Jordanes
Jordanes was a sixth-century Latin writer whose Getica recounts Gothic history and origins, drawing heavily on an otherwise lost work by Cassiodorus.
Getica: Jordanes’s Latin account of Gothic origins and history, composed in the sixth century. This is Jordanes’s best-known work and the central source for his account of the Goths.
Cassiodorus: A Roman statesman and scholar whose lost Gothic history is a major reported source for Jordanes’s Getica. Jordanes says he consulted Cassiodorus’s much longer Gothic history, though the extent of his access remains debated.
Jordanes’s Roman identity: The debated cultural and political identity of Jordanes, a Latin-writing author who described Gothic history. His position between Roman literary culture and Gothic subject matter shapes how his narrative is read.
Scandza: The northern island or region in Jordanes’s Getica that serves as the Goths’ ancestral homeland. Jordanes’s description of Scandza supplies the narrative’s most influential account of Gothic beginnings.
Roman-Gothic relations: The political, military, and cultural interactions between Roman states and Gothic peoples. Jordanes recounts Gothic history within its long, changing relationship with Rome.
Ethnogenesis: The historical process through which ethnic groups form, change, and sustain a shared identity. The Getica presents Gothic identity as a continuous people with a shared origin and past.
Sixth-century Italy: The politically fragmented Italian peninsula during the sixth century, including Ostrogothic rule and Byzantine reconquest. Jordanes wrote amid the upheavals that ended Ostrogothic rule in Italy.
Gothiscandza: The name Jordanes gives to a coastal region where Goths supposedly settled after leaving Scandza. The Getica uses this place to connect the Goths’ migration story to the European mainland.
Ostrogoths: A Gothic people who ruled Italy from the late fifth century until the Byzantine conquest in the sixth. Jordanes wrote during Ostrogothic Italy’s collapse and addressed the Goths’ past.
Origo gentis: A narrative of a people’s origins, migrations, and early history in medieval historiography. Jordanes frames Gothic history through an origin narrative that links ancestry, migration, and political legitimacy.