Bulgaria | Page 5

strict accuracy--which
bring very close to us that curious tragedy of civilisation, the
destruction of the power of Rome and the overrunning of Europe by
successive waves of barbarians.
In the fifth century before Christ, what is now Bulgaria was practically
a Greek colony, and its trading relations with the North gave possibly
the first hint to the Goths of the easiest path by which to invade the
Roman Empire. The present Bulgarian towns of Varna (on the Black
Sea) and Kustendji (which has a literary history in that it was later a
place of banishment for Ovid the poet) can be traced back as Greek
trading towns through which passed traffic from the Mediterranean to
the "Scythians," i.e. the Goths of the North. Amber and furs came from
the north of the river valleys, and caravans from the south brought in
return silver and gold and bronze.
Towards the dawn of the Christian era there began a swelling-over of
the Goths from the Baltic shores, sending one wave of invasion down
towards Italy, another towards the Black Sea and the Aegean. Jordanes,
the earliest Gothic historian, writing in the sixth century gives this
account--derived from Gothic folk-songs--of the movement of the
invasion towards the Balkan Peninsula (probably about A.D. 170):
In the reign of the fifth King after Berig, Filimer, son of Gadariges, the
people had so greatly increased in numbers that they all agreed in the
conclusion that the army of the Goths should move forward with their
families in quest of more fitting abodes. Thus they came to those
regions of Scythia which in their tongue are called Oium, whose great
fertility pleased them much. But there was a bridge there by which the

army essayed to cross a river, and when half of the army had passed,
that bridge fell down in irreparable ruin, nor could any one either go
forward or return. For that place is said to be girt round with a
whirlpool, shut in with quivering morasses, and thus by her confusion
of the two elements, land and water, Nature has rendered it inaccessible.
But in truth, even to this day, if you may trust the evidence of
passers-by, though they go not nigh the place, the far-off voices of
cattle may be heard and traces of men may be discerned.
That part of the Goths therefore which under the leadership of Filimer
crossed the river and reached the lands of Oium, obtained the
longed-for soil. Then without delay they came to the nation of the Spali,
with whom they engaged in battle and therein gained the victory.
Thence they came forth as conquerors, and hastened to the farthest part
of Scythia which borders on the Black Sea.
[Illustration: A PEASANT AT WORK, DISTRICT OF TSARIBROD]
The people whom these Teutonic Goths displaced were Slavs. The
Goths settled down first on the Black Sea between the mouths of the
Danube and of the Dniester and beyond that river almost to the Don,
becoming thus neighbours of the Huns on the east, of the Roman
Empire's Balkan colonies on the west, and of the Slavs on the north. It
is reasonable to suppose that to some extent they mingled their blood
somewhat with the Slavs whom they dispossessed, and that they came
into some contact with the Huns also. It was in the third century of the
Christian era that these Goths, who had been for some time subsidised
by the Roman emperors on the condition that they kept the peace,
crossed the Danube and devastated Moesia and Thrace. An incident of
this invasion was the successful resistance of the garrison of
Marcianople--now Schumla--to the invaders. In a following campaign
the Goths crossed the Danube at Novae (now Novo-grad) and besieged
Philippopolis, a city which still keeps its name and now, as then, is an
important strategical point commanding the Thracian Plain. (It was
Philippopolis which would have been the objective of the Turkish
attack upon Bulgaria in 1912-1913 if Turkey had been given a chance
in that war to develop a forward movement.) This city was taken by the

Goths, and the first notable Balkan massacre is recorded, over 100,000
people being put to the sword within its walls. Later in the campaign
the Emperor Decius was defeated and killed by the Goths in a battle
waged on marshy ground near the mouth of the Danube. This was the
second of the three great disasters which marked the doom of the
Roman Empire: the first was the defeat of Varus in Germany; the third
was to be the defeat and death of the Emperor Valens before
Adrianople. Bulgaria, the scene of the second and third disasters, can
accurately be described as having provided the death-arena for Rome.
[Illustration: WOMEN OF PORDIM, IN THE PLEVNA DISTRICT]