eing.
Goth, Guth, Yuth, signifies war. 'God' is the highest warrior, the Lord
of hosts, and the progenitor of the race, whether as an 'Eponym hero' or
as the supreme Deity. Physical force was their rude notion of Divine
power, and Tiu, Tiv, or Tyr, in like manner, who was originally the god
of the clear sky, the Zeus or Jove of the Greeks and Romans, became by
virtue of his warlike character, identical with the Roman Mars, till the
dies Martis of the Roman week became the German Tuesday.

Working their way down from Gothland and Jutland, we know not why nor
when, thrusting aside the cognate Burgunds, and the Sclavonic tribes whom
they met on the road, they had spread themselves, in the third century,
over the whole South of Russia, and westward over the Danubian Provinces,
and Hungary. The Ostrogoths (East-goths) lay from the Volga to the
Borysthenes, the Visigoths (West-goths?) from the Borysthenes to the
Theiss. Behind them lay the Gepidae, a German tribe, who had come south-
eastward with them, and whose name is said to signify the men who had
'bided' (remained) behind the rest.

What manner of men they were it is hard to say, so few details are left
to us. But we may conceive them as a tall, fair-haired people, clothed
in shirts and smocks of embroidered linen, and gaiters cross-strapped
with hide; their arms and necks encircled with gold and silver rings; the
warriors, at least of the upper class, well horsed, and armed with lance
and heavy sword, with chain-mail, and helmets surmounted with plumes,
horns, towers, dragons, boars, and the other strange devices which are
still seen on the crests of German nobles. This much we can guess; for
in this way their ancestors, or at least relations, the War-Geats, appear
clothed in the grand old song of Beowulf. Their land must have been
tilled principally by slaves, usually captives taken in war: but the
noble mystery of the forge, where arms and ornaments were made, was an
honourable craft for men of rank; and their ladies, as in the middle age,
prided themselves on their skill with the needle and the loom. Their
language has been happily preserved to us in Ulfilas' Translation of the
Scriptures. For these Goths, the greater number of them at least, were
by this time Christians, or very nearly such. Good Bishop Ulfilas,
brought up a Christian and consecrated by order of Constantine the Great,
had been labouring for years to convert his adopted countrymen from the