Leaving, for the present at least, to better historians than myself
the general subject of the Teutonic immigrations; the conquest of
North Gaul by the Franks, of Britain by the Saxons and Angles, of
Burgundy by the Burgundians, of Africa by the Vandals, I shall speak
rather of those Teutonic tribes which actually entered and conquered
Italy; and first, of course, of the Goths. Especially interesting to
us English should their fortunes be, for they are said to be very
near of kin to us; at least to those Jutes who conquered Kent. As
Goths, Geats, Getae, Juts, antiquarians find them in early and
altogether mythic times, in the Scandinavian peninsula, and the isles
and mainland of Denmark.

Their name, it is said, is the same as one name for the Supreme
Being. Goth, Guth, Yuth, signifies war. 'God' is the highest
warrior, the Lord of hosts, and the progenitor of the race, whether
as an 'Eponym hero' or as the supreme Deity. Physical force was
their rude notion of Divine power, and Tiu, Tiv, or Tyr, in like
manner, who was originally the god of the clear sky, the Zeus or Jove
of the Greeks and Romans, became by virtue of his warlike character,
identical with the Roman Mars, till the dies Martis of the Roman week
became the German Tuesday.

Working their way down from Gothland and Jutland, we know not why nor
when, thrusting aside the cognate Burgunds, and the Sclavonic tribes
whom they met on the road, they had spread themselves, in the third
century, over the whole South of Russia, and westward over the
Danubian Provinces, and Hungary. The Ostrogoths (East-goths) lay
from the Volga to the Borysthenes, the Visigoths (West-goths?) from
the Borysthenes to the Theiss. Behind them lay the Gepidae, a German