ed the consulship with the haughty patricians.
Plebeine Deciorum animae, &c. Juvenal, Sat. viii. 254. See the spirited
speech of Decius, in Livy. x. 9, 10.]

[Footnote 3: Zosimus, l. i. p. 20, c. 22. Zonaras, l. xii. p. 624, edit.
Louvre.]

The emperor Decius had employed a few months in the works of peace and
the administration of justice, when he was summoned to the banks of
the Danube by the invasion of the Goths. This is the first considerable
occasion in which history mentions that great people, who afterwards
broke the Roman power, sacked the Capitol, and reigned in Gaul, Spain,
and Italy. So memorable was the part which they acted in the subversion
of the Western empire, that the name of Goths is frequently but
improperly used as a general appellation ef rude and warlike barbarism.

In the beginning of the sixth century, and after the conquest of Italy,
the Goths, in possession of present greatness, very naturally indulged
themselves in the prospect of past and of future glory. They wished to
preserve the memory of their ancestors, and to transmit to posterity
their own achievements. The principal minister of the court of Ravenna,
the learned Cassiodorus, gratified the inclination of the conquerors in
a Gothic history, which consisted of twelve books, now reduced to the
imperfect abridgment of Jornandes. [4] These writers passed with the most
artful conciseness over the misfortunes of the nation, celebrated its
successful valor, and adorned the triumph with many Asiatic trophies,
that more properly belonged to the people of Scythia. On the faith of
ancient songs, the uncertain, but the only memorials of barbarians,
they deduced the first origin of the Goths from the vast island, or
peninsula, of Scandinavia. [5] [501] That extreme country of the North
was not unknown to the conquerors of Italy: the ties of ancient
consanguinity had been strengthened by recent offices of friendship; and
a Scandinavian king had cheerfully abdicated his savage greatness, that
he might pass the remainder of his days in the peaceful and polished
court of Ravenna. [6] Many vestiges, which cannot be ascribed to the
arts of popular vanity, attest the ancient residence of the Goths in the
countries beyond the Rhine. From the time of the geographer Ptolemy, the
southern part of Sweden seems to have continued in the possession of the
less enterprising remnant of the nation, and a large territory is even
at present divided into east and we