Alaric I was the first king of the Visigoths,from 395 to 410. He rose to leadership of the Goths who came to occupy Moesia—territory acquired a couple of decades earlier by a combined force of Goths and Alans after the Battle of Adrianople.
The Goths were a Germanic people who played a major role in the fall of the Western Roman Empire and the emergence of medieval Europe. They were first reported by Graeco-Roman authors in the 3rd century AD,living north of the Danube in what is now Ukraine,Moldova and Romania. These Goths conducted raids into Roman territory,and large numbers of them joined the Roman military. These early Goths lived in the regions where archaeologists find the Chernyakhov culture,which flourished throughout this region during the 3rd and 4th centuries.
Jordanes,also written as Jordanis or Jornandes,was a 6th-century Eastern Roman bureaucrat,widely believed to be of Gothic descent,who became a historian later in life.
The Ostrogoths were a Roman-era Germanic people. In the 5th century,they followed the Visigoths in creating one of the two great Gothic kingdoms within the Western Roman Empire,drawing upon the large Gothic populations who had settled in the Balkans in the 4th century. While the Visigoths had formed under the leadership of Alaric I,the new Ostrogothic political entity which came to rule Italy was formed in the Balkans under Theodoric the Great.
The Visigoths were a Germanic people united under the rule of a king and living within the Roman Empire during late antiquity. The Visigoths first appeared in the Balkans,as a Roman-allied barbarian military group united under the command of Alaric I. Their exact origins are believed to have been diverse but they probably included many descendants of the Thervingi who had moved into the Roman Empire beginning in 376 and had played a major role in defeating the Romans at the Battle of Adrianople in 378. Relations between the Romans and Alaric's Visigoths varied,with the two groups making treaties when convenient,and warring with one another when not. Under Alaric,the Visigoths invaded Italy and sacked Rome in August 410.
The Rugii,Rogi or Rugians,were one of the smaller Germanic peoples of Late Antiquity who are best known for their short-lived 5th-century kingdom upon the Roman frontier,near present-day Krems an der Donau in Austria. This kingdom,like those of the neighbouring Heruli and Scirii,first appears in records after the death of Attila in 453. The Rugii,Heruli,Scirii and others are believed to have moved into this region from distant homelands under pressure from the Huns,and become part of Attila's Hunnic empire which also moved and came to be based in this region. The Rugii were subsequently part of the alliance which defeated Attila's sons and the Ostrogoths at the Battle of Nedao in 454,giving their kingdom independence. In 469 they were part of a similar alliance who lost to the Ostrogoths at the Battle of Bolia,weakening their kingdom significantly.
The Migration Period,also known as the Barbarian Invasions,was a period in European history marked by large-scale migrations that saw the fall of the Western Roman Empire and subsequent settlement of its former territories by various tribes,and the establishment of the post-Roman kingdoms.
Wallia,Walha or Vallia,was king of the Visigoths from 415 to 418,earning a reputation as a great warrior and prudent ruler. He was elected to the throne after Athaulf and Sigeric were both assassinated in 415. One of Wallia's most notable achievements was negotiating a foedus with the Roman emperor Honorius in 416. This agreement allowed the Visigoths to settle in Aquitania,a region in modern-day France,in exchange for military service to Rome. This settlement marked a significant step towards the eventual establishment of a Visigothic kingdom in the Iberian Peninsula. He was succeeded by Theodoric I.
De origine actibusque Getarum,commonly abbreviated Getica,written in Late Latin by Jordanes in or shortly after 551 AD,claims to be a summary of a voluminous account by Cassiodorus of the origin and history of the Gothic people,which is now lost. However,the extent to which Jordanes actually used the work of Cassiodorus is unknown. It is significant as the only remaining contemporaneous resource that gives an extended account of the origin and history of the Goths,although to what extent it should be considered history or origin mythology is a matter of dispute.
