The chief ancient authority for the early history of the Goths is their national historian Jordanis, who chiefly followed the Gothic history of Cassiodorus the minister of Theodoric, and the lost history of Ablavius. (On the value of Jordanis’s writings see Palimann, Geschichte der V'olher-wanderung, 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 century to the 6th. Among these, perhaps the first place is due to Ammianus in the 4th century and to Procopius in the 6 th.

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 inferences. There are a remarkable number of national and legendary names which have more or less of likeness to the name Goth ; and this likeness has naturally led to an unusual number of theories. The Goths first’appear in history in the ancient land of the Getae·, and this geographical fact, combined with the likeness of the names, has naturally caused Getae and Goths to be looked on as the same people. The identification is as old as our first historical mention of the Goths (Aelius Spartianus, Ant. Car., 10). Claudian always speaks of the Goths as Getae. So does the national historian Jordanis (cap. v.). The identity is mentioned doubtingly by Procopius {Bell. Vand., i. 2; c∕. Bell. Goth., v. 4). It is strongly maintained by Jacob Grimm {Geschichte der Deutschen Sprache, capp. ix., xviii.), but is rejected by nearly all later writers. A more famous legend, which has derived its chief currency from Jordanis, brings the Goths first of all from Scandinavia (see Gibbon, c. x.; Geijer’s History of Sweden, c. x.). There is a so-called East and West 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 Γo⅛αι in Scandia, and Procopius {Bell. Goth., ii. 15) knew the Γαυτοί among the inhabitants of Thoule; but he clearly did not look on them as Goths (see Zeuss, Die Deutschen, 500, 511; Grimm, p. 312). Then there is the god Gedt (see Kemble’s Saxons in England, i. 370), and the Gedtas, who figure in Beowulf, and elsewhere in Old-English writings. The Traveller’s Song (34, 115, 177) distinctly distinguishes Goths and Gedtas, and couples the latter with the Swedes. Pliny {Nat. Hist., iv. 11) places Getae and Gaudoe together on the lower Danube. His Gaudae may possibly be Goths; if so, they are distinguished from the Getae. Then there are the Jutes of Old-English history, the Guttones, Gothones, Gothini (see Latham, Germania, Epilegomena xxxviii. et seqg.). Pytheas, according to Pliny {Nat. Hist., xxxvii. 7; cf. iv. 14) placed the Guttones 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 Γυ'0ωveς in Sarmatia on the Vistula. Tacitus {Germania, 43) distinguishes the German Gothones in the same region from the Celtic Gothini, whom he places seemingly nearer to the Carpathians. Tacitus moreover not only speaks of the Gothones or Gotones as a people, but mentions {Ann., 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 Maroboduus. With this hint, it is perhaps not too much to infer with Aschbach {Westgotheη, 2d ed.) and Zeuss (136) that for Boυτoves in Strabo (vii. 1), who are mentioned among the nations subject to Maroboduus, we should read Γoυτoreς. And there is no doubt that names like Getae, Gethae, Guddoe, even Gothi, lived on almost to modern times, first as national names, then as names of contempt, in Poland, Lithuania, and Prussia (see Latham, and Zeuss, 672). Latham asserts the identity of the names Getae, Gothi, and Gothones, but he holds (see especially p. 42 of his Epilegomena) that both Gothones and Getae were Lithuanian, and that the Teutonic Goths took the name of the people whom they had conquered. They would, on this view, be 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 Gothland to the island Gotland, as well as to the continental Gauthiod, is a further mistake. Nor does there seem to be any reason for making Goths and Getae the same. But the identification of the Goths with the Gothones, Γoυτoveς, Guttones, on the south coast of the Baltic (which is accepted by Pallmann and Dahn) has much more to be said for it. Gothi and Gothones 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 northern 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? Setting aside Getae and other doubtful theories, the real Gothic name is used by the Greek and Latin writers in a wider and in a narrower sense. We must also bear in mind 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 Scythians and Sarmatians. Procopius, in an evidently well-considered passage (Bell. Vaιul., i. 2), speaks of the Goths as having been formerly called Σαυρορ,άται και Μελαγχλαινοι, names which come out of Herodotus’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-Goths,— Vandals, West-Goths, and Gepidae (Γ^7rαιδeς, 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 Gepidae are commonly acknowledged as a branch of the Gotlιs, and Jordanis (17) has a legend which implies their kindred. The Taifake (Ammianus, xxxi. 19), the Bastarnae, Peucini, and other tribes are also reckoned among the Gothic races. In other passages Procopius speaks of several other nations, as the Alans, Rogi, and Scirri, as Gothic, but he does not seem to be in the same way pronouncing a definite judgment. 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 Tetraxitae. 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 Greuthungi and Tervingi. These seem to be (see Aschbach, 21; Zeuss, 406; Köpke, 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 Gewissas gives way to the geographical name of West-Saxons. Jordanis indeed doubts whether the East-Goths 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. Ojστpιγ0τ0oς (Procop., Bell. Goth., 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 λVest Goths, as far as the empire is concerned, falls naturally into three periods. In the 3d century they are still settled outside the empire, and appear as invaders and ravagera of the Roman 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 lasting 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 Antoninus 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, ed. Bonn). The next emperor, Maximin, is claimed by Jordanis (15) as himself of Gothic birth, but we may suspect the usual confusion with the Getoe. The narrative of Jordanis begins from this point to put on a more historical character, and his account is helped out by various notices in the Augustan History. In the reign of Philip (244-248 λ.d.) they passed the Danube and ravaged Moesia, and in 251 the emperor Decius fell in battle against them (see Zosimus, i. 19 ci seqq. y ). From 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. Here their settlement lasted for many ages, and they became allies rather than subjects 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 historian Dexippus (Trebellius, Gallienus 13, and the fragment of Dexippus himself). At last, in 269, the Goths suffered 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 Aurelian. But the chief event of his reign was one which amounted to a legal acknowledgment of Gothic occupation north of the Danube. The Roman 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 Hermanric -, the name is the same as Eοrmenric, in the royal line of Kent), of the house of the Amali, which was reckoned to be the noblest among the Goths. Ermanaric 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 Ammianus (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 Ermanaric himself. Jordanis (23) 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 overlord. 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 ealdorman or heretoga (cf. Jordanis, 26); and along with him are other West-Gothic chiefs, specially his rival Frithigern. 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 usurper of Procopius in 365, and afterwards made peace with the emperor Valens. By this time Christianity was making swift advances among the Goths. According to the view of some modern writers (Köpke, 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 mass of the Gothic nation. This was mainly the work of the teaching of Ulfila (see Ulfila), the Gothic apostle and translator of the Scriptures into the Gothic tongue (Sozomen, iv. 24). According to some accounts (Pallmann, i. 71), he had, to avoid persecution, led a Christian colony south of the Danube (348), who settled peaceably at Nicopolis, and are hence known as Mcesogoths (seemingly the Gothi Minores of Jordanis, 51). Later, in 370, there was another great persecution, in which Athauaric, the special enemy of everything Roman, appears also as the enemy of the Christians, while Frithigern is their friend (Sozomen, vi. 37; Socrates, iv. 33). The distinction between Christian and heathen G∩ths remains of political importance for some time. But both East and West Goths had fully embraced Arianism long before the end of the 5th century, while the Goths of Crim seem to have remained Catholic, and received Catholic bishops from Saint John Chrysostom, and afterwards from Justinian.

