The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire · ¶338

The emperor Decius had employed a few months in the works of peace and the administration of justice, when he was summoned to the banks of the Danube by the invasion of the Goths. This is the first considerable occasion in which history mentions that great people, who afterwards broke the Roman power, sacked the Capitol, and reigned in Gaul, Spain, and Italy. So memorable was the part which they acted in the subversion of the Western empire, that the name of Goths is frequently but improperly used as a general appellation of rude and warlike barbarism.

Edward Gibbon · Project Gutenberg #731 (Milman edition) — public domain
Source edition
Passage preview. Read in context for the complete text, notes and references.