GOTHS, a Teutonic people who in the 1st century A.D. appear to have inhabited the middle part of the basin of the Vistula. They were probably the easternmost of the Teutonic peoples. According to their own traditions they had come originally from the island Scandza, i.e. Skane or Sweden and landed first in a region called Gothiscandza. Thence they invaded the territories of the Ulmerugi (the Holmryge of Anglo-Saxon tradition), which were probably in the neighbourhood of Rdgenwalde in eastern Pomerania, and conquered both them and the neighbouring Vandals.
The first certain references to the Goths in ancient literature go back to the first years of the Christian era, when they seem to have been subject to the Marcomannic king Maroboduus. They do not enter into Roman history until the 3rd century, when their frontier seems to have been advanced considerably farther south, and the whole country as far as the lower Danube was frequently ravaged by them. The emperor Gordian is called "victor Gotho rum" by Capitolinus, and further conflicts are recorded with his successors, one of whom, Decius, was slain by the Goths in Moesia. The emperor Gallus was forced to pay tribute to them. and during the next twenty years they frequently ravaged the maritime regions of Asia Minor and Greece. Aurelian is said to have won a victory over them, but the province of Dacia had to be given up. In the time of Constantine the Great, Thrace and Moesia were again plundered by the Goths, A.D. 321. Constantine drove them back and then concluded peace with their king Ariaric.
Though by this time the Goths had extended their territories far to the south and east, it must not be assumed that they had evacuated their old lands on the Vistula. Jordanes records several traditions of their conflicts with other Teutonic tribes, in particu lar a victory won by Ostrogotha over Fastida, king of the Gepidae, and another by Geberic over Visimar, king of the Vandals, about the end of Constantine's reign, in consequence of which the Vandals sought and obtained permission to settle in Pannonia. Geberic was succeeded by the most famous of the Gothic kings, Hermanaric (Eormenric, Iormunrekr), one of the greatest figures of Germanic saga, whose deeds are recorded in the traditions of all Teutonic nations. According to Jordanes he conquered the Heruli, the Aestii, the Venedi and a number of other tribes who seem to have been settled in the southern part of Russia. From Anglo-Saxon sources it seems probable that his supremacy reached westwards as far as Holstein. To his time belong a number of other heroes whose exploits are recorded in English and Northern tradition, amongst whom we may mention Wudga (Vidigoia), Hama and several others, who in Widsith are represented as de fending their country against the Huns in the forest of the Vistula. Hermanaric committed suicide in his distress because of an in vasion of the Huns about A.D. 3 70, and the portion of the nation called Ostrogoths then came under Hunnish supremacy.
(F. G. M. B.) Later History.—From about this time the history of the East and West Goths parts asunder. The East Goths do not at first enter into the history of the Empire. In 376 a great part of the West Gothic people, under their chief, Frithigern, crossed the Danube into the Roman province of Moesia with the approval of the imperial government. Disputes between the new settlers and the Roman officials soon led to a war, marked by the great Gothic victory at Adrianople in 378, when the emperor Valens was killed. His successor Theodosius the Great made terms with the Goths in 381 and the mass of the Gothic warriors entered the Roman service as foederati. Athanaric, the Gothic leader, came to Con stantinople in 381 ; he was received with high honours, and had a solemn funeral when he died.
The death of Theodosius in 395 broke up the union between the West Goths and the Empire. The Goths threw off their allegiance, and chose Alaric as their king. Under him, the Goths are an inde pendent people under a national king ; their independence is in no way interfered with if the Gothic king, in a moment of peace, accepts the office and titles of a Roman general. But under Alaric the Goths make no lasting settlement. Cessions of territory are offered to them, provinces are occupied by them, but as yet they do not take root anywhere; no Western land becomes Gothia.
Greece was the scene of Alaric's first great campaign, in His Italian campaigns fall into two great divisions, that of 402-3, when he was driven back by Stilicho, and that of 408-1o, after Stilicho's death. In this second war he thrice besieged Rome (408, 41o). The second time it suited a momentary policy to set up a puppet emperor of his own, and even to accept a military commission from him. The third time he sacked the city. The intricate political and military details of these campaigns are of less importance in the history of the Gothic nation than the stage which Alaric's reign marks in the history of that nation. It stands between two periods of settlement within the Empire and of service under the Empire. Under Alaric there is no settlement, and service is quite secondary and precarious ; after his death in 410 the two begin again in new shapes.
