Theoderic the Great

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Kyle Harper, The Warrior King.  Theoderic's power derived from his success in battle. He killed one king with his bare hands, and used his sword to slice another rival in two. Wall Street Journal, July 18, 2023, at page A13
https://www.wsj.com/articles/the ... rrior-king-d2763acc
(book review on Hans-Ulrich Wiemer, Theoderic the Great; King of Goths, ruler of Romans. Yale University Press, 2023)

Note:
(a)
(i) Goths
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Goths

two consecutive paragraphs in introduction: "In the late 4th century, the lands of the Goths were invaded from the east by the Huns. In the aftermath of this event, several groups of Goths came under Hunnic domination, while others migrated further west or sought refuge inside the Roman Empire. Goths who entered the Empire by crossing the Danube inflicted a devastating defeat upon the Romans at the Battle of Adrianople in 378. These Goths would form the Visigoths, and under their king Alaric I, they began a long migration, eventually establishing a Visigothic Kingdom in Spain at Toledo. Meanwhile, Goths under Hunnic rule gained their independence in the 5th century, most importantly the Ostrogoths. Under their king Theodoric the Great, these Goths established an Ostrogothic Kingdom in Italy at Ravenna." (citations omitted)

"The Ostrogothic Kingdom [which ended in 553] was destroyed by the Eastern Roman Empire in the 6th century, while the Visigothic Kingdom [which ended in 711] was conquered by the Umayyad Caliphate in the early 8th century. * * *

(ii) etymology: Ostrogoth (n)
https://www.etymonline.com/word/ostrogoth
("from Proto-Germanic *austra- 'east' ")

Compare Austria
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Austria
(section 1 Etymology)

(b) Maróti Z et al, The Genetic Origin of Huns, Avars, and conquering Hungarians. Current Biology, 32: 2858 (2022)
https://www.cell.com/current-biology/pdfExtended/S0960-9822(22)00732-1

(i) Quote:

(A) Introduction (three consecutive paragraphs; footnotes omitted)

" * * *  the unique language and ethnocultural traditions of the Hungarians, the closest parallels of which are found in populations east of the Urals. According to present scientific consensus, these eastern links are solely attributed to the last migrating wave of conquering Hungarians (henceforth shortened as Conquerors), who arrived in the Carpathian Basin at the end of the 9th century CE. On the other hand, medieval Hungarian chronicles, foreign written sources, and Hungarian folk traditions maintain that the origin of Hungarians can be traced back to the European Huns, with subsequent waves of Avars and Conquerors considered kinfolk of the Huns.

"Both Huns and Avars founded a multiethnic empire in Eastern Europe centered on the Carpathian Basin. The appearance of Huns in European written sources ca 370 CE was preceded by the disappearance of Xiongnus from Chinese sources.4 Likewise, the appearance of Avars in Europe in the sixth century broadly correlates with the collapse of the Rouran Empire. However, the possible relations between Xiongnus and Huns as well as Rourans and Avars remain largely controversial due to the scarcity of sources.

"From the 19th century onward, linguists reached a consensus that the Hungarian language is a member of the Uralic language family. * * *

(B) Discussion: "our data [by analysis of DNA from ancient bones] are in accordance with the Xiongnu ancestry of European Huns" (at page 2866)

(ii) Carpathian Basin, so named due to Carpathian (accent is on the second syllable see wiki page for these mountains) Mountains form an arc from 11 o'clock to 5 o'clock. See top map in Pannonian Basin
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pannonian_Basin
("or Carpathian Basin * * * The Danube * * * divide the basin roughly in half. It extends roughly between Vienna in the northwest")
(iii) The top map above does not identify nations. Tis map does:
https://resources.eumetrain.org/ ... thianBasin/sim.html
(iv) Rouran Khaganate  柔然
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rouran_Khaganate
(330 AD–555 AD (succeeded by Göktürks 突厥); "The Rouran supreme rulers are noted for being the first to use the title of 'khagan,' having borrowed this popular title from the Xianbei" 鮮卑)
Turkish-English dictionary:
* Göktürk (proper noun; Turkish [noun] gök 'sky, blue' + Türk 'Turk' "):
https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/Göktürk


(c)
(i) Western Roman Empire
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Western_Roman_Empire
(table: 395–476)

Please view all illustrations, including photos and maps (For the latter, particularly
• one on the right with "395" in it (the year Roman Empire was sorted into Western and Eastern Roman Empires, and
• another further down but on the left, with the caption: "Germanic and Hunnic invasions of the Roman Empire, 100–500 AD."

