Note 137 — Chapter VI

The alleged first mention of the Goths in the biography of Caracalla, c. 10, rests on a misunderstanding. If really a senator allowed himself the malicious jest of assigning to the murderer of Geta the name Geticus, because he on his march from the Danube to the east had conquered some Getic hordes (tumultuariis proeliis), he meant Dacians, not the Goths, scarcely at that time dwelling there and hardly known to the Roman public, whose identification with the Getae was certainly only a later invention.—We may add that the statement that the emperor Maximinus (235–238) was the son of a Goth settled in the neighbouring Thrace, carries us still further back; yet not much weight is to be attached to it.