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The Goths (; ; (ラテン語:Gothi); ) were an East Germanic people, two of whose branches, the Visigoths and the Ostrogoths, played an important role in the fall of the Western Roman Empire and the emergence of Medieval Europe. An important source of knowledge of the Goths is ''Getica,'' a semi-fictional account, written in the 6th century by the Roman historian Jordanes, of their migration from southern Scandza (Scandinavia), into Gothiscandza—believed to be the lower Vistula region in modern Pomerania—and from there to the coast of the Black Sea. Archaeological evidence from the Pomeranian Wielbark culture and the Chernyakhov culture, northeast of the lower Danube, confirms that some such migration did in fact take place. In the 3rd century, the Goths crossed either the lower Danube or the Black Sea, ravaged the Balkans and Anatolia as far as Cyprus, and sacked Athens, Byzantium, and Sparta. By the 4th century, the Goths had captured Dacia, and were divided into at least two distinct groups separated by the Dniester River, the Thervingi (led by the Balti dynasty) and the Greuthungi (led by the Amali dynasty). The Goths dominated a vast area, which at its peak under the King Ermanaric and his sub-king Athanaric possibly extended all the way from the Danube to the Ural mountains, and from the Black to the Baltic Sea. In the late 4th century, the Huns came from the east and invaded the region controlled by the Goths. Although the Huns successfully subdued many of the Goths, who joined their ranks, a group of Goths led by Fritigern fled across the Danube. They then revolted against the Roman Empire, winning a decisive victory at the Battle of Adrianople. By this time the Gothic missionary Wulfila, who devised the Gothic alphabet to translate the Bible, had converted many of the Goths from paganism to Arian Christianity. In the 4th, 5th, and 6th centuries the Goths separated into two main branches, the Visigoths, who became federates of the Romans, and the Ostrogoths, who joined the Huns. After the Ostrogoths successfully revolted against the Huns at the Battle of Nedao in 454, their leader Theodoric the Great settled his people in Italy, founding a kingdom which eventually gained control of the whole peninsula. Shortly after Theodoric's death in 526, the country was captured by the Byzantine Empire, in a war that devastated and depopulated the peninsula. After their able leader Totila was killed at the Battle of Taginae, effective Ostrogothic resistance ended, and the remaining Goths were assimilated by the Lombards, another Germanic tribe, who invaded Italy and founded a kingdom in the northern part of the country in 567 AD. The Visigoths sacked Rome under Alaric I in 410, defeated Attila at the Battle of the Catalaunian Plains under Theodoric I in 451, and founded a kingdom in Aquitaine. The Visigoths were pushed to Hispania by the Franks following the Battle of Vouillé in 507. By the late 6th century, the Visigoths had converted to Catholicism. They were conquered in the early 8th century by the Muslim Moors, but began to regain control under the leadership of the Visigothic nobleman Pelagius, whose victory at the Battle of Covadonga began the centuries-long Reconquista. The Visigoths founded the Kingdom of Asturias, which eventually evolved into modern Spain and Portugal. Gothic language and culture largely disappeared during the Middle Ages, although its influence continued to be felt in small ways in some western European states. As late as the 16th century a small number of people in the Crimea may still have been speaking the Gothic language known as Crimean Gothic.〔.〕 ==Etymology== The Goths have been referred to by many names, perhaps at least in part because they comprised many separate ethnic groups, but also because in early accounts of Proto-Indo-European and later Germanic migrations in general it was common practice to use various names to refer to the same group. The Goths clearly believed (as most modern scholars do) that the various names all derived from a single prehistoric ethnonym that referred originally to a uniform culture that flourished around the middle of the first millennium BC—the original "Goths". The word "Goths" derives from the stem ''Gutan-''.