The adjective Hunnic corresponds to proper noun Hun.
(ii) Sack of Rome
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sack_of_Rome
(may refer to
• Sack of Rome (410), by Visigoths under Alaric I[;]
• Sack of Rome (455), by Vandals under Genseric")
(A) The accents of Alaric and Genseric are both on the first syllable. The g in Genseric sounds the same of that of1 orange. The "ric" is Germanic language, cognate with the first element of Richard.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Richard
(B) Click "Sack of Rome (419)," and you will read: "At that time, Rome was no longer the capital of the Western Roman Empire, having been replaced in that position first by Mediolanum (now Milan) in 286 and then by Ravenna in 402."
(C) Click "Sack of Rome (455)," and you will learn: "The sack of 455 is generally seen as being more destructive than the Visigothic sack of 410, because the Vandals plundered Rome for fourteen days whereas the Visigoths spent only three days in the city."  (citations omitted)
(iii) Germanic languages
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Germanic_languages
(table: "Subdivisions[:]       
North Germanic
West Germanic
East Germanic")
(A) A map with caption: "The present-day distribution of the Germanic languages in Europe: shows "North Germanic languages" and "West Germanic languages" but no "East Germanic languages." That is because the last group are extinct, which included Gothic and Vandalic (whose accent is on the second syllable).
(B) section 1 History: "The earliest coherent Germanic text preserved is the 4th-century Gothic translation of the New Testament by [missionary] Ulfilas. Early testimonies of West Germanic are in Old Frankish/Old Dutch (the 5th-century Bergakker inscription), Old High German (scattered words and sentences 6th century and coherent texts 9th century), and Old English (oldest texts [mostly found in tombstones] 650, coherent texts 10th century)
(C) Heed a map whose captionreads: "Expansion of early Germanic tribes into previously mostly Celtic Central Europe."


(d) "If there was a Roman version of '1066 and All That,' the satirical romp through English history, the year 476 [would stand out, in which] Romulus Augustulus, the last Roman emperor, was deposed in the west. * * * Theoderic the Great, the Ostrogothic king who reigned in Italy [as King of Italy] from 493 until his death in 526 * * * Hans-Ulrich Wiemer's 'Theoderic the Great' is a monumental exploration of the life and times of this remarkable leader. It is the most important treatment of its subject since [German historian whose surname is Enßlin in German] Wilhelm Ensslin's 1947 biography * * * Mr Wiemer's book (here in John Noël Dillon's fluid English translation) * * * The Gothic tribe to which Theoderic belonged had just emerged, following the recent death of Attila, from a long spell of domination by the Huns. * * * As an upstart prince, he [Theoderic] killed the Sarmatian King Babai with his own hands."
(i) 1066 and All That
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1066_and_All_That
(ii)
(A) Romulus Augustulus
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Romulus_Augustulus

His father Orestes, a general, usurped the Western Roman emperor Julus Nepos (reign 474-475) and installed him, Augustulus, as emperor (reign Oct 31, 475 to Sept 4, 476, when barbarian general Odoacer defeated and killed Orestes). Odoacer spared his life.King of Italy
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/King_of_Italy
(B) A 2007 en.wikipedia.org page for Romulus Augustus stated that his full name was "Flavius Romulus Augustus (c 463 – after 476), often called Romulus Augustulus" (Augustus was added after he became the emperor). The full name of his father was Flavius Orestes.
https://www.cs.mcgill.ca/~rwest/ ... omulus_Augustus.htm
(iii)
(A) the German original (book): Hans-Ulrich Wiemer, Theoderich der Große: König der Goten, Herrscher der Römer. Beck CH, 2018.
(B) German-English dictionary:
* groß (adjective; weak nominative all-gender singular große)   
https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/groß
* Gote (noun masculine; plural Goten, weak, genitive Goten): "Goth"
https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/Gote
* Löwe (noun masculine; plural Löwen, weak, genitive Löwen)
https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/Löwe
* Herrscher (noun masculine): "agent noun of [verb] herrschen [to rule, to reign]; ruler, monarch, sovereign"
https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/Herrscher
(C) Of course the Goten in "König der Goten" is not plural (der being the masculine definite article the) but genitive.

