existed between the end of the third and of the thirteenth
centuries.

It is not surprising that some of the historians of Roumania, who have
managed to fill volumes, should have slurred over what really
constitutes half the period of her national existence in a few pages,
nay even in some instances in a few lines; and that they should have
substituted what one writer has called 'brilliant declamatory
evolutions' for the conclusions of careful research. For the last method
sometimes leads to the discovery of discrepancies between standard
authors of fifty or a hundred years in the chronicle of events. For us
the history of the so-called dark ages in that part of Europe is full of
interest, inasmuch as the Danubian plains constituted the highway over
which the barbarians wandered who were the ancestors of a large
proportion of the existing population of Europe; and we have sought, in
the table appended to this work, to bring some kind of order out of the
chaos of events narrated by historians.[109] Beyond this, it is true, we
cannot do much to serve the student of history, and it is a matter of
regret that the character of this work necessitates our treating the
subject with such inconvenient brevity; but we must appeal to the
patience and good nature of our readers whilst we seek to give as much
interest as possible to a necessarily dry and tedious narrative.

For about a century after the withdrawal of the Roman legions, the
_Goths_, a people of whose origin and exploits we have already spoken,
ruled in Trajan's Dacia, except during a brief interval (327
A.D.) when Constantine, having built a bridge across the
Danube at or near Nicopolis on the southern, and Turnu-Magurele on the
northern bank, overran the country and once more incorporated it with
the Empire. This occupation was, however, of short duration. Finding
that he could not maintain his supremacy north of the Danube, and that
the Goths were even settling on the right bank, Constantine is said to
have established Roman colonies south of the Balkans, and, according to
some historians, it was from those settlers that the country has derived
its present name of Roumelia. That the Goths must have founded permanent
settlements in various parts of Dacia is obvious from the traces they
have loft behind them, notably in the neighbourhood of Buseu.[110]
Moreover, in the middle of the century (361 A.D.) they are said
to have embraced Christianity, although we hear shor