GOTHS. The historical position of the Gothic nation needs to be marked out with special care, both on account of various lax popular uses of the Gothic name, and also on account of much legendary history and many rash ethnological speculations, ancient and modern, which have gathered round the true history of the Gothic people. An ignorant age used the words Goth and Gothic as vague names of contempt for anything that was thought rude and barbarous. A hardly less ignorant but better disposed age used the word Gothic in an equally vague way, but without the same feeling of contempt, for anything which was thought to be mediaeval or "romantic," as opposed to "classical." The name came also to be used as a philological or ethnological term; we heard of " Gothic nations," " Gothic languages," &c, meaning "Teutonic" in the widest sense. The name was also, first scornfully, then respectfully, applied to a style of architecture which has some claim to be called Teutonic as opposed to Greek or Roman, but which has nothing whatever to do with the Goths as a nation. Long before this, two European sovereigns who had nothing whatever to do with the national Goths, took the title of King of the Goths out of a mere accidental like-ness of names. All these uses of the Gothic name must be carefully distinguished from the history of the true national Goths who play so great a part in Europe from the 3d to the 8th century of our era. The Goths may on many grounds claim the foremost place among the Teutonic nations which had a share in the break-up of the Roman power. They were among the earliest, if not quite the earliest, of the Teutonic nations to establish themselves within the empire, as distinguished from merely ravaging its frontiers. Their history too is closely connected with the geography of the whole empire. Their first historical appearance was in the East; their great historical settle-ments were made in the West. No Teutonic people fills so great a place in the political and military history of the 4th, 5th, and 6 th centuries, and no Teutonic people has left behind it such early remains of a written native litera-ture. The real greatness of the Goths quite accounts for the many vague uses of the Gothic name. Alike in scorn and in honour, the Goths have been, not unreasonably, taken as the representatives of the whole Teutonic race. The wonderful thing is that a people who played so great a part for several ages should have wholly passed away. The Goths have not for many ages existed anywhere as a distinct nation, nor have they given-an abiding name to any part of Europe. Franks, Angles, Saxons, Burgun-diaus, Frisians, Thuringians, Lombards, Bavarians, perhaps Vandals, are all visible on the modern map. So several parts of Europe have at different times been known as GotMa; but the name was never borne by any large country, and it has nowhere lasted down to modern times.

The chief ancient authority for the early history of the Goths is their national historian Jordanis, who chiefly followed the Gothic history of Cassiodorus the minister of Theodoric, and the lost history of Ablavius. (On the value of Jordanis's writings see Pallmann, Geschichte der Volher-loanderwig, i. 23.) But he is careless and uncritical, and, like other national historians, is full of mythical elements in the early part. He has to be tested throughout by the contemporary Roman and Greek writers from the 3d cen-tury to the 6th. Among these, perhaps the first place is due to Ammianus in the 4th century and to Procopius in the 6th.

The first certain historical appearance of the Goths is in the lands north of the lower Danube in the 3d century of our era. For any earlier account of them we have to go either to mythical stories or to ingenious guesses and infer-ences. There are a remarkable number of national and legendary names which have more or less of likeness to the name Goth; and this likeness has naturally led to an un-usual number of theories. The Goths first appear in history in the ancient land of the Getce; and this geographical fact, combined with the likeness of the names, has naturally caused Getce and Goths to be looked on as the same people. The identification is as old as our first historical mention of the Goths (¿Elius Spartianus, Ant. Gar., 10). Claudian always speaks of the Goths as Getce. So does the national historian Jordanis (cap. v.). The identity is mentioned doubtingly by Procopius (Bell. Vand., i. 2; cf. Bell. Goth., v. 4). It is strongly maintained by Jacob Grimm (Geschichte der Deutschen Sprache, capp. ix., xviii.), but is rejected by nearly all later writers. A more famous legend, which has derived its chief currency from Jordanis, brings the Goths first of all from Scandinavia (see Gibbon, c. x.; Geijer's History of Sweden, c. x.). There is a so-called East and West Gothland in Sweden, but the connexion of these lands with the Goths of Roman history is more than doubtful. Ptolemy (ii. 11, 35) places the Tovrai in Scandia, and Procopius (Bell. Goth., ii. 15) knew the Tavrol among the inhabitants of Thoule; but he clearly did not look on them as Goths (see Zeuss, Die Deidschen, 500, 511; Grimm, p. 312). Then there is the god Gedt (see Kemble's Saxons in England, i. 370), and the Gedtas, who figure in Beowulf, and elsewhere in Old-English writings. The Traveller's Song (34, 115, 177) distinctly distinguishes Goths and Gedtas, and couples the latter with the Swedes. Pliny (Nat. Hist., iv. 11) places Getce and Gaudce together on the lower Danube. His Gaudce may possibly be Goths ; if so, they are distinguished from the Getce. Then there are the Jutes of Old-English history, the Guttones, Gothon.es, Gothini (see Latham, Germania, Epilegomena xxxviii. et seqq.). Pytheas, according to Pliny (Nat. Hist., xxxvii. 7; cf. iv. 14) placed the Guttones on the south coast of the Baltic (that seems to be his meaning), and rules them to be a German people. This carries the name back to the time of Alexander. Ptolemy also (iii. 5, 20) has TvOwves in Sarmatia on the Vistula. Tacitus (Germania, 43) distin-guishes the German Gothones in the same region from the Celtic Gothini, whom he places seemingly nearer to the Carpathians. Tacitus moreover not only speaks of the Gothones or Gotones as a people, but mentions (Ann., ii. 62) a particular man of the nation, Catualda by name, as having restored the independence of his people after it had been overthrown by Maroboduus. With this hint, it is perhaps not too much to infer with Aschbach (Westgothen, 2d ed.) and Zeuss (136) that for Bovrove<s in Strabo (vii. 1), who are mentioned among the nations subject to Maroboduus, we should read TOVTOVV;. And there is no doubt that names like Getce, Gethce, Guddce, even Gothi, lived on almost to modern times, first as national names, then as names of contempt, in Poland, Lithuania, and Prussia (see Latham, and Zeuss, 672). Latham asserts the identity of the names Getce, Gothi, and Gothones, but he holds (see especially p. 42 of his Epilegomena) that both Gothones and Getce were Lithuanian, and that the Teutonic Goths took the name of the people whom they had conquered. They would, on this view, be Goths only in the sense in which Englishmen are Britons.