Ermanaric was a Greuthungian Gothic king who before the Hunnic invasion evidently ruled a sizable portion of Oium,the part of Scythia inhabited by the Goths at the time. He is mentioned in two Roman sources:the contemporary writings of Ammianus Marcellinus,and in Getica by the sixth-century historian Jordanes. He also appears in a fictionalized form in later Germanic heroic legends.
The Chernyakhov culture,Cherniakhiv culture or Sântana de Mureș—Chernyakhov culture was an archaeological culture that flourished between the 2nd and 5th centuries CE in a wide area of Eastern Europe,specifically in what is now Ukraine,Romania,Moldova and parts of Belarus. The culture is thought to be the result of a multiethnic cultural mix of the Geto-Dacian,Sarmatian,and Gothic populations of the area. "In the past,the association of this [Chernyakhov] culture with the Goths was highly contentious,but important methodological advances have made it irresistible."
Oium was a name for Scythia,or a fertile part of it,roughly in modern Ukraine,where the Goths,under a legendary King Filimer,settled after leaving Gothiscandza,according to the Getica by Jordanes,written around 551.
The Gutones were a Germanic people who were reported by Roman era writers in the 1st and 2nd centuries to have lived in what is now Poland. The most accurate description of their location,by the geographer Ptolemy,placed them east of the Vistula River.
Walter Andre Goffart is a German-born American historian who specializes in Late Antiquity and the European Middle Ages. He taught for many years in the history department and Centre for Medieval Studies of the University of Toronto (1960–1999),and is currently a senior research scholar at Yale University. He is the author of monographs on a ninth-century forgery,late Roman taxation,four "barbarian" historians,and historical atlases.
The Greuthungi 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.
Odotheus was a Greuthungi king who in 386 led an incursion into the Roman Empire. He was defeated and killed by the Roman general Promotus. His surviving people settled in Phrygia.
Michael Kulikowski is an American historian. He is a professor of history and classics and the head of the history department at Pennsylvania State University. Kulikowski specializes in the history of the western Mediterranean world of late antiquity. He is sometimes associated with the Toronto School of History and was a student of Walter Goffart.
The barbarian kingdoms were states founded by various non-Roman,primarily Germanic,peoples in Western Europe and North Africa following the collapse of the Western Roman Empire in the fifth century. The barbarian kingdoms were the principal governments in Western Europe in the Early Middle Ages. The time of the barbarian kingdoms is considered to have come to an end with Charlemagne's coronation as emperor in 800,though a handful of small Anglo-Saxon kingdoms persisted until being unified by Alfred the Great in 886.
The Vienna School of History is an influential school of historical thinking based at the University of Vienna. It is closely associated with Reinhard Wenskus,Herwig Wolfram and Walter Pohl. Partly drawing upon ideas from sociology and critical theory,scholars of the Vienna School have utilized the concept of ethnogenesis to reassess the notion of ethnicity as it applies to historical groups of peoples such as the Germanic tribes. Focusing on Late Antiquity and the Early Middle Ages,the Vienna School has a large publishing output,and has had a major influence on the modern analysis of barbarian identity.
Concerning the origin of the Goths before the 3rd century,there is no consensus among scholars. It was in the 3rd century that the Goths began to be described by Roman writers as an increasingly important people north of the lower Danube and Black Sea,in the area of modern Romania,Republic of Moldova,and Ukraine. They replaced other peoples who had been dominant in the region,such as especially the Carpi,and Germanic-speaking Bastarnae. However,while some scholars,such as Michael Kulikowski,believe there is insufficient evidence to come to strong conclusions about their earlier origins,the most commonly accepted proposal is that the Goths known to the Romans were a people whose traditions derived to some extent from the Gutones who lived near the delta of the Vistula in what is now Poland. More speculatively,the Gutones may have been culturally related to the similarly named Gutes of Gotland and the Geats of southern Scandinavia,known from much later historical periods.
