Theodoric the Goth | Page 5

Europe.
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CHAPTER I.
THEODORIC'S ANCESTORS.
Ostrogoths and Visigoths--Nations forming the Gothic Confederacy--Royal family of the Amals--Gothic invasion in the Second Century--Hermanric the Ostrogoth--Inroad of the Huns--Defeat of the Ostrogoths--Defeat of the Visigoths--The Visigoths within the Empire--Battle of Adrianople--Alaric in Rome.
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Towards the end of the second century of the Christian Era a great confederacy of Teutonic nations occupied those vast plains in the south of Russia which are now, and have been for more than a thousand years, the homes of Sclavonic peoples. These nations were the Ostrogoths, the Visigoths, and the Gepid?. Approximately we may say that the Ostrogoths (or East Goths) dwelt from the Don to the Dnieper, the Visigoths (or West Goths) from the Dnieper to the Pruth, and the Gepid? to the north of both, in the district which has since been known as Little Russia. These three nations were, as has been said, Teutons, and they belonged to that division of the Teutonic race which is called Low-German, man; that is to say, that they were more nearly allied to the Frisians, the Dutch, and to our own Saxon forefathers than they were to the ancestors of the modern Swabian, Bavarian, and Austrian. They worshipped Odin and Thunnor; they wrote the scanty records of their race in Runic characters; they were probably chiefly a pastoral folk, but may have begun to practise agriculture in the rich cornlands of the Ukraine. They were essentially a monarchic people, following their kings, whom they believed to be sprung from the seed of gods, loyally to the field, and shedding their blood with readiness at their command; but their monarchy was of the early Teutonic type, always more or less limited by the deliberations of the great armed assembly of the nation, which (in some tribes at least) was called the Folc-mote or the Folc-thing; and there were no strict rules of hereditary succession, the crown being elective but limited in practice to the members of one ruling and heaven-descended family.
This family, sprung from the seed of gods, but ruling by the popular will over the Ostrogothic people, was known as the family of the Amals. It is true that the divine and exclusive prerogatives of the family have been somewhat magnified by the minstrels who sang in the courts of their descendants, for there are manifest traces of kings ruling over the Ostrogothic people, who are not included in the Amal genealogy. Still, as far as we can peer through the obscurity of the early history of the people, we may safely say that there was no other family of higher position than the Amals, and that gradually all that consciousness of national life and determination to cherish national unity, which among the Germanic peoples was inseparably connected with the institution of royalty, centred round the race of the divine Amala.
The following is the pedigree of this royal clan, as given by the historian of the Goths,[5] and with those epithets which the secretary of Theodoric[6] attached to the names of some of the ancestors of his lord. (The names of those who wore the crown are marked in italics.)
Gapt (possibly=Gaut, the eponymous | hero of the Gothic nation) Hulmul | Augis | Amal ("the fortunate") | Hisarna (=the man of iron) | OSTROGOTHA ("the patient") | Hunuil | Athal ("the mild") |_______________________________ | | Achiulf Odwulf | ____________________________|______________________________| | | | Ansila Ediulf Vultwulf Hermanric | | Walaravans Hunimund | ("the beautiful") | | Winithar ("the just") Thorismund | ("the chaste") Wideric | Wandalar _________________________|________________________ | | | Walamir Theudemir Widemir ("the faithful") ("the affectionate") | THEODORIC.
[Footnote 5: Jordanes.]
[Footnote 6: Cassiodorus.]
These fifteen generations, which should carry back the Amal ancestry four hundred and fifty years, or almost precisely to the Christian Era, seem to have marked the utmost limit to which the memory of the Gothic heralds, aided by the songs of the Gothic minstrels, could reach. The forms of many of the names, the initial "Wala" and "Theude", the terminal "wulf", "mir", and "mund" will be at once recognised as purely Teutonic, recalling many similar names in the royal lines of the Franks, the Visigoths and the Vandals, and the West Saxons.
In the great, loosely knit confederacy which has been described as filling the regions of Southern Russia in the third and fourth centuries of our Era, the predominant power seems to have been held by the Ostrogothic nation. In the third century, when a succession of weak ephemeral emperors ruled and all but ruined the Roman State, the Goths swarmed forth in their myriads, both by sea and land, to ravage the coast of the Euxine and the ?gean, to cross the passes of the Balkans, to make their desolating presence felt at Ephesus and at Athens. Two great Emperors of Illyrian origin, Claudius and Aurelian, succeeded, at a