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A.D. 267-270] plundering expedition of the Heruli in the year 267. From Lake Maeotis a fleet, said to have been five hundred strong, sailed along the western shore of the Euxine, then through the Bosphorus, where they made a successful coup-de-main against Byzantium, through the Propontis, where Cyzicus was captured, and the Hellespont, and onward past Lemnos and Scyros across the Aegean to Greece. Here on the classic soil of Attica, Argolis, and Laconia the wild hosts of these barbarians made fearful havoc, and it was long enough before the bewildered provincial government ventured to oppose them. The defenders, in whose ranks the historian Dexippus of Athens played a leading part, gradually gained confidence, and when they had succeeded in destroying the ships, the invaders were obliged to retreat by the land route. Beaten by the Roman troops their hosts rolled northwards through Boeotia, Epirus, Macedonia, towards their home, which they succeeded in reaching although hard pressed by their pursuers and at the very last compelled by the Emperor Gallienus to fight a battle, in which they incurred heavy losses, at the river Nestus, on the boundary between Macedonia and Thrace.

We have seen above how the Danube had been constantly threatened since the appearance of the Goths on the Black Sea, how invasion after invasion had descended on Dacia and Moesia. Soon after the accession of Gallienus (probably 256-7), Dacia with the exception of the narrow strip between the Temes and the Danube, which continued to be held down to the time of Aurelian, together with the portion of Lower Moesia which lay to the north of the Danube (the present Great Wallachia), became the prey of the barbarians. Some of the West Goths settled in Great Wallachia and the Taifali in the Banat; the northern districts, especially Transylvania, were occupied by the Victovali and Gepidae, who at this time make their appearance among the enemies of Rome. The consequence of the loss of Dacia and Trans-Danubian Moesia was that the Teutons now became on the lower Danube as well as elsewhere the immediate neighbours of the Empire, their territory being divided from it only by the river.

Only once in this whole period of inward decay did the imperial power succeed in winning a decisive victory. That was the achievement of the Emperor Claudius, whom his grateful contemporaries and successors have rightly adorned with the honourable title of “Gothicus.” In the spring of 269 the Teutons made yet another attack upon the Empire, surpassing all former ones in violence. East Goths and West Goths, whom tradition here first distinguishes, Bastamae (Peucini), Gepidae, and Heruli united their forces and advanced with a mighty army And fleet—estimated in the sources at 300,000 fighting-men and 2000