The Colonization.
See SOUTH AFRICA.
{1553}
GOORKAS, OR GURKHAS, OR GHORKAS, The.
See INDIA: THE ABORIGINAL INHABITANTS;
and A. D. 1805-1816.
GOOROO, OR GURU.
See SIKHS.
GORDIAN I. and II., Roman Emperors, A. D. 238.
Gordian III., Roman Emperor, A. D. 238-244.
GORDIAN KNOT, Cutting the.
"It was about February or March 333 B. C., when Alexander
reached Gordium; where he appears to have halted for some
time, giving to the troops which had been with him in Pisidia
a repose doubtless needful. While at Gordium, he performed the
memorable exploit familiarly known as the cutting of the
Gordian knot. There was preserved in the citadel an ancient
waggon of rude structure, said by the legend to have once
belonged to the peasant Gordius and his son Midas--the
primitive rustic kings of Phrygia, designated as such by the
Gods and chosen by the people. The cord (composed of fibres
from the bark of the cornel tree), attaching the yoke of this
waggon to the pole, was so twisted and entangled as to form a
knot of singular complexity, which no one had ever been able
to untie. An oracle had pronounced, that to the person who
should untie it the empire of Asia was destined. ...
Alexander, on inspecting the knot, was as much perplexed as
others had been before him, until at length, in a fit of
impatience, he drew his sword and severed the cord in two. By
everyone this was accepted as a solution of the problem."
_G. Grote,
History of Greece,
part 2, chapter 93._
GORDON, General Charles George,
In China.
See CHINA: A. D.1850-1864.
In the Soudan.
See EGYPT: A. D. 1870-1883, and 1884-1885.
GORDON RIOTS, The.
See ENGLAND: A. D. 1778-1780.
GORDYENE, OR CORDYENE, OR CORDUENE.
The tribes of the Carduchi which anciently occupied the region
of northern Mesopotamia, east of the Tigris, have given their
name permanently to the country, but in variously modified
forms. In the Greek and Roman period it was known as Gordyene,
Cordyene, Corduene; at the present day it is Kurdistan. Under
the Parthian domination in Asia, Gordyene was a tributary
kingdom. In the early part of the last century B. C. it was
conquered by Tigranes, king of Armenia, who chose a site
within it for building his vast new capital, Tigranocerta, to
populate which twelve Greek cities were stripped of
inhabitants. It was included among the conquests of Trajan for
the Romans, but relinquished by Hadrian.
_G. Rawlinson,
Sixth Great Oriental Monarchy,
chapter 10, and after._
See, also, CARDUCHI, THE.
GORGES, Sir Ferdinando, and the colonization of Maine.
See NEW ENGLAND: A. D. 1621-1631, and 1635;
also MAINE: A. D. 1639.
GORM, King of Denmark, A. D. 883-941.
GOROSZLO, Battle of (1601).
See BALKAN AND DANUBIAN STATES: 14TH-18TH CENTURIES
(ROUMANIA, &c.).
GORTYN.
See CRETE.
GOSHEN, Land of.
See JEWS: THE ROUTE OF THE EXODUS.
GOSNOLD'S VOYAGE TO NEW ENGLAND.
See AMERICA: A. D. 1602-1605.
GOSPORT NAVY YARD, Abandonment and destruction of the.
See UNITED STATES OF AMERICA: A. D. 1861 (APRIL).
GOTHA, Origin of the Dukedom of.
See SAXONY: A. D. 1180-1553.
GOTHI MINORES, The.
See GOTHS: A. D. 341-381.
GOTHIA, in central Europe.
See GOTHS (VISIGOTHS): A. D. 376.
GOTHIA, in Gaul.
Septimania, the strip of land along the Mediterranean between
the Pyrenees and the Rhone, was the last possession of the
Goths in Gaul, and the name Gothia became for a time attached
to it.
_E. A. Freeman,
Historical Geography of Europe,
chapter 5, section 5._
See GOTHS (VISIGOTHS): A. D. 419-451.
GOTHINI, The.
The Gotini or Gothini were a people of ancient Germany who
"are probably to be placed in Silesia, about Breslau." "The
Gotini and Osi [who held a part of modern Gallicia, under the
Carpathian mountains] are proved by their respective Gallic
and Pannonian tongues, as well as by the fact of their
enduring tribute, not to be Germans. ... The Gotini, to
complete their degradation, actually work iron mines."
