NO. I I THE RACES OF RUSSIA HRDLICKA 5 



Vandals and probably not far from the Vistula River. There they 

 remained for a time ; but when the number of people increased 

 greatly, Filimer, their king", " decided that the army of the Goths 

 with their families should move from that region," and " in search 

 of suitable homes and pleasant places they came to the land of 

 Scythia." (Jordanes, Getica, 551 A. D.) Whatever the details of 

 their invasion, it is certain that by the beginning of the third cen- 

 tury A. D., the Goths reached as far as the western parts of Scythia, 

 to the Black Sea and the Danube, as well as to the south of the 

 Carpathians. They then became known as the western and the 

 eastern Goths, or Visigoths and Ostrogoths ; and the latter, with 

 whom alone we are here concerned, were found at the beginning of 

 the fourth century ruling over the territory from the Carpathians 

 to the Sea of Azov. This rule they kept up until 375 A. D., when 

 their state under Hermanric, together with the remainder of Scythia, 

 was broken up by the invasion of the Huns. Most of the Ostrogoths 

 who survived sought refuge in the southwestern part of Europe; 

 while those who remained were subject to the Huns until after 

 Attila's death, or about 460, when they moved bodily into Pannonia, 

 granted to them by the Romans. 



However, the Goth sovereignty in southwestern Russia should 

 not be viewed as an occupancy of a waste or depopulated region by 

 a new race. The territories in question were peopled before, and 

 remained so after the period of Goth domination. And their popula- 

 tion was not Goth but in all probability Vendic or Slav, though there 

 are also mentioned the Callipidae (Gepidae), the Alans, and the 

 Heruli, who may have been some of Alpine and some of Nordic 

 extraction. The Goths were warlike northerners, who forcibly in- 

 vaded Scythia in considerable force for the time, and brought with 

 them their families. Due to their favorable original geographical 

 position and their sea activities they, much like the Germans of 

 to-day, were more advanced in culture and especially in military art 

 and equipment, than the inland populations that so far were rela- 

 tively only slightly affected by the rest of the world. As a conse- 

 quence the northmen found little difficulty in overrunning great 

 areas occupied by the sedentary as well as the nomadic primitive 

 tribes, which had little political unity and no adequate power of 

 resistance. Some such tribes could even be employed against others, 

 though of their own blood, and the invader finished by becoming the 

 ruler. We have excellent illustrations of similar processes else- 

 where, such as many centuries later on the American continent, in 



