city was taken by the Goths, and the first notable
Balkan massacre is recorded, over 100,000 people being put to the sword
within its walls. Later in the campaign the Emperor Decius was defeated
and killed by the Goths in a battle waged on marshy ground near the
mouth of the Danube. This was the second of the three great disasters
which marked the doom of the Roman Empire: the first was the defeat of
Varus in Germany; the third was to be the defeat and death of the
Emperor Valens before Adrianople. Bulgaria, the scene of the second and
third disasters, can accurately be described as having provided the
death-arena for Rome.

[Illustration: WOMEN OF PORDIM, IN THE PLEVNA DISTRICT]

From the defeat of Decius (A.D. 251) may be said to date the Gothic
colonisation of the Balkan Peninsula. True, after that event the Goths
often retired behind the Danube for a time, but, as a rule, thereafter
they were steadily encroaching on the Roman territory, carrying on a
maritime war in the Black Sea as well as land forays across the Danube.
It was because of the successes of the Goths in the Balkans that the
decision was ultimately arrived at to move the capital of the Roman
Empire from Rome to Constantinople. During the first Gothic attack,
after the death of Decius, Byzantium itself was threatened, and the
cities around the Sea of Marmora sacked. An incident of this invasion
which has been chronicled is that the Goths enjoyed hugely the warm
baths they found at Anchialus--"there were certain warm springs renowned
above all others in the world for their healing virtues, and greatly did
the Goths delight to wash therein. And having tarried there many days
they thence returned home." Now Anchialus is clearly identifiable as
the present Bulgarian town of Bourgas, a flourishing seaport connected
by rail with Jambouli and still noted for its baths.

In a later Gothic campaign (A.D. 262), based on a naval expedition from
the Black Sea, Byzantium was taken, the Temple of Diana at Ephesus
destroyed, and Athens sacked. A German historian pictures this last
incident:

The streets and squares which at other times were enlivened only
by the noisy crowds of the ever-restless citizens, and of the
students who flocked thither from all parts of the Graeco-Roman
world, now resounded with the dull roar of the German bull-horns
and the war-cry of the Goths. Instead of the red cloak of the
Sophists, and the dark hoods of the P