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All this time the Goths and Scandinavians were either learning ideas of navigation from the Romans of the Mediterranean or the Greeks of the Black Sea, or they were inventing for themselves better ways of constructing ships; and although they propelled them mainly by oars, they used masts and sails as well.
The pressing invitation of the malecontents, who urged the king of the Goths to invade Italy, was enforced by a lively sense of his personal injuries; and he might especially complain, that the Imperial ministers still delayed and eluded the payment of the four thousand pounds of gold which had been granted by the Roman senate, either to reward his services, or to appease his fury.
Then began the work of destruction. The Goths ran in crowds through the city, wrecked private houses and public buildings and seized everything of value they could find.
In most respects they closely resembled the Gothic tribes, who, whether starting into historic life on the Euxine or the Danube, or faintly heard of by the Latins from the far off Baltic, filled with constant alarm the Roman statesmen of the fourth century; nor can the invasions of what we may call the maritime Goths be better introduced to the reader than by a rapid sketch of the previous triumphs of their kindred tribes over the Roman Empire.
They were betrayed by treachery or weakness; and the rapid march of the Goths scarcely allowed time for the escape of Belisarius to the coast of Sicily. At length a fleet and army were assembled for the relief of Ruscianum, or Rossano, a fortress sixty furlongs from the ruins of Sybaris, where the nobles of Lucania had taken refuge.
The movements of the Goths and Huns, the Vandals, the Cimri in a way, they had a like significance with this, but in results those migrations did far less in the history of the world; did less to prove the purpose of the world. I watched the forming of our caravan, and I saw again that canvas which I have mentioned, that picture of the savages who traveled a thousand years before Christ was born.
The great event of the reign of Valens was the irruption of the Huns into Europe, and the consequent invasion of the Goths, by whom Valens was defeated and slain in 378. In 476, after successive invasions of barbarians had disorganized the western part of the Empire, the line of phantom emperors at Rome came to an end.
"This opinion having been proclaimed and well received, Duke Hugh was unanimously raised to the throne, crowned on the 1st of July by the metropolitan and the other bishops, and recognized as king by the Gauls, the Britons, the Normans, the Aquitanians, the Goths, the Spaniards, and the Gascons.
The Goths had fled in all directions from their conquerors, taking with them such of their valuables as they could carry, some crossing the Pyrenees to France, some hiding in the mountain valleys, some seeking a place of refuge in the Asturias, a rough hill country cut up in all directions by steep, scarped rocks, narrow defiles, deep ravines, and tangled thickets.
Arianism long maintained a theological and political importance in the East and among the Goths and other nations converted by Arian missionaries.
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