On the whole, it seems that there is no trustworthy evidence for a migration of the Goths from Scandinavia, and that the idea was suggested only by the likeness of name between the true Goths and the Gauts or Gedtas of Swedish history. The application of the name Gothland to the island Gotland, as well as to the conti-nental Gauthiod, is a further mistake. Nor does there seem to be any reason for making Goths and Getce the same. But the identification of the Goths with the Gothones, VOVTOVK, Guttones, on the south coast of the Baltic (which is accepted by Pallmann and Dahn) has much more to be said for it. Gothi and Gothones are strictly the same name ; the double form is usual in the Latin shapes of Teutonic names. But the whole history of the Goths in their north-ern seats is summed up in the personal history of Catualda, who, after delivering his people from Maroboduus, was himself overthrown by the Hermunduri. The continuous and certain history of the Gothic nation begins in the Roman Dacia.

The question now comes, Which of the nations which are historically connected with the Goths had any closer connexion with them than that of common Teutonic origin 1 Setting aside Getse and other doubtful theories, the real Gothic name is used by the Greek and Latin writers in a wider and in a narrower sense. We must also bear in mind the vague way in which the ancient writers used national names, and their fondness for using obsolete names. Thus the Goths and other Teutonic nations are spoken of as Scythians and Sarmatians. Procopius, in an evidently well-considered passage (Bell. Vand., i. 2), speaks of the Goths as having been formerly called Saupo/xdrai KOX MeAay^Aatvot, names which come out of Herodotus's description of the regions where the Goths first appear. But he gives it as the definite result of his own observations that Goths,—by this name he always means specially the East-Goths,— Vandals, West-Goths, and Gepidas (r^cuSes, with an evident intention to give the word a Greek meaning) were originally one nation, speaking one Gothic language. The only question is about the Vandals. The Gepidae are com-monly acknowledged as a branch of the Goths, and Jor-danis (17) has a legend which implies their kindred. The Taifake (Ammianus, xxxi. 19), the Bastarnaa, Peucini, and other tribes are also reckoned among the Gothic races. In other passages Procopius speaks of several other nations, as the Alans, Bogi, and Scirri, as Gothic, but he does not seem to be in the same way pronouncing a definite judg-ment. Among all these, the historical Goths, who play a part in European history by that name, consist of the East and West Goths, and of the small division called Tetraxitas. The division into East and West Goths does not appear in the earlier writers, as Am.mian.us and Zosimus, but we find it both in Procopius and in Jordanis. Instead of East-Goths and West-Goths, we read in Ammianus, Zosimus, and Claudian of Greuthungi and Tervingi. These seem to be (see Aschbach, 21; Zeuss, 406 ; Kopke, 103) the strictly national names of the two divisions, which took the names of East and West Goths from their geographical position in the lands which they entered. There is an exact parallel in England, where the national name of the Gewissas gives way to the geographical name of West-Saxons. Jor-danis indeed doubts whether the East-Goths were so called from their eastern position, or from a king Ostrogotha. Strange to say, this Ostrogotha seems to be a real person, and not a mere mythical eponym. Ou'o-Tpi-yortfos (Procop., Bell. Goth., iv. 27) is an historical person at a later date, and the name is borne in a feminine shape by one of the daughters of Theodoric. The history of the East and West Goths, as far as the empire is concerned, falls naturally into three periods. In the 3d century they are still settled out-side the empire, and appear as invaders and ravagers of the Roman territory from outside. After an interval in which they almost sink out of notice, they appear again within the bounds of the empire, in various relations of alliance and enmity, marching to and fro, but not making any last-ing settlement. It is not till the 5th century that they begin to form settled powers. During their wandering stage they appear mainly in the Eastern empire. But neither they nor any other Teutonic people founded any permanent settlement within its borders. The historical settlements of the Goths are the short and brilliant dominion of the East-Goths in Italy, and the more lasting dominion of the West-Goths in Gaul and Spain.

After the first vague mention of the Goths under Antoninus Caracalla, they begin to play a distinct part in the reign of Alexander Severus. They were then in Dacia, and received a tribute or subsidy of some kind (Petrus Patricius, 124, ed. Bonn). The next emperor, Maximin, is claimed by Jordanis (15) as himself of Gothic birth, but we may suspect the usual confusion with the Getce. The narrative of Jordanis begins from this point to put on a more his-torical character, and his account is helped out by various notices in the Augustan History. In the reign of Philip (244-248 A.D.) they passed the Danube and ravaged Mcesia, and in 251 the emperor Decius fell in battle against them (see Zosimus, i. 19 e¿ seqq.). From this time they ravaged eastern Europe and western Asia far and wide (251-268). They carried on their warfare by sea, and reached as far east as Trebizond. And it seems to have been now that the first permanent Gothic settlement was made, though not strictly within the lands of the empire. This was in the Tauric Chersonesos or Crim. Here their settlement lasted for many ages, and they became allies rather than subjects of the empire in the reign of Justinian. Within the empire the Gothic inroads met with repulses at several points, especially from the local forces of Athens under the historian Dexippus (Trebellius, Gallienus 13, and the fragment of Dexippus himself). At last, in 269, the Goths suffered a decisive defeat from the emperor Claudius at Naissus in Dardania, which formed an epoch in Gothic history. It answers to the repulse of the Saxons from Britain by the elder Theodosius. The first attempt at Gothic settlement south of the Danube had been premature. It had to be repeated at a later time with greater success.

