considered the same as Gutones. In his work Geography, the 2nd-century geographer Ptolemy mentions the Gutones/Gythones as one of the peoples of Sarmatia. He also mentions the Gutae/Gautae/Goutai of southern Scandia. The latter are variants of the name of the Geats and closely related to the name of the Goths. After Ptolemy, the Gothic name is not attested again until the late 3rd century, when the name Goths (Latin: Gothi) is explicitly recorded for the first time for a group of peoples living north of the Danube. The Gothic name is attested in Shapur I's famous trilingual inscription at Naqsh-e Rostam, which is dated to 262. According to Shapur, "When first I was come to the imperial throne, Gordian Caesar (Gordian III) assembled a force of Goths and Germans from all of Rome and made an inroad into Assyria against the Aryan empire and us." The Middle Persian inscription is damaged at this point, but the Parthian reads Gvt (Goths) and the Greek Gouththon ("of Goths"). In 269 the Roman emperor Claudius II assumed the name Claudius Gothicus. No ancient sources make a connection between the names Gutones and Goths. Nevertheless, philologists and linguists have no doubt that these are the same names. Historian Arne Søby Christensen on the other hand argues that the similarities between the names are not significant. Heather has argued that while this similar name on its could arguably be an "accidental resemblance", there were also other ethnic names, the Vandals and Rugii, found in what is now Poland in the 1st century, which were similarly found south of the Carpathians near the Goths in subsequent centuries. A runic inscription on the Ring of Pietroassa can be read as Gutaniwiheilag, which is usually interpreted as 'the sacred heritage of the Goths'. The name Gutani probably reflects a form of the Gothic endonym *Gutans. Alternatively it reflects a form of the ethnonym of the Gutes. Legacy The name Goths was sometimes applied also to several non-Gothic peoples, including Burgundians, Vandals, Gepids, Rugii, Sciri and even the non-Germanic Alans. Despite the scarce attestation of their languages, these peoples, with the exception of the Alans, are often referred to as East Germanic peoples. Herwig Wolfram has instead proposed that all these peoples still be referred to as Gothic peoples. From the late 4th century, the region of Dacia in the Balkans came to be referred to as Gothia, as