The First Migrations of the Goths.
THE night of January 1, A. D. 193, the Emperor Commodus, after having reached "the summit of vice and infamy," was poisoned by Marcia, his favorite concubine, and, at the instance of her accomplices, who were impatient of the poison, was strangled by a wrestler. From that night till the reign of Constantine as sole emperor, A. D. 323, of more than sixty who assumed the "bloody purple" none lived in peace; only four—Severus, Claudius, Constantius, and Galerius—died in quietness; only one—Decius—fell in battle with the barbarians; and one—Valerian—died in captivity in Persia. All the others were either assassinated, or else took their own lives to prevent being massacred, or else fell in battle with their successful rivals. De Quincey, however, lengthens the period and lessens the number. Of the office of emperor he says, it was "always a post of danger, and so regularly closed by assassination, that in the course of two centuries there are hardly to be found three or four cases of exception."—Essay, Ancient History, the Cæsars, chap. 6, par. 6. A few strokes of Gibbon's vigorous pen will illustrate for us the terrible history of this dreary period of the empire. He says:— "From the great secular games celebrated by Philip, to the death of the Emperor Gallienus, there elapsed [A. D. 248-268] twenty years of shame and misfortune. During that calamitous period, every instant of time was marked, every province of the Roman world was afflicted, by barbarous invaders and military tyrants, and the ruined empire seemed to approach the last and fatal moment of its dissolution."—Chap. 10, par. 1. In this twenty years there were seven emperors,—Philip, Decius, Hostilianus, Gallus, Æmilianus, Valerian, and Gallienus. Of the reigns of the last two—father and son—Gibbon says:— "The joint government of the father and the son subsisted about seven, and the sole administration of Gallienus continued about eight years [A. D. 253-268]. But the whole period was one uninterrupted series of confusion and calamity. The Roman Empire was at the same time, and on every side, attacked by the blind fury of foreign invaders, and the wild ambition of domestic usurpers."—Id., par. 21. Of Gallienus and his reign we are told that,— "In every art that he attempted, his lively genius enabled him to succeed; and as his genius was destitute of judgment, he attempted every art, except the important ones of war and government. He was a master of several curious but useless sciences, a ready orator, an elegant poet, a skillful gardener, an excellent cook, and most contemptible prince. When the great emergencies of the State required his presence and attention, he was engaged in conversation with the philosopher Plotinus, wasting his time in trifling or licentious pleasures, preparing his initiation to the Grecian mysteries, or soliciting a place in the Areopagus of Athens. . . . At a time when the reins of government were held with so loose a hand, it is not surprising that a crowd of usurpers should start up in every province of the empire against the son of Valerian. . . . To illustrate the obscure monuments of the life and death of each individual, would prove a laborious task, alike barren of instruction and amusement. Of the nineteen tyrants who started up under the reign of Gallienus there was not one who enjoyed a life of peace or a natural death."—Id., par. 46, 47, 50. Except in the number of the usurpers, the reign of Gallienus may be taken as a fair picture of the whole period from Commodus to Constantine. In concluding his observations upon these "rapid and perpetual transitions from the cottage to the throne, and from the throne to the grave," the historian adds:— "Such were the barbarians [which we shall introduce presently], and such the tyrants, who, under the reigns of Valerian and Gallienus, dismembered the provinces, and reduced the empire to the lowest pitch of disgrace and ruin, from whence it seemed impossible that it should ever emerge."—Id., par. 52. We have now reached the time when we can enter intelligently upon the study of the course of the flood of barbarians which comes pouring down from the North upon the already torn and distracted empire. And we now propose to trace the ten kingdoms from their origin among the savage tribes of ancient Germany to their establishment within the Western Empire, and to the present condition of such of them as remain, among the civilized nations of modern Europe. Of all these, to the Goths belongs the first place. Although the Goths were not absolutely the first to invade the empire, nor yet actually the first to fix their final settlement within its limits; yet as they did more than any other nation to break the power of Rome, and so to prepare the way for the other nations to enter, to them rightly belongs the foremost place among all the nations that had any share in the breaking up of the once so mighty empire of Rome. "The Emperor Decius had employed a few months in the works of peace and the administration of justice, when [A. D. 250] he was summoned to the banks of the Danube by the invasion of the Goths. This is the first considerable occasion in which history mentions that great people, who afterwards broke the Roman power, sacked the capital, and reigned in Gaul, Spain, and Italy. So memorable was the part which they acted in the subversion of the Western Empire, that the name of Goths is frequently, but improperly, used as a general appellation of rude and warlike barbarism." "Many vestiges, which cannot be