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The Goths [a] were a Germanic people who played a major role in the fall of the Western Roman Empire and the emergence of medieval Europe. [1] [2] ...
Concerning the origin of the Goths before the 3rd century, there is no consensus among scholars. [ 1 ] [ 2 ] It was in the 3rd century that the Goths began to be described by Roman writers as an increasingly important people north of the lower Danube and Black Sea , in the area of modern Romania , Republic of Moldova , and Ukraine .
According to Jordanes, the Goths lived there for the reigns of about 5 kings, starting in about 1490 BC — a period long before Jordanes, and long before the Roman empire existed. [16] According to Jordanes, the Goths then moved to takeover the coastal region where the Ulmerugi lived.
[45] [46] 12,000 of Radagaisus' Goths were pressed into Roman military service, and others were enslaved. So many were sold into slavery by the victorious Roman forces that slave prices temporarily collapsed. [47] Only in 407 did Stilicho turn his attention back to Illyricum, gathering a fleet to support Alaric's proposed invasion.
Sometime during the spring of 537, the Goths marched on Rome with upwards of 100,000 men under the leadership of Witiges and laid siege to the city, albeit unsuccessfully. Despite outnumbering the Romans by a five-to-one margin, the Goths could not loose Belisarius from the former western capital of the Empire. [79]
The Goths also recruited mounted archers from the Alans and Sarmatians, and light sword cavalry from the Heruli and Taifali, although all of these also fielded lancers. [6] For a Gothic or Vandal nobleman the most common form of armour was a mail shirt, often reaching down to the knees, and an iron or steel helmet, often in a Roman Ridge helm ...
A more specific theory about the word Gautigoths is that it means the Goths who live near the river Gaut, [5] today's Göta älv (Old Norse: Gautelfr). [8] It might also have been a conflation of the word Gauti with a gloss of Goths. [9] In the 17th century the name Göta älv, 'River of the Geats', replaced the earlier names Götälven and ...
An important linguistic step was made by the Christian convert Ulfilas, who became a bishop to the Thervingi Goths in CE 341; he subsequently invented a Gothic alphabet and translated the scriptures from Greek into Gothic, creating a Gothic Bible, which is the earliest known translation of the Bible into a Germanic language.