Further victories over the Goths are attributed to Aure-lian. But the chief event of his reign was one which amounted to a legal acknowledgment of Gothic occupation north of the Danube. The Roman legions were withdrawn from Dacia, and the name of Trajan's great conquest was transferred to the land south of the Danube (274). That is, the great river was established as the boundary between the Roman and Gothic dominions. The wisdom of this cession is shown hj its being followed by a period of ninety years in which the peace between the Goths and the empire was seldom seriously broken. The chief interruption was during the reign of Constautine, when the Guthic king Araric invaded the empire, and, after some momentary successes, was driven back. In the middle of the 4th century a great power arose under the East-Gothic king Ermanaric (less correctly Hermanric; the name is the same as Eormenric, in the royal line of Kent), of the house of the Amali, which was reckoned to be the noblest among the Goths. Erman-aric has become a great figure in Teutonic legend, and it is not easy to say how far legend has built upon history, and how far so-called history has drawn from legend. But that Ermanaric was a real man, and the founder of a great dominion, is plain from the few words of Ammianus (xxxi. 3). Yet there is something unsatisfactory in the way in which we read vague accounts of the greatness of his power, with hardly a glimpse of himself personally. The period assigned to his reign is full of stirring events, in which we get a clear conception of much lesser Gothic chiefs, but none of Ermanaric himself. Jordanis (23) claims for him a vast dominion stretching from the Danube to the Baltic, and he is specially emphatic on the subjection of the Slavonic nations to the rule of the Gothic over-lord. With regard to the Gothic nations, we can see that the rule of Ermanaric was a mere overlordship. The West-Goths appear as a distinct people, with the power of making war and peace on their own account. But they had no kings; their great chief Athanaric appears only as "judge" (Ammianus, xxvii. 5 ; xxxi. 3), answering to our ealdorman or heretoga (cf. Jordanis, 26); and along with him are other West-Gothic chiefs, specially his rival Frithi-gern. We hear of a civil war between these two rivals (Socrates, iv. 33), and it is more certain that Athanaric made war within the Roman border as an ally of the usur-per of Procopius in 365, and afterwards made peace with the emperor Valens. By this time Christianity was mak-ing swift advances among the Goths. According to the view of some modern writers (Kopke, 123; Pallmann, ii. 63), the outlying Gothic settlement in Crim had been Christian and Catholic from the beginning; but now Christianity in its Arian form began to be gradually accepted by the great mass of the Gothic nation. This was mainly the work of the teaching of Ulfila (see ULFILA), the Gothic apostle and translator of the Scriptures into the Gothic tongue (Sozomen, iv. 24). According to some accounts (Pallmann, i. 71), he had, to avoid persecution, led a Christian colony south of the Danube (348), who settled peaceably at Nicopolis, and are hence known as Moesogoths (seemingly the Gothi Miuores of Jordanis, 51). Later, in 370, there was another great persecution, in which Athanaric, the special enemy of everything Roman, appears also as the enemy of the Christians, while Frithigern is their friend (Sozomen, vi. 37; Socrates, iv. 33). The distinction between Chris-tian and heathen Goths remains of political importance for some time. But both East and West Goths had fully embraced Arianism long before the end of the 5th century, while the Goths of Crim seem to have remained Catholic, and received Catholic bishops from Saint John Chrysostom, and afterwards from Justinian.

Towards the end of the reign of Ermanaric several causes joined together to break his great dominion asunder. There were clearly signs of division between East and West Goths, between Christians and heathens, as well as discon-tents among the subject nations. These causes of division were now strengthened by pressure from without. Now began the first of those movements of the Turanian races into the lands north of the Danube, which have had such an effect on the history of south-eastern Europe down to our own time. The Huns pressed on the new dominion of the Goths, which was already beginning to break in pieces. Ermanaric died at the age, it is said, of 110, by the hands of subject princes stirred to wrath by his cruelties (Jor-danis, 24). All thought of a lasting Gothic dominion north of the Danube died with him. With his fall the move-ments south of that river begin again on a great scale.

From this time the history of the East and West Goths parts asunder, to be joined together again only incidentally and for a season. The great mass of the East-Goths stayed north of the Danube, and passed under the overlordship of the Hun. They do not for the present play any import-ant part in the affairs of the empire. The great mass of the West-Goths crossed the Danube into the Roman pro-vinces, and there played a most important part in various characters of alliance and enmity. The great migration was in 376, when they were allowed to pass as peaceful settlers under their chief Frithigern. His rival Athanaric seems to have tried to maintain his party for a while north of the Danube in defiance of the Huns; but he had presently to follow the example of the great mass of the nation. The peaceful designs of Frithigern were meanwhile thwarted by the ill-treatment which the Goths suffered from the Roman officials, which led first to disputes and then to open war. In 378 the Goths won the great battle of Adrianople, in which the emperor Valens was killed. His successor Theodosius the Great made terms with them in 381, and the mass of the Gothic warriors entered the Roman service as fcederati. Many of their chiefs were in high favour; but it seems that the orthodox Theodosius showed more favour to the still remaining heathen party among the Goths than to the larger part of them who had embraced Arian Christianity. Athanaric himself came to Constan-tinople in 381; he was received with high honours, and had a solemn funeral when he died. His saying is worth re-cording, as an example of the effect which Roman civilization had on the Teutonic mind. " The emperor," he said, " was a god upon earth, and he who resisted him would have his blood on his own head."

The death of Theodosius in 395 broke up the union between the West-Goths and the empire. Dissensions arose between them and the ministers of Arcadius; the Goths threw off their allegiance, and chose Alaric as their king. This was a restoration alike of national unity and of national independence. The royal title had not been borne by their leaders in the Roman service. Alaric's position is quite different from that of several Goths in the Roman service, who appear as simple rebels (see Kopke, 128). He was of the great West-Gothic house of the Balti (bold), a house second in nobility only to that of the Amali. His whole career was taken up with marchings to and fro within the lands, first of the Eastern, then of the Western empire. The Goths are under him an independent people under a national king; their independence is in no way interfered with if the Gothic king, in a moment of peace, accepts the office and titles of a Roman general. But under Alaric the Goths make no lasting settlement. In the long tale of in trigue and warfare between the Goths and the two imperial courts which fills up this whole time, cessions of territory are offered to the Goths, provinces are occupied by them, but as yet they do not take root anywhere; no Western land as yet becomes Gothia. Alaric's designs of settlement seem in his first stage to have still kept east of the Adriatic, in Illyricum, possibly in Greece, Towards the end of his career his eyes seem fixed on Africa (see Kopke, 128).

Greece was the scene of his great campaign in 396, the second Gothic invasion of that country. In this campaign the religious position of the Goths is strongly marked. The Arian appeared as an enemy alike to the pagan majority and the Catholic minority; but he came surrounded by monks, and his chief wrath was directed against the heathen temples (Hertzberg, GescAichte Griechenlands, iii. 391). His Italian campaigns fall into two great divisions, that of 402-3, when he was driven back by Stilicho, and that of 408-10, after Stilicho's death. In this second war he thrice besieged Rome (408, 409, 410). The second time it suited a momentary policy to set up a puppet emperor of his own, and even to accept a military commission from him. The third time he sacked the city, the first time since Brennus that Rome had been taken by an army of utter foreign-ers. The intricate political and military details of these campaigns are of less importance in the history of the Gothic nation than the stage which Alaric's reign marks in the history of that nation. It stands between two periods of settlement within the empire and of service under the empire. Under Alaric there is no settlement, and service is quite secondary and precarious; after his death in 410 the two begin again in new shapes.





