The Goths, from the earliest times to the end of the Gothic dominion in Spain . hundreds of years,is a very different sort of thing from the movementsof mere wandering hordes like the Huns or the Tar-tars. It is true the Goths were only barbarians, andthe tics which bound them to their native soil werefar less complex and powerful than those which affecta civilized community ; and no doubt they had oftenmade long expeditions for plunder or conquest intothe adjoining lands. But still we may be sure thatthe resolution to forsake their ancient homes, and toseek a settlement in unknown and distant
The Goths, from the earliest times to the end of the Gothic dominion in Spain . hundreds of years,is a very different sort of thing from the movementsof mere wandering hordes like the Huns or the Tar-tars. It is true the Goths were only barbarians, andthe tics which bound them to their native soil werefar less complex and powerful than those which affecta civilized community ; and no doubt they had oftenmade long expeditions for plunder or conquest intothe adjoining lands. But still we may be sure thatthe resolution to forsake their ancient homes, and toseek a settlement in unknown and distant regions,must have cost them a great deal of anxious delibe-ration, and that they must have been impelled to itby very powerful motives. What these motives werewe can only faintly guess. It can scarcely be supposedthat the Goths were driven southward by the invasionof stronger neighbours, for the peoples who afterwardsoccupied the Baltic shores seem to have been cer-tainly their inferiors in warlike prowess. Most likelyit was simply the natural increase of their TRADITIONS OF THE WANDERING. 23 aided perhaps by the failure of their harvests or theoutbreak of a pestilence, that made them sensibleof the poverty of their country, and led them to castlonging eyes towards the richer and more genial landsfurther to the south, of which they had heard, andwhich some of them may have visited. Our only information about the path along whichthey travelled is derived from their own traditions, asrecorded by Jordanes in the sixth century. A greatdeal of the story told by that historian, however,seems to be either his own guesswork, or to be takenfrom the history of the Getes and Scythians. Puttingall this aside, we find that the Goths, Gepids, Herules,and some other kindred peoples, united into one greatbody, first wandered southward through what is nowWestern Russia, till they came to the shores of theBlack Sea and the Sea of Azov, and then spreadthemselves westward to the nort
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Keywords: ., bookcentury1800, bookdecade1880, booksubjectgoths, bookyear1887