Towards the end of the reign of Ermanaric several causes joined together to break his great dominion asunder. There were clearly signs of division between East and West Goths, between Christians and heathens, as well as discontents among the subject nations. These causes of division were now strengthened by pressure from without. Now began the first of those movements of the Turanian races into the lands north of the Danube, which have had such an effect on the history of south-eastern Europe down to our own time. The Huns pressed on the new dominion of the Goths, which was already beginning to break in pieces. Ermanaric died at the age, it is said, of 110, by the hands of subject princes stirred to wrath by his cruelties (Jordanis, 24). All thought of a lasting Gothic dominion north of the Danube died with him. With his fall the movements south of that river begin again on a great scale.

From this time the history of the East and West Goths parts asunder, to be joined together again only incidentally and for a season. The great mass of the East-Goths stayed north of the Danube, and passed under the overlordship of the Hun. They do not for the present play any important part in the affairs of the empire. The great mass of the West-Goths crossed the Danube into the Roman provinces, and there played a most important part in various characters of alliance and enmity. The great migration was in 376, when they were allowed to pass as peaceful settlers under their chief Frithigern. His rival Athanaric seems to have tried to maintain his party for a while north of the Danube in defiance of the Hun3; but he had presently to follow the example of the great mass of the nation. The peaceful designs of Frithigern were meanwhile thwarted by the ill-treatment which the Goths suffered from the Roman officials, which led first to disputes and then to open war. In 378 the Goths won the great battle of Adrianople, in which the emperor Valens was killed. His successor Theodosius the Great made terms with them in 381, and the mass of the Gothic warriors entered the Roman service as foederati. Many of their chiefs were in high favour; but it seems that the orthodox Theodosius showed more favour to the still remaining heathen party among the Goths than to the larger part of them who had embraced Arian Christianity. Athanaric himself came to Constantinople in 381; he was received with high honours, and had a solemn funeral when he died. His saying is worth recording, as an example of the effect which Roman civilization had on the Teutonic mind. “The emperor,” he said, “was a god upon earth, and he who resisted him would have his blood on his own head.”

The death of Theodosius in 395 broke up the union between the West-Goths and the empire. Dissensions arose between them and the ministers of Arcadius; the Goths threw off their allegiance, and chose Alaric as their king. This was a restoration...