The Maces of the Danube. 231 



forward by Aryan Slavs and Tataric Huns who 

 attacked them from the east. Throughout the 

 classic period of antiquity, and until the fifth 

 century after Christ, the Teutonic family appears 

 far to the eastward of its present position. In 

 the time of Herodotos, and down to the age of 

 Constantine, the inhabitants of Thrace now 

 the centre of European Turkey were blue- 

 eyed Goths, called Getee by the classic historians. 

 Pretty much the whole of Turkey and southern 

 Russia were German in those days ; and, as Don- 

 aldson conjectured, it is possible that the people 

 known to the ancients as Skythians may have 

 been no other than Goths. 



Thus, as if to illustrate how completely all Ar- 

 yan Europe is made up out of the same race- 

 elements, we find that the lower Danube, for at 

 least a thousand years, was German territory ; 

 and, except on the very improbable supposition 

 that its old population has been entirely exter- 

 minated or transferred westward, we have every 

 reason to believe that there is much German 

 blood there at the present day. 



While this region was still in the hands of the 

 Germans, at the beginning of the second century 

 after Christ, the legions of the Emperor Trajan 

 passed beyond the Danube, and, conquering the 



