Whatever the causes, the Goths determined to move. Uniting with the Gepids, Herules, and some other kindred peoples, they formed a great throng, which moved through what is now western Russia to the shores of the Black Sea and the Sea of Azov. Thence they journeyed westward to the north bank of the Danube. On the way they were joined by other groups of people, of Slavonic race. Their real history may be said to begin about 245 A.D., when they were living near the mouth of the Danube, under the rule of the Ostrogoths. For about twenty years they had been the allies of the Romans, who paid them money to defend their borders from the attacks of other would-be invaders. The Roman emperor, Philip the Arab, put an end to this payment, thereby arousing the anger of the Ostrogoths, who crossed the Danube and plundered the Roman provinces. This was the beginning of a long series of invasions extending down into Greece and Asia Minor. Many cities were plundered cruelly and brutally. Fortunately for civilization, however, the Goths had been converted to Christianity in the meantime, so that the army which finally entered and devastated Rome in the year 410 was not the utterly barbarous throng which had started on the journey from northern Europe. Their leader, Alaric, was himself a Christian and did what he could to restrain the natural passions of his followers. Yet in spite of all, the sack of Rome was a cruel and bloodthirsty affair. It is characteristic of an invasion that over two centuries were consumed in the journey from the old home to Rome, so that no single individual of those who started on the undertaking lived to reach the final destination. For nearly a century and a half after the fall of Rome the Ostrogoths lived in or near Italy. Their fortunes in war fluctuated, and for a time, under Theodoric, they were the masters of the peninsula. Their kindred, the Visigoths, were in the meantime settled in Gaul and Spain. Finally, in the year 553, after repeated reverses, the Ostrogoths retired from Italy to the north, and as a people disappeared from history, leaving scarcely a trace behind. The Franks were never driven from Gaul, but eventually lost their native language and became absorbed in the people whom they had invaded. The Goths “have bequeathed to the world no treasures of literature, no masterpieces of art, no splendid buildings. They have left no conscious impress on the manners or the institutions of any modern European people.”[7] Even Gothic architecture has no historic connection with the people whose name it bears.