This laudation, both of the Goths and of their Byzantine conquerors, may perhaps help us to understand the motive with which the _Getica_ was written. In the year 551 Germanus, nephew of Justinian, accompanied by his bride, Matasuntha, grand-daughter of Theodoric, set forth to reconquer Italy for the empire. His early death prevented any schemes for a revived Romano-Gothic kingdom which may have been based on his personality. His widow, however, bore a posthumous child, also named Germanus, of whom Jordanes speaks (cap. 60) as "blending the blood of the Anicii and the Amals, and furnishing a hope under the divine blessing of one day uniting their glories." This younger Germanus did nothing in after life to realize these anticipations; but the somewhat pointed way in which his name and his mother's name are mentioned by Jordanes lends some probability to the view that he hoped for the child's succession to the Eastern Empire, and the final reconciliation of the Goths and Romans in the person of a Gotho-Roman emperor. The _De rebus Geticis_ falls naturally into four parts. The first (chs. i.-xiii.) commences with a geographical description of the three quarters of the world, and in more detail of Britain and Scanzia (Sweden), from which the Goths under their king Berig migrated to the southern coast of the Baltic. Their migration across what has since been called Lithuania to the shores of the Euxine, and their differentiation into Visigoths and Ostrogoths, are next described. Chs. v.-xiii. contain an account of the intrusive Geto-Scythian element before alluded to. The second section (chs. xiv.-xxiv.) returns to the true history of the Gothic nation, sets forth the genealogy of the Amal kings, and describes the inroads of the Goths into the Roman Empire in the 3rd century, with the foundation and the overthrow of the great but somewhat shadowy kingdom of Hermanric. The third section (chs. xxv.-xlvii.) traces the history of the West Goths from the Hunnish invasion to the downfall of the Gothic kingdom in Gaul under Alaric II. (376-507). The best part of this section, and indeed of the whole book, is the seven chapters devoted to Attila's invasion of Gaul and the battle of the Mauriac plains. Here we have in all probability a verbatim extract from Cassiodorus, who (possibly resting on Ablabius) interwove with his narrative large portions of the Gothic sagas. The celebrated expression _certaminis gaudia_ assuredly came at first neither from the suave minister Cassiodorus nor from the small-souled notary Jordanes, but is the translation of some thought which first found utterance through the lips of a Gothic minstrel.