[Edit] Ostrogothic culture

Ostrogoth ear jewels, Metropolitan Museum of Art

Of Gothic literature in the Gothic language we have the Bible of Ulfilas and some other religious writings and fragments. Of Gothic legislation in Latin we have the edict of Theodoric of the year 500, and the Variae of Cassiodorus may pass as a collection of the state papers of Theodoric and his immediate successors. Among the Visigothic written laws had already been put forth by Euric. Alaric II put forth a Breviarium of Roman law for his Roman subjects; but the great collection of Visigothic laws dates from the later days of the monarchy, being put forth by King Reccaswinth about 654. This code gave occasion to some well-known comments by Montesquieu and Gibbon, and has been discussed by Savigny (Geschichte des romischen Rechts, ii. 65) and various other writers. They are printed in the Monumenta Germaniae, leges, tome i. (1902).

Of special Gothic histories, besides that of Jordanes, already so often quoted, there is the Gothic history of Isidore, archbishop of Seville, a special source of the history of the Visigothic kings down to Suinthila (621-631). But all the Latin and Greek writers contemporary with the days of Gothic predominance make their constant contributions. Not for special facts, but for a general estimate, no writer is more instructive than Salvian of Marseilles in the 5th century, whose work, De Gubernatione Dei, is full of passages contrasting the vices of the Romans with the virtues of the "barbarians", especially of the Goths. In all such pictures we must allow a good deal for exaggeration both ways, but there must be a groundwork of truth. The chief virtues that the Roman Catholic presbyter praises in the Arian Goths are their chastity, their piety according to their own creed, their tolerance towards the Catholics under their rule, and their general good treatment of their Roman subjects. He even ventures to hope that such good people may be saved, not withstanding their heresy. This image must have had some basis in truth, but it is not very surprising that the later Visigoths of Iberia had fallen away from Salvian's somewhat idealistic picture.

[edit] Ostrogothic rulers

[edit] Amal Dynasty

• Valamir (not yet in Italy)

• Theodemir (not yet in Italy)

• Theodoric the Great 493–526

• Athalaric 526–534

• Theodahad 534–536

[edit] Later kings

• Witiges 536–540

• Ildibad 540–541

• Eraric 541

• Baduela 541–552 (also known as Totila)

• Theia 552–553 (also known as Teiam or Teja)

[edit] Notes

Sources

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• Amory, Patrick. People and Identity in Ostrogothic Italy, 489–554. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2003. ISBN 0 52152 635 3.

• Burns, Thomas S. A History of the Ostrogoths. Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1984. ISBN 0 253 32831 4.

• Cantor, Norman F. The Civilization of the Middle Ages. Harper Perennial. ISBN 0 06 092553 1.

• Heather, Peter. The Goths. Oxford: Blackwell Publishers, 1996.

• Heather, Peter. "Theoderic, king of the Goths." Early Medieval Europe, Volume 4, Issue 2 (Sep., 1995), pp. 145–173.

• Mierow, Charles Christopher (translator). The Gothic History of Jordanes. In English Version with an Introduction and a Commentary. 1915. Reprinted by Evolution Publishing, 2006. ISBN 1 889758 77 9.

• Wallace-Hadrill, John Michael. The Barbarian West, 400–1000. 3rd ed. London: Hutchison, 1967.

• Wolfram, Herwig. History of the Goths. Thomas J. Dunlap, trans. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1988.

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We cannot say with certainty at what period the Gothic race was severed into the nations of East and West Goths. The question is well discussed by Mr. Hodgkin, in Italy and her Invaders, chap. i. Appendix.

The name Ostrogoth occurs first in the Life of Claudius Gothicus in the Historia Augusta (written about the beginning of the fourth century), and next in Claudian, in Eutrop. ii. 153 (at the end of the same century). Our first testimony to the existence of the Visigothic name is later. In the fifth century Sidonius Apollinaris speaks of the Vesi in two places (Pan. in Avit. 456; Pan. in Major. 458). Is there any ground for inferring that the Ostrogothic name is the older? It looks rather as if at first (c. 300-400) the distinction was between Ostrogoths and Goths; and that the name Visigoth was a later appellation.

We must emphatically reject the view that Gruthungi and Thervingi were old names for Ostrogoths and Visigoths respectively and expressed the same distinction. Mr. Hodgkin has noticed the objections supplied by the passages in the Vita Claudii and Claudian; and they are decisive.