〔, as is apparent from Pytheas's name for them, the ''Gutones'', cited in Pliny'.〕 This stem produces the singular *''Gutô'', plural *''Gutaniz'' in Proto-Germanic. It survives in the modern Scandinavian tribal name Gutes, which is what the inhabitants of present-day Swedish island Gotland in Baltic Sea call themselves. (In Gutnish - ''Gutar'', in Swedish "Gotlänningar") Another modern Scandinavian tribal name, Geats (in Swedish "Götar"), which is what the (original) inhabitants of present-day Götaland/Geatland (originally south of Svealand, and north of the former Danish regions Skåne and Halland) call themselves, derives from a related Proto-Germanic word, *''Gautaz'' (plural *''Gautôz''). (Both *''Gautaz'' and *''Gutô'' relate to the Proto-Germanic verb *''geutaną'', meaning "to pour".〔(Compare modern Swedish ''gjuta'' (pour, perfuse, found), modern Dutch ''gieten'', modern German ''gießen'', Gothic ''giutan'', old Scandinavian ''giota'', old English ''geotan'' all cognate with Latin ''fondere'' "to pour" and old Greek ''cheo'' "I pour".〕 The Indo-European root of the word "geutan" and its cognates in other language is '' *gʰewd-''〔.〕 ''American Heritage Dictionary'' (''AHD'') designates '' *gʰewd-'' as a centum form, in reliance on Julius Pokorny.〔.〕 This same root may be connected to the name of a river that flows through Västergötland in Sweden, the Göta älv, which drains Lake Vänern into the Kattegat at the city of Gothenburg (Swedish: Göteborg), on the western coast of Sweden. It is certainly plausible that a flowing river would be given a name that describes it as "pouring", and that, if the original home of the Goths was near that river, they would choose an ethnonym that described them as living by the river. Another possibility is of course that the name of the "Geats" developed independently from that of the Gutar/Goths. The earliest mention of Geats was possibly made by Ptolemy in the 100's AD ("doutai" or "goutai") and in the 500's by Jordanes ("gauthigoth") and Prokopios ("gautoi") Both the Goths and the Gutes were called ''Gotar'' in Old West Norse, and ''Gutar'' in Old East Norse (for example in the Gutasaga and in runic inscription on the Rökstone). In contrast, the other tribe, the Geats, were clearly differentiated from the Goths / Gutes. Since Old Norse literature do not distinguish between the Goths and the Gutes (Gotlanders), but do clearly distinguish between the Goths or Gutes on the one hand, and the Geats on the other (as do Old English literature), it is plausible that the Goths who migrated out of Scandinavia were members of the Gutes tribe. At some time in European prehistory, consonant changes according to Grimm's Law shifted '' *gʰ'' to '' *g'' and '' *d'' to '' *t'' in Germanic. This same law more or less rules out '' *gʰedʰ-'',〔.〕 which would become '' *ged-'' in Germanic. According to the rules of Indo-European ablaut, the full grade (containing an *e), '' *gʰewd-'', might be replaced with the zero-grade (the *e disappears), '' *gʰud-'', or the o-grade (the *e changes to an *o), '' *gʰowd-'', accounting for the various forms of the name. The zero-grade is preserved in modern times in the Lithuanian ethnonym for Belarusians, ''Gudai'' (earlier Baltic Prussian territory before Slavic conquests by about 1200 CE), and in certain Prussian towns in the territory around the Vistula River in Gothiscandza, today Poland (Gdynia, Gdańsk). The use of all three grades suggests that the name derives from an Indo-European stage; otherwise, it would be from a line descending from one grade. However, when and where the ancestors of the Goths assigned this name to themselves and whether they used it in Indo-European or proto-Germanic times remain unsolved questions of historical linguistics and prehistoric archaeology. A compound name, ''Gut-þiuda'', at root the "Gothic people", appears in the ''Gothic Calendar'' (''aikklesjons fullaizos ana gutþiudai gabrannidai''). Parallel occurrences indicate that it may mean "country of the Goths": Old Icelandic ''Sui-þjòd'', "Sweden"; Old English ''Angel-þēod'', "Anglia"; Old Irish ''Cruithen-tuath'', "country of the Picts".〔 抄文引用元・出典: フリー百科事典『 ウィキペディア（Wikipedia）』 ■ウィキペディアで「Goths」の詳細全文を読む スポンサード リンク
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