Under Ataulf, the brother-in-law and successor of Alaric, an other era opens, the beginning of enterprises which did in the end lead to the establishment of a settled Gothic monarchy in the West. His position is well marked by the speech put into his mouth by the Roman historian Orosius. He had at one time dreamed of destroying the Roman power, of turning Romania into Gothia, and putting himself in the place of Augustus; but he had learned that the world could be governed only by the laws of Rome and he determined to use the Gothic arms for the support of the Roman power. In many shiftings of allegiance, Ataulf seems never to have wholly given up the position of an ally of the Empire. His marriage with Placidia, the daughter of the great Theodosius, was taken as the seal of the union between Goth and Roman, and, had their son Theodosius lived, a dynasty might have arisen uniting both claims. But the career of Ataulf was cut short by his murder at Barcelona in 415. Under Wallia, who became king in that year, a more settled state of things was estab lished. The Empire received again, as the prize of Gothic victories, the Tarraconensis in Spain, and Novempopulana and the Narbo nensis in Gaul. The Roman "Aquitania Secunda" became the West Gothic kingdom of Toulouse. The dominion of the Goths was strictly Gaulish; their lasting Spanish dominion had not begun.
Under Wallia's successor Theodoric I. (419-451) Goths and Romans became for a time united against their common enemy Attila King of the Huns. But they met Gothic warriors in his army. By the terms of their subjection to the Huns, the East Goths came to fight for Attila against Christendom at Chalons, just as the Serbs came to fight for Bajazet against Christendom at Nicopolis. Theodoric fell in the battle (451) . After this mo mentary meeting, the history of the East and West Goths again separates for a while. The West Gothic kingdom of Toulouse grew within Gaul at the expense of the Empire, and in Spain at the expense of the Suevi. Under Euric (466-485) the West Gothic power again became largely a Spanish power. The kingdom of Toulouse took in nearly all Gaul south of the Loire and west of the Rhone, with all Spain, except the north-west corner, which was still held by the Suevi. Provence alone remained to the Empire. The West Gothic kings largely adopted Roman manners and culture ; but, as they still kept to their original Arian creed, their rule never became thoroughly acceptable to their Catholic subjects. They stood, therefore, at a great disadvantage when a new and aggressive Catholic power appeared in Gaul through the conversion of the Frank Clovis. In 507 the West Gothic king Alaric II. fell before the Frankish arms at Campus Vogladensis, near Poitiers, and his kingdom, as a great power north of the Alps, fell with him. That Spain and a fragment of Gaul still remained to form a West Gothic kingdom was owing to the inter vention of the East Goths under the rule of the greatest man in Gothic history.
When the Hunnish power broke in pieces on the death of Attila, the East Goths recovered their full independence. Even before this time, in 406, a large body of Goths, apparently belong ing to the eastern branch of their race, had invaded Italy under their king Radagais. Later in the century, the East Goths entered into relations with the Empire and obtained a settlement in Pan nonia. Subsequently, they play in south-eastern Europe nearly the same part which the West Goths played in the century before. Towards the close of the 5th century their royal house produced a great figure, famous alike in history and in romance, in the per son of Theodoric, son of Theodemir. Theodoric the Great is some times the friend, sometimes the enemy, of the Empire, but in all cases alike he remains the national East Gothic king. It was both as Gothic leader and as ally of the Empire that he set out in 488, by commission from the emperor Zeno, to recover Italy from Odoacer. By 493 the East Gothic power was fully established over Italy, Sicily, Dalmatia and the lands to the north of Italy. Under Theodoric the history of the East and West Goths con verges again, through the marriage of a daughter of Theodoric to the Visigothic king Alaric II. After Alaric's fall in 507 his heir was protected by Theodoric, in whose later years the kingdoms of the East and West Goths were in effect united.
The East Gothic dominion was now again as great in extent and far more splendid than it could have been in the time of Hermanaric. But it was now of a wholly different character. The dominion of Theodoric was not a barbarian but a civilized power. His twofold position ran through everything. He was at once national king of the Goths, and successor, though without any imperial titles, of the Roman emperors of the West. The two nations, differing in manners, language and religion, lived side by side on the soil of Italy; each was ruled according to its own law, by the prince who was, in his two separate characters, the common sovereign of both. The Goths seem to have been thick on the ground in northern Italy ; in the south they formed little more than garrisons. In Theodoric's theory the Goth was the armed protector of the peaceful Roman ; the Gothic king had the toil of government, while the Roman consul had the honour. All the forms of the Roman administration went on, and the Roman polity and culture had great influence on the Goths themselves.