The Disney movie The Lion King is, in German, Der König der Löwen. Löwen being "of lion" (an attribute similar to Richard the Lionheart), Der König der Löwen is, in English, the lion king.
(iv) Attila
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Attila
("ruler of the Huns from 434 until his death in March 453)"/ section 1 Etymology)
(v) Sarmatians
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sarmatians
("equestrian nomadic peoples of classical antiquity who dominated the Pontic steppe from about the 3rd century BC to the 4th century AD")

Their political entity was Sarmatia (English derived via Latin from Ancient Greek (the latter two spelled the same). The map in this Wiki page shows it is about where present-day Ukraine is.


(e) "In 488, he set off with some 100,000 followers—men, women and children—in an armed wagon train on an uncertain journey from the banks of the Danube (in what is now Bulgaria) to Italy. Their goals were to unseat Odoacer [first King of Italy (476-493), succeeded by Theoderic, second King of Italy (493-526)] —the deposer of Romulus Augustulus—and to find for themselves a permanent home. Theoderic cornered Odoacer and his forces in the major stronghold of Ravenna, and the two signed a treaty by which they were meant to share power. The treaty lasted all of about 10 days, before Theoderic personally clove his rival in two ('with a single sword stroke,' Mr Wiemer tells us, 'slicing him apart from collarbone to hip'). From such sanguinary beginnings emerged a generation of peace in Italy. * * * Mr Wiemer, a professor of ancient history at the University of Erlangen–Nuremberg * * * By some shadowy process, Theoderic's memory was preserved, or distorted, in the legends of Dietrich of Bern."
(i) Bulgaria
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bulgaria
("the Danube defines the border with Romania," Bulgaria's neighbor on the north)
(ii) Odoacer
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Odoacer
("The city [Ravenna, where Odoacer holed up] surrendered on 5 March 493. Theodoric invited Odoacer to a banquet of reconciliation, where instead of forging an alliance, Theodoric killed the unsuspecting king. * * * Except for the fact that he was not considered Roman, Odoacer's precise ethnic origins are not known")

Both Odoacer and Theoderic retained Ravenna as their capital, following in the footsteps of Western Roman Empire.
(iii) University of Erlangen–Nuremberg
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/University_of_Erlangen–Nuremberg
(public; "in the cities of Erlangen and Nuremberg in Bavaria * * * The university was founded in 1742 in Bayreuth by Frederick, Margrave of Brandenburg-Bayreuth, and moved to Erlangen in 1743. * * * In 1972, the school of education (normal school) in Nuremberg became part of the university")

The air distance between the two cities are approximately ten miles.
(iv)
(A) Dietrich von Bern
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dietrich_von_Bern
("The name 'Dietrich,' meaning 'Ruler of the People,' is a form of the Germanic name 'Theodoric' ")
(B) Friedrich is German form of English
Frederick (given name)
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Frederick_(given_name)
, whose second element is from Germanic root "ric, meaning 'ruler' or 'power.' "
(C)
• Dietrich (proper name masculine): "a male given name from Proto-Germanic, equivalent to English Derek"
https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/Dietrich

The "ie" in Dietrich is pronounced the same as vowel of English nickname (from Richard) Dick.
• Derek: "borrowed [into English] in the Middle Ages from a Middle Low German variant of Theodoric"
https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/Derek

choi

-----------------------WSJ
If there was a Roman version of “1066 and All That,” the satirical romp through English history, the year 476 would surely be one of those suspiciously bold lines in our collective historical imagination. It was then that Romulus Augustulus, the last Roman emperor, was deposed in the west. On one side of his 10-month reign lay Antiquity. On the other, the Middle Ages.

Where does that leave Theoderic the Great, the Ostrogothic king who reigned in Italy from 493 until his death in 526? Under the rule of this Gothic-speaking warrior, the Colosseum still rang with the roar of spectators, crisp mountain water still streamed through the aqueducts, and giants of Latin literature, like Cassiodorus and Boethius, still served in the senate.

Hans-Ulrich Wiemer’s “Theoderic the Great: King of Goths, Ruler of Romans” is a monumental exploration of the life and times of this remarkable leader. It is the most important treatment of its subject since Wilhelm Ensslin’s 1947 biography, and since Mr. Wiemer’s book (here in John Noël Dillon’s fluid English translation) surpasses its predecessor in breadth and sophistication, the author can claim the laurel of having written the best profile of Theoderic we have.

