THE GERMANIC INVASION 0 determined to take them forcibly* for they always marched under arms. Mure than one Germanic people in such a migration was overwhelmed by the Roman armies. In the year 269 three hundred thousand Goths had passed the Danube with wives and children ; a long convoy of carts brought up the rear. The Emperor Claudius attacked them with a small army, lighting one great battle and frequent winter skirmishes in the Balkans. At the end of the campaign the Gothic army was wiped out, the men had been killed, the women reduced to slavery. And yet more than one people succeeded in establishing themselves in the empire. The Coinitatus—The greater part of the German warriors thought only of fighting. *" Whenever I he}" are not at war,'" says Tacitus, "(hey spend the time in hunting, or rather in doing1 nothing but eating ami sleeping. The bravest and the most warlike of them do nothing at all; they leave the care of their house and their fields to their wives, to the old men, and to the weak; they themselves live in the most stupid fashion." There were in every people many of these warriors by profession. They united themselves to a noble chief or one renowned for fighting and swore to be faithful to him. And so there was formed a band (comitatus) of companions devoted to a chief, who lived at his house., ate at his table, surrounded him in battle and died in his defence. War was necessaiy to these men—to the companions to withdraw them from this life of ban- quets and idleness, and to the chief to provide enter- tainment for his men. When a people was at peace its bands of warriors went away with their chiefs to fight in the army of any other people, or even to make