indeed, that from Byzantium to the mouth of the Ister is a journey of twenty-two days, which should be added to the measure of Europe by one making the computation.  And on the Asiatic side, that is from Chalcedon to the Phasis River, which, flowing from the country of the Colchians, descends into the Pontus, the journey is accomplished in forty days.  So that the whole Roman domain, according to the distance along the sea at least, attains the measure of a three hundred and forty-seven days’ journey, if, as has been said, one ferries over the Ionian Gulf, which extends about eight hundred stades from Dryous.  For the passage across the gulf[9] amounts to a journey of not less than four days.  Such, then, was the size of the Roman empire in the ancient times.

And there fell to him who held the power in the West the most of Libya, extending ninety days’ journey—­for such is the distance from Gadira to the boundaries of Tripolis in Libya; and in Europe he received as his portion territory extending seventy-five days’ journey—­for such is the distance from the northern[10] of the Pillars of Heracles to the Ionian Gulf.[11] And one might add also the distance around the gulf.  And the emperor of the East received territory extending one hundred and twenty days’ journey, from the boundaries of Cyrene in Libya as far as Epidamnus, which lies on the Ionian Gulf and is called at the present time Dyrrachium, as well as that portion of the country about the Euxine Sea which, as previously stated, is subject to the Romans.  Now one day’s journey extends two hundred and ten stades,[12] or as far as from Athens to Megara.  Thus, then, the Roman emperors divided either continent between them.  And among the islands Britain, which is outside the Pillars of Heracles and by far the largest of all islands, was counted, as is natural, with the West; and inside the Pillars, Ebusa,[13] which lies in the Mediterranean in what we may call the Propontis, just inside the opening where the ocean enters, about seven days’ journey from the opening, and two others near it, Majorica and Minorica, as they are called by the natives, were also assigned to the Western empire.  And each of the islands in the Sea itself fell to the share of that one of the two emperors within whose boundaries it happened to lie.

II

Now while Honorius was holding the imperial power in the West, barbarians took possession of his land; and I shall tell who they were and in what manner they did so. [395-423 A.D.] There were many Gothic nations in earlier times, just as also at the present, but the greatest and most important of all are the Goths, Vandals, Visigoths, and Gepaedes.  In ancient times, however, they were named Sauromatae and Melanchlaeni;[14] and there were some too who called these nations Getic.  All these, while they are distinguished from one another by their names, as has been said, do not differ in anything else at all.  For they all have white