The word “slave” has previously been derived from Slav. Slave, however, would be a new word resulting from the slave trade in Slavs in the middle ages. Antiquity did not know the word “slave”. In particular, the Latin word for “slave” had previously been “servus”. But this too appears strange inasmuch as a connection seems to exist between the names Slavs and Serbs – albeit, obviously, not all Slavs are Serbs. To add to the mystery, the word Slav has historically among the Western “Slavs” been pronounced “Suavianin” – a remarkable pronunciation given that Procopius and Jordanes referred to what must have been Suebi as Suavi. On the etymological connection (noted by no less than an authority than Jacob Grimm) between Suevi and Suavs/Slavs we have written previously.
So where do we go from here?
There was a theory by Edward Romuald Bogusławski (there were at least two Bogusławskis) that the Slavs were basically the servants/slaves/lower classes of the Suevic confederacy who then took over the name of the tribe once the upper classes hit the dirt in the various Suevic wars. If this were to be the case, their ethnic background could have been Suevic but also as diverse as that of the peoples conquered by the Suevi, i.e., “Germanic” (?) in the north, Celtic (?) in the south, Venetic (?) in the east (or far west?) or Pannonian or “Sarmatian” or Baltic (Aestic) in the east.
One could further extrapolate from this and posit that the Servi were those Suevic captives (whether Suevic or otherwise) that fled – perhaps eastwards across the Elbe – encountering there, perhaps, the Veneti. That would make the remaining Suevi (i.e., the Suavs/Slavs) much like the later Cossacks fleeing the feudal oppression of the magnates to the Wild Fields of the Zaporozhian Sich… And what of language? Was there one language of the Suevi? Tacitus suggests yes but he also says that the Suevi are not one nation… What does he mean by that?
Here is an interesting quote from Meisterlin’s Cronographia Augustensium (Chronik von Augsburg or Chronicle of Augsburg) which says: est gens Sevorum qui nunc Suevi dicuntur
Strange
We have mentioned before the interesting connection between the Suevi and, what seem like, the Sorbs by bringing up Vibius Sequester’s sentence (see also here):
Albis Germaniae Suevos a Cerveciis dividiit: mergitur in Oceanum.
(Elbe of Germany divides the Suevi from the Cervecii and empties into the Ocean)
It is a bit strange, given the above sentence, that the Suevi were previously separated from “other Germans” and the Suevi freemen from the Suevic “Servi” in another way (in the words of Tacitus):
Insigne gentil obliquera crinem, nodoque substringere. Sic Suevi a ceteris Germanis: sic Suevorum ingenui a servis separantur.
(It is the special characteristic of this nation to comb the hair sideways and fasten it below with a knot. This distinguishes [separates] the Suevi from the rest of the Germans; this, among the Suevi, distinguishes the freeman from the slave)
Prisoner’s head – from a bronze figure found at Vindobona (aka Vienna)
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