21 Facts About Goths

1.

Goths were a Germanic people who played a major role in the fall of the Western Roman Empire and the emergence of medieval Europe.

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2.

Goths who entered the Empire by crossing the Danube inflicted a devastating defeat upon the Romans at the Battle of Adrianople in 378.

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3.

Under their king Theodoric the Great, these Goths established an Ostrogothic Kingdom in Italy at Ravenna.

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4.

Remnants of Gothic communities in Crimea, known as the Crimean Goths, lingered on for several centuries, although Goths would eventually cease to exist as a distinct people.

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5.

Goths are classified as a Germanic people in modern scholarship.

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6.

Goths'storians are not in agreement on the authenticity and accuracy of this account.

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7.

Goths are generally believed to have been first attested by Greco-Roman sources in the 1st century under the name Gutones.

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8.

Goths writes that the Gutones, Burgundiones, Varini, and Carini belong to the Vandili.

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9.

Goths described them as "ruled by kings, a little more strictly than the other German tribes".

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10.

The fact that the expanding Goths appear to have preserved their Gothic language during their migration suggests that their movement involved a fairly large number of people.

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11.

Goths won an important victory near the Nessos river, on the boundary between Macedonia and Thrace, the Dalmatian cavalry of the Roman army earning a reputation as good fighters.

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12.

Around 275 the Goths launched a last major assault on Asia Minor, where piracy by Black Sea Goths was causing great trouble in Colchis, Pontus, Cappadocia, Galatia and even Cilicia.

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13.

Goths who gained prominent positions in the Roman military include Gainas, Tribigild, Fravitta and Aspar.

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14.

Goths suffered heavy losses while serving Theodosius in the civil war of 394 against Eugenius and Arbogast.

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15.

In 395, following the death of Theodosius I, Alaric and his Balkan Goths invaded Greece, where they sacked Piraeus and destroyed Corinth, Megara, Argos, and Sparta.

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16.

Goths was succeeded by Sigeric and then Wallia, who succeeded in having the Visigoths accepted by Honorius as foederati in southern Gaul, with their capital at Toulouse.

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17.

Goths were briefly reunited under one crown in the early 6th century under Theodoric, who became regent of the Visigothic kingdom following the death of Alaric II at the Battle of Vouille in 507.

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18.

John of Gothia, the metropolitan bishop of Doros, capital of the Crimean Goths, briefly expelled the Khazars from Crimea in the late 8th century, and was canonized as an Eastern Orthodox saint.

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19.

Roman writers note that the Goths neither assessed taxes on their own people nor on their subjects.

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20.

The early 5th-century Christian writer Salvian compared the Goths' and related people's favourable treatment of the poor to the miserable state of peasants in Roman Gaul:.

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21.

Goths's remains were removed during Byzantine rule, when the mausoleum was turned into a Christian oratory.

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