If any man deemed himself injured by another he could bring his case before the court, and if he made it good the court would award him compensation for the injury done him in the form of some cattle, or other valuable property to be given over to him by the man that did him the injury. The amount of the compensation it would be part of the work of the court of law to settle when it was assembled at the "mote hill" or place where the eldermen of the tribe gathered for the purpose.
But, you may say, that is all very well for the man who had suffered an injury that was not fatal. You could compensate him, perhaps. But how about a man that had been killed? You could not very well compensate him.
You could not. All you could do in a case like this would be to make the killer give compensation, in form of a heavy fine of cattle or goods, to the wife and family of the murdered man. But that would not be enough: the killer must be personally punished too, probably with death.
And then you may say that, if he was to be punished with death, it would not much matter to him how many of his cattle or how much of his goods were taken from him and given to the family of the man he had killed.
The Gothic family
It would not—to him personally; but it would matter to his wife and family. They would be the poorer by the amount of the fine that was paid. And it is thought likely that it was in this way that the custom grew of looking upon the family of a person who had suffered wrong as the people who were to be compensated for the wrong, rather than the sufferer himself; and also of looking upon the family of the man who had done the wrong as the people who should make the compensation, rather than the wrong-doer himself.
The result of that was to make each person in the family look upon every other person of the same family as one whose acts might make a great deal of difference to him. The whole family had to suffer when any of its members did wrong: the whole family had a claim against a person who had wronged one of its members.
So they had this sentiment, that all the members of a family were dependent each on the acts of the other, and that they must suffer together when wrong was done; but in other ways they were very independent people.
They seem to have been generally tall and big, both men and women. They had light hair, which even the men allowed to grow long, so as to fall on their shoulders, blue eyes and fair complexions.
That is a general description which may serve for all the tribes of the barbarians which came knocking on the northern and eastern walls of the Empire in Europe all the way down from Sleswig, where the Saxons were, to the lands occupied by the Goths, some of whom lived as far east as the shores of the Black Sea, where they had formed, as we have seen, a large fleet. It is possible for a general account like this to serve for the many different tribes and nations into which the barbarians on this boundary of the Empire were split up, because they were all of one race originally, rather as we of Great Britain and most of the Americans are of the Anglo-Saxon race, although we are now of different nations.