The next event of importance was the defeat of the Goths (about 268 or 269[104]) by Marcus Aurelius Claudius.  They had once more entered Roman territory, had overrun Moesia and Illyria, and were approaching the capital; it was therefore found necessary to raise a powerful army and drive them over the frontier.  This time they were defeated with great slaughter at Naissos in the Balkans and elsewhere, and were then driven across the Danube.  Marcus Aurelius, who took the name of ‘Gothicus,’ describes the fate of the enemy in these terms:  ’We have annihilated 320,000 Goths, and have sunk two thousand of their ships.  Everywhere rivers are covered with their shields, all the banks with their swords and spears, whilst the fields are sown with their bones.  The roads are indistinguishable; much baggage is taken.  We have captured so many women that every soldier is able to possess two or three of them.’[105] And yet, notwithstanding this decisive victory of Marcus Aurelius, his successor Aurelian found himself very shortly afterwards in deadly conflict with these same Goths, and his contests were so doubtful in their results that he was glad to make a treaty of peace with them and leave them in undisturbed possession of Trajan’s Dacia.  That he decided to withdraw the Roman legions (about 270 or 275 A.D.) from Dacian territory, that he offered protection to all colonists who were prepared to follow them across the Danube, and that a new colony, called Dacia Aureliani, was founded along the south bank of the Danube:  these are uncontradicted facts.  But when we come to enquire into the details of the withdrawal and the composition of the remaining population, we find such a conflict of authorities that it is impossible to come to a definite conclusion.  Nay, not only do the historians differ from one another in regard to the conditions under which Aurelian evacuated Dacia Trajana, or Dacia north of the Danube, but in some cases they even contradict themselves, and, after a careful perusal and comparison of the statements of many of them, we are quite disposed to accept the opinion expressed by our own historian Gibbon, who, after saying that Aurelian withdrew the Roman legions from Dacia and offered the alternative of leaving to those colonists who were disposed to follow him, adds:—­

’The old country of that name (Dacia) detained, however, a considerable number of its inhabitants who dreaded exile more than a Gothic master.  These degenerate Romana continued to serve the Empire whose allegiance they had renounced by introducing amongst their conquerors the first notions of agriculture, the useful arts, and the convenience of civilisation.  An intercourse of commerce and language was gradually established between the opposite banks of the Danube, and after Dacia became an independent State it often proved the firmest barrier of the Empire against the invasions of the savages of the north.  A sense of interest attached these more settled barbarians