Theodoric the Great (493-526): The Ostrogothic Kingdom of Italy

Theodoric the Great was the Ostrogothic king who conquered Italy from Odoacer and ruled it from Ravenna between 493 and 526. Combining a Gothic army with a Roman administration, he gave Italy three decades of relative peace and prosperity and became the leading ruler of the post-Roman West. His reign is remembered through the writings of his Roman ministers and through the monuments of Ravenna.

Early life: a hostage in Constantinople

Theodoric was born around 454 in Pannonia, in what is now western Hungary, the son of Thiudimer, a prince of the Amal dynasty of the Goths. At about the age of seven or eight he was sent as a hostage to Constantinople, where he spent roughly ten years at the imperial court. There he came to know Roman politics, although the claim of the Anonymus Valesianus that he could not write is debated.

Returning to his people in about 471, Theodoric became king after his father’s death around 474. For the next fifteen years the Goths moved around the Balkans, alternately serving and fighting the eastern emperor Zeno and competing with a rival Gothic leader, Theodoric Strabo. Zeno honoured him with the consulship in 484, but the Goths remained a dangerous presence close to Constantinople.

The conquest of Italy

In 476 the general Odoacer had deposed the last western emperor and ruled Italy as king, the event described in Fall of the Western Roman Empire. In 488 Zeno authorised Theodoric to march against Odoacer and rule Italy until the emperor himself should come. It solved two problems at once for Zeno: it removed the Goths from the Balkans and threatened a ruler he distrusted.

Theodoric led his people, perhaps several tens of thousands including families, across the Julian Alps. He defeated Odoacer at the river Isonzo on 28 August 489, at Verona on 30 September 489 and at the river Adda on 11 August 490. Odoacer shut himself up in Ravenna, protected by marshes, and resisted for almost three years.

On 25 February 493 the two kings agreed to share power, and Theodoric entered Ravenna on 5 March. On 15 March, at a banquet, he killed Odoacer with his own sword, and Odoacer’s family and soldiers were massacred. Theodoric was now sole master of Italy.

Government: Goths and Romans

Theodoric ruled as king of the Goths and, in practice, as viceroy of the Roman emperor in Italy. In 497 or 498 the emperor Anastasius recognised his position and returned the palace regalia that Odoacer had sent to Constantinople. He never took the title of emperor, and his regular gold coinage was struck in the emperor’s name rather than his own.

The government kept a clear division of roles. The Goths formed the army and were settled with land or revenues in northern and central Italy. The Romans ran the civil administration, the Senate kept its dignity, and Roman law continued for Romans. Theodoric’s leading officials included the scholar Cassiodorus, whose collection of official letters, the Variae, is the main source for the reign, and the philosopher Boethius.

The settlement of the Goths on Italian land was organised by a Roman official, the praetorian prefect Liberius, whom Cassiodorus praised for carrying it out with little conflict. How the Goths were provided for, whether with land itself or with a share of tax revenue, is still debated by historians. A legal code known as the Edict of Theodoric, applying Roman rules to Goths and Romans alike, has traditionally been credited to him, although some scholars attribute it to a Visigothic king instead.

Theodoric was a Homoian (Arian) Christian, while most Italians were Nicene Catholics, but he generally tolerated the Catholic Church. He repaired aqueducts, walls and public buildings and drained marshes, and contemporaries praised the peace and order of his rule.

A web of alliances

Theodoric built a network of marriage alliances across the West. He married Audofleda, sister of the Frankish king Clovis, and gave his daughters in marriage to the Visigothic king Alaric II and the Burgundian prince Sigismund. His sister Amalafrida married the Vandal king Thrasamund.

When Clovis defeated the Visigoths in 507, as told in Clovis I and the Battle of Vouillé, Theodoric’s armies stopped the Frankish advance, annexed Provence and preserved Septimania for the Visigoths. From 511 he governed the Visigothic kingdom in Spain on behalf of his young grandson Amalaric. For a time he controlled most of Italy, the western Balkans, southern Gaul and Spain.

The troubled final years

In the 520s relations with Constantinople worsened, partly over the Eastern Empire’s measures against Arian Christians. Theodoric came to suspect Roman senators of treason. Boethius, then master of offices, was arrested after defending a senator accused of corresponding with the emperor, and was executed around 524–525. While in prison he wrote The Consolation of Philosophy, one of the most widely read books of the Middle Ages. His father-in-law Symmachus was executed soon afterwards, and Pope John I died in custody at Ravenna in 526 after an embassy to Constantinople.

Theodoric died on 30 August 526. He was succeeded by his grandson Athalaric, a child, with his daughter Amalasuntha as regent.

Monuments and legacy

Ravenna preserves Theodoric’s legacy in stone and mosaic. His palace church, rededicated in the ninth century as Sant’Apollinare Nuovo, still shows a mosaic of his palace, the Palatium, although images of the king and his court were later removed. The Arian Baptistery has a mosaic of the baptism of Christ, and his tomb is described in Mausoleum of Theodoric.

His kingdom did not long outlast him. After Amalasuntha’s murder in 535, Justinian launched the Gothic War, which devastated Italy and ended Ostrogothic rule. In medieval German legend, Theodoric lived on as the epic hero Dietrich von Bern.

Key people and popular myths

• Odoacer (c. 433–493): the soldier-king who deposed Romulus Augustulus in 476 and ruled Italy until Theodoric killed him.
• Zeno (eastern emperor 474–491): the emperor who sent Theodoric to Italy.
• Cassiodorus (c. 485–c. 585): Roman senator and minister whose letters, the Variae, record Theodoric’s government; he later founded the monastery of Vivarium in southern Italy.
• Boethius (c. 477–524/525): philosopher, translator of Aristotle and author of The Consolation of Philosophy.
• Amalasuntha (died 535): Theodoric’s educated daughter, regent for her son Athalaric.

Myths and facts

Myth: Theodoric was an illiterate barbarian. The Anonymus Valesianus says he used a stencil to sign his name, but the story may be hostile gossip. He spent ten formative years at the imperial court and governed through a sophisticated bureaucracy.

Myth: Theodoric ruled as Roman emperor. He never claimed the imperial title. He styled himself simply “king” (rex) and acknowledged, at least formally, the emperor in Constantinople.

Fact: Charlemagne admired him. In 801 Charlemagne had a gilded equestrian statue believed to represent Theodoric moved from Ravenna to his palace at Aachen, a sign of the Gothic king’s prestige three centuries after his death.

Timeline

• c. 454: Theodoric born in Pannonia.
• c. 461–471: Hostage at Constantinople.
• 484: Consul under Emperor Zeno.
• 489, 28 August: Victory over Odoacer at the Isonzo.
• 490, 11 August: Victory at the Adda; siege of Ravenna begins.
• 493, 15 March: Theodoric kills Odoacer at Ravenna.
• 508–511: Ostrogoths take Provence; Theodoric becomes regent of the Visigoths.
• c. 524–525: Execution of Boethius.
• 526, 30 August: Death of Theodoric.

Why it matters

Theodoric showed how a Germanic king could rule a Roman population through Roman institutions, preserving the culture and administration of late antique Italy for another generation. The writings of Cassiodorus and Boethius and the mosaics of Ravenna, all products of his reign, became bridges between the ancient and medieval worlds.