if History of the Goths Herwig Wolfram Translated by Thomas J. Dunlap New and completely revised from the second German edition UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA PRESS BERKELEY LOS ANGELES LONDON‘University of California Press Merkeley and Los Angeles, Calfornia University of California Press, Led. London, England First published in Germany © 1979 by C. H. Beck'sche ‘Verlagsbuchhandiung, Oscar Beck, Munchen. Copyright © 1988 by The Regents of the University of California First Paperback Printing 1990 Libeary of Congress Cataloging in Publication Data Wolfram, Herwig. History of the Goths. Translation of: Geschichte der Goren. Bibliography: p. Inctudes index, ISBN 0.520-06983-8 (alk. paper} 1. Goths. 1, Title, D137.W6l13 1987 940.1 35-19044 Printed in the United States of America 456789 “The paper used in this publication meets the minimum require- ments af Ametican National Standard for Information Sciences Permanence of Paper for Mrinted Library Materials, ANSI Z39AB-1 984.342 THE OSTROGOTHS the talks were concluded only under Vitigis.°° Meanwhile, after a tough struggle Naples fell, whereupon Belisarius made an example of the city. Theodahad now marched out of Ravenna and advanced toward the imperial general as far as Rome, in the vicinity of which he concentrated the greater part of the Gothic army. But a revolt took place among the Gothic troops at the end of November 536. Theodahad tried to escape to Ravenna but ‘was murdered by a personal enemy on orders from the new king, Vitigis.“' The Non-Amal Kings and the Fall of the Ostrogothic Kingdom, 536-552 VITIGIS (536-540) In the five years between 531 and 536 the last three kings who can be at- tested as members of the Amal clan died. All had been closely related: wo grandsons of Theodoric and their uncle. Their own people were respon- sible for their deaths. Athalaric died on the “home front,” a victim of the typical Gothic life-style focusing on wine and women. Amalaric and Theo- dahad were both deserted and killed by their own Goths because they proved failures in the battle for the survival of the gens.“ The brilliance formula reges ex nobilitate, duces ex virtute sumunt |Germani) with which Tacitus summed up his analysis of barbarian kingship was once again proved.’ The Gothic nobility was exhausted. No suitable Amal was still alive, and the non-Amal nobility could not fill the gap. The Gothic leading stratum had suffered severely in the preceding years. The execution of Odoin in 500—the ycar of great tciumph—and the killing of Pitzia in $14—ater regrerted—had remained isolated measures by Theadoric against the high nobility. The leading Gothic magnates were therefore a consider- able power with whom Amalasuintha had to contend. The unsuccessful court revolt of 532/533 provoked the victorious queen to a bloody reaction against the nobility, as a result of which the court party at least was numer- ically weakened. Subsequently Theodahad initiated the downfall of his co- ruler Amalasuintha by eliminating certain individuals from her entourage, presumably grear nobles friendly ro the Amal queen. Finally, those who had been defeated in 533—who “were still numerous and of high nobility”"— killed her to satisfy the blood feud. This act must have compromised the entice nobility.“ When Theodahad lost his kingship because he had proved “useless” (isutilis)™ in the face of the enemy, thus disqualifying himself as king of the Goths, no one from among the nobility (ex nobilitate) could take his place. And so a proven commander (dux ex wirtute)™ was raised344 THE OSTROGOTHS Alamanni and other Eastern Alpine peoples; and they relinquished south- eastern Gaul, from which they could now recall their troops.“ Strengthened through the addition of the Gallic army, Vitigis was numerically superior to his Roman adversary."' Retreating to Ravenna, gathering the Gothic forces in northern Italy, reequipping them with offensive weapons and ar- mor: all this—in addition ta the constitutional measures co secure the gship—reveals the well-planned moves of the seasoned commander, Nor did Vitigis neglect to take his rurn in attacking the Romans in Dalmatia. If we criticize Vitigis for incompetence and indecisiveness as early as 537 we are mistaking the king of the first hundred days for the king who withdrew defeated from Rome.