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Rh their remains. The stories of the persecution, its horrors and its heroism, are too numerous to repeat. A glance over them reveals the fact that a great number of the martyrdoms occurred in the district of Adiabene, which appears to have been almost wholly Christian. But multitudes fell in ail the provinces. At first only the clergy were aimed at; nevertheless the persecution was not confined to the official leaders of the Church.

When we next meet with Persian Christians we find them adopting Nestorianism; and the later fortunes of Christianity in Persia will be considered in the division of this volume dealing with the Nestorians.

2. The other series of events occurring beyond the borders of the Roman Empire during the earlier period of our history that now claims our attention is found in connection with the story of and the conversion of the Goths. These people of our own Teutonic stock, whose repeated invasions were among the most serious troubles of the Roman emperors, first meet us in the lands north of the lower Danube during the third century of the Christian era. Their traditional earlier connection with Scandinavia has not been verified; but the fact that in the restless migrations of their teeming populations they had swept eastward from the ancient forests of Germany, and thus early begun the characteristic colonising habit of which their English representatives, the Jutes, gave evidence, is the probable explanation of their appearance in Eastern Europe, wedged in between the Sclavs on the north and the Greeks on the south. Still pressing onward, during the course of the fourth century they poured into the Roman province of Dacia in repeated and disastrous raids, the first of which occurred in the year 238, ravaging Mœsia in the reign of Philip the Arabian, and later defeating the Emperor Decius, who fell while fighting them ( 251). Thus indirectly they saved the Church by putting an end to