Contemporary with the campaigns of Alaric was a barbarian invasion of Italy, which, according to one view, again brings the East and West Goths together. The great mass of the East-Goths, as has been already said, became one of the many nations which were under vassalage to the Huns; but their relation was one merely of vassalage. They remained a distinct people under kings of their own, kings of the house of the Amali and of the kindred of Ermanaric (Jordanis, 48). They had to follow the lead of the Huns in war, but they were also able to carry on wars of their own ; and it has been held (see KSpke, 139 ; Pallmann, ii. 173, 277) that among these separate East-Gothic enterprises we are to place the invasion of Italy in 405 by Radagaisus (whom Pallmann writes Ratiger, and takes him for the chief of the heathen part of the East-Goths). One chronicler, Prosper, makes this invasion pre-ceded by another in 400, in which Alaric and Radagaisus appear as partners. The paganism of Radagaisus is certain. The presence of Goths in his army is certain, but it seems dangerous to infer that his invasion was a national Gothic enterprise.
Under Ataulf, the brother-in-law and successor of Alaric, another era opens, the beginning of enterprises which did in the end lead to the establishment of a settled Gothic monarchy in the West. The position of Ataulf is well marked by the speech put into his mouth by Orosius. He had at one time dreamed of destroying the Roman power, of turning Romania into Gothia, and putting Ataulf in the stead of Augustus ; but he had learned that the world could be governed only by the laws of Rome, and he had deter-mined to use the Gothic arms for the support of the Roman power. And in the confused and contradictory accounts of his actions (for the story in Jordanis cannot be reconciled with the accounts in Olympiodorus and the chroniclers), we can see something of this principle at work throughout. Gaul and Spain were overrun both by barbarian invaders and by rival emperors. The sword of the Goth was to win back the lost lands for Rome. And, amid many shiftings of allegiance, Ataulf seems never to have wholly given up the position of an ally of the empire. His marriage with Placidia, the daughter of the great Theodosius, was taken as the seal of the union between Goth and Roman, and, had their son Theodosius lived, a dynasty might have arisen uniting both claims. But the career of Ataulf was cut short at Barcelona in 415, by his murder at the hands of another faction of the Goths. The reign of Sigeric was momentary. Under Wallia in 418 a more settled state of things was established. The empire received again, as the prize of Gothic victories, the Tarraconensis in Spain, and Novempopulana and the Narbonensis in Gaul. The " second Aquitaine," with the sea-coast from the mouth of the Garonne to the mouth of the Loire, became the West-Gothic kingdom of Toulouse. The dominion of the Goths was now strictly Gaulish; their lasting Spanish dominion does not yet begin.

The reign of the first West-Gothic Theodoric (418-451) shows a shifting state of relations betwen the Roman and Gothic powers ; but, after defeats and successes both ways, the older relation of alliance against common enemies was again established. At last Goth and Roman had to join together against the common enemy of Europe and Christendom, Attila the Hun. But they met Gothic warriors in his army. By the terms of their subjection to the Huns, the East-Goths came to fight for Attila against Christendom at Chalons, just as the Servians came to fight for Bajazet against Christendom at Nicopolis. Theodoric fell in the battle (451). After this momentary meeting, the history of the East and West Goths again separates for a while. The kingdom of Toulouse grew within Gaul at the expense of the empire, and in Spain at the expense of the Suevi. Under Euric (466-488) the West-Gothic power again became largely a Spanish power. The kingdom of Toulouse took in nearly all Gaul south of the Loire and west of the Rhone, with all Spain, except the north-west comer, which was still held by the Suevi. Provence alone remained to the empire. The West-Gothic kings largely adopted Roman manners and culture; but, as they still kept to their original Arian creed, their rule never became thoroughly acceptable to their Catholic subjects. They stood therefore at a great disadvantage when a new and aggressive Catholic power appeared in Gaul through the conversion of the Frank Chlodwig. Toulouse was, as in days long after, the seat of an heretical power, against which the forces of northern Gaul marched as on a crusade. In 507 the West-Gothic king Alaric fell before the Frankish arms at Bougie, near Poitiers, and his kingdom, as a great power north of the Alps, fell with him. That Spain and a fragment of Gaul still remained to form a West-Gothic kingdom was owing to the intervention of the East-Goths under the rule of the greatest man in Gothic history.

When the Hunnish power broke in pieces on the death of Attila, the East-Goths recovered their full independence. They now entered into relations with the empire, and were settled on lands in PannoDia. During the greater part of the latter half of the 5th century, the East-Goths play in south-eastern Europe nearly the same part which the West-Goths played in the century before. They are seen going to and fro, in every conceivable relation of friendship and enmity with the Eastern Roman power, till, just as the West-Goths had done before them, they pass from the East to the West. They are still ruled by kings of the house of the Amali, and from that house there now steps forward a great figure, famous alike in history and in romance, in the person of Theodoric son of Theodemir. Born about 454, his childhood was spent at Constantinople as a hostage, where he was carefully educated. The former part of his life is taken up with various disputes, intrigues, and wars within the Eastern empire, in which he has as his rival another Theodoric, son of Triarius, and surnamed Strabo. This older but lesser Theodoric seems to have been the chief (not king) of that branch of the East-Goths which had settled within the empire at an earlier time. Theodoric the Great, as he is sometimes distinguished, is sometimes the friend, sometimes the enemy, of the empire. In the former case he is clothed with various Roman titles and offices, as patrician and consul; but in all cases alike he remains the national East-Gothic king. It was in both characters together that he set out in 488, by commission from the emperor Zeno, to recover Italy from Odoacer. By 493 Ravenna was taken; Odoacer was killed by Theodoric's own hand; and the East-Gothic power was fully estab-lished over Italy, Sicily, Dalmatia, and the lands to the north of Italy. In this war the history of the East and West Goths begins again to unite, if we may accept the witness of one writer (Anon. Vales. 728) that Theodoric was helped by West-Gothic auxiliaries. The two branches of the nation were soon brought much more closely together, when, through the overthrow of the West-Gothic kingdom of Toulouse, the power of Theodoric was practically extended over a large part of Gaul and over nearly the whole of Spain. A time of confusion followed the fall of Alaric, and, as that prince was the son-in-law of Theodoric, the East-Gothic king stepped in as the guardian of his grandson Amalaric, and preserved for him all his Spanish and a fragment of his Gaulish dominion. Toulouse passed away to the Frank; but the Goth kept Narbonne and its district, the land of Septimania—the land which, as the last part of Gaul held by the Goths, kept the name of Gothia for many ages. While Theodoric lived, the West-Gothic king-dom was practically united to his own dominion. He seems also to have claimed a kind of protectorate over the Teutonic powers generally, and indeed to have practically exercised it, except in the case of the Franks.

