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The Battle of Abritus, also known as the Battle of Forum Terebronii, occurred near Abritus in the Roman province of Moesia Inferior in the summer of 251. It was fought between the Romans and a federation of Gothic and Scythian tribesmen under the Gothic king Cniva. The Roman army of three legions was soundly defeated, and Roman emperors Decius and his son Herennius Etruscus were both killed in battle. They became the first Roman emperors to be killed by a foreign enemy. It was one of the worst defeats suffered by the Roman Empire against Germanics, rated by the Roman historian Ammianus Marcellinus as on par with the Battle of the Teutoburg Forest in 9 AD, the Marcomannic invasion of Roman Italy in 170, and the Battle of Adrianople in 378.
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.
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 Roman Empire, based upon the large Gothic populations who had settled in the Balkans in the 4th century, having crossed the Lower Danube. 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 the influence of the Amal Dynasty, the family of Theodoric the Great.
The Gepids were an East Germanic tribe who lived in the area of modern Romania, Hungary and Serbia, roughly between the Tisza, Sava and Carpathian mountains. They were said to share the religion and language of the Goths and Vandals.
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 a full story to the origin and history of the Goths, although how close it is to actual history or origin mythology is a matter of dispute.
Cniva was a Gothic king who invaded the Roman Empire. He successfully captured the city of Philippopolis in 250 and killed Emperor Decius and his son Herennius Etruscus at the Battle of Abritus as he was attempting to leave the Empire in 251. This was the first time a Roman Emperor had been killed in combat against barbarians. He was allowed by the new Emperor Trebonianus Gallus to leave with his spoils and was paid tribute to stay out of the empire.
King Rodulf was king of the Heruli kingdom on the Middle Danube in the period around 500, and possibly of Scandinavian origin. He died in a battle with the neighbouring Lombards which led to the splitting up of the Heruli. He is probably the same Heruli king that Theoderic the Great wrote to in two surviving letters, in one of which Theoderic "adopted" him with a gift of arms. Less certainly, he is also sometimes equated to a King Rodulf that Jordanes mentions as having come from Scandinavia to Italy, to join Theoderic.
The Sciri, or Scirians, were a Germanic people. They are believed to have spoken an East Germanic language. Their name probably means "the pure ones".
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 Amali – also called Amals, Amalings or Amalungs – were a leading dynasty of the Goths, a Germanic people who confronted the Roman Empire during the decline of the Western Roman Empire. They eventually became the royal house of the Ostrogoths and founded the Ostrogothic Kingdom of Italy.
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.
The Thervingi, Tervingi, or Teruingi 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.
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.
The Taifals or Tayfals were a people group of Germanic or Sarmatian origin, first documented north of the lower Danube in the mid third century AD. They experienced an unsettled and fragmented history, for the most part in association with various Gothic peoples, and alternately fighting against or for the Romans. In the late fourth century some Taifali were settled within the Roman Empire, notably in western Gaul in the modern province of Poitou. They subsequently supplied mounted units to the Roman army and continued to be a significant source of cavalry for early Merovingian armies. By the sixth century their region of western Gaul had acquired a distinct identity as Thifalia.
Balamber was ostensibly a chieftain of the Huns, mentioned by Jordanes in his Getica. Jordanes simply called him "king of the Huns" and writes the story of Balamber crushing the tribes of the Ostrogoths in the 370s; somewhere between 370 and more probably 376 AD.
The belagines were written laws which, according to Jordanes, were given to the Goths by Dicineus / Dekaineos, the Dacian-Getic legislator, Zalmoxian priest at the time of Burebista.
Ariaric also known as Ariacus was a 4th-century Thervingian Gothic pagan ruler He was succeeded by Geberic. In 328, Constantine the Great constructed a bridge across the Danube and built fortifications in the territory of Oltenia and Wallachia. This caused a migration of the Thervingi and Taifali to the west into Tisza Sarmatian controlled areas. The Sarmatians joined forces with Constantine, who appointed his son Constantine II to campaign against the Goths in late winter 332, reportedly resulting in the deaths of approximately one hundred thousand people due to the weather and lack of food. Ariaric was forced to sign a treaty or foedus with Constantine in 332. Yet some scholars dispute that this treaty was a foedus, but more like an act of submission.
The name of the Goths is one of the most discussed topics in Germanic philology. It is first recorded by Greco-Roman writers in the 3rd century AD, although names that are probably related appear earlier. Derived from Proto-Germanic *Gutōz ~ *Gutaniz, it is closely related to and probably means the same as the names of both the Geats of southern Sweden and Gutes of Gotland. The implications of these similarities, and the actual meaning of the Gothic name, are disputed in scholarship. Although the Goths have disappeared as a people, their name has survived in various appellations up to the present day.
There were several origin stories of the Gothic peoples recorded by Latin and Greek authors in late antiquity, and these are relevant not only to the study of literature, but also by historians seeking evidence of real historical events involving the Goths and other peoples mentioned in these stories.
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, displacing previous hegemonic groups of the region, such as the Carpi. However, while some scholars, such as Michael Kulikowski, believe there is insufficient evidence to come to strong conclusions, 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. More speculatively, the Gutones may have been culturally related to the similarly named Gutes of Gotland and the Geats of southern Scandinavia.
References
- ↑ Wolfram 1990 , pp. 387–388
- ↑ Wolfram 1990 , p. 95
- ↑ Jordanes. The Origin and Deeds of the Goths XXXIV.
- 1 2 Wolfram 1990 , p. 61
- ↑ Jordanes. The Origin and Deeds of the Goths V.
- ↑ Christensen 2002 , pp. 325–326