Lower Danube in the context of "Breg (river)"

The Thervingi, Tervingi, or Teruingi (sometimes pluralised Tervings or Thervings) were a Gothic people of the plains north of the Lower Danube and west of the Dniester River in the 3rd and the 4th centuries.

They had close contacts with the Greuthungi, another Gothic people from east of the Dniester, and they also had significant interactions with the Roman Empire. They were one of the main components of the large movement of Goths and other peoples over the Danube in 376, and they are seen as one of the most important ancestral groups of the Visigoths.

The Greuthungi (also spelled Greutungi) were a Gothic people who lived on the Pontic steppe between the Dniester and Don rivers in what is now Ukraine, in the 3rd and the 4th centuries. They had close contacts with the Tervingi, another Gothic people, who lived west of the Dniester River. To the east of the Greuthungi, living near the Don river, were the Alans. As such, the Greuthungi are strongly identified with the archeological sites known collectively as the Chernyakhov culture.

When the Huns arrived in the European Steppe region in the late 4th century, first the Alans were forced to join them, and then a part of the Greuthungi. Alans and Goths became an important part of Attila's forces, together with other eastern European peoples. Many Greuthungi, together with some Alans and Huns, crossed the Lower Danube to join a large group of Tervingi who had entered the Roman Empire in 376. These peoples defeated an imperial army in the Battle of Adrianople in 378, and came to a settlement agreement within the Roman empire by 382 AD. The original tribal names of the Goths fell out of use within the empire. Many of the 382 settlers appear to have become an important component of the Visigoths who formed under Alaric I.

The Sciri, or Scirians, were a Germanic people, who were first mentioned in the late 3rd century BC as participants in a raid on the city of Olbia near modern-day Odesa. Along with the Bastarnae, who are much more frequently mentioned, they are among the earliest, and most easterly, of the Germanic peoples mentioned by Greek or Roman authors.

Centuries later, in the late 4th century AD they still lived somewhere north of the Black Sea and Lower Danube in the vicinity of the Goths. By the early 5th century, the Sciri had been subdued by the Huns, whom they fought under at the Battle of the Catalaunian Plains in 451 AD.

The Danubian provinces of the Roman Empire were the provinces of the Lower Danube, within a geographical area encompassing the middle and lower Danube basins, the Eastern Alps, the Dinarides, and the Balkans. They include Noricum, Dacia (Trajana and Aureliana), the northern part of Dalmatia, Moesia (Inferior and Superior), Scythia Minor, and Pannonia (Superior and Inferior). The Danube defined the region to the north, with the Carpathian Mountains to the north and east. These provinces were important to the Imperial economy as mining regions, and their general significance in the Empire of the 3rd century is indicated by the emperors who came from the region.

The Roman presence in the region can be described as having four phases from Augustus to Hadrian: military conquest under Augustus, and consequent military actions; the establishment of military bases along roads and river crossings under Claudius; the establishment of camps along the river for stationing legions and auxiliaries carried out by the Flavian dynasty and Trajan; and further expansion into Dacia north of the Danube. Hadrian's approach was to defend and maintain, a policy that remained more or less in effect until the latter 4th century, when Roman control disintegrated. The pattern of Roman settlement after the time of Hadrian became standard: a fort (castra), a military town (canabae) associated with it, and a town (municipium) developing two or three miles away.