germans, since they build houses, carry shields, and travel with speed on foot; in which particulars they differ from the Sarmatians, who pass their time in wagons and on horseback." (Germania, c.43 to c.46)

Shortly after the works of Pliny and Tacitus, the Goths migrated south along the Vistula, the culture followed by archaological evidence, and entered Moldova and Ukraine, then moving west into Rumania where they "ruined" Roman Dacia. From these earlier historians, we know that they were a Germanic culture, not Dacian. Around 350, the Gothic language was written down by Bishop Ulfilas as the Gothic Bible. It is Germanic and records such words as "hailog" (hello), "hwaiteis" (wheat), "saian" (flax), and "thriskan" (threshing yard). In this light, early and long before either Jordanes or Issidore were writing-- and almost an entire millenium before a "romantic times era"-- the Goths can be identified as Germanic people influenced by the Celts and Sarmatians (basically the Iazyges and Roxolani).

Remember the words of Sun Tzu, "There is no history. Only stories."