The East-Gothic dominion was now again as great in extent, and far more splendid, than it could have been in the time of Ermanaric. But it was now of a wholly dif-ferent character. The dominion of Theodoric was not a barbarian but a civilized power. His twofold position ran through everything. He was at once national king of the Goths, and successor, though without any imperial titles, of the Roman emperors of the West. The two nations, dif-fering in manners, language, and religion, lived side by side on the soil of Italy; each was ruled according to its own law, by the prince who was, in his two separate characters, the common sovereign of both. The picture of Theodoric's rule is drawn for us in the state papers drawn up in his name and in the names of his successors by his Roman minister Cassiodorus. The Goths seem to have been thick on the ground in northern Italy; in the south they formed little more than garrisons. In Theodoric's theory the Goth was the armed protector of the peaceful Roman; the Gothic king had the toil of government, while the Roman consul had the honour. All the forms of the Roman administration went on, and the Roman polity and Roman culture had great influence on the Goths themselves. The rule of the prince over two distinct nations in the same land was necessarily despotic; the old Teutonic freedom was necessarily lost. Such a system as that which Theodoric established needed a Theodoric to carry it on. It broke in pieces after his death.

On the death of Theodoric (526) the East and West Goths were again separated. The few instances in which they are found acting together after this time are as scattered and incidental as they were before. Amalaric succeeded to the West-Gothic kingdom in Spain and Septimania. Provence was added to the dominion of the new East-Gothic king Athalaric, the grandson of Theodoric through his daughter Amalasontha. The weakness of the East-Gothic position in Italy now showed itself. The long wars of Justinian's reign (535-555) recovered Italy for the empire, and the Gothic name died out on Italian soil. The chance of forming a national state in Italy by the union of Roman and Teutonic elements, such as those which arose in Gaul, in Spain, and in parts of Italy under Lombard rule, was thus lost. The East-Gothic kingdom was destroyed before Goths and Italians had at all mingled together. The war of course made the distinction stronger; under the kings who were chosen for the purposes of the war national Gothic feel-ing had revived. The Goths were now again, if not a wander-ing people, yet an armed host, no longer the protectors but the enemies of the Roman people of Italy. The East-Gothic dominion and the East-Gothic name wholly passed away. The nation had followed Theodoric. It is only once or twice after his expedition that we hear of Goths, or even of Gothic leaders, in the eastern provinces. From the soil of Italy the nation passed away almost without a trace, while the next Teutonic conquerors stamped their name on the two ends of the land, one of which keeps it to this day.

The West-Gothic kingdom lasted much longer, and came much nearer to establishing itself as a national power in the lands which it took in. But the difference of race and faith between the Arian Goths and the Catholic Romans of Gaul and Spain influenced the history of the West-Gothic kingdom for a long time. The Arian Goths ruled over Catholic subjects, and were surrounded by Catholic neighbours. The Franks were Catholics from their first conversion; the Suevi became Catholics much earlier than the Goths. The African conquests of Belisarius gave the Goths of Spain, instead of the Arian Vandals, another Catholic neighbour in the form of the restored Roman power. The Catholics everywhere preferred either Roman, Suevian, or Frankish rule to that of the heretical Goths; even the unconquerable mountaineers of Cantabria seem for a while to have received a Frankish governor. In some other mountain districts the Roman inhabitants long maintained their independence, and in 534 a large part of the south of Spain, including the great cities of Cadiz, Cordova, Seville, and New Carthage, was, with the good will of its Roman inhabitants, reunited to the empire, which kept some points on the coast as late as 624. That is to say, the same work which the empire was carrying on in Italy against the East-Goths was at the same moment carried on in Spain against the West-Goths. But in Italy the whole land was for a while won back, and the Gothic power passed away for ever. In Spain the Gothic power outlived the Roman power, but it outlived it only by itself becoming in some measure Roman. The greatest period of the Gothic power as such was in the reign of Leovigild (567-586). He reunited the Gaulish and Spanish parts of the kingdom which had been parted for a moment; he united the Suevian dominion to his own; he overcame some of the independent districts, and won back part of the recovered Roman province in southern Spain. He further established the power of the crown over the Gothic nobles, who were beginning to grow into territorial lords.





The next reign, that of his son Recared (586-601), was marked by a change which took away the great hindrance which had thus far stood in the way of any national union between Goths and Romans. The king and the greater part of the Gothic people embraced the Catholic faith. A vast degree of influence now fell into the hands of the Catholic bishops; the two nations began to unite; the Goths were gradually Romanized, and the Gothic language began to go out of use. In short, the Romance nation and the Romance speech of Spain began to be formed. The Goths supplied the Teutonic infusion into the Roman mass. The king-dom, however, still remained a Gothic kingdom. "Gothic," not "Roman" or "Spanish," is its formal title; only a single late instance of the use of the formula "regnum Hispanise" is known. In the first half of the 7th century that name became for the first time geographically applicable by the conquest of the still Roman coast of southern Spain. The empire was then engaged in the great struggle with the Avars and Persians, and, now that the Gothic kings were Catholic, the great objection to their rule on the part of the Roman inhabitants was taken away. The Gothic nobility still remained a distinct class, and held, along with the Catholic prelacy, the right of choosing the king. Union with the Catholic Church was accompanied by the introduction of the ecclesiastical ceremony of anointing, a change de-cidedly favourable to elective rule. The growth of those later ideas which tended again to favour the hereditary doc-trine had not time to grow up in Spain before the Maho-metan conquest (711). The West-Gothic crown therefore remained elective till the end. The modern Spanish nation is the growth of the long struggle with the Mussulmans; but it has a direct connexion with the West-Gothic king-dom. We see at once that the Goths hold altogether a different place in Spanish memory from that which they hold in Italian memory. In Italy the Goth was but a momentary invader and ruler; the Teutonic element in Italy comes from other sources. In Spain the Goth sup-plies an important element in the modern nation. And that element has been neither forgotten nor despised. Part of the unconquered region of northern Spain, the land of Asturia, kept for a while the name of Gothia, as did the Gothic possessions in Gaul and in Crim. The name of the people who played so great a part in all southern Europe, and who actually ruled over so large a part of it, has now wholly passed away; but it is in Spain that its historical impress is to be looked for.

