Where is Lake Musianus? We are told we don’t know (but we do).
How do we find it? Well, in addition to Lake Musianus, Jordanes also discusses the Mursian swamps. Mursian? Well, it seems in some manuscripts also Musian (as with the Lake that “r” seems to find its way in there). But where is the Musian (or Mursian) swamp?
Where the Ister originates says Jordanes. What is Ister? Pliny thought that it was the part of the Danube from the Iron Gates to the Black Sea. But others did not. Nor did Pliny write the Getica. Jordanes wrote the Getica and he himself explained what he thought the Danube was and what the Ister was. The word Ister appears four times in the Getica. One of those times, Jordanes mentions “the farthest channel of the Ister, which is called the Danube all the way from mouth to source.” Thus, Danube is the last part of the Ister but Ister is just the Danube to Jordanes – all of the Danube.
But where are the sources of the Danube? And is there a lake and a swamp there?
So to recapitulate:
“The abode of the Sclaveni extends from the city of Noviodunum and the lake called Mu(r)sianus to the Danaster, and northward as far as the Vistula.”
So one might call this post redundant.
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