f Ammianus, 31, 5; Aurelius Victor, 29.
\ Herodotus, Strabo, and Menander who was a Getian by birth, and many others, declare
that the Getsn were of Thracian origin. Stephanus of Byzantium says expressly, " r«na, ^
X«pa Tfav rrruii>. E<rn 8« QpaKiKov tdvos Getia, the country of the Geta. It is a Thracian
nation. — Sub voce TETIA, p. 207 ; Virg. /En. iii. 35 ; Ovid. Trist. v. 7 ; Epist. Pont. lib. iv.
Ep. xiii. 17. Strabo declares that the Getae and Thracians spoke the same language, and
that the Thracian and the Gothic or Old-German are quite distinct languages. See Zahn,
p. 4, note a. In Adelung's Geschichte der Deutschen there is a lonjr list of Thracian words,
not one of which has the least resemblance to German, p. 284—290.
§ Sozomcn's EccL Hist. lib. ii. 6.
VII. 7, 8. GOTHIC— EXTENT OF EAST AND WEST OOTHS. 11*

christian Golbs had their bishop, Theophilus, whose signature appears
in the records of this celebrated council. The Ostro or Eastern Goths,
having no such advantages, remained for a long time heathens. In the
latter part of the 4th century, the whole of the Goths were governed by
Ermanneric, one of their greatest conquerors, who subdued the western
nations, and extended his empire from the river Don, through Sarmatia to
the Vistula, and even to the Baltic.
