Part 510

"The little kingdom of Bosphorus; whose capital was situated on the straits through which the Mæotis communicates itself to the Euxine, was composed of degenerate Greeks and half-civilized barbarians. It subsisted as an independent state from the time of the Peloponnesian war, was at last swallowed up by the ambition of Mithridates, and, with the rest of his dominions, sunk under the weight of the Roman arms. From the reign of Augustus the kings of Bosphorus were the humble but not useless allies of the empire. By presents, by arms, and by a slight fortification drawn across the isthmus, they effectually guarded, against the roving plunderers of Sarmatia, the access of a country which, from its peculiar situation and convenient harbours, commanded the Euxine Sea and Asia Minor. As long as the sceptre was possessed by a lineal succession of kings, they acquitted themselves of their important charge with vigilance and success. Domestic factions, and the fears or private interest of obscure usurpers who seized on the vacant throne, admitted the Goths [already, in the third century, in possession of the neighboring region about the mouth of the Dneiper] into the heart of Bosphorus. With the acquisition of a superfluous waste of fertile soil, the conquerors obtained the command of a naval force sufficient to transport their armies to the coast of Asia."

_E. Gibbon, Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire, chapter 10._

GOTHS: A. D. 244-251. First invasions of the Roman Empire.

As early as the reign of Alexander Severus (A. D. 222-235) the Goths, then inhabiting the Ukraine, had troubled Dacia with incursions; but it was not until the time of the Emperor Philip, called the Arabian (244-249), that they invaded the Empire in force, passing through Dacia and crossing the Danube into Mœsia (Bulgaria). They had been bribed by a subsidy to refrain from pillaging Roman territory, but complained that their "stipendia" had not been paid. They made their way without opposition to the city of Marcianopolis, which Trajan had founded in honor of his sister, and which was the capital of one of the two provinces into which Mœsia had been divided. The inhabitants ransomed themselves by the payment of a large sum of money, and the barbarians retired. But their expedition had been successful enough to tempt a speedy repetition of it, and the year 250 found them, again, in Mœsia, ravaging the country with little hindrance. The following year they crossed the Hæmus or Balkan mountains and laid siege to the important city of Philippopolis—capital of Thrace, founded by Philip of Macedon. Now, however, a capable and vigorous emperor, Decius, was briefly wearing the Roman purple. He met the Goths and fought them so valiantly that 30,000 are said to have been slain; yet the victory remained with the barbarians, and Philippopolis was not saved. They took it by storm, put 100,000 of its inhabitants to the sword and left nothing in the ruins of the city worth carrying away. Meantime the enterprising Roman emperor had reanimated and recruited his troops and had secured positions which cut off the retreat of the Gothic host. The peril of the barbarians seemed so great, in fact, that they offered to surrender their whole booty and their captives, if they might, on so doing, march out of the country undisturbed. Decius sternly rejected the proposition, and so provoked his dangerous enemies to a despair which was fatal to him. In a terrible battle that was fought before the close of the year 251, at a place in Mœsia called Forum Trebonii, the Roman emperor perished, with the greater part of his army. The successor of Decius, Gallus, made haste to arrange a payment of annual peace-money to the Goths, which persuaded them to retire across the Danube.

_E. Gibbon, Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire, chapter 10._

ALSO IN: _T. Hodgkin, Italy and Her Invaders, introduction, chapter 8 (volume 1)._

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GOTHS: A. D. 258-267. Naval expeditions in the East.

