Bulgaria | Page 6

From the defeat of Decius (A.D. 251) may be said to date the Gothic
colonisation of the Balkan Peninsula. True, after that event the Goths
often retired behind the Danube for a time, but, as a rule, thereafter they
were steadily encroaching on the Roman territory, carrying on a
maritime war in the Black Sea as well as land forays across the Danube.
It was because of the successes of the Goths in the Balkans that the
decision was ultimately arrived at to move the capital of the Roman
Empire from Rome to Constantinople. During the first Gothic attack,
after the death of Decius, Byzantium itself was threatened, and the
cities around the Sea of Marmora sacked. An incident of this invasion
which has been chronicled is that the Goths enjoyed hugely the warm
baths they found at Anchialus--"there were certain warm springs
renowned above all others in the world for their healing virtues, and
greatly did the Goths delight to wash therein. And having tarried there
many days they thence returned home." Now Anchialus is clearly
identifiable as the present Bulgarian town of Bourgas, a flourishing
seaport connected by rail with Jambouli and still noted for its baths.
In a later Gothic campaign (A.D. 262), based on a naval expedition
from the Black Sea, Byzantium was taken, the Temple of Diana at
Ephesus destroyed, and Athens sacked. A German historian pictures
this last incident:
The streets and squares which at other times were enlivened only by the
noisy crowds of the ever-restless citizens, and of the students who
flocked thither from all parts of the Graeco-Roman world, now

resounded with the dull roar of the German bull-horns and the war-cry
of the Goths. Instead of the red cloak of the Sophists, and the dark
hoods of the Philosophers, the skin-coats of the barbarians fluttered in
the breeze. Wodan and Donar had gotten the victory over Zeus and
Athene.
It was in regard to this capture of Athens that the story was first told--it
has been told of half a dozen different sackings since--that a band of
Goths came upon a library and were making a bonfire of its contents
when one of their leaders interposed:
"Not so, my sons; leave these scrolls untouched, that the Greeks may in
time to come, as they have in time past, waste their manhood in poring
over their wearisome contents. So will they ever fall, as now, an easy
prey to the strong unlearned sons of the North."
In the ultimate result the Goths were driven out of Athens by a small
force led by Dexippus, a soldier and a scholar whose exploit revived
memory of the deeds of Greece in her greatness. The capture of Athens
deeply stirred the civilised world of the day, and "Goth" still survives
as a term of destructive barbarism.
A few years later (A.D. 269) the Goths began a systematic invasion of
the Balkan provinces of the Roman Empire, attacking the Roman
territory both by sea and by land. The tide of victory sometimes turned
for a while, and at Naissus (now Nish in Servia, near the border of
Bulgaria) the Goths were defeated by the Emperor Claudius. Their
defeated army was then shut up in the Balkan Mountains for a winter,
and the Gothic power in the Balkans temporarily crushed. The Emperor
Claudius, who took the surname Gothicus in celebration of his victory,
announced it grandiloquently to the governor of Illyricum:
Claudius to Brocchus.
We have destroyed 320,000 of the Goths; we have sunk 2000 of their
ships. The rivers are bridged over with shields; with swords and lances
all the shores are covered. The fields are hidden from sight under the
superincumbent bones; no road is free from them; an immense

encampment of waggons is deserted. We have taken such a number of
women that each soldier can have two or three concubines allotted to
him.
[Illustration: IN THE HARVEST FIELDS NEAR SOFIA]
But the succeeding Emperor, Aurelian, gave up all Dacia to the Goths
and withdrew the Romanised Dacians into the province of
Moesia--made up of what is now Eastern Servia and Western Bulgaria.
This province was divided into two and renamed Dacia. One part,
Dacia Mediterranea, had for its capital Sardica, now Sofia, the capital
of Bulgaria. Then followed a period of comparative peace. The Roman
emperors saw that on the Balkan frontier their Empire had to be won or
lost, and strengthened the defences there. Thus Diocletian made his
headquarters at Nicomedia. Finally, Constantine moved the capital
altogether to Constantinople. Goth and Roman at this time showed a
disposition to a peaceful amalgamation, and the Bulgarian population
was rapidly becoming a Romano-Gothic one. Christianity had been
introduced, and the Gothic historian Jordanes tells of a Gothic people
living upon the northern side of the