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ArchivesRe: Goth - the tribal name and Glevum - Roman/ Latin
in reply to a message by Mark C.
The Goths were a Germanic lot who came from the island of Gotland, in the Baltic off the coast of Sweden. They supposedly left there about the time of Julius Caesar, for reasons I'm far too lazy to look up. They wandered south thru Poland and Ukraine, etc., before splitting into the Ostrogoths (Eastern) and Visigoths (Western) branches and becoming a pain in the arse for the late Roman Empire (300s).
The Romans, convincing themselves that the Goths might readily take on menial underpaid jobs that Roman citizens didn't want, like picking the garlic crop and changing bedsheets in the villas, trustingly let 400,000 Goths settle within the bounds of the Empire while overlooking their utter lack of documentation and background checks.
Naturally, it wasn't too many years before the Goths wanted to run the show and, well, for the Roman Empire, the rest is history. There's probably a lesson to be learned from this, but not to worry, we won't.
The Romans, convincing themselves that the Goths might readily take on menial underpaid jobs that Roman citizens didn't want, like picking the garlic crop and changing bedsheets in the villas, trustingly let 400,000 Goths settle within the bounds of the Empire while overlooking their utter lack of documentation and background checks.
Naturally, it wasn't too many years before the Goths wanted to run the show and, well, for the Roman Empire, the rest is history. There's probably a lesson to be learned from this, but not to worry, we won't.
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