of Scythia which in
their tongue are called Oium, whose great fertility pleased them
much. But there was a bridge there by which the army essayed
to cross a river, and when half of the army had passed, that
bridge fell down in irreparable ruin, nor could any one either
go forward or return. For that place is said to be girt round
with a whirlpool, shut in with quivering morasses, and thus by
her confusion of the two elements, land and water, Nature has
rendered it inaccessible. But in truth, even to this day, if you
may trust the evidence of passers-by, though they go not nigh
the place, the far-off voices of cattle may be heard and traces
of men may be discerned.

That part of the Goths therefore which under the leadership of
Filimer crossed the river and reached the lands of Oium,
obtained the longed-for soil. Then without delay they came to
the nation of the Spali, with whom they engaged in battle and
therein gained the victory. Thence they came forth as
conquerors, and hastened to the farthest part of Scythia which
borders on the Black Sea.

[Illustration: A PEASANT AT WORK, DISTRICT OF TSARIBROD]

The people whom these Teutonic Goths displaced were Slavs. The Goths
settled down first on the Black Sea between the mouths of the Danube and
of the Dniester and beyond that river almost to the Don, becoming thus
neighbours of the Huns on the east, of the Roman Empire's Balkan
colonies on the west, and of the Slavs on the north. It is reasonable to
suppose that to some extent they mingled their blood somewhat with the
Slavs whom they dispossessed, and that they came into some contact with
the Huns also. It was in the third century of the Christian era that
these Goths, who had been for some time subsidised by the Roman emperors
on the condition that they kept the peace, crossed the Danube and
devastated Moesia and Thrace. An incident of this invasion was the
successful resistance of the garrison of Marcianople--now Schumla--to
the invaders. In a following campaign the Goths crossed the Danube at
Novae (now Novo-grad) and besieged Philippopolis, a city which still
keeps its name and now, as then, is an important strategical point
commanding the Thracian Plain. (It was Philippopolis which would have
been the objective of the Turkish attack upon Bulgaria in 1912-1913 if
Turkey had been given a chance in that war to develop a forward
movement.) This