Such a system as that which Theodoric established needed a Theodoric to carry it on. On his death (526) the East and West Goths were again separated. Amalaric, son of Alaric II., succeeded to the West Gothic kingdom in Spain and Septimania. Provence was added to the dominion of the new East Gothic king Athalaric, the grandson of Theodoric through his daughter Amalaswintha. But the essential weakness of the East Gothic position in Italy now showed itself. The long wars of Justinian's reign recovered Italy for the Empire, and the Gothic name died out.
The West Gothic kingdom lasted much longer, and came much nearer to establishing itself as a national power in the lands which it took in. But its history was long influenced by the difference of race and faith between the Arian Goths and the Catholic Romans of Gaul and Spain. The Arian Goths ruled over Catho lic subjects, and were surrounded by Catholic neighbours. The Catholics everywhere preferred either Roman, Suevian or Frank ish rule to that of the heretical Goths; even the unconquerable mountaineers of Cantabria seem for a while to have received a Frankish governor. In some other mountain districts the Roman inhabitants long maintained their independence, and in 534 a large part of the south of Spain, including the great cities of Cadiz, Cordova, Seville and New Carthage, was, with the good will of its Roman inhabitants, reunited to the Empire, which kept some points on the coast as late as 624. That is to say, the same work which the Empire was carrying on in Italy against the East Goths was at the same moment carried on in Spain against the West Goths. But in Italy the whole land was for a while won back, and the Gothic power passed away for ever. In Spain the Gothic power outlived the Roman power, but it outlived it only by itself becoming in some measure Roman. The greatest period of the Gothic power as such was in the reign of Leovigild (568-586). He reunited the Gaulish and Spanish parts of the kingdom which had been parted for a moment ; he united the Suevian dominion to his own; he overcame some of the independent districts, and won back part of the recovered Roman province in southern Spain. He further established the power of the crown over the Gothic nobles, who were beginning to grow into territorial lords. The next reign, that of his son Recared (586-6oi), was marked by a change which took away the great hindrance which had thus far stood in the way of any national union between Goths and Romans. The king and the greater part of the Gothic people em braced the Catholic faith. A vast degree of influence now fell into the hands of the Catholic bishops ; the two nations began to unite ; the Goths were gradually romanized and the Gothic language began to go out of use. In short, the Romance nation and the Romance speech of Spain began to be formed. The kingdom, however, still remained a Gothic kingdom. "Gothic," not "Roman" or "Spanish," is its formal title; only a single late instance of the use of the formula "regnum Hispaniae" is known. In the first half of the 7th century that name became for the first time geograph ically applicable by the conquest of the Roman coast of southern Spain. The Empire was then engaged in the great struggle with the Avars and Persians, and, now that the Gothic kings were Catholic, the great objection to their rule on the part of the Roman inhabitants was taken away. The modern Span ish nation is the growth of the long struggle with the Mussulmans, which followed the overthrow of the Visigothic kingdom in 71i. Nevertheless, the Goths hold altogether a different place in Span ish memory from that which they hold in Italian memory. In Italy the Goth was but a momentary invader and ruler. In Spain the Goth supplies an important element in the modern nation. And that element has benn neither forgotten nor despised. Part of the unconquered region of northern Spain, the land of Asturia, kept for a while the name of Gothia, as did the Gothic possessions in Gaul and in the Crimea. The name of the people who played so great a part in all southern Europe, and who actually ruled over so large a part of it has now wholly passed away; but it is in Spain that its historical impress is to be looked for.
