Focusing on Scythian and Hunnic Ethics

The Dilemma of Early Hungarian Historiography

Abstract

The antique sources on the Scythians and Huns vary on the topic of morals. Part of them is idealizing and another part gives a picture of an immoral people (Ammian and Jordanes are the most hostile authors to the Huns). The ethical principle by which they judged the nomadic peoples was mostly temperance. The pre-modern Hungarian identity was based on the supposition that the Hungarians were direct descendants of Huns. Consequently, the Hungarian historians of the 17th–18th centuries faced a serious contradiction between the pro-Hun traditions and the anti-Hun antique sources. The greatest Hungarian historians of the 17^th and early 18^th centuries, Otrokocsi Fóris and Bél eliminated this contradiction by source criticism. They compared the antique anti-nomadic and pro-nomadic narratives and found out not only their contradictory statements but the inner inconsistence of Ammian’s and Jordanes’ narratives. For example, such a week point was Ammian’s accusation of ‛irreligious behaviour’, which was a misinterpretation of Hunnic rituals, ignored the descriptions of earlier authors (as Herodotus) and his own description of the Alans. They used recent parallels of folklore too, remnants of the former nomadic Hungarian culture. That was the first attempt of European historiography, to acknowledge nomadic cultural values.