The barbarians are a black box. The internal workings of their societies remain mostly occluded because they did not write about themselves (or anything else), leaving us with only external Greek and Roman accounts and just one side of the story. Beginning in the 1980s, this epistemic circumstance was filtered through both the linguistic turn and the paradigm shift away from the decline and fall of Rome to the change and continuity of Late Antiquity. Were the barbarians in Roman sources rhetorical confabulations expressive of the ideologies of their authors’ culture, or did they contain an extractable historical core? Did destructive foreigners invade and dismantle the Roman empire, or were their migrations and alterity the constructs of literary genre? Efforts to dial in a frequency between these questions have generated an ongoing, now four-decades-long debate about who these groups were and what they did, and it has defined the subfield of ‘Rome and the barbarians’. Gothic Italy has been especially contested due to its multiplex character consisting of new Gothic overlordship of an Italian population undergirded by old Roman institutions. How did such a polity function, what was the shape of its society and culture, and what actually changed?
These questions motivate the two works under review. Hans-Ulrich Wiemer’s 2018 monograph has received an English translation of noteworthy clarity, together with expanded references and supplemented source material. The book is outstanding — the best single-author monograph on Theoderic and his kingdom. But this is more than a study of Theoderic, the title somewhat belying its vastness of scope. Early chapters include sections on sources, especially Jordanes, a summary of all Gothic history before the Ostrogoths, and an account of the western emperors from the death of Julian to Augustulus, followed by a generous, twenty-page treatment of Odoacer’s reign. W. thus eschews the standard approach of treating Theoderic’s kingdom in historical and geographical isolation, which can unintentionally render it an oddball blip in time. By providing ample background and context, W. shows how the structural and contingent forces of late Roman history produced the most successful of the post-Roman barbarian kingdoms.
But even once he has ensconced Theoderic within Italy, W.’s remit remains expansive. He will push the king into the background for long stretches to explore the shaping power of ecology and demography, render descriptions of the economy, trade, slavery and religion, or dissect the day-to-day management of both central and regional administration, while also recounting the rhythms of life for those serving in the Gothic army or Roman senate. And when Theoderic comes to the fore, his actions, policies and motivations as king are treated with similar granularity. The result is an immersive and intricately textured reconstruction, alive with episodes and examples from the sources. The great length of this book is earned, and even crucial for its holistic world-building. It is a major milestone in Ostrogothic studies, enriched and made possible by the intensive churn of scholarship on this time and place over the last few decades.
This study is also an intervention in that scholarship and the ongoing disputes over barbarian identities. Its interpretive stances are, in this reviewer’s opinion, almost always convincing, but the book would have been improved both by signalling more sites of debate in the history it covers and by articulating more explicitly just how much it contradicts two major, often complementary, currents of scholarship: one that argues for the Roman character of Theoderic’s regime, emphasising its classical continuities and revivals, and another deeply sceptical analytical mode that diminishes or denies Gothic cultural distinctiveness and instead understands Goths to be essentially Romans by some other name. To be sure, W. is not negligent in this regard; he gives voice to divergent approaches and notes certain debate flashpoints, keeping their exposition brief. Admittedly, incessant rehearsals of disagreement would become tedious, but given the overall excellence of the study and the likelihood that it will become indispensable reading, its utility to student and scholar alike would have been improved had it mapped the scholarly terrain more fully. Footnotes are kept to a minimum, and their content is all too concise. One wonders if editorial intervention played a role here.