Among the West Goths written laws had already been put forth by Euric. Alaric II. (484-507) put forth a Breviarium of Roman law for his Roman subjects; but the great collection of West Gothic laws dates from the later days of the monarchy, being issued by King Recceswinth about 654. Of special Gothic histories, besides that of Jordanes, already so often quoted, there is the Gothic history of Isidore, archbishop of Seville, a special source of the history of the West Gothic kings down to Svinthala (6 21-631) . Not f o : special facts, but for a general estimate, no writer is more instructive than Salvian of Marseilles in the 5th century, whose work De Gubernatione Dei is full of passages con trasting the vices of the Romans with the virtues of the bar barians, especially of the Goths. In all such pictures we must allow a good deal for exaggeration both ways, but there must be a ground-work of truth. The chief virtues which the Catholic presbyter praises in the Arian Goths are their chastity, their piety according to their own creed, their tolerance towards the Catholics under their rule, and their general good treatment of their Roman subjects. He even ventures to hope that such good people may be saved, notwithstanding their heresy. For the Gothic language see below. (E. A. F.) There is now an extensive literature on the Goths, and among the principal works may be mentioned: T. Hodgkin, Italy and her Invaders (Oxford, 188o-99) ; F. Dahn, Die Konige der Germanen (1861-99) ; E. von Wietersheim, Geschichte der Volkerwanderung (i88o-8i) ; R. Pallmann, Die Geschichte der Volkerwanderung (Gotha, 1863-64) ; B. Rappaport, Die Einfalle der Goten in das romische Reich (Leipzig, 1899), and K. Zeuss, Die Deutschen and die Nachbar stdmme (Munich, 1837) . Other works which may be consulted are: E. Gibbon, Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire, edited by J. B. Bury 0896—i9oo) ; J. B. Bury, History of the Later Roman Empire (i88q); P. Villari, Le Invasion barbariche in Italia (Milan, i9oi) ; and F. Martroye, L'Occident a t'epoque byzantine: Goths et Vandales Gothic Language.—Our knowledge of the Gothic language is derived almost entirely from the fragments of a translation of the Bible which is believed to have been made by the Arian bishop Wulfila or Ulfilas (d. 383) for the Goths who dwelt on the lower Danube. The mss. which have come down to us and which date from the period of Ostrogothic rule in Italy (489-555) contain the Second Epistle to the Corinthians complete, together with more or less considerable fragments of the four Gospels and of all the other Pauline Epistles. The only remains of the Old Tes tament are three short fragments of Ezra and Nehemiah. There is also an incomplete commentary on St. John's Gospel, a fragment of a calendar, and two charters (from Naples and Arezzo, the latter now lost) which contain some Gothic sentences. All these texts are written in a special character, which is said to have been invented by Wulfila. It is based chiefly on the uncial Greek alpha bet, from which indeed most of the letters are obviously derived, and several orthographical peculiarities, e.g., the use of ai for e and ei for i reflect the Greek pronunciation of the period. Other letters, however, have been taken over from the Runic and Latin alphabets. Apart from the texts mentioned above, the only remains of the Gothic language are the proper names and occasional words which occur in Greek and Latin writings, together with some notes, including the Gothic alphabet, in a Salzburg ms. of the loth century, and two short inscriptions on a torque and a spearhead, discovered at Buzeo (Walachia) and Kovel (Volhynia) respec tively. The language itself, as might be expected from the date of Wulfila's translation, is of a much more archaic type than that of any other Teutonic writings which we possess, except a few of the earliest Northern inscriptions. This may be seen, e.g., in the better preservation of final and unaccented syllables and in the re tention of the dual and the middle (passive) voice in verbs. It would be quite erroneous, however, to regard the Gothic fragments as representing a type of language common to all Teutonic nations in the 4th century. Indeed the distinctive characteristics of the language are very marked, and there is good reason for believing that it differed considerably from the various northern and west ern languages, whereas the differences among the latter at this time were probably comparatively slight (see TEUTONIC LAN GUAGES). On the other hand, it must not be supposed that the language of the Goths stood quite isolated. Procopius (Vand. i. 2) states distinctly that the Gothic language was spoken not only by the Ostrogoths and Visigoths but also by the Vandals and the Gepidae ; and in the former case there is sufficient evidence, chiefly from proper names, to prove that his statement is not far from the truth. With regard to the Gepidae we have less in formation; but since the Goths, according to Jordanes (cap. r 7), believed them to have been originally a branch of their own nation, it is highly probable that the two languages were at least closely related. Procopius elsewhere (Vand. i. 3; Goth. i. i, iii. 2) speaks of the Rugii, Sciri and Alani as Gothic nations. The fact that the two former were sprung from the north-east of Germany renders it probable that they had Gothic affinities, while the Alani, though non-Teutonic in origin, may have become gothicized in the course of the migration period.
