cause that
produced it lies concealed among the various motives which actuate the
conduct of unsettled barbarians. Either a pestilence or a famine, a
victory or a defeat, an oracle of the gods or the eloquence of a daring
leader, were sufficient to impel the Gothic arms on the milder climates
of the south. Besides the influence of a martial religion, the numbers
and spirit of the Goths were equal to the most dangerous adventures.
The use of round bucklers and short swords rendered them formidable in
a close engagement; the manly obedience which they yielded to hereditary
kings, gave uncommon union and stability to their councils; [20] and
the renowned Amala, the hero of that age, and the tenth ancestor of
Theodoric, king of Italy, enforced, by the ascendant of personal merit,
the prerogative of his birth, which he derived from the Anses, or demi
gods of the Gothic nation. [21]

[Footnote 19: See a fragment of Peter Patricius in the Excerpta
Legationum and with regard to its probable date, see Tillemont, Hist,
des Empereurs, tom. iii. p. 346.]

[Footnote 20: Omnium harum gentium insigne, rotunda scuta, breves
gladii, et erga rages obsequium. Tacit. Germania, c. 43. The Goths
probably acquired their iron by the commerce of amber.]

[Footnote 21: Jornandes, c. 13, 14.]

The fame of a great enterprise excited the bravest warriors from all the
Vandalic states of Germany, many of whom are seen a few years afterwards
combating under the common standard of the Goths. [22] The first motions
of the emigrants carried them to the banks of the Prypec, a river
universally conceived by the ancients to be the southern branch of the
Borysthenes. [23] The windings of that great stream through the plains
of Poland and Russia gave a direction to their line of march, and a
constant supply of fresh water and pasturage to their numerous herds
of cattle. They followed the unknown course of the river, confident in
their valor, and careless of whatever power might oppose their progress.
The Bastarnae and the Venedi were the first who presented themselves;
and the flower of their youth, either from choice or compulsion,
increased the Gothic army. The Bastarnae dwelt on the northern side of
the Carpathian Mountains: the immense tract of land that separated the
Bastarnae from the savages of Finland was possessed, or rather wasted,
by the Venedi; [24] we have some reason to believe that the first of
these nations, which distinguished itself in t