Collier's New Encyclopedia (1921)/Goth

GOTH, one of an ancient race belonging to the Teutons, who originally occupied a great portion of European and Asiatic Russia. Filmer, their king, conducted a body of his nation to the coast of the Euxine, where it afterward increased into a numerous and formidable people under the names of Visigoths and Ostrogoths, the former occupying the countries to the W. of the Dnieper, the latter those to the E. The Visigoths crossed the Danube, plundered Rome and Italy, and fixed their residence in Spain, while their kindred, the Ostrogoths, took possession of Italy, which they held till A. D 544, when they were overthrown by Narses, general of Justinian. From this time the Goths as a nation make no figure in history except in Spain; but traces of their language, manners, and arts are still to be found in every country of the East. A branch of the Visigoths, settled in Mœsia, the modern Bulgaria, are known as Mœsogoths, and the translation of a great portion of the Bible by Wulfila, or Ulfila, a Christian bishop, about A. D. 350, fragments only of which have come down to us, is the earliest known specimen of the Gothic or Teutonic tribe of tongues. Figuratively, a barbarian; one deficient in or utterly without taste; a rude, ignorant person.