Of Gothic literature in the Gothic language we have the Bible of Ulfila, and some other religious writings and fragments (see notice of Gothic Language below). Of Gothic legislation in Latin, we have the edict of Theodoric of the year 500, lately edited by Bluhme in the Monumento, Germanice Histórica; and the books of Varies of Cassiodorus may pass as a collection of the state papers of Theodoric and his immediate successors. Among the West-Goths written laws had already been put forth by Euric (466-484). The second Alaric (484-507) put forth a Breviarium of Roman law for his Roman subjects; but the great collection of West-Gothic laws dates from the later days of the monarchy, being put forth by King Rekisvinth about 654. This code gave occasion to some well-known comments by Mont-esquieu and Gibbon, and have been discussed by Savigny (Geschichte des Romischen Rechts, ii. 65) and various other writers. They are printed in the old collections of Linden-brog and Heineccius. They do not seem to have been yet reprinted in the Monumenta Germanice. Of special Gothic histories, besides that of Jordanis, already so often quoted, there is the Gothic history of Isidor, archbishop of Seville, a special source of the history of the West-Gothic kings down to Siunthala (621-631). But all the Latin and Greek writers contemporary with the days of Gothic predominance make their constant contributions. Not for special facts, but for a general estimate, no writer is more instructive than Salvian of Marseilles in the 5th century, whose work De Gubernatione Dei is full of passages con-trasting the vices of the Romans with the virtues of the barbarians, especially of the Goths. In all such pictures we must allow a good deal for exaggeration both ways, but there must be a ground-work of truth. The chief virtues which the Catholic presbyter praises in the Arian Goths are their chastity, their piety according to their own creed, their tolerance towards the Catholics under their rule, and their general good treatment of their Roman subjects. He even ventures to hope that such good people may be saved, notwithstanding their heresy. All this must have had some ground-work of truth in the 5th century, but it is not very wonderful if the later West-Goths of Spain had a good deal fallen away from the doubtless somewhat ideal picture of Salvian.

Of modern writers dealing specially with Gothic history may he mentioned Manso (Geschichte des Osl-Gothischen Seiches in Italien, Breslau, 1824); Aschbach (Geschichte der Westgothen, Frankfort, 1827); Kopke (Die Anfänge des Konigsthums bei den Gothen, Berlin, 1854; Dahn (Die Könige der Germanen, Munich and Würzburg, 1861-1871); Pallmann (Geschichte der Volkerwanderung, Gotha and Weimar, 1863-1864). It is hard to find any work in English dealing specially with Gothic history, though much may be
learned from writers like Gibbon and Milman, who deal with the Goths simply as part of some larger subject. Several chapters in the third book of Milman's History of Latin Christianity are of special importance in this way. (E. A. F.)

GOTHIC LANGUAGE.

By this name, which may be taken generally as denoting the idioms of the various divisions of the Gothic nation, is more particularly meant the language exhibited in certain fragments of a translation of the Bible and other minor documents, which, although preserved in manuscripts not dating farther back than perhaps the 5th century, and clearly written in Italy during the rule of the East-Goths, are commonly assumed to have originated among the West-Goths at the time when they were seated in Moesia, and to be therefore older by at least a century than the manu-scripts themselves. It is chiefly due to this assumption that the more distinctive name of Meesogothie language is often used, in England and elsewhere, as well as the simpler Gothic. The latter name, however, seems to be more appro-priate, in spite of the great probability of the assumption referred to,—since it is, for obvious reasons, utterly impos-sible to prove that the language of the West-Goths at that time differed from that of the East-Goths, or, even if there was any difference, to show that our manuscripts represent the original forms of the speech of their supposed West-Gothic author. Indeed, according to a fragment of a Gothic calendar preserved in one of the Milan manuscripts, which gives the name of the Gothic people as Gut-thiuda (thiuda, " people "), the most correct form of the name would be Gotic. This spelling at least has obviously greater claims to authenticity than Gothi, Gotthi, or TOTOOI, and other similar forms most commonly (although not exclusively) used by Latin and Greek writers, whose want of familiarity with the sounds of the Gothic language is often abundantly manifest. From Gut-thiuda we may infer with certainty that the Goths called themselves Gutos, the corresponding adjective being gutisks.

We have no direct evidence of the character of the Gothic language until the time of the above-mentioned manuscripts; but some conclusions regarding a more archaic state of the language may be drawn from a careful examination of the numerous words borrowed from Gothic at a much earlier period by some of the Finnish tribes originally dwelling in the interior of Russia. Ifc may be safely assumed that some at least of these words still retain forms of the Gothic language from as early a period as perhaps the 1st or 2d century B.C. By the same date the Goths, as well as the other Teutonic nations, were no doubt already in possession of the Runic alphabet, an adaptation of a parti-cular form of the Latin characters to their special wants and uses. No traces of this alphabet, however, have been left, except the already mentioned short inscription of the Bucharest ring, a list of the Gothic names of these runes, preserved in a Vienna manuscript of the 9th century, and some letters in Ulfila's Gothic alphabet, which soon sup-planted the less convenient Runic characters, and so helped to inaugurate the short literary period of the Gothic language so closely connected with the name of that prelate.

Ulfila, or rather Vulfila (310-380 A.D., see ULFILA), was a man of the most profound learning. He not only invented, as has been said, a new alphabet for his literary purposes, but was also able to preach and to write in Latin and Greek as well as in his native Gothic language, and he is reported to have left behind him a great number of tracts and translations in these three idioms. The principal work of his life, however, was his translation of the Bible, parts of which seem to have reached us in the famous Codex Argenteus, now at Upsala, and in several minor fragments at Wolfenbiittel (Codex Carolinus) and Milan (Codices Ambrosiani, including some leaves now kept at Rome and Turin). In this way we possess the greater part of the gospels, considerable portions of the epistles, and a few fragments of the Old Testament; there is also a fragment of a commentary on St John's gospel, commonly called Skeireins (or "explanation"), and the fragment of a calendar which has been already mentioned as containing the ori-ginal form of the name of the Gothic people. As to the authorship of the last two fragments nothing can be said with certainty; and certain differences in language and manner of translation make it doubtful even whether the fragments of the Old Testament can be traced to the same origin as those of the New. The bulk of the whole, how-ever, may safely be ascribed to Ulfila, for it can hardly be assumed that the same work would have been done twice over in so short a space of time as that lying between the days of Ulfila and the date of our manuscripts. The whole character of the translation too seems to indicate a man of Ulfila's mental power and theological learning. Although it cannot be denied that several alterations of the original have been introduced into our texts at a later time, it is certain both that the author carefully interpreted the Greek text (which was of course the fundamental source of his work), and also that he consulted, and in not a few places followed, the old Latin versions where his own ideas seemed to differ from those of his Greek authorities.

