People
Gaetae
Getho Githorum
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The Gaetae are the Getae, a Thracian people of the lower Danube, in what is now the Dobruja. The Greek historian Herodotus called them the bravest and most just of the Thracians, set apart by their worship of the god Zalmoxis. Pressed westward by the Bastarnae, they left their old homeland so empty that the geographer Strabo spoke of the desert of the Getae. Greeks said Getae where Romans said Dacians, and from Augustus onward the two were treated as one. Later still, once the Goths appeared under Caracalla, the ancient name passed to them.