Athanaric (; ; died 381 ) was king of several branches of the Thervingian Goths for at least two decades in the fourth century.

The Gepids (; ; possibly, " giver " or gepanta ) were an East Germanic tribe who were closely related to the Goths.

Nonetheless, the written sources do not mention damages wrought by fire, save the Gardens of Sallust, which were situated close to the gate by which the Goths had made their entrance ; nor is there any reason to attribute any extensive destruction of the buildings of the city to Alaric and his followers.

According to Gregory of Tours ' account, Alaric was intimidated by Clovis into surrendering Syagrius to Clovis ; Gregory then adds that " the Goths are a timorous race.

Alaric was forced by his magnates to meet Clovis in the Battle of Vouillé ( Summer 507 ) near Poitiers ; there the Goths were defeated and Alaric slain, according to Gregory of Tours, by Clovis himself.

The Þiðrekssaga tells that the warrior Heime ( Hama in Old English ) takes sides against Eormanric, king of the Goths, and has to flee his kingdom after robbing him ; later in life, Hama enters a monastery and gives them all his stolen treasure.

" The movement spread in areas controlled by the Roman Empire and Arian Goths, and the Persian Empire ; it continued to develop in the Mediterranean and Middle East before and during the 2nd and 3rd centuries.

* Jūratė Statkutė de Rosales Balts and Goths: the missing link in European history, translation by Danutė Rosales ; supervised and corrected by Ed Tarvyd.

The Germanic Goths and Asiatic Huns were the first to arrive, invading in mid-century ; the Avars attacked in AD 570 ; and the Croatian tribes invaded in the early 7th century.

The garrison commander was killed in the violence, so Theodosius ordered the Goths to kill all the spectators in the circus as retaliation ; Theodoret, a contemporary witness to these events, reports:

* Charles XII, King of Sweden, the Goths and the Wends ;

* The Goths attack Adrianople ; they attempt to scale the city walls with ladders but are repelled by the defenders who drop lumps of masonry.

The Ostrogothic conquest under Theodoric the Great began in 488 ; although the Goths were Germanic, Theodoric supported Roman culture and government instead.

In June 251, Decius was killed in battle with the Goths ; immediately following this Trebonianus Gallus became Emperor.

The Goths, though partly tamed by Valens ' successor Theodosius I ( who accepted them once more as allies ), were to remain as a distinct entity within its frontiers ; sometimes allies ; other times enemies.

* Tamora – Queen of the Goths ; afterwards Empress of Rome

For example, Saturninus ' " How well the tribune speaks to calm my thoughts " ( 1. 1. 46 ); Tamora's vow to slaughter the Andronici at 1. 1. 450 – 455 ( thus absolving Saturninus from any involvement ); Aaron's soliloquy in 2. 1 ; Aaron's " Ay, and as good as Saturninus may " ( 2. 1. 91 ); Aaron's soliloquy in 2. 3 ; Tamora's " Now will I hence to seek my lovely Moor ,/ And let my spleenful sons this trull deflower " ( 2. 3. 190 – 191 ); Aaron's two asides in 3. 1 ( ll. 187 – 190 and 201 – 202 ); Lucius ' " Now will I to the Goths and raise a power ,/ To be revenged on Rome and Saturnine " ( 3. 1. 298 – 299 ); Marcus ' " O, heavens, can you hear a good man groan " speech ( 4. 1. 122 – 129 ); Young Lucius ' asides in 4. 2 ( ll. 6 and 8 – 9 ); Aaron's " Now to the Goths, as swift as swallow flies ,/ There to dispose this treasure in mine arms ,/ And secretly to greet the Empress ' friends " ( 4. 2. 172 – 174 ); and Tamora's " Now will I to that old Andronicus ,/ And temper him with all the art I have ,/ To pluck proud Lucius from the warlike Goths " ( 4. 4. 107 – 109 ).

They launched a major invasion of Gaul and northern Italy in 268, when the Romans were forced to denude much of their German frontier of troops in response to a massive invasion of the Goths from the east.

In the mid-6th century, the Byzantine historian Agathias of Myrina records, in the context of the wars of the Goths and Franks against Byzantium, that the Alemanni fighting among the troops of Frankish king Theudebald were like the Franks in all respects except religion, since

Alaric's first appearance was as the leader of a mixed band of Goths and allied peoples who invaded Thrace in 391, who were stopped by the half-Vandal Roman General Stilicho.

After a few centuries, following an incident where the Goths ' women successfully fended off a raid by a neighboring tribe, while the menfolk were off campaigning against Pharaoh Vesosis, the women formed their own army under Marpesia and crossed the Don, invading Asia.

With the end of western Roman power, the islands, to the extent that they were governed at all, were part of territories of Goths, Vandals, Saracens, before the Normans fortified Favignana in 1081.

Zosimus consistently refers to the migrants as " Scythians " ( unlike Ammianus, who refers to them as " Goths "), specifically stating at one point that, in addition, " Goths, Taifali and other tribes " were involved.

Whether these were consisted only of Goths is rather unlikely so the name " Scythians " by which the Greek sources called them ( a geographical definition ) seems more appropriate.

