If you were to ask where we are at the moment on the question of Slavic presence in Europe, I’d have to say that there are more than enough clues that Slavs, or at least Slavic-like speaking populations, occupied places in a very broad area of Europe.
In particular, we have evidence of such a presence in (parts of) today’s Netherlands (see here and here), Belgium (here) and northeastern (see here) and southeastern France (see here). The Vindelici (see here and here) were also likely ancestral to some Slavs. In fact, while Samo may have been – in the political sense – of the nation of the Franks (and emphasizing this may have been obviously of great interest to Fredegar who was a loyal servant of the Merovingians) – he may have traded with and ultimately settled with the Wends on account of a shared heritage. Notice, for example, that each of (admittedly later) the Conversion of the Carantanians and the Deeds of Dagobert treat Samo as a Slav.
That line seems to have extended along the coast (Morini) and reached as far as the Veneti and the Ossismi (the last – compare, too, this name with that of the Ossi). Further, there are some suspicious names even in parts of Spain (here) and Portugal (here) – although whether these – particularly the Portuguese – came from pre-Roman era times or came in with the Suevi is probably difficult to tell. Much of northern Italy (see here and here but also remember that the Codex Aesinas was found in Jesi) also seems to bear such influence and occasional – typically coastal – place names raise a Slavic language possibility even in portions of southern Italy. There are some place names that appear similar in the north too – in Britain (here or here or for that matter, here) and even in southern Scandinavia.
Although the Serbs and Croats are often referred to as “possibly Iranian”, this suggestion is not really based on anything substantial. It is true that Pliny has something akin (depending on the manuscripts) to Serbs north of the Caucasus. But the Serb name appears also in Ptolemy right in the Balkan territory of the former Yugoslavia. Indeed, there are “Serb” names in Britain (Sorbiodoni in the Augustine Itinerary) and in Saxo’s Scandinavia (Sorbburg or something like that).
Are these all Slavic? Not clear. But their names certainly appear closer to Slavic than to the Germanic languages.
Not to mention, the important presence of various -iser or -oser names throughout Europe – preserved, for example, in the Slavic jezioro or ozero.
Were these “Slavs” the only people in Europe – very doubtful – there are vast tracts of lands that bear no recorded Slavic names. It rather appears that various types of people lived in proximity. But from the prospective of the conquerors these were all the same to the extent they answered to one governmental authority (opposing the conquerors). Much later, for example, the Goths and later Huns were Goths/Huns for Romans even though – early on – it was understood that the Goths/Huns sensu strict – were few and far between and most of these Goths/Huns were composed of the various conquered peoples – thus, for example, for the Huns it was Alans, Goths, all the people that had previously been taken over by the Goths.
It seems that all these people may have been “run over” by the Celtic and then Scandinavian Nordic invasions (or were these the same?), the Roman expansion and then, after the fall of the Empire, faced the new state of the Franks. It is telling that the Slavic presence in Germany was almost exclusive to and for many miles westwards beyond the Elbe (see here or here for Cracow, Soest, Osnabrueck; see here for a German perspective). The only “German” presence there were the Allemanni, Bavarians, Thuringi and later the Saxons. We find zero German presence in the lands formerly referred to as East Germanic. The origin of the Frisians is I think unclear.
In fact, the point worth making is that there seems to be far more evidence of “Slavs” in places where they are not supposed to have been than “Teutons” in places where they were supposed to have been aplenty.
If you were to ask me who were the “ancestors” of the people who we call Slavs today, I’d say Suevi, Veneti and, most probably, the Iazyges. Perhaps the Esti and the Finni were somehow also involved in the process of Slavic ethnic creation. Out of that mix the nation of the Slavs came about. Whether the Suevi were Slavs or just the Slavs’ overlords (from who the Slavs got their name) is a matter of debate. My guess is all these people thoroughly mixed with one another and we’ll never know the answer to such questions.
As regards, the other “Slavs” in the West they probably became a part of the Franks, Spanish and others, along with those they lived next to and those that came to conquer them. Much in the same spirit, it is likely that the descendants of the Vandals are to be found in Africa, Romania and the Bohemian/Hungarian lands, rather than in Germany. Note too that the historical Slavic presence is impressive enough including obviously wide swaths of today’s Germany, portions of Italy but also places like Spain, Greece, maybe Sicily, maybe Malta, Morocco, Turkey/Syria or Iraq.