** Between the end of November 536 and February 537 Vitigis led the Gothic army from Terracina to Ravenna and back again to Rome." It is true that within this short period the Eternal City was lost, contrary to the Gothic war plan; even the senatorial hostages whom the Goths had taken could not prevent this." But Vitigis had strengthened his army, he had prevented a war on two fronts with a timely treaty, and he had won the royal city together with the royal child Matasuntha, The young girl, about eighteen years of age, was little pleased with the situation, but her displea- sure probably had less to do with Vitigis's age—he was born around 500— than with his birth. Perhaps she was also annoyed because her royal consort had repudiated his first wife** After the legally determinative act at the “barbarian fields” of Regata had been secured and extended by the equally important legitimization attained at Ravenna, Vitigis marched forth in great haste to face Belisarius. The Roman general had begun to entrench himself at Rome on December 9 or 10, 536.” Apart from the city militia, Belisarius had at his command only about five thousand imperial soldicrs. In addition, there were sailors and camp followers, but they had little fighting ability and discipline. When in a dispatch to the emperor Belisarius lamented the thirtyfold superiority of the enemy, he was greatly exaggerating, but it was time for Constantinople to realize that the situation had changed since the death of Theodahad" The drdle de guerre of the first cighteen months had turned into a full-scale Gothic war. The situation of the Roman army now scemed so precarious that Vitigis was actually afraid he might not be able to force Belisarius to battle," Bur even in this war there was no danger of arriving too late. Since Vitigis made a detour around Belisarius's advanced strongholds at Spoleto and Perugia he reached the Tiber city sooner than expected” On February 21, 537, the Goths stood before the gates of Rome,*"' and for more than a year they would assault its walls, sustain defeats, and gain victories in splendid cavalryTHE OSTROGOTHS 345 artacks.*” Bur they suffered great losses. The heavy artillery as well as the mounted and armored archers wrought havoc among the Gothic lancers and foot warriors.‘ Moreover, with the arrival of Roman reinforcements the Goths’ numerical superiority soon dwindled.‘ Nevertheless, the impe- rial troops struggled with many difficulties. Belisarius had to send to Naples all the “useless eaters,” such as women, children, and slaves. He even had to depose and exile the pope, who was the leader of a moderate party friendly to the Goths. The large-scale assault on the cighteenth day of the siege nearly succeeded,*“ and this seemed to justify the decision of those who had deserted to the Goths at the very beginning because they had given up Belisarius's cause as lost.** But they were all proved wrong. Despite hunger and epidemics raging in the city, the Romans managed to hold out." While still in Ravenna, Vitigis had commanded an army to cross to Dalmatia and recover Salona. Although the Goths had ships at their disposal, the expedition failed.” And at Rome too Vitigis was making no progress, His letters of reconciliation to the emperor and the high magistrates of Constantinople were still unanswered after a year," and negotiations with the imperial general to divide Italy along the lines of the status quo were also unsuccessful. None the wiser for these experiences, the Gothic king arranged an armistice from which only Belisarius profited. It allowed the imperial general to rcprovision Rome and then choose the next best opportunity to break the armistice once he had gathered enough troops to renew hostilities. In che first months of the winter of 538 a Roman cavalry force actually crossed the Apennines, laid waste to Gothic Picenum, led into slavery the women and children of the Gothic warriors besieging Rome, and finally advanced to Rimini where it en- trenched itself dangerously close to Ravenna, Vitigis thus had no choice but to raise the siege in early March 538 and return to his royal city as quickly as possible." The mountain fortress Auximum-Osimo south of Ancona was to stop the advance of the imperial forces: the “key to Ravenna” was thus placed in the hands of its strong Gothic garrison.” ‘When the siege of Auximum began a year later (spring 539) it tied down for seven months the main imperial army of eleven thousand soldiers under the command of Belisarius.