North of the Danube lived, near the close of the fourth
century, a German people called Visigoths, or West Goths. Their kinsmen, the
Ostrogoths, or East Goths, held the land north of the Black Sea between the
Danube and the Don. These two nations had been among the most dangerous enemies
of Rome. In the third century they made so many expeditions against the eastern
territories of the empire that Aurelian at last surrendered to the Visigoths
the great province of Dacia. The barbarians now came in contact with Roman
civilization and began to lead more settled lives. Some of them even accepted
Christianity from Bishop Ulfilas, who translated the Bible into the Gothic
tongue.
THE VISIGOTHS CROSS THE DANUBE, 376 A.D.
The peaceful fusion of Goth and Roman might have gone on
indefinitely but for the sudden appearance in Europe of the Huns. They were a
nomadic people from central Asia. Entering Europe north of the Caspian Sea, the
Huns quickly subdued the Ostrogoths and compelled them to unite in an attack
upon their German kinsmen. Then the entire nation of Visigoths crowded the
banks of the Danube and begged the Roman authorities to allow them to cross
that river and place its broad waters between them and their terrible foes. In
an evil hour for Rome their prayer was granted. At length two hundred thousand
Gothic warriors, with their wives and children, found a home on Roman soil.