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During Roman empire times Serbinum/Servitium was an ancient Roman city in the ancient Pannonia province, with authors and maps using both versions as the name of the town. It was situated in the location of present-day Gradiška in Northern BiH, formerly part of the the Kingdom of the Croats/Croatia. The word Servitium in Latin means “Service, Slavery” and it was a city in the front-line border area where there were multitudes of Roman troops in order to defend the area against Barbarians. Its second name Seruitio in Latin means “To obey”! Its third name Servitii means “Of service”. There were other similar named outpost towns all the way to modern-day Spain, British Isles and elsewhere. The similarities between the three names has nothing to do with any factual Serbs or Serb people or Serb ethnonym from centuries later whatsoever other than in their own pseudohistory. To make it even more clear, eastern Roman Emperor Constantine VII Porphyrogennetos (who had at his disposal the Byzantine imperial archives in Constantinople, Roman library sources and privy to many other numerous manuscripts, very old written material from emissaries, ecclesiastics, ambassadors, military notes and journals and records from their expeditions, and particularly relevant from the times of the Roman empire), in his domestic and foreign policy manual De Administrando Imperio proved this when he wrote…(…) “Serbs’ in the tongue of the Romans is the word for ‘slaves’, whence the colloquial ‘serbula’ for menial shoes, and ‘tzerboulianoi’ for those who wear cheap, shoddy footgear…this name the Serbs acquired from their being Slaves of the emperor of the Romans.” The Roman town of “Servia” in northern Greece which was named that way over 4 centuries before any Serbs were ‘recorded’ is another similar example, because the name of the town was given by the Romans already in the 1st-2nd century. Their nationalistic serb pseudohistorians and their mentally ill supporters/believers have it all backwards and see serbs everywhere especially wherever they see an “s”, I feel sorry sorry for Sweden, Scandinavia and hundreds of other places/names in Europe. (the only real and successful first so-called “pan-slavic” attempt was soviet russia and communism, which is really nothing to brag about or be proud of)
The old existence of the serb name in various places is not proof of the presence of Serbs as you understand them but it seems a very good indicator of the – possible – presence of Slavs or Slavic speakers in the area. For example, sierp, siorbac, pasierb and so forth. And there aren’t that many placenames in the Roman world with that stem. It stretches the bounds of credulity to believe that the town Serbinum had nothing to do with Serbs who just so happen to be found there later. There are at least three possibilities. That this was a Serb (sensu stricto) town in Roman times – the possibility that you are railing against. That the later inhabitants of this town got their own “national” name from that town – but we know that that’s not true. And that the people who lived there were the same people – or at least spoke the same language – as the people who later used the word “Serb” as a self-designation – that is that they were some form of Slavs/Suavs – what those people called themselves back then is, of course, uncertain. Perhaps they called themselves Suavs or Slavs but, who knows, maybe they called themselves Croats 😉
Of course, it IS possible that that is just all an incredible coincidence and that the Romans really did name a town after their word for “slaves” (an ancient Omsk so to say) and that centuries later an entirely different group showed up in the area who just happened to call themselves the very same name… It is possible in the same sense that it’s possible that the Earth will reverse the direction of its spin tomorrow.
For that matter, it’s just as possible as the proposition that there is no connection whatsoever between the fact that the name of a major subgroup of the Slavs (Serbs) has the same meaning in Roman Latin – unfree servant – as the much later word “slave” does, and the fact that that word just so happens to be provably derived from the name of that larger ethnic group of which the Serbs are a part of.
Finally, the arguments for the presence of Slavs in Roman times have nothing to do with “pan-Slavism” if understood as a political movement (which is how you seem to understand it) or “pan-Serbianism” (?) so i would suggest trying to take your Balkan glasses off for a moment to have a broader look. (Putting aside that the Soviets or Russians were hardly successful or really Slavic except in language – hard to do when all you really want to do is to control everyone – Thomas Friedman has a fair recent editorial on that if you can get past his usual “constant retraining will save us all” Friedmanisms).