was divided into Roman provinces, over each of which a prefect was
established. In the third century, the Goths, from the shores of the
Baltic, came rushing over the wide arena, with the howling of wolves
and their gnashing of teeth. They trampled down all opposition, with
their war knives drove out the Romans, crossed the Black Sea in their
rude vessels, and spread conflagration and death throughout the most
flourishing cities and villages of Bythinia, Gallacia and Cappadocia.
The famous temple of Diana at Ephesus, these barbarians committed to
the flames. They overran all Greece and took Athens by storm. As they
were about to destroy the precious libraries of Athens, one of their
chieftains said,

"Let us leave to the Greeks their books, that they, in reading
them may forget the arts of war; and that we thus may more easily
be able to hold them in subjection."

These Goths established an empire, extending from the Black Sea to the
Baltic, and which embraced nearly all of what is now European Russia.
Towards the close of the fourth century, another of these appalling
waves of barbaric inundation rolled over northern Europe. The Huns,
emerging from the northern frontiers of China, traversed the immense
intervening deserts, and swept over European Russia, spreading
everywhere flames and desolation. The historians of that day seem to
find no language sufficiently forcible to describe the hideousness and
the ferocity of these savages. They pressed down on the Roman empire
as merciless as wolves, and the Cæsars turned pale at the recital of
their deeds of blood.

It is indeed a revolting picture which contemporaneous history gives
us of these barbarians. In their faces was concentrated the ugliness