Page:Encyclopædia Britannica, Ninth Edition, v. 10.djvu/871

Rh GOTHS “ classical.” The name came also to be iisetl as a philologi- cal or ethnological term ; we heard of “Gothic nations,” “ Gothic languages,” &c., meaning “Teutonic” in tlie widest sense. The name was also, ﬁrst scornfully, then respect- fully, applied to a style of architecture which has some claim to be called Teutonic as opposed to Greek or Roman, b11t which has nothing whatever to do with the Goths as a nation. Long before this, two European sovereigns who had nothing whatever to do with the national Goths, took the title of King of the Goths out of a mere accidental like- ness of names. All these uses of the Gothic name must be carefully distinguished from the history of the true national Goths who play so great a part in Europe from the 3d to the 8th century of our era. The Goths may on many grounds claim the foremost place among the Teutonic nations which had a share in the break—up of the Roman power. They were among the earliest, if not quite the earliest, of the Teutonic nations to establish themselves within the empire, as distinguishe:l from merely ravaging its frontiers. Their history too is closely connected with the geography of the whole empire. Their first historical appearance was in the East ; their great "historical settle- ments were made in the West. N o Teutonic people ﬁlls so great a place in the political and military history of the 4th, 5th’, and 6th centuries, and no Teutonic people has left behind it such early remains of a written native litera- ture. The real greatness of the Goths quite accounts for the many vague uses of the Gothic name. Alike in scorn and in honour, the Goths have been, not unreasonably, taken as the representatives of the whole Teutonic race. The wonderful thing is that a people who played so great a part for several ages should ha_ve wholly passed away. The Goths have not for many ages existed anywhere as a distinct nation, nor have they given an abiding name to any part of Europe. Franks, Angles, Saxons, Burgun- dians, Frisians, Thuringians, Lombards, Bavari-ans, perhaps Vandals, are all visible on the modern n1ap. So several parts of Europe have at different times been known as Gotlaiw; but the name was never borne by any large country, and it has nowhere lasted down to modern times. The chief ancient authority for the early history of the Goths is their national historian J ordanis, who chieﬂy followed the Gothic history of Cassiodorus the minister of The >1oric, and the lost history of Ablavius. (On the value of J ordanis’s writings see Palhnann, Gcsc/zic/rte der V0'll'er- '21.»!/U/erzuzy, i. 23.) But he is careless and uncritical, and, like other national historians, is full of mythical elements in the early part. He has to be tested throughout by the contemporary Roman and Greek writers from the 3d cen- tury to the 6th. Among these, perhaps the ﬁrst place is due to Ammianus in the 4th century and to Procopius in the 6th. The ﬁrst certain historical appearance of the Goths is in the lands north of the lower Danube in the 3d century of _ our era. For any earlier account of them we have to go either to mythical stories or to ingenious guesses and infer- ences. There are a remarkable number of national and legendary names which have more or less of likeness to the name Got/1. ; and this likeness has naturally led to an un- usual number of theories. The Goths ﬁrstappear in history in the ancient land of t-he Getce; and this geographical fact, combined with the likeness of the names, has naturally caused Gem: and Got/as to be looked on as the same people. The identiﬁcation is as old as our ﬁrst historical mention of the Goths (z’Elius Spartianus, Am‘. Car., 10). Claudian always speaks of the Goths as Gem. So does the national historian J ordanis (cap. v.). The identity is mentioned doubtingly by Procopius (Bell. Vaml., i. 2; cf. Bell. 002%., v. 4). It is strongly maintained by Jacob Grimm (Gesrlzzklzte der Deutsclzen Spraclze, capp. ix., xviii.), but is rejected by 847 nearly all later writers. A more famous legend, which has derived its chief currency from J ordanis, brings the Goths ﬁrst of all from Scandinavia (see Gibbon, e. x.; Gei_jer’s 1[z'sto7'g/ of Sweden, c. x.). There is a so-called East and Vest Gothland in Sweden, but the connexion of these lands with the Goths of Roman history is more than doubtful. _ Ptolemy (ii. 11, 35) places the Fofvrac in Scandia, and Procopius (Hell. Got/1., ii. 15) knew the I‘am-or’ among the inhabitants of Thoule; but he clearly did not look on them as Goths (see Zenss, Die Dczztsr/mi, 500, 511; Grimm, p. 312). Then there is the god Gait (see Kemble’s Saxons in Is'n,r/lrmd, i. 370), and the (lecitcls, who ﬁgure in Beowulf, and elsewhere in Old-English writings. The Traveller’s Song (3-1, 115, 177) distinctly distinguishes Got/is and Gedtas, and couples the latter with the Swedes. Pliny (Kat. I[i.st., iv. 11) places Getcc and Ga-udce together on the lower Danube. His Gaudce may possibly be Goths ; if so, they are distinguished from the Getcc. Then there are the J ates of Old-English history, the Guttones, Got/zones, Got/aim} (see Latham, G'e7'nmnz'a, Epilegomena xxxviii. ct seqq.). Pytheas, according to Pliny (Nat. I[z'st., xxxvii. 7; cf. iv. 14) placed the Guttozzes on the south coast of the Baltic (that seems to be his meaning, and rules them to be a German people. This carries the name back to the time of Alexander. Ptolemy also (iii. 5, 20) has I‘1i9mves in Sarmatia on the Vistula. Tacitus (Germania, 43) distin- guishes the German Gotlaones in the same region from the Celtic Got/u'ni, whom he places seemingly nearer to the Carpathians. Tacitus moreover not only speaks of the Got/zones or Gotones as a people, but mentions (A1m., ii. 62) a particular man of the nation, Catualda by name, as having restored the independence of his people after it had been overthrown by Maroboduns. With this hint, it is perhaps not too much to infer with Aschbach (Westf/otlzen, 2d ed.) and Zeuss (136) that for B0151-oves in Strabo (vii. 1), who are mentioned among the nations subject to Maroboduus, we should read I‘ov5-roves. And there is no doubt that names like Getce, G€t]t(F, Gudrlce, even Gotlzi, lived on almost to modern times, ﬁrst as national names, then as names of contempt, in Poland, Lithuania, and Prussia (see Latham, and Zenss, 672). Latham asserts the identity of the names Gelce, Got/oi, and 6'0!/zones, but he holds (see especially p. 42 of his Epilegomena) that both Gotlzones and G'ez‘ce were Lithuanian, and that the Teutonic Goths took the name of the people whom they had conquered. They would, on this view, he Goths only in the sense in which Englishmen are Britons. On the whole, it seems that there is no trustworthy evidence for a migration of the Goths from Scandinavia, and that the idea was suggested only by the likeness of name between the true Goths and the Gauts or Gedtas of Swedish history. The application of the name Got/(land to the island Gotlaml, as well as to the conti- nental Gcmtlziod, is a further mistake. Nor does there seem to be any reason for making Gotlzs and Getaa the same. But the identiﬁcation of the Goths with the Gotlwnes, Pot‘-roves, G'uttones, on the south coast of the Baltic (which is accepted by Pallmann and Dahn) has much more to be said for it. G0t]£i and Gotlzones are strictly the same name ; the double form is usual in the Latin shapes of Teutonic names. But the whole history of the Goths in their north- ern seats is summed up in the personal history of Catualda, who, after delivering his people from Maroboduus, was himself overthrown by the Hermunduri. The continuous and certain history of the Gothic nation begins in the Roman Dacia. The question now comes, Which of the nations which are historically connected with the Goths had any closer connexion with them than that of common Teutonic origin '2 Setting aside Getze and other doubtful theories, the real