W.’s approach seeks to correct an interpretive model with roots stretching back to Mommsen, one that renders the Gothic kingdom as an ‘almost seamless continuation of Roman traditions’, even a ‘golden age’ of inspired rulership, harmonious coexistence between Goths and Romans, and classical renewal (15). For W., Theoderic’s Italy was not Roman; it was Roman and Gothic, and starkly so. Goths and Romans were distinct peoples, and at the centre of Theoderic’s ruling concept was the imperative to maintain that distinction by enforcing on them separate social roles: Goths formed the standing army, Romans did everything else, with Roman elites left to run the late Roman civil administration, which Theoderic did not change. Theoderic had conquered Italy as a ‘warlord’ in command of a ‘community of violence’, and his power then and forever depended on the loyalty of those warriors, which he maintained through awards of confiscated land to provide them with wealth (ch. 4). Only by transforming his mobile warrior confederation into a permanent army could Theoderic, a foreign conqueror, maintain his grip on the majority Roman population of Italy. And to gain the acceptance of the power brokers among those Romans, the king recognised the privileges of secular elites and conferred offices on them, and left unchanged the prerogatives of the Catholic Church, despite his own adherence to and support of the heretical Gothic Church. The result was a ‘dual state’ achieved through a governing strategy of ‘integration through separation’ (chs 6 and 7). Some scholars consider this separation, articulated most clearly in Cassiodorus’ Variae, to be a rhetorical exaggeration, and then search for exceptions (which exist) to argue for the prevalence of assimilation; however, the weight of the evidence favours W.
Theoderic emerges from this portrait as the consummate conservative: a ruler who sought to preserve both the Roman status quo he found in Italy and the coherence of the people who conquered that land alongside him. Acculturation was actively avoided, even if it was inevitable, as W. himself recognises. Theoderic’s strategy could not have lasted very long, but any nascent processes of merging were cut short by the East Roman destruction of the Gothic kingdom.
Two years after the appearance of his monograph, W. headed up an edited volume focused mainly on Gothic Italy during Theoderic’s lifetime. It aims to take stock of recent scholarship while also pursuing novel lines of inquiry. The result is an admirable success. Initial archaeological chapters reach the following conclusions: settlement patterns in the cities of central and northern Italy maintain pre-Gothic trends rather than decline or expansion owed to the Goths (Witschel); the material record of the city of Rome barely attests what Cassiodorus claimed were Theoderic’s efforts at urban renewal (Behrwald); Sicilian cities remained complex and productive economic centres, contrary to arguments for urban decline (Vaccaro); the archaeological presence of the Gothic people is rarely apparent, except in their power-projecting fortresses (Christie). In each study, the material impact of Gothic rule proves difficult to discern.
The next seven chapters cover religion, politics and identity. Brennecke emphasises the near invisibility of the Homoian (‘Arian’) Church in the sources, and argues that especial tolerance toward Jews expressed Gothic prioritisation of equal legal protections in a mixed (and potentially volatile) society. Kötter shows how Theoderic gained the support of the Catholic Church by guaranteeing bishops’ privileges. Eich reveals that second-tier senators were preferred for key roles in the Gothic regime over those from illustrious families. Ubel (contra Lafferty), argues that the socio-judicial decay depicted in the Edictum Theoderici is merely rhetorical and designed to accentuate Theoderic’s civilitas propaganda. W. demonstrates that the Gothic monarchy never became institutionalised and that Theoderic’s successors laboured to obtain legitimacy from Gothic and Roman stakeholders. Stickler examines how Roman identities developed in relation to Gothic rule and East Roman invasion, while Pohl tackles debates about Gothic identity, rejecting both ethnic essentialism and denialism, and arguing that Gothic ethnicity emerged from the social interplay of indicia such as the Gothic language, army and Church.
Final chapters treat the Gothic kingdom in memory. Vitiello, working from Jordanes’ Getica, new Dexippus fragments and the Variae, reconstructs how Cassiodorus’ lost Gothic history glorified and embellished the Amal past. Kragl explores how differing conceptions of migration-era peoplehood create deep methodological discrepancies between Altgermanist scholars and (some) historians with regard to Theoderic. Wiemer concludes with an erudite account of the historiography on Gothic Italy since the sixteenth century.
This volume’s strength lies in its diversity of methodological approaches and measured conclusions that embrace complexity and accept the limitations of our sources. Taken together with his monograph, W. has greatly advanced and enriched our understanding of Theoderic and the Gothic kingdom. His efforts are laudable.