ascribed to the arts of popular vanity, attest the ancient residence of the Goths in the countries beyond the Baltic. From the time of the geographer Ptolemy, the southern part of Sweden seems to have continued in the possession of the less enterprising remnant of the nation, and a large territory is even at present divided into East and West Gothland. During the Middle Ages (from the ninth to the twelfth century), whilst Christianity was advancing with a slow progress into the North, the Goths and the Swedes composed two distinct, and sometimes hostile, members of the same monarchy. The latter of these two names has prevailed without extinguishing the former. The Swedes, who might well be satisfied with their own fame in arms, have in every age claimed the kindred glory of the Goths." "If so many successive generations of Goths were capable of preserving a faint tradition of their Scandinavian origin, we must not expect from such unlettered barbarians any distinct account of the time and circumstances of their emigration. To cross the Baltic was an easy and natural attempt. The inhabitants of Sweden were masters of a sufficient number of large vessels with oars, and the distance is little more than one hundred miles from Carscrona to the nearest ports of Pomerania and Prussia. Here, at length, we land on firm and historic ground. At least as early as the Christian era, and as late as the age of the Antonines [A. D. 138-180], the Goths were established towards the mouth of the Vistula, and in that fertile province where the commercial cities of Thorn, Elbing, Konigsberg, and Dantzic were long afterwards founded." "In the age of the Antonines the Goths were still seated in Prussia. About the reign of Alexander Severus [A. D. 222-235], the Roman province of Dacia had already experienced their proximity by frequent and destructive inroads. In this interval, therefore, of about seventy years, we must place the second migration of the Goths from the Baltic to the Euxine; but the cause that produced it lies concealed among the various motives which actuate the conduct of unsettled barbarians. Either a pestilence or a famine, a victory or a defeat, an oracle of the gods or the eloquence of a daring leader, was sufficient to impel the Gothic arms on the milder climate of the south. Besides the influence of a martial religion, the numbers and spirit of the Goths were equal to the most dangerous adventures. The use of round bucklers and short swords rendered them formidable in a close engagement; the manly obedience which they yielded to hereditary kings gave uncommon union and stability to their councils; and the renowned Amala, the hero of that age and the tenth ancestor of Theodoric, king of Italy, enforced, by the ascendant of personal merit, the prerogative of his birth, which he derived from the Anses, or demigods of the Gothic nation." "The fame of a great enterprise excited the bravest warriors from all the Vandalic States of Germany, many of whom are seen a few years afterwards combating under the common standard of the Goths. The first motions of the emigrants carried them to the banks of the Prypec, a river universally conceived by the ancients to be the southern branch of the Borysthenes [Dnieper]. The windings of that great stream through the plains of Poland and Russia gave a direction to their line of march, and a constant supply of fresh water and pasturage to their numerous herds of cattle. They followed the unknown course of the river, confident in their valor, and careless of whatever power might oppose their progress. The Bastarnæ and the Venedi were the first who presented themselves; and the flower of their youth, either from choice or compulsion, increased the Gothic army. The Bastarnæ dwelt on the northern side of the Carpathian Mountains; the immense tract of land that separated the Bastarnæ from the savages of Finland was possessed, or rather wasted, by the Venedi. . . ." "As the Goths advanced near the Euxine [Black] Sea, they encountered a purer race of Sarmatians, the Jazyges, the Alani, and the Roxolani; and they were probably the first Germans who saw the mouths of the Borysthenes and of the Tanais [Don]. If we inquire into the characteristic marks of the people of Germany and of Sarmatia, we shall discover that those two great portions of human kind were principally distinguished by fixed huts or movable tents; by a close dress or flowing garments; by the marriage of one or of several wives; by a military force, consisting, for the most part, either of infantry or cavalry; and, above all, by the use of the Teutonic or of the Slavonian language—the last of which has been diffused by conquest [of Russia] from the confines of Italy to the neighborhood of Japan." "The Goths were now in possession of the Ukraine, a country of considerable extent and uncommon fertility, intersected with navigable rivers which from either side discharge themselves into the Borysthenes, and interspersed with large and lofty forests of oak. The plenty of game and fish, the innumerable bee-hives, deposited in the hollows of old trees and in the cavities of rocks, and forming, even in that rude age, a valuable branch of commerce, the size of the cattle, the temperature of the air, the aptness of the soil for every species of grain, and the luxuriance of the vegetation, all displayed the liberality of nature, and tempted the industry of man. But the Goths withstood all these temptations, and still adhered to a life of idleness, of poverty, and of rapine."—Id., chap. 10, par. 3, 4, 8-11.