Having acquired command of a port and a navy by their conquest of or alliance with the little kingdom of Bosporus in the Chersonesus Taurica (modern Crimea), the Goths launched forth boldly upon a series of naval marauding expeditions, which spread terror and destruction along the coasts of the Euxine, the Ægean and the straits between. The first city to suffer was Pityus, on the Euxine, which they totally destroyed, A. D. 258. The next was Trebizond, which fell a victim to the negligence with which its strong walls were guarded. The Goths loaded their ships with the enormous booty that they took from Trebizond, and left it almost a ruined city of the dead. Another expedition reached Bithynia, where the rich and splendid cities of Chalcedon, Nicea, Nicomedia, Prusa, Apamæa, nd others were pillaged and more or less wantonly destroyed. "In the year 267, another fleet, consisting of 500 vessels, manned chiefly by the Goths and Heruls [or Heruli], passed the Bosphorus and the Hellespont. They seized Byzantium and Chrysopolis, and advanced, plundering the islands and coasts of the Ægean Sea, and laying waste many of the principal cities of the Peloponnesus. Cyzicus, Lemnos, Skyros, Corinth, Sparta, and Argos are named as having suffered by their ravages. From the time of Sylla's conquest of Athens, a period of nearly 350 years had elapsed, during which Attica had escaped the evils of war; yet when the Athenians were called upon to defend their homes against the Goths, they displayed a spirit worthy of their ancient fame. An officer, named Cleodamus, had been sent by the government from Byzantium to Athens, in order to repair the fortifications, but a division of these Goths landed at the Piræus and succeeded in carrying Athens by storm, before any means were taken for its defence. Dexippus, an Athenian of rank in the Roman service, soon contrived to reassemble the garrison of the Acropolis; and by joining to it such of the citizens as possessed some knowledge of military discipline, or some spirit for warlike enterprise, he formed a little army of 2,000 men. Choosing a strong position in the Olive Grove, he circumscribed the movements of the Goths, and so harassed them by a close blockade that they were soon compelled to abandon Athens. Cleodamus, who was not at Athens when it was surprised, had in the meantime assembled a fleet and gained a naval victory over a division of the barbarian fleet, These reverses were a prelude to the ruin of the Goths. A Roman fleet entered the Archipelago, and a Roman army, under the emperor Gaillenus, marched into Illyricum; the separate divisions of the Gothic expedition were everywhere overtaken by these forces, and destroyed in detail. During this invasion of the empire, one of the divisions of the Gothic army crossed the Hellespont into Asia, and succeeded in plundering the cities of the Troad, and in destroying the celebrated temple of Diana of Ephesus. … The celebrity of Athens, and the presence of the historian Dexippus, have given to this incursion of the barbarians a prominent place in history; but many expeditions are casually mentioned which must have inflicted greater losses on the Greeks, and spread devastation more widely over the country."

_G. Finlay, Greece Under the Romans, chapter 1, section 14._

ALSO IN: _E. Gibbon, Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire, chapter 10._

GOTHS: A. D. 268-270. Defeat by Claudius.

"Claudius II. and his successor Aurelian, notwithstanding the shortness of their reigns, effectually dissipated the mosquito-swarms of barbarian invaders and provincial usurpers who were ruining the unhappy dominions of Gallienus. The two campaigns (of 268 and 269) in which the Emperor Claudius vanquished the barbarians are related with great brevity, and in such a shape that it is not easy to harmonise even the scanty details which are preserved for us. It seems clear, however, that the Goths (both Ostrogoths and Visigoths), with all their kindred tribes, poured themselves upon Thrace and Macedonia in vaster numbers than ever. The previous movements of these nations had been probably but robber-inroads: this was a national immigration. … A few years earlier, so vast an irruption must inevitably have ruined the Roman Empire. But now, under Claudius, the army, once more subjected to strict discipline, had regained, or was rapidly regaining, its tone, and the Gothic multitudes, vainly precipitating themselves against it, by the very vastness of their unwieldy masses, hastened their own destruction. A great battle was fought at Naissus (Nisch, in Servia), a battle which was not a complete victory, which according to one authority was even a defeat for the Romans, but since the barbarians as an immediate consequence of it lost 50,000 men, their doubtful victory may fairly be counted as a defeat. In the next campaign they were shut up in the intricate passes of the Balkans by the Roman cavalry. Under the pressure of famine they killed and ate the cattle that drew their waggons, so parting with their last chance of return to their northern homes. … At length the remnants of the huge host seem to have disbanded, some to have entered the service of their conqueror as 'foederati,' and many to have remained as hired labourers to plough the fields which they had once hoped to conquer. … The vast number of unburied corpses bred a pestilence, to which the Emperor fell a victim. His successor Aurelian, the conqueror of Zenobia … made peace wisely as well as war bravely, and, prudently determining on the final abandonment of the Roman province of Dacia, he conceded to the Goths the undisturbed possession of that region [A. D. 270], on condition of their not crossing the Danube to molest Moesia. Translating these terms into the language of modern geography, we may say, roughly, that the repose of Servia and Bulgaria was guaranteed by the final separation from the Roman Empire of Hungary, Transylvania, Moldavia, and Wallachia, which became from this time forward the acknowledged home of the Gothic nation. … For about a century (from 270 to 365) the Goths appear to have been with little exception at peace with Rome."

_T. Hodgkin, Italy and Her Invaders, introduction, chapter 3._

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GOTHS: A. D. 341-381. Conversion to Christianity.

