ds,
and enabled them to purchase the corn and wine of the more plentiful
provinces. These harmless Barbarians multiplied in obscure peace and the
profession of Christianity. [77]

[Footnote 74: On the subject of Ulphilas, and the conversion of the
Goths, see Sozomen, l. vi. c. 37. Socrates, l. iv. c. 33. Theodoret, l.
iv. c. 37. Philostorg. l. ii. c. 5. The heresy of Philostorgius appears
to have given him superior means of information.]

[Footnote 741: This is the Moeso-Gothic alphabet of which many of the
letters are evidently formed from the Greek and Roman. M. St. Martin,
however contends, that it is impossible but that some written alphabet
must have been known long before among the Goths. He supposes that
their former letters were those inscribed on the runes, which, being
inseparably connected with the old idolatrous superstitions, were
proscribed by the Christian missionaries. Everywhere the runes, so
common among all the German tribes, disappear after the propagation of
Christianity. S. Martin iv. p. 97, 98.--M.]

[Footnote 75: A mutilated copy of the four Gospels, in the Gothic
version, was published A.D. 1665, and is esteemed the most ancient
monument of the Teutonic language, though Wetstein attempts, by some
frivolous conjectures, to deprive Ulphilas of the honor of the work. Two
of the four additional letters express the W, and our own Th. See Simon,
Hist. Critique du Nouveau Testament, tom ii. p. 219-223. Mill. Prolegom
p. 151, edit. Kuster. Wetstein, Prolegom. tom. i. p. 114. * Note: The
Codex Argenteus, found in the sixteenth century at Wenden, near Cologne,
and now preserved at Upsal, contains almost the entire four Gospels.
The best edition is that of J. Christ. Zahn, Weissenfels, 1805. In 1762
Knettel discovered and published from a Palimpsest MS. four chapters of
the Epistle to the Romans: they were reprinted at Upsal, 1763. M. Mai
has since that time discovered further fragments, and other remains
of Moeso-Gothic literature, from a Palimpsest at Milan. See Ulphilae
partium inedi arum in Ambrosianis Palimpsestis ab Ang. Maio repertarum
specimen Milan. Ito. 1819.--M.]

[Footnote 76: Philostorgius erroneously places this passage under the
reign of Constantine; but I am much inclined to believe that it preceded
the great emigration.]

[Footnote 77: We are obliged to Jornandes (de Reb. Get. c. 51, p. 688)
for a short and lively picture of these lesser Goths. Gothi minores,
populus immensus, cum su