_Tacitus,
Minor Works,
translated by Church and Brodribb:
The Germany, with geographical notes._
GOTHLAND IN SWEDEN.
See GOTHS: ORIGIN OF THE.
GOTHONES, The.
A tribe in ancient Germany, mentioned by Tacitus. They
"probably dwelt on either side of the Vistula, the Baltic
being their northern boundary. Consequently, their settlements
would coincide with portions of Pomerania and Prussia. Dr.
Latham thinks they were identical with the Æstii."
_Church and Brodribb,
Geographical Notes to the Germany of Tacitus._
See GOTHS, ORIGIN OF THE.
GOTHS, Origin of the.
"The Scandinavian origin of the Goths has given rise to much
discussion, and has been denied by several eminent modern
scholars. The only reasons in favor of their Scandinavian
origin are the testimony of Jornandes and the existence of the
name of Gothland in Sweden; but the testimony of Jornandes
contains at the best only the tradition of the people
respecting their origin, which is never of much value; and the
mere fact of the existence of the name of Gothland in Sweden
is not sufficient to prove that this country was the original
abode of the people. When the Romans first saw the Goths, in
the reign of Caracalla, they dwelt in the land of the Getæ [on
the northern side of the lower Danube]. Hence Jornandes,
Procopius, and many other writers, both ancient and modern,
supposed the Goths to be the same as the Getæ of the earlier
historians. But the latter writers always regarded the Getæ as
Thracians; and if their opinion was correct, they could have
had no connection with the Goths. Still, it is a startling
fact that a nation called Gothi should have emigrated from
Germany, and settled accidentally in the country of a people
with a name so like their own as that of Getæ. This may have
happened by accident, but certainly all the probabilities are
against it. Two hypotheses have been brought forward in modern
times to meet this difficulty. One is that of Grimm, in his
History of the German Language, who supposes that there was no
migration of the Goths at all, that they were on the Lower
Danube from the beginning, and that they were known to the
earlier Greek and Latin writers as Getæ: but the great
objection to this opinion is the general belief of the earlier
writers that the Getæ were Thracians, and the latter were
certainly not Germans.
{1554}
The other is that of Latham, who supposes, with much
ingenuity, that the name of Get, or Goth, was the general name
given by the Slavonic nations to the Lithuanians. According to
this theory, the Goth-ones, or Guth-ones, at the mouth of the
Vistula, mentioned by Tacitus and Ptolemy, are Lithuanians,
and the Get-æ, on the Danube, belong to the same nation.
Latham also believes that the Goths of a later period were
Germans who migrated to the Danube, but that they did not bear
the name of Goths till they settled in the country of the
Getæ.
See _Latham,
The Germania of Tacitus,
Epil., p. xxxviii., seq._"
_W. Smith,
Note to Gibbon's Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire,
chapter 10._
"The first clear utterance of tradition among the Goths points
to Sweden as their home. It is true that this theory of the
Swedish origin of the Goths has of late been strenuously
combatted, but until it is actually disproved (if that be
possible) it seems better to accept it as a 'working
hypothesis,' and, at the very least, a legend which influenced
the thoughts and feelings of the nation itself. Condensing the
narrative of Jornandes ... we get some such results as these:
'The island of Scanzia [peninsula of Norway and Sweden] lies
in the Northern Ocean, opposite the mouths of the Vistula, in
shape like a cedar-leaf. In this island, a warehouse of
nations ("officina gentium"), dwelt the Goths, with many other
tribes,' whose uncouth names are for the most part forgotten,
though the Swedes, the Fins, the Heruli, are familiar to us.
'From this island the Goths, under their king Berig, set forth
in search of new homes. They had but three ships, and as one
of these during their passage always lagged behind, they
called her "Gepanta," "the torpid one," and her crew, who ever
after showed themselves more sluggish and clumsy than their
companions when they became a nation, bore a name derived from
this circumstance, Gepidae, the Loiterers'." Settling, first,
near the mouth of the Vistula, these Gothic wanderers
increased in numbers until they were forced once more to
migrate southward and eastward, seeking a larger and more
satisfactory home. In time, they reached the shores of the
Euxine. "The date of this migration of the Goths is uncertain;
but, as far as we can judge from the indications afforded by
contemporary Roman events, it was somewhere between 100 and
200 A. D. At any rate, by the middle of the third century, we
find them firmly planted in the South of Russia. They are now
divided into three nations, the Ostrogoths on the East, the
Visigoths on the West, the lazy Gepidae a little to the
rear--that is, to the North of both. ... It is important for
us to remember that these men are Teutons of the Teutons. ...
