![]() Jordanes work, which may be seen as a kind of obituary of the Gothic nation, contains a number of elements surprising and interesting to the modern reader. The plain sense of the business about the steward is that Cassiodorus was not inclined to cooperate with such a project at this time and that it was carried out without his knowledge. O∭onnell, in his web-published The Aims of Jordanes, observes that Jordanes has only managed to lay his hands on the twelve books of Cassiodorus for three days and now must write from memory. Jordanes was in fact able to read the work only through the good graces of Cassiodorus steward, not Cassiodorus himself. To avoid being seen as an enemy of the Empire, he therefore probably eliminated any traces of his former allegiance, which included his volumes on the Goths. ![]() Senator Cassiodorus very likely destroyed his own 12-volume work because it had been written during the reign of Theodoric (493-526) and had treated the Goths very favorably, but shortly after Theodorics death the political climate had changed and Cassiodorus, formerly Theodorics Chief of Staff, now found himself in Constantinople, the seat of anti-Gothic sentiment. I have also translated and included the final sections of Jordanes Romana (# 367-388), portions which treat of Emperor Justinians war against the Goths in Italy and which both supplement and recapitulate some of the material found in the Getica. ![]() ![]() The main aim of both treatises was to show how even the greatest structures of human power on this earth - whether Gothic or Roman - are transient and deceptive, and that man can find lasting peace in God alone. By 551 the Gothic kingdom established by Theodoric ( Þiuda-reik) had been destroyed, and the Western Roman Empire was disintegrating rapidly. The Getica was written after beginning and before finishing a similar work on Roman history, the Romana, dedicated to a certain most noble brother Vigilius (probably not the pope of that name). To judge from his extremely negative attitude toward Arian Christianity (a heresy started by a priest named Arius), it is very likely that Jordanes had himself once been an Arian like most of the Goths, and that he had later converted to Catholicism. Jordanes dedicated his work to another man of religion, an otherwise unknown brother Castalius (or ∼astulus). 551 under Emperor Justinian of Byzantium (527-565), during which time Pope Vigilius himself happened to be in Constantinople by order of the Emperor. Jordanes history of the Goths (also called the Getica ) includes in part a summation of a 12-volume history by Senator Cassiodorus, On the Origin and Deeds of the Goths from Long Ago and Descending through Generations and Kings to Now. Even if not a bishop, Jordanes was at least a monk or similar ecclesiastic, and wrote his own work in Constantinople in A.D. The name of one Jordanes Crotonensis, bishop of Crotona (now Cotrone) in Bruttium (southern Italy) is found, with those of several other bishops, appended to a document sometimes called the Damnatio Theodori, issued by pope Vigilius in August 551 at Constantinople. He explains toward the end of chapter 49 that his grandfather was called Farja and his father Wiha-moð, both Gothic names, and that his grandfather had been secretary to the Alan leader Candac and he himself secretary to the Ostrogothic chieftain Gunþi-gis before his conversion (perhaps from Arianism to Catholicism). With classicized grammar, normalized spelling and some emendationsĪlthough Jordanes tells us (# 266) that he is of Gothic descent and may indeed be partly or even fully a Goth, his name itself is not Germanic. Jordanes - Latin & English - First half Jordanes GETICA
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