hilosophers, the skin-coats
of the barbarians fluttered in the breeze. Wodan and Donar had
gotten the victory over Zeus and Athene.

It was in regard to this capture of Athens that the story was first
told--it has been told of half a dozen different sackings since--that a
band of Goths came upon a library and were making a bonfire of its
contents when one of their leaders interposed:

"Not so, my sons; leave these scrolls untouched, that the Greeks
may in time to come, as they have in time past, waste their
manhood in poring over their wearisome contents. So will they
ever fall, as now, an easy prey to the strong unlearned sons of
the North."

In the ultimate result the Goths were driven out of Athens by a small
force led by Dexippus, a soldier and a scholar whose exploit revived
memory of the deeds of Greece in her greatness. The capture of Athens
deeply stirred the civilised world of the day, and "Goth" still survives
as a term of destructive barbarism.

A few years later (A.D. 269) the Goths began a systematic invasion of
the Balkan provinces of the Roman Empire, attacking the Roman territory
both by sea and by land. The tide of victory sometimes turned for a
while, and at Naissus (now Nish in Servia, near the border of Bulgaria)
the Goths were defeated by the Emperor Claudius. Their defeated army was
then shut up in the Balkan Mountains for a winter, and the Gothic power
in the Balkans temporarily crushed. The Emperor Claudius, who took the
surname Gothicus in celebration of his victory, announced it
grandiloquently to the governor of Illyricum:

_Claudius to Brocchus._

We have destroyed 320,000 of the Goths; we have sunk 2000 of
their ships. The rivers are bridged over with shields; with
swords and lances all the shores are covered. The fields are
hidden from sight under the superincumbent bones; no road is
free from them; an immense encampment of waggons is deserted. We
have taken such a number of women that each soldier can have two
or three concubines allotted to him.

[Illustration: IN THE HARVEST FIELDS NEAR SOFIA]

But the succeeding Emperor, Aurelian, gave up all Dacia to the Goths and
withdrew the Romanised Dacians into the province of Moesia--made up of
what is now Eastern Servia and Western Bulgaria. This province was
divided into two and renamed Dacia. One part, Dacia Mediterranea, had
for its capital Sardica, now Sofia, the capital o