Moreover, the evidence of language shows that among the
Teutonic races they belonged to the Low German family of
peoples: more nearly allied, that is to say, to the Dutch, the
Frieslanders, and to our own Saxon forefathers, all of whom
dwelt by the flat shores of the German Ocean or the Baltic
Sea, than to the Suabians and other High German tribes who
dwelt among the hills."
_T. Hodgkin,
Italy and Her Invaders,
introduction, chapter 3 (volume 1)._
ALSO IN:
_T. Mommsen,
History of Rome,
book 8, chapter 6._
_T. Smith,
Arminius,
part 2, chapter 2._
See, also, VANDALS.
GOTHS:
Acquisition of Bosphorus.
"The little kingdom of Bosphorus; whose capital was situated
on the straits through which the Mæotis communicates itself to
the Euxine, was composed of degenerate Greeks and
half-civilized barbarians. It subsisted as an independent
state from the time of the Peloponnesian war, was at last
swallowed up by the ambition of Mithridates, and, with the
rest of his dominions, sunk under the weight of the Roman
arms. From the reign of Augustus the kings of Bosphorus were
the humble but not useless allies of the empire. By presents,
by arms, and by a slight fortification drawn across the
isthmus, they effectually guarded, against the roving
plunderers of Sarmatia, the access of a country which, from
its peculiar situation and convenient harbours, commanded the
Euxine Sea and Asia Minor. As long as the sceptre was
possessed by a lineal succession of kings, they acquitted
themselves of their important charge with vigilance and
success. Domestic factions, and the fears or private interest
of obscure usurpers who seized on the vacant throne, admitted
the Goths [already, in the third century, in possession of the
neighboring region about the mouth of the Dneiper] into the
heart of Bosphorus. With the acquisition of a superfluous
waste of fertile soil, the conquerors obtained the command of
a naval force sufficient to transport their armies to the
coast of Asia."
_E. Gibbon,
Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire,
chapter 10._
GOTHS: A. D. 244-251.
First invasions of the Roman Empire.
As early as the reign of Alexander Severus (A. D. 222-235) the
Goths, then inhabiting the Ukraine, had troubled Dacia with
incursions; but it was not until the time of the Emperor
Philip, called the Arabian (244-249), that they invaded the
Empire in force, passing through Dacia and crossing the Danube
into Mœsia (Bulgaria). They had been bribed by a subsidy to
refrain from pillaging Roman territory, but complained that
their "stipendia" had not been paid. They made their way
without opposition to the city of Marcianopolis, which Trajan
had founded in honor of his sister, and which was the capital
of one of the two provinces into which Mœsia had been divided.
The inhabitants ransomed themselves by the payment of a large
sum of money, and the barbarians retired. But their expedition
had been successful enough to tempt a speedy repetition of it,
and the year 250 found them, again, in Mœsia, ravaging the
country with little hindrance. The following year they crossed
the Hæmus or Balkan mountains and laid siege to the important
city of Philippopolis--capital of Thrace, founded by Philip of
Macedon. Now, however, a capable and vigorous emperor, Decius,
was briefly wearing the Roman purple. He met the Goths and
fought them so valiantly that 30,000 are said to have been
slain; yet the victory remained with the barbarians, and
Philippopolis was not saved. They took it by storm, put
100,000 of its inhabitants to the sword and left nothing in
the ruins of the city worth carrying away. Meantime the
enterprising Roman emperor had reanimated and recruited his
troops and had secured positions which cut off the retreat of
the Gothic host. The peril of the barbarians seemed so great,
in fact, that they offered to surrender their whole booty and
their captives, if they might, on so doing, march out of the
country undisturbed. Decius sternly rejected the proposition,
and so provoked his dangerous enemies to a despair which was
fatal to him. In a terrible battle that was fought before the
close of the year 251, at a place in Mœsia called Forum
Trebonii, the Roman emperor perished, with the greater part of
his army. The successor of Decius, Gallus, made haste to
arrange a payment of annual peace-money to the Goths, which
persuaded them to retire across the Danube.