The introduction of Christianity among the Goths seems to have begun while they were yet on the northern side of the Danube and the Black Sea. It first resulted, no doubt, from the influence of many Christian captives who were swept from their homes in Mœsia, Greece, and Asia Minor, and carried away to spend their lives in slavery among the barbarians. To these were probably added a considerable number of Christian refugees from Roman persecution, before the period of Constantine. But it was not until the time of Ulfilas, the great apostle and bishop of the Goths (supposed to have held the office of bishop among them from about A. D. 341 to 381), that the development and organization of Christianity in the Gothic nation assumed importance. Ulfilas is represented to have been a descendant of one of the Christian captives alluded to above. Either as an ambassador or as a hostage, he seems to have passed some years in his early manhood at Constantinople. There he acquired a familiar knowledge of the Greek and Latin languages, and became fitted for his great work—the reducing of the Gothic language to a written form, with an alphabet partly invented, partly adapted from the Greek, and the translation of the Bible into that tongue. The early labors of Ulfilas among his countrymen beyond the Danube were interrupted by an outbreak of persecution, which drove him, with a considerable body of Christian Goths, to seek shelter within the Roman empire. They were permitted to settle in Mœsia, at the foot of the Balkans, round about Nicopolis, and near the site of modern Tirnova. There they acquired the name of the Gothi Minores, or Lesser Goths. From this Gothic settlement of Ulfilas in Mœsia the alphabet and written language to which he gave form have been called Mœso-Gothic. The Bible of Ulfilas—the first missionary translation of the Scriptures—with the personal labors of the apostle and his disciples, were powerfully influential, without doubt, in the Christianizing of the whole body of the Goths, and of their German neighbors, likewise. But Ulfilas had imbibed the doctrines of Arianism, or of Semi-Arianism, at Constantinople, and he communicated that heresy (as it was branded by the Athanasian triumph) to all the barbarian world within the range of Gothic influence. It followed that, when the kingdoms of the Goths, the Vandals, and the Burgundians were established in the west, they had to contend with the hostility of the orthodox or Catholic western church, and were undermined by it. That hostility had much to do with the breaking down of those states and with the better success of the orthodox Franks.

_C. A. A. Scott, Ulfilas, Apostle of the Goths._

See, also, FRANKS: A. D. 481-511.

GOTHS: (Ostrogoths) A. D. 350-375. The empire of Ermanaric or Hermanric.

"Ermanaric, who seems to have been chosen king about the year 350, was a great warrior, like many of his predecessors; but his policy, and the objects for which he fought, were markedly different from theirs. … Ermanaric made no attempt to invade the provinces of the Roman Empire; but he resolved to make his Ostrogothic kingdom the centre of a great empire of his own. The seat of his kingdom was, as tradition tells us, on the banks of the Dnieper [and it extended to the Baltic]. … A Roman historian compares Ermanaric to Alexander the Great; and many ages afterwards his fame survived in the poetic traditions of Germans, Norsemen and Anglo-Saxons. … Ermanaric was the first king since Ostrogotha who belonged to the Amaling family. … Henceforward the kingship of the Ostrogoths became hereditary among the descendants of Ermanaric. During this time the Visigoths appear to have been practically independent, divided into separate tribes ruled by their own 'judges' or chieftains; but … it is probable that in theory they acknowledged the supremacy of the Ostrogothic king. … Ermanaric died in the year 375, and the Ostrogoths were subdued by the Hunnish king Balamber. For a whole century they remained subject to the Huns." One section of the Ostrogothic nation escaped from the Hunnish conquest and joined the Visigoths, who found a refuge on the Roman side of the Danube. The bulk of the nation bore the yoke until the death of the great Hun king, Attila, in 453, when the strife between his sons gave them an opportunity to throw it off.

_H. Bradley, Story of the Goths, chapter 5._

"The forecast of European history which then [during the reign of Hermanric] seemed probable would have been that a great Teutonic Empire, stretching from the Danube to the Don, would take the place which the colossal Slav Empire now holds in the map of Europe, and would be ready, as a civilised and Christianised power, to step into the place of Eastern Rome when, in the fulness of centuries, the sceptre should drop from the nerveless hands of the Cæsars of Byzantium."

_T. Hodgkin, Italy and Her Invaders, book 4, chapter 1._

GOTHS: (Visigoths) A. D. 376. Admission into the Roman Empire.

"Let us suppose that we have arrived at the year (364) when the feeble and timid Valens was placed on the Eastern throne by his brother Valentinian. At that time, Ulfilas would be in the fifty-third year of his age and the twenty-third of his episcopate. Hermanric, king of the Ostrogoths, a centenarian and more, was still the most important figure in the loosely welded Gothic confederacy. His special royalty may possibly have extended over Northern Hungary, Lithuania, and Southern Russia. The 'torpid' Gepidæ, dwelt to the north of him, to the south and west the Visigoths, whose settlements may perhaps have occupied the modern countries of Roumania, Transylvania and Southern Hungary. The two great nations, the Ostrogoths and Visigoths, were known at this time to the Romans, perhaps among themselves also, by the respective names of the Gruthungi and Thervingi, but it will be more convenient to disregard these appellations and speak of them by the names which they made conspicuous in later history."

