Theoderic the Great and Ostrogothic Italy

Abstract

The Ostrogothic king Theoderic is the only non-Roman ruler of Late Antiquity to have acquired the epithet the Great, albeit only in modern times. Born around 453 in Pannonia (Hungary) as the son of a Gothic king named Thiudimir, he grew up in Constantinople, where he was held as a hostage for ten years. He returned to Pannonia in 471, in 474 succeeding his father, who had meanwhile led the “Pannonian Goths” into Macedonia. For several years Theoderic fought a Gothic king and rival claimant to imperial favor likewise named Theoderic whose power base was in Thrace (hence “Thracian Goths”). Only after the latter’s death in 481 did he succeed in uniting the two groups under his leadership. Although he was subsequently appointed magister militum and held the consulship in 484, relations with the emperor Zeno soon became hostile. In 488, Theoderic and Zeno made an agreement that Theoderic should take his people to Italy and eliminate Odovacer. After a devastating war, he slew Odovacer by his own hand in March 493, in breach of an oath sworn shortly before to share rule in Italy. Having secured sole rule in Italy, Theoderic turned his mobile and militarized followers into a standing army by allotting them ownership rights to landed estates (rather than shares in land tax, as some have argued). He defined his position as ruler over two peoples, Goths and Romans, to which he assigned complementary but separate roles (“integration by separation”). While Goths were warriors by definition, the civilian population was labeled Roman. Theoderic won over the senatorial elites by preserving their privileges, wealth, and social power and by giving them a share in his rule. He left the administrative structures of the Late Roman state largely unaltered and filled all positions of a civilian nature with people from the senatorial milieu. Although he belonged to a Christian denomination considered heretical by Catholics (“Arian”) he treated Catholic bishops with respect; they in turn asked him to act as an arbitrator when in 498 Symmachus and Laurentius were simultaneously elected to be bishop of Rome. From 508 to 511 he extended his rule over Provence and the Iberian peninsula. Relations with the senatorial elites and the Roman church became strained at the end of Theoderic’s life. He died in Ravenna on 30 August 526 without having nominated an heir to the throne. His kingdom fell within a generation after his death, but his memory lived on in Italy and in all Germanic-speaking lands where legend transformed him into Dietrich of Berne.