As a specimen of the language, and of Ulfila's mode of translation, we may insert here his version of the Lord's prayer:—
Atta unsar thu in himinam. Weihnai namo thein. Qimai thiudinassus theins. Wairthai wilja theins swe in himina jah ana
airthai. Hlaif unsarana thana sinteinan gif uns himma daga. Jah afiet uns thatei skulans sijaima, swaswe jah weis afletam thaim skulam unsaraim. Jah ni briggais uns in fraistuhnjai, ak lausais uns af thamma uhilin.

The Gothic language did not very long survive the times of Ulfila. From Mcesia, where it had gained its highest literary culture, it disappeared together with the Goths, when they were driven from these parts by later migrations/ In the western portions of Europe, that is, in Italy, France, and Spain, whither it had been carried by the emigrants, the Gothic language seems to have died out even sooner than the Gothic nationality, giving way to the overpowering influence of Latin, and leaving behind it only a few indistinct relics in some proper names and other words that had been received into that victorious language. It was only in a remote spot of the Crimea that it continued to exist until the 16th century, when the last remains of a Gothic people were detected, and a few specimens of their language were gathered by Augerius de Busbeck, a Dutch traveller, who visited the eastern parts of Europe in the years 1554-1564:.

It is well known that the literary remains of Gothic are (with the exception, perhaps, of a few Runic inscriptions belonging to the Scandinavian languages) by several centuries the oldest specimens of Teutonic speech, and therefore have a particular value for the student of the history of that family of languages. Notwithstand-ing this fact, it would be altogether wrong to regard Gothic as the common source of the more modern stages of these idioms. Although very archaic in many of its forms and sounds, it is in these still far removed from the original features of the common language, as that was spoken before any separation of Teutonic tribes had taken place. Most nearly related to it seem to have been the Scandinavian languages, which are now generally assumed to have formed, together with Gothic, the so-called eastern branch of the Teutonic family, while English, Frisian, and Low and High German belonged to a western division. The latter is chiefly marked by the introduction of a considerable number of forms and sounds of a less archaic stamp, while the eastern idioms are found to have adhered more closely to the original forms. Thus, almost the only distinct inno-vation in the sound-system of the eastern branch is the insertion of a g sound into the groups iuw, auiv, uw in accented syllables, as in Gothic triggws, Old Norse tryggr, compared with Old High Ger-man and Old Saxon triutvi, Old English treowe, try we, '' true "; or Old Norse hbggva, to hew, Old High German and Old Saxon hauwan, Old English heawan. "Western Teutonic, on the other hand, is at once discernible by its doubling all single consonants ending a short root-syllable before y (w, r, I); thus Old English theccan, Old Saxon thekkian, Old High German deeken, to cover (literally "to thatch"), but Gothic thakjan, Old Norse thekja; or Old English sellan, Old Saxon sellian, Old High German sellen, to sell, but Gothic saljan, Old Norse selja. As to the inflexional system, the accusative plural of nouns has in Western Teutonic been replaced by the nominative form, as in Old English dagas, Old Saxon dagos, Old High German tagd, days; Gothic still has dagos for the nominative, and dagans for the accusative, the Old Norse forms being dagar and daga respectively. The same change is found in the adjectives, as Old English and Old Saxon blinde, Old High German blinte, blind (caxi), corresponding to both Gothic blindai and blindans, Old Norse blindir and blinda. On the other hand, the formation of the plural of certain neutral substantives by adding an r, as in Old English lonibru, lambs, Old High German l&mbir (still extant in the English plural children) is entirely lost in Eastern Teutonic (Gothic lamba, Old Norse lomb). Another instance of change is to be seen in the loss of the dative case of the reflective pronoun (Gothic sis, Old Norse ser) in Western Teutonic, the corre-sponding forms of the personal pronoun of the 3d person being used instead (Old English him, hire, &c.) Western Teutonic has also introduced the use of the genitive forms of the same personal pronoun instead of the possessive pronoun (Gothic seins, Old Norse sinn) when the possessor is denoted by a feminine or a plural (Old English has gone even farther by dropping the possessive pro-noun altogether). In the verb, Western Teutonic has replaced the original form of the 2d person singular of the past indicative ending in -t (as in Gothic and Old Norse wast, gaft, thou wert, gavest) by the corresponding form of the subjunctive (Old English wcere, gedfe, Old Saxon and Old High German wdri, gdbi). Western Teutonic has also lost the faculty of deriving passive or intransitive verbs from active verbs or adjectives by adding the syllable -na- after the root-syllable, as in Gothic fullnan, Old Norse fullna, to be filled, as compared with Gothic fulls, Old Norse fullr, full; or Gothic fulljan, Old Norse fylla, to fill. Only a very few instances of this formation are left in Western Teutonic, such as Old English wceenan, to awaken [intrans. ], or leornian, German lernen, to learn (cf. Old English weccan, German wecken, to awaken [trans.], and German lehren, to teach). As to the vocabulary, we may mention the loss of the verb din, to do, in Gothic and Scandi-navian. The most conspicuous peculiarity in the syntax is the frequent use of the dative (or perhaps originally the instrumental case) instead of the accusative in Eastern Teutonic.