_E. Gibbon,
Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire,
chapter 10._
ALSO IN:
_T. Hodgkin,
Italy and Her Invaders,
introduction, chapter 8 (volume 1)._
{1555}
GOTHS: A. D. 258-267.
Naval expeditions in the East.
Having acquired command of a port and a navy by their conquest
of or alliance with the little kingdom of Bosporus in the
Chersonesus Taurica (modern Crimea), the Goths launched forth
boldly upon a series of naval marauding expeditions, which
spread terror and destruction along the coasts of the Euxine,
the Ægean and the straits between. The first city to suffer
was Pityus, on the Euxine, which they totally destroyed, A. D.
258. The next was Trebizond, which fell a victim to the
negligence with which its strong walls were guarded. The Goths
loaded their ships with the enormous booty that they took from
Trebizond, and left it almost a ruined city of the dead.
Another expedition reached Bithynia, where the rich and
splendid cities of Chalcedon, Nicea, Nicomedia, Prusa, Apamæa,
nd others were pillaged and more or less wantonly destroyed. "In
the year 267, another fleet, consisting of 500 vessels, manned
chiefly by the Goths and Heruls [or Heruli], passed the
Bosphorus and the Hellespont. They seized Byzantium and
Chrysopolis, and advanced, plundering the islands and coasts
of the Ægean Sea, and laying waste many of the principal
cities of the Peloponnesus. Cyzicus, Lemnos, Skyros, Corinth,
Sparta, and Argos are named as having suffered by their
ravages. From the time of Sylla's conquest of Athens, a period
of nearly 350 years had elapsed, during which Attica had
escaped the evils of war; yet when the Athenians were called
upon to defend their homes against the Goths, they displayed a
spirit worthy of their ancient fame. An officer, named
Cleodamus, had been sent by the government from Byzantium to
Athens, in order to repair the fortifications, but a division
of these Goths landed at the Piræus and succeeded in carrying
Athens by storm, before any means were taken for its defence.
Dexippus, an Athenian of rank in the Roman service, soon
contrived to reassemble the garrison of the Acropolis; and by
joining to it such of the citizens as possessed some knowledge
of military discipline, or some spirit for warlike enterprise,
he formed a little army of 2,000 men. Choosing a strong
position in the Olive Grove, he circumscribed the movements of
the Goths, and so harassed them by a close blockade that they
were soon compelled to abandon Athens. Cleodamus, who was not
at Athens when it was surprised, had in the meantime assembled
a fleet and gained a naval victory over a division of the
barbarian fleet, These reverses were a prelude to the ruin of
the Goths. A Roman fleet entered the Archipelago, and a Roman
army, under the emperor Gaillenus, marched into Illyricum; the
separate divisions of the Gothic expedition were everywhere
overtaken by these forces, and destroyed in detail. During
this invasion of the empire, one of the divisions of the
Gothic army crossed the Hellespont into Asia, and succeeded in
plundering the cities of the Troad, and in destroying the
celebrated temple of Diana of Ephesus. ... The celebrity of
Athens, and the presence of the historian Dexippus, have given
to this incursion of the barbarians a prominent place in
history; but many expeditions are casually mentioned which
must have inflicted greater losses on the Greeks, and spread
devastation more widely over the country."
_G. Finlay,
Greece Under the Romans,
chapter 1, section 14._
ALSO IN:
_E. Gibbon,
Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire,
chapter 10._
GOTHS: A. D. 268-270.
Defeat by Claudius.
