Cassiodorus, Jordanes and the History of the Goths

Cassiodorus, Jordanes and the History of the Goths
Author: Arne Søby Christensen
Publisher: Museum Tusculanum Press
Total Pages: 408
Release: 2002
Genre: History
ISBN: 9788772897103

This book is a study in the myth of the origins and early history of the Goths as told in the Getica written by Jordanes in AD 551. Jordanes claimed they emigrated from the island of Scandza (Sweden) in 1490 BC, thus giving them a history of more than two thousand years. He found this narrative in Cassiodorus' Gothic history, which is now lost. The present study demonstrates that Cassiodorus and Jordanes did not base their accounts on a living Gothic tradition of the past, as the Getica would have us believe. On the contrary, they got their information only from the Graeco-Roman literature. The Greeks and Romans, however, did not know of the Goths until the middle of the third century AD. Consequently, Cassiodorus and Jordanes created a Gothic history partly through an erudite exploitation of the names of foreign peoples, and partly by using the narratives about other peoples' history as if they belonged to the Goths. The history of the Migrations therefore must be reconsidered.

Writing the Barbarian Past: Studies in Early Medieval Historical Narrative

Writing the Barbarian Past: Studies in Early Medieval Historical Narrative
Author: Shami Ghosh
Publisher: BRILL
Total Pages: 329
Release: 2015-10-27
Genre: History
ISBN: 9004305815

Writing the Barbarian Past examines the presentation of the non-Roman, pre-Christian past in Latin and vernacular historical narratives composed between c.550 and c.1000: the Gothic histories of Jordanes and Isidore of Seville, the Fredegar chronicle, the Liber Historiae Francorum, Paul the Deacon’s Historia Langobardorum, Waltharius, and Beowulf; it also examines the evidence for an oral vernacular tradition of historical narrative in this period. In this book, Shami Ghosh analyses the relative significance granted to the Roman and non-Roman inheritances in narratives of the distant past, and what the use of this past reveals about the historical consciousness of early medieval elites, and demonstrates that for them, cultural identity was conceived of in less binary terms than in most modern scholarship.

History of the Goths

History of the Goths
Author: Herwig Wolfram
Publisher: Univ of California Press
Total Pages: 644
Release: 1990
Genre: History
ISBN: 9780520069831

Provides an overview on the formation of the Gothic tribes, their migrations, and the later history of the Ostrogothic and Visigothic settlements.

The Gothic: A Very Short Introduction

The Gothic: A Very Short Introduction
Author: Nick Groom
Publisher: OUP Oxford
Total Pages: 0
Release: 2012-09-27
Genre: History
ISBN: 9780199586790

There are many interpretations of the word 'Gothic'. Nick Groom explores the rich history and chronology of the term, bringing together various underlying and disparate elements to clarify its meaning. By examining its history, he argues that we can better interpret and understand society today.

Romana

Romana
Author: Jordanes
Publisher:
Total Pages: 0
Release: 2020
Genre: Germanic peoples
ISBN: 9781837643967

Of Gothic descent, Jordanes wrote a unique set of histories. The Getica narrates the history of the Goths from their earliest origins until the middle of the sixth century. Building on the lost history of Cassiodorus, it is the earliest example of a history told from the perspective of one of the barbarian peoples establishing kingdoms in the fifth and sixth centuries. It had great influence on later medieval historians, on national histories of the nineteenth century and on modern accounts of Gothic history. The Romana is a survey of world and Roman history. Whilst largely dependent on traditional Roman histories and chronicles for events up to the fourth century, it contains much unique information for the last two centuries it narrates. This book offers the first translation into English of the Getica for a century and the first modern translation of the Romana. The introduction locates the Getica and the Romana in the context of ancient historiography, building a new picture of Jordanes as a historian and of the two works themselves. It also offers a detailed discussion of the sources used by Jordanes, suggesting possible ways to identify his debt to Cassiodorus. Extensive notes guide the reader through these fascinating but often complex texts.

The Ostrogoths from the Migration Period to the Sixth Century

The Ostrogoths from the Migration Period to the Sixth Century
Author: S. J. B. Barnish
Publisher: Boydell & Brewer Ltd
Total Pages: 510
Release: 2007
Genre: History
ISBN: 9781843830740

The Ostrogoths appropriated the remnants of the Roman empire in Italy, Spain, southern Gaul and the north-west Balkans. In this title, studies illuminate the evolution of medieval Europe from Roman civilisation moderated by Germanic outsiders.

Goths and Romans, 332-489

Goths and Romans, 332-489
Author: Peter J. Heather
Publisher: Oxford University Press on Demand
Total Pages: 378
Release: 1994
Genre: History
ISBN: 9780198205357

This book examines the collision of Goths and Romans in the fourth and fifth centuries. In these years Gothic tribes played a major role in the destruction of the western half of the Roman Empire, moving the length of Europe from what is now the USSR to establish successor states to the Roman Empire in southern France and Spain (the Visigoths) and in Italy (the Ostrogoths). Our understanding of the Goths in this "Migration Period" has been based upon the Gothic historian Jordanes, whose mid-sixth-century Getica suggests that the Visigoths and Ostrogoths entered the Empire already established as coherent groups and simply conquered new territories. Using more contemporary sources, Peter Heather is able to show that, on the contrary, Visigoths and Ostrogoths were new and unprecedentedly large social groupings, and that many Gothic societies failed even to survive the upheavals of the Migration Period. Dr Heather's scholarly study explores the complicated interactions with Roman power which both prompted the creation of the Visigoths and Ostrogoths around newly emergent dynasties and helped bring about the fall of the Roman Empire.

The Variae

The Variae
Author: Cassiodorus
Publisher: Univ of California Press
Total Pages: 529
Release: 2022-01-25
Genre: History
ISBN: 0520389700

Cassiodorus—famed throughout history as one of the great Christian exegetes of antiquity—spent most of his life as a high-ranking public official under the Ostrogothic King Theoderic and his heirs. He produced the Variae, a unique letter collection that gave witness to the sixth-century Mediterranean, as late antiquity gave way to the early middle ages. The Variae represents thirty years of Cassiodorus’s work in civil, legal, and financial administration, revealing his interactions with emperors and kings, bishops and military commanders, private citizens, and even criminals. Thus, the Variae remains among the most important sources for the history of this pivotal period and is an indispensable resource for understanding political and diplomatic culture, economic and legal structure, intellectual heritage, urban landscapes, religious worldview, and the evolution of social relations at all levels of society during the twilight of the late-Roman state. This is the first full translation of this masterwork into English.

Amalasuintha

Amalasuintha
Author: Massimiliano Vitiello
Publisher: University of Pennsylvania Press
Total Pages: 312
Release: 2017-11-03
Genre: Biography & Autobiography
ISBN: 081224947X

As mother, as regent, and as queen, Amalasuintha struggled at the palace of Ravenna to maintain the Ostrogothic dynasty. Massimiliano Vitiello demonstrates the ways in which her life shows the influence of both Western and Eastern imperial models on the formation of female political power in the post-Roman world.