The Death of Rome: The Ostrogothic Invasion (Illustrated) (Italy and Her Invaders Book 3)

The Ostrogoths were that member of the great East-German family of nations which first attained to widely extended dominion. Through the greater part of the third century after Christ theirs was the chief controlling influence in the vast plains between the Baltic and the Euxine which form the Lithuania and Southern Russia of modern history. Like the other German nations at that time, they were probably passing or had recently passed from the nomadic to the settled form of society, from dependence on flocks and herds to dependence on the tillage of the ground as their chief means of support. The head of this powerful but loosely compacted state was Hermanric the Amal, sprung from the seed of gods, still true to the martial religion of Odin and Thor; a Goth of Goths, and a Teuton of Teutons. Under his orders moved to battle the hosts of the Visigoths who dwelt between him and the Danube, of the Gepidae who perhaps occupied the plains of Central Russia in his rear. The forecast of Euro­pean history which then seemed probable would have been that a great Teutonic Empire stretching from the Danube to the Don would take the place which the colossal Slav Empire now holds in the map of Europe, and would be ready, as a civilised and Christianised power, to step into the place of Eastern Rome when in the fulness of centuries the sceptre should drop from the nerveless hands of the Caesars of Byzantium...