_T. Hodgkin, Italy and Her Invaders, introduction, chapter 3._

This was the situation of Gothia, or the Gothic Empire of Central Europe, when the Huns made their appearance on the scene. "An empire, formerly powerful, the first monarchy of the Huns, had been overthrown by the Sienpi, at a distance of 500 leagues from the Roman frontier, and near to that of China, in the first century of the Christian era. … The entire nation of the Huns, abandoning to the Sienpi its ancient pastures bordering on China, had traversed the whole north of Asia by a march of 1,300 leagues. This immense horde, swelled by all the conquered nations whom it carried along in its passage, bore down on the plains of the Alans, and defeated them on the banks of the Tanais in a great battle. {1557} It received into its body a part of the vanquished tribe, accompanied by which it continued to advance towards the West; while other Alans, too haughty to renounce their independence, had retreated, some into Germany, whence we shall see them afterwards pass into Gaul; others into the Caucasian mountains, where they preserve their name to this day. The Goths, who bordered on the Alans, had fertilised by their labours the rich plains which lie to the north of the Danube and of the Black Sea. More civilised than any of the kindred Germanic tribes, they began to make rapid progress in the social sciences. … This comparatively fortunate state of things was suddenly interrupted by the appearance of the Huns,—the unlooked-for arrival of that savage nation, which, from the moment it crossed the Borysthenes, or the Dnieper, began to burn their villages and their crops; to massacre, without pity, men, women, and children; to devastate and destroy whatever came within the reach of a Scythian horseman. … The great Hermanric, whose kingdom extended from the Baltic to the Black Sea, would not have abandoned his sceptre to the Huns without a struggle; but at this very time he was murdered by a domestic enemy. The nations he had subjugated prepared on every side for rebellion. The Ostrogoths, after a vain resistance, broke their alliance with the Visigoths; while the latter, like an affrighted flock of sheep, trooping together from all parts of their vast territory to the right bank of the Danube, refused to combat those superhuman beings by whom they were pursued. They stretched out their supplicating hands to the Romans on the other bank, entreating that they might be permitted to seek a refuge from the butchery which threatened them, in those wilds of Mœsia and Thrace which were, almost valueless to the empire." Their prayer was granted by the Emperor Valens, on the condition that they surrender their arms and that the sons of their chief men be given as hostages to the Romans. The great Visigothic nation was then (A. D. 376) transported across the Danube to the Mœsian shore—200,000 warriors in number, besides children and women and slaves in proportion. But the Roman officers charged with the reception of the Goths were so busy in plundering the goods and outraging the daughters and wives of their guests that they neglected to secure the arms of the grim warriors of the migration. Whence great calamities ensued.

_J. C. L. de Sismondi, Fall of the Roman Empire, chapters 3 and 5 (volume 1)._

GOTHS: (Visigoths): A. D. 378. Defeat and destruction of Valens.

When the Visigothic nation was permitted to cross the Danube, A. D. 376, to escape from the Huns, and was admitted into Lower Mœsia, nothing seems to have been left undone that would exasperate and make enemies of these unwelcome colonists. Every possible extortion and outrage was practised upon them. To buy food, they were driven to part, first, with their slaves, then with their household goods, and finally with their children, whom they sold. In despair, at last, they showed signs of revolt, and the fatuous Roman commander precipitated it by a murderous outrage at Marcianople (modern Shumla). In a battle which soon followed near that town, the Romans were disastrously beaten. The Visigoths were now joined by a large body of Ostrogoths, who passed the Danube without resistance, and received into their ranks, moreover, a considerable force of Gothic soldiers who had long been in the service of the empire. The open country of Mœsia and Thrace was now fully exposed to them (the fortified cities they could not reduce), and they devastated it for a time without restraint. But Valens, the emperor in the east, and Gratian in the west, exerted themselves in co-operation to gather forces against them, and for two years there was a doubtful struggle carried on. The most serious battle, that of The Willows (Ad Salices), fought in the region now called the Dobrudscha, was a victory to neither side. On the whole the Romans appear to have had some advantage in these campaigns, and to have narrowed the range of the Gothic depredations. But the host of the barbarians was continually increased by fresh reinforcements from beyond the Danube. Even their own ferocious enemies, Huns and Alans, were permitted to join their standard. Yet, in face of this fact, the folly and jealousy of the Emperor Valens led him to stake all on the chances of a battle which he made haste to rush into, when he learned that his nephew Gratian was marching to his assistance from the west. He coveted the sole honors of a victory; but death and infamy for himself and an overwhelming calamity to the empire were what he achieved. The battle was fought near Hadrianople, on the 9th day of August, A. D. 378. Two-thirds of the Roman army perished on the awful field, and the body of the emperor was never found.

_T. Hodgkin, Italy and Her Invaders, book 1, chapter 1._

ALSO IN: _E. Gibbon, Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire, chapters 26._

_H. Bradley, Story of the Goths, chapter 8._

See, also, ROME: A. D. 363-379.

GOTHS: A. D. 379-382. Settlement of the Goths by Theodosius, in Mœsia and Thrace.