Cambridge Ancient Hi.. - Index of

ostrogothic italy, 493,555 129
reputation and the propagandistic use of the episode in subsequent imperial
historiography, there is no evidence that this and the parallel execution
of his father-in-law Symmachus led to any alienation of the Roman aristocracy
from the regime of Theoderic.
The Ostrogothic king was faced with problems over his succession.
Lacking a son of his own, in 515 he married his daughter Amalasuintha to
Eutharic, a member of a collateral branch of the Amal dynasty living in
Spain. The emperor Justin I (518–27), who was initially less hostile to the
Ostrogothic kingdom than his predecessor, adopted Eutharic as his ‘son by
arms’ and shared the consulship with him in 519. However, Eutharic predeceased
Theoderic, who left the throne to his ten-year-old grandson Athalaric
(526–34) under the tutelage of Amalasuintha. The problems of a minority
were always acute in Germanic military societies, and Amalasuintha apparently
resorted to violent measures to maintain her authority. She is said to
have had several of her opponents murdered. The death of her son in 534
left her unable to rule in her own right, and she was forced to concede the
crown to the senior male member of the family, Theodahad (534–6), a
nephew of Theoderic. Her attempts to continue to exercise influence led
him to have her imprisoned on an island, where she was murdered, apparently
by the relatives of those she herself had had killed. 28
This, following the precedent used to justify the imperial invasion of the
Vandal kingdom in 533, was made the excuse for the despatch of Belisarius’
army from Africa to Sicily in 535 and then on to Italy in 536. Theodahad
failed to take any effective action against the imperial forces, and after
Naples fell to Belisarius the leading Gothic nobles deposed him. He was
subsequently murdered on the orders of his successor while trying to escape
to Ravenna. Under the new king Vitigis (536–9), who was not a member of
the Amal dynasty but who married Athalaric’s sister Matasuintha, more
energetic measures were taken to try to stem the imperial advance.
However, Belisarius was allowed to occupy Rome and a subsequent siege
failed to dislodge him. When a second imperial army took Rimini, threatening
to cut Vitigis off from his capital, he was forced to retreat to Ravenna.
Blockaded there, he submitted in 539, having allowed himself to be persuaded
that Belisarius would proclaim himself emperor if admitted to
Ravenna. In 540 Vitigis and those Ostrogoths with him in Ravenna, despite
the existence of an earlier plan to establish a reduced Ostrogothic kingdom
north of the Po as a buffer for Italy, were shipped off to Constantinople and
incorporated into the imperial forces. This was due to the acute military
needs of the empire, resulting from the Persian invasion of the eastern
provinces, something that Vitigis is said to have tried to persuade the shah
Khusro I to undertake in the final stages of the war in Italy.
28 Procop. Wars v.4.25–7, in preference to Jord. Get. 306.
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