"Claudius II. and his successor Aurelian, notwithstanding the
shortness of their reigns, effectually dissipated the
mosquito-swarms of barbarian invaders and provincial usurpers
who were ruining the unhappy dominions of Gallienus. The two
campaigns (of 268 and 269) in which the Emperor Claudius
vanquished the barbarians are related with great brevity, and
in such a shape that it is not easy to harmonise even the
scanty details which are preserved for us. It seems clear,
however, that the Goths (both Ostrogoths and Visigoths), with
all their kindred tribes, poured themselves upon Thrace and
Macedonia in vaster numbers than ever. The previous movements
of these nations had been probably but robber-inroads: this
was a national immigration. ... A few years earlier, so vast
an irruption must inevitably have ruined the Roman Empire. But
now, under Claudius, the army, once more subjected to strict
discipline, had regained, or was rapidly regaining, its tone,
and the Gothic multitudes, vainly precipitating themselves
against it, by the very vastness of their unwieldy masses,
hastened their own destruction. A great battle was fought at
Naissus (Nisch, in Servia), a battle which was not a complete
victory, which according to one authority was even a defeat
for the Romans, but since the barbarians as an immediate
consequence of it lost 50,000 men, their doubtful victory may
fairly be counted as a defeat. In the next campaign they were
shut up in the intricate passes of the Balkans by the Roman
cavalry. Under the pressure of famine they killed and ate the
cattle that drew their waggons, so parting with their last
chance of return to their northern homes. ... At length the
remnants of the huge host seem to have disbanded, some to have
entered the service of their conqueror as 'foederati,' and
many to have remained as hired labourers to plough the fields
which they had once hoped to conquer. ... The vast number of
unburied corpses bred a pestilence, to which the Emperor fell
a victim. His successor Aurelian, the conqueror of Zenobia ...
made peace wisely as well as war bravely, and, prudently
determining on the final abandonment of the Roman province of
Dacia, he conceded to the Goths the undisturbed possession of
that region [A. D. 270], on condition of their not crossing
the Danube to molest Moesia. Translating these terms into the
language of modern geography, we may say, roughly, that the
repose of Servia and Bulgaria was guaranteed by the final
separation from the Roman Empire of Hungary, Transylvania,
Moldavia, and Wallachia, which became from this time forward
the acknowledged home of the Gothic nation. ... For about a
century (from 270 to 365) the Goths appear to have been with
little exception at peace with Rome."
_T. Hodgkin,
Italy and Her Invaders,
introduction, chapter 3._
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GOTHS: A. D. 341-381.
Conversion to Christianity.
The introduction of Christianity among the Goths seems to have
begun while they were yet on the northern side of the Danube
and the Black Sea. It first resulted, no doubt, from the
influence of many Christian captives who were swept from their
homes in Mœsia, Greece, and Asia Minor, and carried away to
spend their lives in slavery among the barbarians. To these
were probably added a considerable number of Christian
refugees from Roman persecution, before the period of
Constantine. But it was not until the time of Ulfilas, the
great apostle and bishop of the Goths (supposed to have held
the office of bishop among them from about A. D. 341 to 381),
that the development and organization of Christianity in the
Gothic nation assumed importance. Ulfilas is represented to
have been a descendant of one of the Christian captives
alluded to above. Either as an ambassador or as a hostage, he
seems to have passed some years in his early manhood at
Constantinople. There he acquired a familiar knowledge of the
Greek and Latin languages, and became fitted for his great
work--the reducing of the Gothic language to a written form,
with an alphabet partly invented, partly adapted from the
Greek, and the translation of the Bible into that tongue. The
early labors of Ulfilas among his countrymen beyond the Danube
were interrupted by an outbreak of persecution, which drove
him, with a considerable body of Christian Goths, to seek
shelter within the Roman empire. They were permitted to settle
in Mœsia, at the foot of the Balkans, round about Nicopolis,
and near the site of modern Tirnova. There they acquired the
name of the Gothi Minores, or Lesser Goths. From this Gothic
settlement of Ulfilas in Mœsia the alphabet and written
language to which he gave form have been called Mœso-Gothic.
The Bible of Ulfilas--the first missionary translation of the
Scriptures--with the personal labors of the apostle and his
disciples, were powerfully influential, without doubt, in the
Christianizing of the whole body of the Goths, and of their
German neighbors, likewise. But Ulfilas had imbibed the
doctrines of Arianism, or of Semi-Arianism, at Constantinople,
and he communicated that heresy (as it was branded by the
Athanasian triumph) to all the barbarian world within the
range of Gothic influence. It followed that, when the kingdoms
of the Goths, the Vandals, and the Burgundians were
established in the west, they had to contend with the
hostility of the orthodox or Catholic western church, and were
undermined by it. That hostility had much to do with the
breaking down of those states and with the better success of
the orthodox Franks.
_C. A. A. Scott,
Ulfilas, Apostle of the Goths._
See, also, FRANKS: A. D. 481-511.
GOTHS: (Ostrogoths) A. D. 350-375.
The empire of Ermanaric or Hermanric.