Similar editions had appeared for Aeschylus and Sophoclesthe only plays of theirs that survive today: " The rise of Goths and Tartars throughout the Roman world from the gutter to the throne, the destruction of libraries by choleric and fanatical popes and emperors, were unfavourable to the progress but not entirely fatal to the preservation of literary studies.

Under the influence of Constantius, Honorius issued the Edict of 418, which was designed to enable the Empire to retain a hold on the lands which were to be surrendered to the Goths.

After the Huns in the 4th century invaded the territories of the Gothic King Ermanaric, which at its peak stretched between the Danube and the Volga river, and from the Black to the Baltic Sea, thousands of Goths fled into the Balkans, defeating the Romans at the Battle of Adrianople and sacking Rome in 410, while thousands of Germans were crossing the Rhine.

By the fourth century, the Goths conquered Dacia, and were divided into at least two distinct groups separated by the Dniester River, the Thervingi, led by the Balti dynasty, and the Greuthungi, led by the Amali dynasty.

While many Goths were subdued and joined the ranks of the Huns, a group of Goths led by Fritigern fled across the Danube and revolted against the Roman Empire, winning a decisive victory at the Battle of Adrianople.

Meanwhile, the Goths were converted from paganism to Arian Christianity by the Gothic missionary Wulfila, who devised the Gothic alphabet to translate the Bible.

After their able leader Totila was killed at the Battle of Taginae, effective Ostrogothic resistance ended, and the remaining Goths were assimilated by the Lombards, another Germanic tribe, who invaded Italy and founded a Kingdom in the northern parts of the country in 567 AD.

In the first attested incursion in Thrace the Goths were mentioned as Boranoi by Zosimus, and then as Boradoi by Gregory Thaumaturgus.

At the time, there were at least two groups of Goths: the Thervingi and the Greuthungi.

Goths were subsequently heavily recruited into the Roman Army to fight in the Roman-Persian Wars, notably participating at the Battle of Misiche in 242.

Large numbers on both sides were killed but, at the critical point, the Romans tricked the Goths into an ambush by pretended flight.

Some 50, 000 Goths were allegedly killed or taken captive and their base at Thessalonika destroyed.

The Old East Norse term for both Goths and Gotlanders seems to have been Gutar ( for instance, in the Gutasaga and in the runic inscription of the Rökstone ).

Many Huns were employed as mercenaries by both East and West Romans and by the Goths.

* The Roman Empire is threatened by the Alemanni, Franks and Marcomanni in Germania, by the Goths in the Danube region ( Moesia and Thrace ) and Asia Minor, and by the Persians in the East.

The Goths had displaced the Sarmatians in the 2nd century from most areas near the Roman frontier, and by early medieval times, the Turkic migration marginalized East Iranian dialects, and assimilated the Saka linguistically.

In 378, their uncle, the Emperor Valens, was killed in battle with the Goths at Adrianople, and Gratian invited the general Theodosius to be emperor in the East.

After 238 AD, Moesia was frequently invaded or raided by the Dacian Carpi, and the East Germanic tribe of the Goths, who invaded Moesia in 250.

This may be because both languages were East Germanic and closely related ; scholars have pointed out in this context that Procopius refers to the Goths, Vandals, Visigoths, and Gepaedes as " Gothic nations " and opines that they " are all of the Arian faith, and have one language called Gothic ".

All four were Germanic peoples, with the Goths, Rugians and Scirii grouped by ethnologists within the East Germanic tribes.

* Gothic, sole East Germanic language which is attested by significant texts, usually considered to have been preserved for the Arian churches, while the Goths themselves spoke vulgar Latin dialects of their areas.

During the centuries following the Fall of Rome, as the schism between the dioceses loyal to the Pope of Rome in the West and those loyal to the other Patriarchs in the East grew, most of the Germanic peoples ( excepting the Crimean Goths and a few other eastern groups ) would gradually become strongly allied with the Catholic Church in the West, particularly as a result of the reign of Charlemagne.

In 376 the East faced an enormous barbarian influx across the Danube, mostly Goths who were refugees from the Huns.

Jordanes relates that the East Germanic tribe of Goths were led from Scandza by their king Berig.

* The Visigoths are described as Goths from the West and Ostrogoths as Goths from the East ( Ost

There are three theories as to what peoples built the walls: either the Sarmatians against the Scythians, or the Goths of Oium against the Huns, or the Early East Slavs against the nomads of the southern steppes.

In the East, the Goths and other tribes from modern Ukraine raided in great numbers over the Black Sea.

The eagle motif derives from East Asia and results from the participation of the forebears of the Goths in the Hunnic Empire, as in the fourth-century Gothic polychrome eagle-head belt buckle ( picture ) from South Russia.

A thousand years later, the numerous East Germanic tribes that claimed Scandinavian origins ( Lombards, Burgundians, Goths and Heruls ) rendered Scandinavia ( Scandza ) the name " womb of nations " in Jordanes ' Getica.

The first is that Haflingers descend from horses abandoned in the Tyrolean valleys in central Europe by East Goths fleeing from Byzantine troops after the fall of Conza in 555 AD.

With the ascension of Emperor Justin I, the end of the Acacian schism and the return of ecclesiastical unity with the East, several members of the Italian senatorial aristocracy began to favour closer ties to Constantinople as a balance to the Goths ' power.

That would force Justinian to concentrate the majority of his forces, including Belisarius, in the East, and allow the Goths to recover.