There have been numerous instances of invasions in the history of Europe. In fact, the barbarian invasions are perhaps the most important single factor in the history of that continent during the Dark Ages. An excellent example is furnished by the Goths, particularly by the eastern division of that people. The original home of this people was in East Prussia, near the Baltic and the Vistula, where they were known in Roman days as traders in amber. There were two principal branches, the western or Visigoths, and the eastern or Ostrogoths. Their physical and mental characters were well marked and definite. In physique they were tall, blond, and athletic, in disposition brave and generous, patient under hardship, chaste and affectionate in their family relations. As to their habits of life before their migration, we have no very complete picture. In general, they seem to have been living on the pastoral-agricultural stage. They had no cities or villages, but lived in scattered dwellings upon farms, which they cultivated with the aid of slaves descended from captives. Much of the land was held in common, and upon it were pastured the vast herds of cattle which constituted their chief subsistence. The powers of government were centralized in a king, chosen by popular voice from certain great families. They had progressed far enough in learning to have an alphabet, but had not developed any written literature. It is evident, then, that the Goths were a settled people, and while the ties which bound them to their home land were not very complex, and they were undoubtedly used to long warlike expeditions, yet there must have been some powerful motives to induce them to leave a land where they had become so well established. As to the exact nature of these motives, and the causes which lay back of them, there is no accurate record. It is not probable that they were driven out by the pressure of stronger neighbors. “Most likely it was simply the natural increase of their population, aided perhaps by the failure of their harvests or the outbreak of a pestilence, that made them sensible of the poverty of their country, and led them to cast longing eyes towards the richer and more genial lands farther to the south, of which they had heard, and which some of them may have visited.”[6] This explanation is admittedly largely based on guess. But it has every element of probability and marks the movement of the Goths as a perfectly typical example of a migration due to economic causes, natural overpopulation, augmented by temporary natural calamity, arousing motives of dissatisfaction through comparison with other seemingly more desirable regions.