“' By that time Vitigis had already won his last, costly victories. The end was near. The murder of the senatorial hostages led if not to a break with Cassiodorus then to his resignation in 537/538." In 538 a Byzantine fleet landed an army ar Genoa, took Milan at the re- quest of its population, and threatened Ticinum-Pavia, after Ravenna the most important fortified city of the Goths. Burgundian “volunteers” were therefore gratefully received by the Goths, and with their help Milan was346 THE OSTROGOTHS retaken in March $39. But the Goths had to stand by and watch as the Bur- gundians, in return for their support, enslaved as many Milanese women as they needed. With such methods it was hardly possible to win the sup- port of a city population already hostile to the Goths. Nevertheless, the expulsion of the imperial troops from Liguria was a success that the Goths owed to Vitigis's nephew Uraias;“’ but the Byzantine attack on Rimini had taken the life of the king’s uncle. Perhaps the Goths could new get along with their northern neighbors, enter into treaties with them, and make use of their support. And it was certainly time, for just before the conclusion of the Gothic-Frankish alliance Alamannic raiders had ravaged upper Italy.” In 538, however, starvation was the dreaded enemy, afflicting friend and foe alike. Its horrors, from which, especially, the peasants of the lowlands suffered magnified the effects of increasingly brutal warfare, for which Belisarius’s cavalry commanders bear much of the responsibility." The battles that spread across all of central Italy and into the valley of the Po had caused a dispersal of che forces on both sides. Leaving aside the scenes of minor engagements, we find in early 539 that large, even huge, imperial armies were fighting around Osimo near Ancona, around Fiesole near Florence, and around Milan.” On June 21, 538, Belisarius had set out from Rome. Shortly thereafter Narses together with seven thousand men went ashore in Picenum, probably at the port of Firmum-Fermo. The numerical superiority of the Goths was now a thing of the past. They could only hope thar rivalries and disagreements among the Roman generals would prevent the successful operation of the imperial troops. This hope materialized as soon as the two armics united at Fermo. At times the quar- tels between Narses and Belisarius completely paralyzed the imperial forces. The loss of Milan was in no small measure the result of unclear lines of ‘command, The setbacks persuaded the emperor to intervene, and in the spring of 539 he ordered Narses to return to Constantinople.‘ The cunuch obeyed, but his two thousand Herulian troops, who felt bound to him personally, deserted the Roman army and planned to march home to Pan- nonia II through northern Italy. On the way they fraternized with the Goths, promised to stop fighting against them, and sold them slaves and cap- tured cartle. They were not “apprehended” until they had reached northern Venetia, whereupon they were once again taken into Roman service; most, however, were sent off to the East. No sooner had Belisarius regained undisputed command over the imperial army than war resumed. The aim of the Roman operation was to climinate the Gothic field armies through a broad offensive. By forcing them to de- fend steategically important sites the imperial forces would deprive theTHE OSTROGOTHS 347 Goths of their mobility; the result would be the eventual siege and caprure of Ravenna. Although Procopius disliked Narses, he nevertheless gives a good description of the totally different strategies and tactics of Belisarius and Narses, who was Belisarius’s rival in 538/539 and who more than a decade later brought the Gothic war to an end by doing what he had earlier demanded: attacking the Gothic army head-on and destroying it.“ Beli- sarius’s strategy against the Goths was substantially the same as that of Theodoric against Odovacar.*” As early as the summer of 539 Uraias had to expect a reinforced imperial army in Liguria. [t established its base at the fortress of Dertona and thwarted all artempts by Uraias to leave the Po Valley to relieve Gothic-held Fiesole* As a result the garrison of this protective barrier to central Italy was soon in great distress.‘ But the main theater of war was on the Adriatic coast. There, with eleven thousand men, Belisarius assaulted the fortress of Auximum, defended by four thousand select Gothic warriors.