Athanaric, who has continued to follow the old Germanic pagan religion, initiates a fierce persecution of his Christian subjects in Dacia.

According to Christian tradition, his most notable victim is one Sabbas the Goth, who, when one of Athanaric’s sub-chiefs came to the village where Sabbas lived and asked if there were any Christians about, stepped forward and said, “Let no-one swear an oath on my behalf.

I am a Christian.” The leader dismissed him, saying, “This one can do us neither good nor harm.” The next year, a priest comes to the village and celebrates Easter with Sabbas.

The pagans of the village report this, and the leader returns a second time to arrest Sabbas.

They drag Sabbas naked through thorn bushes, bind him and the priest to trees, and force them to eat food that had been sacrificed to idols.

Both men refuse to touch the meat.

Athanaric passes a death sentence on Sabbas, who goes off with the soldiers praising God all the way, denouncing the pagan and idolatrous ways of his captors, and scorning them.

The commander orders Sabbas to be thrown in a river, tying a rock around his neck and his body to a wooden pole.

Sabbas thus becomes the earliest known native-born martyr on Romanian soil.