Goth
one of an ancient race belonging to the Teutons, who originally occupied a great portion of European and Asiatic Russia. Filmer, their king, conducted a body of his nation to the coast of the Euxine, where it afterward increased into a numerous and formidable people under the names of Visigoths and Ostrogoths, the former occupying the countries to the W. of the Dnieper, the latter those to the E. The Visigoths crossed the Danube, plundered Rome and Italy, and fixed their residence in Spain, while their kindred, the Ostrogoths, took possession of of Italy, Italy, which they held till A. D. 544, when they were overthrown by Narses, general of Justinian. From this time the Goths as a nation make no GOTHLAND figure in history except in Spain; but traces of their language, manners, and arts are still to be found in every country of the East. A branch of the Visigoths, settled in Mesia, the modern Bulgaria, are known as Mesogoths, and the translation of a great portion of the Bible by Wulfila, or Ulfila, a Christian bishop, about A. D. 350, fragments only of which have come down to us, is the earliest known specimen of the Gothic or Teutonic tribe of tongues. Figuratively, a barbarian; one deficient in or utterly without taste; a rude, ignorant person.
GOTHA (gō'tä), a town of Germany, alternately with Coburg the capital of the former duchy of Saxe-Coburg-Gotha, 31 miles W. by S. of Weimar, on the N. outskirts of the Thuringian Forest. It is a handsome, well-built town, with fine parks. The principal public building is the castle of Friedenstein, built in 1643, 78 feet above the town; it contains a library of over 200,000 volumes and 6,000 MSS., and a very valuable numismatic collection. The museum (1878), in the Renaissance style, contains the picture gallery, in which Cranach, Van Eyck, Holbein, Rubens, and Rembrandt are represented; a very excellent cabinet of engravings; natural history collection; collections of Egyptian, Roman, Greek and German antiquities; and a Japanese and Chinese museum. A new observatory was built in 1874. Gotha prior to the World War was an active industrial town, the principal manufactures being shoes, fire engine pipes, sugar and toys. Gotha sausages have a widespread celebrity.
Several hundreds of designers, engravers, printers, and map-colorers were employed here in the geographical establishment of Justus Perthes, who also publishes the "Almanach de Gotha" (see ALMANAC). Pop. about 39,500. a