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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.
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.
Women of Pordim, in the Plevna District
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