the first persecution that was systematically planned by a determined emperor to effect its total destruction. During the next seventeen years they devastated Eastern Europe and Western Asia by land and sea as far as Trebizond; but at length they were defeated and driven back by the Emperor Claudius (a.d. 269), just about the time when the elder Theodosius was repulsing the Saxons in Britain. A wise compromise was now agreed upon. The Romans ceded the province of Dacia, north of the Danube, which Trajan had added to the empire, so that the river became the boundary between Roman and Goth, while the name Dacia was preserved by being transferred to the district south of the Danube (a.d. 274). The political sagacity of this arrangement was seen in the ensuing peace of ninety years' duration, only once seriously broken by an incursion of Alaric, which was successfully repelled after its brief, brilliant success. Under Ermanaric, in the fourth century, the Goths north of the Danube grew into a great power, conquering the Sclavs, and, according to their own historian Jornandis—who is not altogether reliable—extending their dominion as far as the Baltic.[1] Ermanaric was only a kind of overlord, for the Goths had no kings, and therefore when Socrates[2] describes a civil war as a contest between two rivals—Athanaric and Frithigern — for the sovereignty, we must understand this as a quarrel between two separate chieftains for the place of primus inter pares.[3] But the important fact in regard to the history of Christianity among the Goths is that these two chieftains followed opposite lines of policy both in relation to the Roman Empire and with reference to Christianity. The close neighbourhood of the two powers led to intercommunication and interaction. Athanaric took the side of a usurper in making war on the emperor, but afterwards came to terms with Valens. Christianity had already
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THE GREEK AND EASTERN CHURCHES
