Decius, although he may have been a very praiseworthy prince, bears the stain of persecutions. His reign was the era of the great break up which began with the Germans, who for seventy years had kept tolerably quiet. The whole of the north of Germany was now in motion, and the Franks made their appearance on the Lower Rhine. With regard to the origin of the Franks, on which go much has been written, I think the opinion to be a very likely one, that the Sigambri on the right banks of the Rhine, and in Westphalia, called themselves Franks, and that they formed a state of their own distinct from that of the Saxons. The Swabians, who are partly called Sueves, and partly Alemanni, make their appearance on the Maine. Yet the grand break up caused by the Goths, dates from the reign of Decius. Over the whole subject of their migrations, hangs the greatest uncertainty. Did they come, as the Icelandic traditions would make us believe, from the South to the North; or the reverse, as the traditions in Jormandes would show? I believe that the question cannot in any way be decided. We can only say thus much, that a large Gothic empire existed in the beginning of the third century, in the south-east of Europe. The invasion of the Goths was made partly by land through Dacia, partly in skiffs across the Black sea; like the attacks of the Russians on Constantinople in the tenth century. Of the detailed account of the Athenian Dexippus, we have unfortunately nothing but fragments in the _Excerpta de Sententiis_ and _de Legationibus_, besides a few in Syncellus. It is impossible to analyse these invasions in detail: I should not venture to divide them, like Gibbon, into three great expeditions. They overpowered the kingdom of the Bosporus, and destroyed the towns on the northern coast of Asia Minor: they advanced also as far as Cappadocia. Another expedition subdued the Thracian Bosporus which since the destruction of Byzantium lay quite open. It is a proof of the utter lethargy of the Roman Empire, that no attempt was made to fit out any ships of war, to destroy the vessels of the barbarians. The most thriving Bithynian cities, Nicomedia, Prusa, Chalcedon, and others, were destroyed after the death of Decius, and with far more cruelty than the Goths displayed in later times.