‘ Vitigis, who had lost all faith in his forrunes of war during the siege of Rome,'” sat in Ravenna, no longer participating in the fighting, But he was not completely inactive; nor was he as helpless as Procopius makes him out to be. ft is more likely that the Gothic king had understood Belisarius's strategic superiority and had accordingly exchanged the role of general for that of statesman. Gothic envoys approached the Lombards, but the latter refused the request for assistance with reference to their own alliance with the empire." Next Vitigis dispatched two Ligu- rian priests to the Persians with the intent of stirring them up against the empire. This threat was taken so seriously by Justinian that the Gothic delegation Vitigis had sent to Constantinople at the beginning of his reign was immediately returned with promises of peace. Belisarius, however, de- tained the envoys for some time, and eventually exchanged them for Petrus Patricius and his companions, who had been captured during the days of Theodahad.“” For the moment this was all that could be achieved, for in 539 King Theudebert led his Franks on a sudden raid into northern Italy. Like a tornado the barbarians first fell upon the Goths and then upon the imperial army. Before crossing the Po the Franks sacrificed Gothic women and. chil- dren to the river god, who must have been surprised at this offering from the emperor's Catholic allies.” But when food shortages and epidemics afflicted the Franks, their advance came to a standstill. Theudebert soon withdrew from a large section of Italy. The Goths, however, had had enough of such help. From this time Vitigis rejected all Frankish offers of an alliance, preferring to submit to the emperor rather than deliver himself up to the “vultures” from the north.“ After the Frankish storm had blown over, the Goths and Romans inTHE OSTROGOTHS. 449 prefer to fight unti) they have forced the enemy's unconditional surrender. He therefore declined to sign the treaty, whereupon the Goths withdrew their support for the agreement." It is also possible that the Goths misinterpreted the hesitation of the Roman patricius and supreme commander because it suited their hopes, Belisarius’s appointment by the legitimate Roman authorities as well as his success over the Italian Gothic army had made him almost “automatically” king of the army and rex of the Western cmpire. Vitigis no longer dared wage the decisive bartle and fight for the existence of the gens. The leaders of the gens now offered the kingship to the victorious enemy. But there must have been carlicr negotiations concerning Belisarius’s elevation to the emperorship of the West. Such negotiations are clearly mentioned before the offer of the kingship. Furthermore, Belisarius made a peculiar, and in light of the Gothic numerical superiority a nonsensical, decision before marching into Ravenna: he sent away four commanders and their units to distant places because these officers “had behaved in a hostile manner toward him." Morcover, he did the same with the new pretorian prefect who had just artived from Byzantium with an appointment for Italy, Only then did Belisarius enter the capital of the Western Empire with the few contingents loyal and faithful to him. But in principle this army, as the exercitus Romanorum, had the right of proclaiming an emperor; mutatis mutandis Belisarius’s soldiers would have taken over the role the Gallic army had played at the elevation of Avitus, while the Vitigis Goths would have been assigned the part played by the Visigothic army, But regardless of whether Belisarius was seriously thinking of accepting the elevation to the emperorship—his removal of the unreliable Roman troops and his cool reception by Justinian lend weight to such a notion—or whether he merely wanted to create the impression that he was prepared to do so, he succeeded in maneuvering Vitigis and his advisers into a position that gave them no choice but to surrender since they were already suffering a terrible famine. The imperial army marched into Ravenna unopposed, took captive the Gothic king and his army, and thus seemed to have ended the conquest of the Western empire in May 540. Procopius describes the scorn and horror ‘of the Gothic women when they realized to whom their men had surren- dered.“ But the war was not aver; as usual, a war fought with the aim of “total victory” had gambled away peace. HILDEBAD AND ERARIC (540/541) After the surrender, large numbers of cispadane Goths were dismissed to return to their sortes, Belisarius sent them home as imperial subjects, with-