ABSTRACT
The Goths of Dacia had just entered on the adventure that was to bring such glory and disaster. With their wives, slaves and cattle they had migrated southwards and by the year a.d. 350 had settled in two great bands on the northwest of the Black Sea, the Ostrogoths in the east, the Visigoths in the west. Civil wars and corrupt government that had lost its force and directness were enough to account for the decay of Rome. Civilization is invisible, built by thoughts: it is a progress in art, knowledge, goodness, and invention, and all of these are created by thought. The ring of barbarian settlements that lay close to the Roman frontiers was nearly all Teutonic. Its most famous tribes were the Goths, the Saxons and the Franks. The successes of the barbarian generals against Rome were never maintained for very long. Rome gained nothing when any one barbarian tribe, even the fiercest, gave up its ambitions.