In the 4th and 5th centuries the Gothic language—using the term in its widest sense—must have spread over the greater part of Europe together with the north coast of Africa. It disappeared, however, with surprising rapidity. There is no evidence for its survival in Italy or Africa after the fall of the Ostrogothic and Vandal kingdoms, while in Spain it is doubtful whether the Visi goths retained their language until the Arabic conquest. In central Europe it may have lingered somewhat longer in view of the evidence of the Salzburg ms. mentioned above. Possibly the in formation there given was derived from southern Hungary or Transylvania where remains of the Gepidae were to be found shortly before the Magyar invasion (889). According to Wala fridus Strabo (de Reb. Eccles. cap. 7) also, Gothic was still used in his time (the 9th century) in some churches in the region of the lower Danube. Thenceforth the language seems to have sur vived only among the Goths (Goti Tetraxitae) of the Crimea, who are mentioned for the last time by Ogier Ghislain de Busbecq, an imperial envoy at Constantinople about the middle of the i6th century. He collected a number of words and phrases in use among them which show clearly that their language was still essentially a form of Gothic. (H. M. C.) The more important phonetic changes are : (I) e became i always; e.g., wigs (road) . But i later became e (written ai in Ulfilas' orthography) before r, h; e.g., hairdeis (herdsman).
(2) It became o (written au) before r, h; e.g., baurgs. (In Ulfilas' orthography the letters transcribed e, o are used for long vowels only.) (3) ai, au became e, o; but the digraphs were still written.
(4) short vowels (except u) in final syllables were lost; e.g., dags, gasts : da3az, -3 astiz.
(5) final nasals and explosives were lost; e.g., sunu (Acc. sing.) : Skr. sunum.
(6) final long vowels (including those which had become final through the last change) were (in general) shortened (i>i, o>a, e>a) ; e.g., waurhta (I sing. pret.) : (N. inscr.) worahto; liuba (N. sing. fem.) : (N. inscr.) liubu.
(7) voiced spirants when final (also before s) became voice less; e.g., bap (3 sing, pret. of bidjan).
All these changes which occurred before or during the 4th century rendered the Gothic language hardly intelligible to a person who spoke a northern or western language. At a later date Gothic underwent further changes which do not appear in Ulfilas' version (c. 37o A.D.), or only to a slight extent.
(I) i became a close e- sound; e.g., Venethae (Jordanes), for Winid-.
(2) u became a close o sound: e.g., `P6yoc (Procopius) : Rugii; later o became a in unaccented syllables, e.g., uraz (for -us).
(3) e became i; e.g., leikeis for lekeis (not infrequently in the MSS.).
(4) o became u; e.g., sunjus for sunjos.
The Gothic and Scandinavian (q.v.), languages have one or two characteristics in common, the most important of which is the treatment of intervocalic j and w in a number of words. In the former case we find Goth. -ddj- and O.N. -ggi-, whereas in German a diphthong developed; e.g., Goth. twaddje (Gen. of twai, "two"). In the latter case both Goth. and Scand. had ggw while a diphthong appears both in English and German, e.g., Goth. triggws ("true"), Anglo-Saxon getriowe, getriewe, Old High Ger man gitriuwi. Gothic and Scandinavian preserved the ending -t in the 2 singular of the strong Preterite, while English and German had a different form with the stem of the plural. By the 4th or 5th century the Scandinavian languages had far more resemblance to English and German than to Gothic.
See H. C. von der Gabelentz and J. Loebe, Ulfilas (Altenburg and Leipzig, 1836-46) ; E. Bernhardt, Vulfila oder die gotische Bibel (Halle, 1875) . For other works on the Gothic language see J. Wright, A Primer of the Gothic Language (Oxford, 1892) , p. 143 f. To the references there given should be added: C. C. Uhlenbeck, Etymo logisches Worterbuch d. got. Sprache (Amsterdam, and ed., i9o1) ; F. Kluge, "Geschichte d. got. Sprache" in H. Paul's Grundriss d. germ. Philologie (end ed., vol. i., Strassburg, 1897) ; W. Streitberg, Gotisches Elementarbuch (Heidelberg, 1897) ; Th. von Grienberger, Beitriige zur Geschichte d. deutschen Sprache u. Literatur, xxi. 185 ff.; L. F. A. Wimmer, Die Runenschrift (Berlin, 1887), p. 61 ff.; G. Stephens, Handbook to the Runic Monuments (London, 1884), p. 203 ; F. Wrede, Ober die Sprache der Wandalen (Strassburg, 1886). For further references see K. Zeuss, Die Deutschen, P. 432 f. (where earlier refer ences to the Crimean Goths are also given) ; F. Kluge, op. cit., p. 515 ff.; O. Bremer, ib. vol. iii., p. 822; and W. Streitberg, Gotisches Elementarbuch, 1920.