No dependence, of course, can be placed on this history, obtained in such a manner, and by a people unacquainted with letters. Commencing on historic ground, as early as the Christian era, and as late as the Antonines, the Goths were established toward the mouth of the Vistula, and in that fertile province where the commercial cities of Thorn, Elbing, Köningsberg, and Dantzic, were long afterward founded. In the reign of Antonines, the Goths were still seated in Prussia. About the reign of Alexander Severus, the Roman province of Dacia had already experienced their proximity, by frequent and destructive inroads. In this interval, therefore, of about seventy years, Gibbon places the second migration of the Goths from the Baltic to the Euxine. Another, and perhaps a more plausible theory, for the origin of the Goths, is that of identifying them with the Thracians. This theory is strongly advocated by Vans Kennedy, who adduces many and conclusive arguments in favor of his hypothesis. Then to identify the Scandinavians with the Goths, and their origin is settled. From the time of Herodotus, until the general prevalence of the name of Goths, it is undeniable, that the Thracians remained unconquered, and that they extended themselves from Macedonia to the Dniester, and from the Euxine Sea to the confines of Germany. For, as the Getæ are identified by ancient writers with the Thracians, and as neither proof nor probability supports the assumption that Thracia was ever occupied by either Scythians or Scandinavians, it must necessarily follow, that whatever is predicated of the Getæ, must equally apply to the Thracians; and, consequently, if the Getæ were Goths, the Goths were also Thracians. To determine, therefore, the identity of the Getæ and Goths, it may be remarked, that from Strabo, it appears that the country immediately to the south of the Elbe was inhabited by the Suevi; then succeeded the country of the Getæ, which extended along the southern bank of the Danube, and also to the north of that river, as far as the Dniester. The Moesi, likewise, dwelt on both banks of the Danube, and were equally with the Getæ considered by the Greeks to be a Thracian people. The Dacians, also, were a Thracian people.'[4]