By the side of the Carpi came, likewise as immediate neighbours of the Romans at the mouth of the Danube, the people of the Goths. This Germanic stock migrated, according to the tradition which has been preserved to us, from Scandinavia over the Baltic towards the region of the Vistula, and from this to the Black Sea; in accordance with this the Roman geographers of the second century know them at the Vistula, and Roman history from the first quarter of the third at the north-west coast of the Black Sea. Thenceforth they appear here constantly on the increase; the remains of the Bastarnae retired before them to the right bank of the Danube under the emperor Probus, the remains of the Carpi under the emperor Diocletian, while beyond doubt a great part of the former as of the latter mingled among the Goths and joined them. On the whole this catastrophe may be designated as that of the Gothic war only in the sense in which that which set in under Marcus is called the war of the Marcomani; the whole mass of peoples set in movement by the stream of migration from the north-east to the Black Sea took part in it; and took part all the more, seeing that these attacks took place just as much by land over the lower Danube as by water from the north coasts of the Black Sea, in an inextricable complication of landward and maritime piracy. Not unsuitably, therefore, the learned Athenian who fought in this war and has narrated it, prefers to term it the Scythian, as he includes under this name--which, like the Pelasgian, forms the despair of the historian--all Germanic and non-Germanic enemies of the empire. What is to be told of these expeditions will here be brought together, so far as the confusion of tradition, which is only too much in keeping with the confusion of these fearful times, allows. [Sidenote: Gothic wars.] The year 238--a year also of civil war, when there were four emperors--is designated as that in which the war against those here first named Goths began.[137] As the coins of Tyra and Olbia cease with Alexander († 235), these Roman possessions situated beyond the boundary of the empire had doubtless become some years earlier a prey to the new enemy. In that year they first crossed the Danube, and the most northerly of the Moesian coast towns, Istros, was the first victim. Gordianus, who emerged out of the confusions of this time as ruler, is designated as conqueror of the Goths; it is more certain that the Roman government at any rate under him, if not already earlier, agreed to buy off the Gothic incursions.[138] As was natural, the Carpi demanded the same as the emperor had granted to the inferior Goths; when the demand was not granted, they invaded the Roman territory in the year 245. The emperor Philippus--Gordianus was at that time already dead--repulsed them, and energetic action with the combined strength of the great empire would probably here have checked the barbarians. [Sidenote: Decius.] [Sidenote: His death.]