The Origin and Deeds of the Goths | Page 9

arrival he was killed.
[Sidenote: Cyrus the Great B.C. 559-529]
[Sidenote: QUEEN TOMYRIS AND CYRUS B.C. 529]
X Then Cyrus, king of the Persians, after a long 61 interval of almost
exactly six hundred and thirty years (as Pompeius Trogus relates),
waged an unsuccessful war against Tomyris, Queen of the Getae.
Elated by his victories in Asia, he strove to conquer the Getae, whose
queen, as I have said, was Tomyris. Though she could have stopped the
approach of Cyrus at the river Araxes, yet she permitted him to cross,
preferring to overcome him in battle rather than to thwart him by
advantage of 62 position. And so she did. As Cyrus approached,
fortune at first so favored the Parthians that they slew the son of
Tomyris and most of the army. But when the battle was renewed, the
Getae and their queen defeated, conquered and overwhelmed the
Parthians and took rich plunder from them. There for the first time the
race of the Goths saw silken tents. After achieving this victory and
winning so much booty from her enemies, Queen Tomyris crossed over
into that part of Moesia which is now called Lesser Scythia--a name
borrowed from great Scythia,--and built on the Moesian shore of
Pontus the city of Tomi, named after herself.
[Sidenote: DARIUS B.C. 521-485]
[Sidenote: DARIUS REPELLED]
Afterwards Darius, king of the Persians, the son of 63 Hystaspes,
demanded in marriage the daughter of Antyrus, king of the Goths,
asking for her hand and at the same time making threats in case they
did not fulfil his wish. The Goths spurned this alliance and brought his

embassy to naught. Inflamed with anger because his offer had been
rejected, he led an army of seven hundred thousand armed men against
them and sought to avenge his wounded feelings by inflicting a public
injury. Crossing on boats covered with boards and joined like a bridge
almost the whole way from Chalcedon to Byzantium, he started for
Thrace and Moesia. Later he built a bridge over the Danube in like
manner, but he was wearied by two brief months of effort and lost eight
thousand armed men among the Tapae. Then, fearing the bridge over
the Danube would be seized by his foes, he marched back to Thrace in
swift retreat, believing the land of Moesia would not be safe for even a
short sojourn there.
[Sidenote: Xerxes B.C. 485-465]
After his death, his son Xerxes planned to avenge his 64 father's
wrongs and so proceeded to undertake a war against the Goths with
seven hundred thousand of his own men and three hundred thousand
armed auxiliaries, twelve hundred ships of war and three thousand
transports. But he did not venture to try them in battle, being overawed
by their unyielding animosity. So he returned with his force just as he
had come, and without righting a single battle.
[Sidenote: Philip of Macedon B.C. 359-336]
[Sidenote: SIEGE OF ODESSUS]
Then Philip, the father of Alexander the Great, made 65 alliance with
the Goths and took to wife Medopa, the daughter of King Gudila, so
that he might render the kingdom of Macedon more secure by the help
of this marriage. It was at this time, as the historian Dio relates, that
Philip, suffering from need of money, determined to lead out his forces
and sack Odessus, a city of Moesia, which was then subject to the
Goths by reason of the neighboring city of Tomi. Thereupon those
priests of the Goths that are called the Holy Men suddenly opened the
gates of Odessus and came forth to meet them. They bore harps and
were clad in snowy robes, and chanted in suppliant strains to the gods
of their fathers that they might be propitious and repel the Macedonians.
When the Macedonians saw them coming with such confidence to meet

them, they were astonished and, so to speak, the armed were terrified
by the unarmed. Straight-way they broke the line they had formed for
battle and not only refrained from destroying the city, but even gave
back those whom they had captured outside by right of war. Then they
made a truce and returned to their own country.
After a long time Sitalces, a famous leader of the 66 Goths,
remembering this treacherous attempt, gathered a hundred and fifty
thousand men and made war upon the Athenians, fighting against
Perdiccas, King of Macedon. This Perdiccas had been left by
Alexander as his successor to rule Athens by hereditary right, when he
drank his destruction at Babylon through the treachery of an attendant.
The Goths engaged in a great battle with him and proved themselves to
be the stronger. Thus in return for the wrong which the Macedonians
had long before committed in Moesia, the Goths overran Greece and
laid waste the whole