lake: paludem Meotidem]. On the second migration they went to Moesia, Thrace and Dacia, and after their third they dwelt again in Scythia, above the Sea of Pontus. [...] Of course if anyone in our city says that the Goths had an origin different from that I have related, let him object. For myself, I prefer to believe what I have read, rather than put trust in old wives' tales. (39) To return, then, to my subject. The aforesaid race of which I speak is known to have had Filimer as king while they remained in their first home in Scythia near Maeotis. In their second home, that is in the countries of Dacia, Thrace and Moesia, Zalmoxes reigned, whom many writers of annals mention as a man of remarkable learning in philosophy. According to Jordanes, the Goths left Oium in a second migration to Moesia, Dacia and Thrace, but they eventually returned, settling north of the Black Sea. Upon their return, they were divided under two ruling dynasties. The Visigoths were ruled by the Balþi and the Ostrogoths by the Amali. The identified places Jordanes himself understands Oium to be near the Sea of Azov, which was understood to be a marshy area in this period. Wolfram (p. 42) for example interprets Jordanes in a straightforward way to be referring to a place on the shore of the Sea of Azov. The Reallexikon der germanischen Altertumskunde (RGA) article on Oium, for example, proposes, based upon a proposal by Herwig Wolfram, that the uncrossable river with a broken bridge might be the Dnieper. The bridge story itself can not be taken literally as bridges crossing major rivers were not known in this area more than 1000 years BCE. It can therefore only refer to events in a much later period. Both Herwig Wolfram and Walter Goffart see the bridge story as likely to be symbolic. Based upon a proposal by Norbert Wagner, the RGA suggests that the marshes surrounding Oium could be the Pripyat or Rokitno marshes in the area of the modern border of Belarus and Ukraine. This is to the west of the Dnieper, and not near Southern Russia where Wagner believed Oium was, and so Wagner saw this area, which contains the Pripyat River, as representing the "river" which needed to be crossed en route to Oium. Jordanes' sources As explained above, Jordanes represented his story as