The Vanishing \'Gadeni\'

[Nathan Ross]

Ptolemy, in his description of Britain, provides the names of various tribes or peoples supposedly inhabiting the region north of the Tyne - Votadini, Selgovae, Novantae and others. Most of these names are still accepted, and appear on modern reconstruction maps (in various speculative configurations) of ancient north Britain. Older maps and descriptions - eighteenth and nineteenth century - also feature a group called the Gadeni, placed in close proximity to the above. Writings of the day often mention the Gadeni alongside the Selgovae and Votadini (referred to, at that time, as the Ottadini...), and imply that this name too comes from Ptolemy.

So what happened to the Gadeni? As far as I can discover, thier name has been erased from reconstruction maps of the twentieth-century onwards, and modern translations of Ptolemy do not mention them either. Was the name a textual corruption or mistranslation?

- Nathan

[D B Campbell]

Older maps and descriptions - eighteenth and nineteenth century - also feature a group called the Gadeni, placed in close proximity to the above. Writings of the day often mention the Gadeni alongside the Selgovae and Votadini (referred to, at that time, as the Ottadini...), and imply that this name too comes from Ptolemy.

You raise an interesting question which I can only partially answer. As you are no doubt aware, Ptolemy's Geography (in common with other ancient sources) is known to us via several manuscripts, in fact running into the hundreds. Scholars nowadays largely use Müller's edition of Ptolemy, compiled around 1883 before one of the main manuscripts (known as "U") came to light.

The "U" manuscript has a number of oddities in it, one of them concerning the section on the peoples of southern Scotland. At 2.3.7, where most manuscripts mention the Votadini (whom Ptolemy, writing in Greek, naturally calls the Otadinoi), some have Otalinoi or Tadinoi, and "U" has Gadinoi. Some manuscripts have an extra line reading "beneath them (viz. the Damnonii) are the Gadinoi more to the north and the Otadini more to the south".

I am not a Ptolemy scholar, so I must take on trust that the line about the Gadinoi is a corruption of some sort. I am not aware of any discussion of the issue, though. If you find one, please let us know. (And where on earth did you find the Gadeni in the first place?!)

[Nathan Ross]

Thanks Duncan! I thought that might be the case...

And where on earth did you find the Gadeni in the first place?!)

Oh, I was whiling away a Sunday afternoon looking at the various antiquarian maps that attempt to marry Ptolemy's description of northern Britain with more accurate modern geography - the differing placements of names etc were quite fascinating, and some of the maps are very impressive too (This one, for example, from 1834: [url:2mti8ye5]http://www.romanscotland.org.uk/pages/infrastructure/maps/BC1834L.jpg[/url] )

I was intrigued that the Gadeni, who feature so prominently on all the earlier maps from the sixteenth century onwards, and, if 'real', would have been one of the principal tribal groups north of Hadrian's Wall, seem to disappear without trace... The only mention of them these days seems to be on dodgy websites about the twelve tribes of Israel and related matters - something like the dustbin of history! :?

It does, I suppose, illustrate the fragility of the 'literary' historical record that an entire nation of people, once securely attested and provided with towns and territory, can vanish off the map entirely! Then again, Ptolemy's description should probably not be taken as very accurate either - the ethnographic surveying skills of the Roman army operating in a semi-hostile tribal environment cannot have been too finely tuned... and archeology will probably continue to turn up other groups that Ptolemy missed altogether - like the Corionotatae, who were given a good thrashing somewhere near Corbridge IIRC.

- Nathan