The story of Theoderic is epic and improbable. He was born in 453 or 454 in the ever-contested Danubian borderlands, probably in what is now the east of Austria, to an elite Gothic warrior and a mother of obscure background. The Gothic tribe to which Theoderic belonged had just emerged, following the recent death of Attila, from a long spell of domination by the Huns. In 461, the boy Theoderic was shipped to Constantinople as insurance for a treaty. He spent almost a decade, his formative youth, in the great metropolitan capital of the Roman Empire.

Theoderic’s power derived less from his distinguished ancestry or the Gothic respect for royal legitimacy, Mr. Wiemer emphasizes, than from his success as a warrior. As an upstart prince, he killed the Sarmatian King Babai with his own hands. As a commander at the head of a fearsome Gothic army, he proved a fickle ally for the eastern Roman Empire, whose emperors were hardly models of loyalty themselves. In the early 480s, he was named commander-in-chief by the Romans. Within a few years, he was besieging Constantinople.

If his career had ended there, Theoderic’s name would belong among the distinguished mercenary warlords of the troubled fifth century. But fortune favors the bold, and Theoderic had even grander ambitions. In 488, he set off with some 100,000 followers—men, women and children—in an armed wagon train on an uncertain journey from the banks of the Danube (in what is now Bulgaria) to Italy. Their goals were to unseat Odoacer—the deposer of Romulus Augustulus—and to find for themselves a permanent home. Theoderic cornered Odoacer and his forces in the major stronghold of Ravenna, and the two signed a treaty by which they were meant to share power. The treaty lasted all of about 10 days, before Theoderic personally clove his rival in two (“with a single sword stroke,” Mr. Wiemer tells us, “slicing him apart from collarbone to hip”). From such sanguinary beginnings emerged a generation of peace in Italy.

What makes Mr. Wiemer’s survey so rich is his mastery of recent research on the twilight of antiquity. Theoderic’s reign cuts to the heart of virtually every great debate among scholars of this period. Were his Ostrogoths an essentially Germanic tribe, or is ethnicity a fiction ever reconfigured by contingent power dynamics?

For Mr. Wiemer, a professor of ancient history at the University of Erlangen–Nuremberg, Ostrogoths were a “community of violence” whose material basis was war and plunder. But the author recognizes that the masses who followed Theoderic on his Italian adventure were a people of shared history and culture, setting them apart from the natives in Italy and drawing them closer to other groups, such as the Visigoths who had settled in Spain and Gaul.

Mr. Wiemer is convincing on the main lines of Theoderic’s domestic and foreign policy. At home, Theoderic pursued functional specialization between the Goths and the Romans. The former were warriors (if also landowners), the latter civilians. A two-track government reflected this essential division of labor. Theoderic sought complementarity, not fusion.

Abroad, he sought legitimacy from the eastern Roman capital, along with stability in the post-Roman west. By means of strategic treaties and an astonishing network of marriage alliances among the Vandals, Visigoths, Franks, Burgundians and others, Theoderic emerged as the most powerful ruler west of Constantinople. Thanks to opportunistic expansion, he came to control wide swathes of the Balkans, much of southern Gaul and (nominally) the Iberian Peninsula. In the early sixth century, it would not have been obvious that the Frankish kingdom would prove more enduring and consequential.

If there is a weakness in this book, it is in trying to explain the mystery of how Theoderic’s achievement unraveled so quickly and completely. Mr. Wiemer offers a good account of the tumultuous final years, including the eternal stain of Boethius’s execution under Theoderic’s orders. But there is too little on the aftermath of Theoderic’s reign. A succession crisis, then reconquest by Justinian, followed by the devastating arrival of the bubonic plague (which Mr. Wiemer underestimates), brought the Ostrogothic experiment to an inglorious end. The material traces of Gothic presence are famously few in the archaeological record of Italy. The thorough demise and relative invisibility of the Goths contrasts with the Lombards, who arrived a generation later. They wrested much of the Italian peninsula by force from the Romans and ruled for two centuries—without a leader half as grand as Theoderic.

By some shadowy process, Theoderic’s memory was preserved, or distorted, in the legends of Dietrich of Bern. Later still, his legacy acted as a cipher for modern ideas about German identity. But in Mr. Wiemer’s sober biography, we are afforded the chance to see a man and a moment that do not easily conform to simple conceptions of Antiquity or the Middle Ages.

Mr. Harper is a professor at the University of Oklahoma and a member of the Fractal Faculty at the Santa Fe Institute.