Among the Teutonic languages Gothic holds by far the foremost rank as regards the regularity of its sound-system and its inflexions. The vowel system is remarkable for the absence of the short e and o sounds, except in a few places where £ and 8 (spelt ai and au) occur under certain consonantal influences. Um,laut, or assimilation of root-vowels to a following a-, i-, or u- sound, is not discernible in Gothic. Thus we find only five short vowels, a, (ai), i, (au), u; five long vowels a, e, l (spelt ei), 5, u; and three diphthongs ai, au, and iu. There may have been other distinctions of vowel-qualities besides those expressed in spelling, but we have no means of definitely settling this question; so much, however, can be said, that the long vowels, and especially e and 6, probably had the close sounds, since these are often interchanged with ei and u in our manuscripts. The spelling of the consonantal system is also very simple. Besides y, w, r, I and three nasal sounds (the guttural nasal being expresssed by g after the Greek fashion), we find three voiceless stops, p, t, k (q being only a combination of kw); three voiced stops, b, d, g; four voiceless spirants, /, s, ih, h; and only one distinct sign for a voiced spirant, z. This system of spelling, however, is obviously insufficient to express all the sounds of the language,—an insufficiency partly due to the fact that the transcrip-tion of the Gothic speech-sounds was chiefly an imitation of the Greek graphic system, which, at least in Ulfila's time, had become rather imperfect, inasmuch as different sounds developed out of one sound of an earlier period were still often expressed by the same sign (just as in the English orthography of the present day). It is highly probable, for instance, that the signs of 6, d, g of the Gothic alphabet not only expressed the sounds of voiced stop consonants (mcdice), but also represented the sounds of voiced spirants, such as English v and soft th, or North German g after a vowel (these values being the only ones left to the Modern Greek signs ff, y, 8). Hence the regular change of b, d final after a vowel into /, th, as in gaf, I gave, fromgiban, to give; or bath, I bade, from bidjan, to bid. Great regularity prevails also in the inflexional system. In the substantival and adjectival declensions the instrumental case has become extinct by an early confusion with the dative (the case commonly called dative being, in fact, a mixture of forms of the original dative and the instrumental and local cases), while in the Western branch of Teutonic it was still in frequent use. At the same time, Gothic is the only Teutonic idiom that has still pre-served, in a few cases, the vocative in a form distinct from that of the nominative (fisks, fish, for instance, has fisk in the voc). The adjectival declension is remarkable for the retention of special forms of the i- and u- stems, which in all other Teutonic languages have been transferred to the inflexion of the ja- stems. In the pronominal inflexion the instrumental case has been kept distinct in a few instances, such as the, hve (the latter form being the same as Eng-lish why). There are also some relics of the dual number left in the 1st and 2d personal pronouns. As for the verb, Gothic is quite unique in retaining the old formation of the passive voice by means of simple derivation (as in bairada, bairanda, he is, they are borne, Greek cpeperai, <pepovrcu), the dual number of the 1st and 2d persons throughout the whole active voice (bairos, bairats, we, you two bear, in the indicative, or bairaiva, bairaits in the subjunctive, or beru, beruts, we, you two bore [ind.j, and bereiva, bereits [subj.] along with the plural forms bairam, bairith, &c), and the 3d person of the imperative (as bairadau, bairandau, he, they shall Bear, Greek cpepera, tpepovruv). The different verbal classes are of course the same as va the other cognate idioms; but they are kept more completely distinct in Gothic, for it is only there that the reduplication has been preserved intact in the past of the reduplicative verbs, Gothic haihald, I held, for instance, corresponding to such shortened forms as Old Norse helt, Old English heold, Old Saxon held, and Old High German helt, healt, Melt. Gothic again is the only language that seems to give us a clue to the explanation of the formation of the past in weak verbs. There we find such plural forms as hausi-dedum, we heard, while in Old Norse we have simple heyr-Sum, in Old English hier-don, &c. Now, this -dedum would he exactly the corresponding form of the verb don, to do (lost in Gothic, as mentioned above), so that hausi-dedum must once have meant '' we did hear."

Notwithstanding all these instances of great antiquity we must be on our guard against the assumption that Gothic in all its features bears the same archaic stamp. In fact, it often goes farther than the other cognate idioms in dropping short final vowels. There are no traces left of the short vowels originally ending a- or i- stems in declension; thus, dags from daga-, day; haurn from horna-, horn; gasts from gasti-, guest; hugs from hugi-, mind; but there are many instances of the preservation of these vowels in the other languages, such as dagar, horna, gastir in Old Scandinavian Eunic inscriptions, or hyge in Old English, or hugi in Old Saxon and Old High German. Even the regularity of the inflexional system is often not archaic, but due to later assimilations of forms originally more distant than in Gothic. The most striking instance of this is perhaps the loss, in the verbal system, of the so-called grammatical change, that is, the transferring of a voiceless spirant into a voiced spirant after a syllable unaccented in the earliest time before the general Teutonic rule of fixing the accent on the root-syllables had come into use. This change (still discernible in such English forms as I was, we were) was fully developed in all other cognate idioms, as for instance in Old English, cf. ic woes, we wceron, or ceosaii, to choose, ic ceas, we curon, gccoren, &c., these forms standing for was, wezum, &c. Gothic has given up the voiced sound altogether, forming simply was, wesum, or kiusan, kaus, kusum, gakusans. It is only in some isolated words (such as fadar and brothar, corresponding to Sanskrit pilar and bhrd'tar), and some derivatives that even traces of this fundamental rale are now to be found in the Gothic language. (B. SI.)

Footnotes

The same form of the name seems to occur a second time in the
Runic inscription of the Bucharest ring, Gut-ann6m hailag, "dedicated
to the Goths' treasure." Of. H. F. Massmann, in Pfeiffer's G'ermania
(Vienna, 1857), ii. p. 209 sq.; and Ludv. Wimmer, Aarbtiger for

2 See Dr Wilh, Thomsen, JJeber den Einftuss der Germanischen Sprachen anf die Finnisch-Lappischen (Halle, 1870).
3 See especially Dr Ludv. Wimmer, Runeskriftens Oprindelse og Udvikling i JVorden, Copenhagen, 1874.
4 J. Zacher, Das Gothische Alphabet Vulfilas und das Rwnen-alphabet, Leipsic, 1855.
5 A few Gothic words and names occur among the subscriptions to two Latin charters, one of which is now preserved at Naples; tho other, formerly kept at Arezzo, is now lost.


See his report and word-lists, reprinted by Massmann, in Zeit-schrift für Deutsches A Uerthum, i. p. 345 seq. The words contained in these lists are not all intelligible, and some of them are clearly of Slavonic or Iranian origin, but others are decidedly Gothic as regards their form, thus schlipen, to sleep; criten, to weep; fyder, four; the j correct Gothic forms being slepan, gretan, fidvör.
H. Zimmer, " Ostgermanen und Westgermanen," in Zeitschrift

für Deutsches Alterthum, xix. p. 393 sq

3 See W. Weingaertner, Die Aussprache des Gothischen (Leipsic, 1658); F. Dietrich, Ueber die Aussprache des Gothischen (Marburg, 1862); H. Paul, " Zur Lautverschiebung," in Beitrage zur Geschichte der Deutschen Sprache und Literatur, i. 147 sq. (Halle, 1874).

E. Sievers, in Beiträge zur Geschichte der Deutsclien Sprache und Literatur, v. 101 sq. (Halle, 1878).
W. Braune, " Ueber den grammatischen Wechsel," in Beiträge, &c., i. 513 sq.; K. Verner, " Ueber eine Ausnahme der ersten Laut-verschiebung," in Zeitschrift für vergleichende Sprachwissenschaft, sxiii. 97 sq. (Berlin, 1877).