Page:Encyclopædia Britannica, Ninth Edition, v. 10.djvu/872

Rh 848 widerand in a n rrrower sense. 'e must also bear in 1nind the vague way in which the ancient writers used national names, and their fondness for using obsolete names. Thus the Goths and other Teutonic nations are spoken of as Seythians and Sarrnati-ins. Procopius, in an evidently well- considered passage (Bell. l'unJ., i. 2), speaks of the Goths as having been formerly called Eavpoprirar Kai. llc)ui-yX}u.LVoL, names which come out of llerodotus's description of the regions where the Goths ﬁrst appear. But he gives it as the deﬁnite result of his own observations that Goths,—by this name he always means specially the East—Gotlrs,—- Vandals, West-Goths, and Gcpidze (I‘1§7.-ar8e;, with an evident intention to give the word a Greek meaning) were originally one nation, speaking one Gothic language. The only question is about the Vandals. The Gepidze are com- monly acknowledged as a branch of the Goths, and Jor- danis (17) has a legend which implies their kindred. The Taifalze (Ammianus, xxxi. 19), the Bastarnze, Peucini, and other tribes are also reckoned among the Gothic races. In other passages Procopius speaks of several other nations, as the Alans, 1-logi, and Scirri, as Gothic, b11t he does not seem to be in the same way pronouncing a deﬁnite judg- r.1ent-. Among all these, the historical Goths, who play a part in European history by that name, consist of the East and West Goths, and of the small division called Tetraxitze. The division into East and West Goths does not appear in the earlier writers, as Ammianus and Zosimus, but we ﬁnd it both in Procopius and in Jordanis. Instead of East- Goths and West-Goths, we read in Ammianus, Zosimus, and Claudian of Greul/nm_r/i and Te;-via;/2'. These seem to be (see Aschbach, 21; Zeuss, 406; Kiipke, 103) the strictly national names of the two divisions. which took the names of East and West Goths from their geographical position in the lands which they entered. There is an exact parallel in England, where the national name of the Cr'ew-issas gives way to the geographical name of ll'esl-Saxons. J or- danis indeed doubts whether the East-Gotlrs were so called from their eastern position, or from a king Ostrogotha. Strange to say, this Ostrogotha seems to be a real person, and not a mere mythical eponym. 0:30-rpryd-r60; (Procop., Bell. Got/2., iv. 27) is an historical person at a later date, and the name is borne in a feminine shape by one of the daughters of Theodoric. The history of the East and West Goths, as far as the empire is concerned, falls naturally into three periods. In the 3d century they are still settled out- side the empire, and appear as invaders and ravagers of the toman territory from outside. After an interval in which they almost sink out of notice, they appear again within the bounds of the empire, in various relations of alliance and enmity, marching to and fro, but not making any last- ing settlement. It is not till the 5th century that they begin to form settled powers. During their wandering stage they appear mainly in the Eastern empire. But neither they nor any other Teutonic people founded any permanent settlement within its borders. The historical settlements of the Goths are the short and brilliant dominion of the East- Goths in Italy, and the more lasting dominion of the West- Goths in Gaul and Spain. After the ﬁrst vague mention of the Goths under Anto- ninus Caracalla, they begin to play a distinct part in the reign of Alexander Severus. They were then in Dacia, and received a tribute or subsidy of some kind (Petrus Patricius, 124, cd. Bonn). The next emperor, Maximin, is claimed by Jordanis (15) as himself of Gothic birth, but we may suspect the usual confusion with the (lace. The narrative of J or-danis begins from this point to put on a more his- torical character, aud his account is helped out by various notices in the Augustan History. In the reign of Philip (24-1-248 A.D.) they passed the Danube and ravaged Moesia, G O T 11 S Gothic name is 11S.:(l by the Greek and Latin writers in a ' and in 2-31 the emperor Dccins fell in battle against them (see Zosimus, i. 19 ct scqr[.). 1"r'om this time they ravaged eastern Europe and western Asia far and wide (251-268). They carried on their warfare by sea, and reached as far east as Trebizond. And it seems to have been now that the first 'permanent Gothic settlement was made, though not strictly within the lands of the empire. This was in the Tauric Chersonesos or Crim. llcre their settlement lasted for many ages, and they became allies rather than srrbjects of the empire in the reign of Justinian. Within the empire the Gothic inroads met with repulses at several points, especially from the local forces of Athens under the his- torian Dexippus ('l‘rebellius, Gallienus 13, and the fragment of Dexippus himself). At last, in 269, the Goths snfl'ered a decisive defeat from the emperor Claudius at Naissus in Dardania, which formed an epoch in Gothic history. It answers to the repulse of the Saxons from Britain by the elder Theodosius. The first attempt at Gothic settlement south of the Danube had been premature. It had to be repeated at a later time with greater success. Further victories over the Goths are attributed to Aure- lian. But the chief event of his reign was one which amounted to a legal acknowledgment of Gothic occupation north of the Danube. The ltoman legions were withdrawn from Dacia, and the name of Trajan’s great conquest was transferred to the land south of the Danube (274). That is, the great river was established as the boundary between the Roman and Gothic dominions. The wisdom of this cession is shown by its being followed by a period of ninety years in which the peace between the Goths and the empire was seldom seriously broken. The chief interruption was during the reign of Constantine, when the Gothic king Araric invaded the empire, and, after some momentary successes, was driven back. In the middle of the 4th century a great power arose under‘ the East—Gothic king Ermanaric (less correctly Ilermcuu-ic; the name is the same as 1;'o2-mam-1'4’, in the royal line of Kent), of the house of the Amali, which was reckoned to be the noblest among the Goths. Erman- aric has become a great ﬁgure in Teutonic legend, and it is not easy to say how far legend has built upon history, and how far so-called history has drawn from legend. But that Ermanaric was a real man, and the founder of a great dominion, is plain from the few words of Anrmianus (xxxi. 3). Yet there is something unsatisfactory in the way in which we read vague accounts of the greatness of his power, with hardly a glimpse of himself personally. The period assigned to his reign is full of stirring events, in which we get a clear conception of much lesser Gothic chiefs, but none of Ernianaric hirnseif. J orrlanis ( 2'3) claims for him a vast dominion stretching from the Danube to the Baltic, and he is specially emphatic on the subjection of the Slavonic nations to the rule of the Gothic over- lord. With regard to the Gothic nations, we can see that the rule of Ermanaric was a mere overlordship. The West-Goths appear as a distinct people, with the power of making war and peace on their own account. But they had no kings ; their great chief Athanaric appears only as “judge” (Ammianus, xxvii. 5 ; xxxi. 3), answering to our calclorman or /rerelqr/a (cf. Jordanis, 26) ; and along with him are other West-Gothic chiefs, specially his rival 1‘r-itl1i- gern. We hear of a civil war between these two rivals (Socrates, iv. 33), and it is more certain that Athanaric made war within the Roman border as an ally of the usr1r- per of Procopius in 365, and afterwards made peace with the enrperor Valcns. By this time Christianity was rnak- ing swift advances among the Goths. According to the view of some modern writers (K6pl;e,123; Pallmann, ii. 63), the outlying Gothic settlement in Crim had been Christian and Catholic from the beginning ; but now Christianity in its Arian form began to be gradually accepted by the great