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About Theodomir, king of the Ostrogoths
Theodemir was king of the Ostrogoths of the Amal Dynasty, and father of Theoderic the Great.[1] He had two "brothers" (actually brothers-in-law) named Valamir and Videmir.[2] Theodemir was Arian, while his wife Erelieva was Catholic and took the Roman Christian name Eusebia upon her baptism.[3] He took over the three Pannonian Goth reigns after the death of Widimir, ruled jointly with his brothers-in-law as a vassal of Attila the Hun. The reason is probably that this relatively long reign of the Ostrogoths in Pannonia, while his elder brother Thiudimir only for four years on the throne, followed by Theoderic, and firstly inherited, the heirless, Walamir's part of the kingdom. He was married to Erelieva, with whom he had two children: Theoderic (454-526) and Amalafrida. When Theodemir died in 475,[4] Theoderic succeeded him as king.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Theodemir
From the Foundation for Medieval Genealogy page on Hungary (covering Theodomir's parents and brothers:
http://fmg.ac/Projects/MedLands/HUNGARY.htm#_Toc146273199
VANDALARIUS, son of VINITHARIUS . Iordanes names "Vandiliarum" as son of "Vinitharius" and father of "Thiudemer et Valamir et Vidimir"[52]. Relative of Thorismund[53].
1. VALAMIR (-killed in battle [468/69]). Iordanes names "Thiudemer et Valamir et Vidimir" as the sons of Vandilarius[54]. He and his brothers followed Attila the Hun into Gaul in 451[55]. Valamir commanded the Ostrogoth contingent in Attila's army which was defeated at the battle of the Catalaunian fields[56]. He was considered king of all Ostrogoths in Pannonia. Iordanes records that "Valamer…ex consobrino eius genitus Vandalario" succeeded as king after "Thorismundo" was killed fighting the Gepids in the second year of his reign[57]. He shared the land with his two brothers, retaining for himself the eastern part of the territory covering lower Slavonia. In 456, he defeated an attack by the Huns, who are said to have retreated to the River Dnieper[58]. He defeated another Hun attack on Bassianae, near Belgrade, in 467/68, but was killed in battle during a similar attack the following year.
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2. THEODEMIR [Thiudimir] (-Kyrrhos 474).
Iordanes names "Thiudemer et Valamir et Vidimir" as the sons of Vandilarius[59].
King of the Ostrogoths in Pannonia, subordinate to his brother Valamir, he ruled over the western part of their domain which covered the county of Somogy and north-eastern Croatia.
He succeeded his brother in [468/49] as King of all the Pannonian Ostrogoths. Iordanes names "Theodemir" when recording that he succeeded his brother "Valamero rege Gothorum" together with "Vidimero fratre et filio Theodorico"[60].
When the Ostrogoths left Pannonia in [473], Theodemir and his contingent went towards Constantinople. They settled in Macedonia, based in the city of Kyrrhos[61].
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3. VIDIMIR (-473).
Iordanes names "Thiudemer et Valamir et Vidimir" as the sons of Vandilarius[62]. King of the Ostrogoths in Pannonia, subordinate to his brother Valamir, he ruled over the central part of their domain which covered upper Slavonia. Iordanes names "Theodemir" when recording that he succeeded his brother "Valamero rege Gothorum" together with "Vidimero fratre et filio Theodorico"[63]. When the Ostrogoths left Pannonia in [473], Vidimir went into Italy where he suffered several defeats.
References:
[52] Iordanes Getarum, MGH Auct. ant. V.1, p. 77.
[53] Wolfram, H. (1998) History Of The Goths (Berkeley, California), p. 251.
[54] Iordanes Getarum, MGH Auct. ant. V.1, p. 77.
[55] Wolfram (1998), p. 258.
[56] Wolfram (1998), p. 247.
[57] Iordanes Getarum, MGH Auct. ant. V.1, p. 122.
[58] Wolfram (1998), p. 261.
[59] Iordanes Getarum, MGH Auct. ant. V.1, p. 77.
[60] Iordanes Romanorum, MGH Auct. ant. V.1, p. 44.
[61] Wolfram (1998), pp. 267 and 269.
[62] Iordanes Getarum, MGH Auct. ant. V.1, p. 77.
[63] Iordanes Romanorum, MGH Auct. ant. V.1, p. 44.
From the Foundation for Medieval Genealogy page on Italy Kings (covering Theodomir's wife and children):
http://fmg.ac/Projects/MedLands/ITALY,%20Kings%20to%20962.htm#Theod...
THEODEMIR [Thiudimir], son of VANDALARIUS (-Kyrrhos 474).
m ---. The name of Theodemir's wife is not known.
Concubine: ERELEUVA [Erelieva].
She was baptised a Catholic as EUSEBIA[233]. Iordanes names "Erelieva concubina" as mother of Theodoric[234]. She went with her son to Italy.
Theodemir & his wife had one child:
1. AMALAFRIDA (-murdered [523/25]).
Iordanes names "Amalfridam germanam suam [Theoderici]" as the mother of "Theodehadi" and wife of "Africa regi Vandalorum…Thrasamundo"[235]. Emperor Zeno used her as ambassador to her half-brother in 487 to thwart his attack on Constantinople[236]. Her second marriage was arranged by her half-brother, Theodoric King of Italy, as part of his efforts to foster the support of the Vandals. Amalafrida's dowry was Lilybæum in western Sicily[237].
After the death of her husband, she unsuccessfully protested his successor's withdrawal of support from her brother, but she was outmanœuvred and killed[238].
m firstly [HUGO ---] (-before 500). The Widukindi Res Gestæ Saxonicæ names "Huga rex Francorum…unicam filiam Amalbergam" who married "Irminfredo regi Thuringorum"[239], but there is no indication to whom "Huga rex Francorum" could refer.
m secondly ([500]%29 THRASAMUND, King of the Vandals, son of [GENTO the Vandal or GELIMER the Vandal] (before 460-523). Amalafrida & her first husband had two children.
Theodemir had three illegitimate children by his concubine:
2. THEODORIC ([451][258]-30 Aug 526).
Iordanes names "Theodericum" as son of Theodemir, in a later passage naming his mother "Erelieva concubina"[259]. He was proclaimed THEODORIC "the Great" King of Italy in Mar 493 after defeating King Odovacar.
3. THEODIMUND.
The primary source which names him has not yet been identified. He marched westwards to Durazzo with his brother in 479, leading one of the three marching columns[260].
4. daughter (-[479]).
The primary source which records her existence has not yet been identified. She died about the time her half-brother marched westwards to Durazzo[261].
References:
[233] Wolfram, H. (1998) History Of The Goths (Berkeley, California), p. 261.
[234] Iordanes Getarum, MGH Auct. ant. V.1, p. 128.
[235] Iordanes Getarum, MGH Auct. ant. V.1, p. 132.
[236] Wolfram (1998), p. 278.
[237] Wolfram (1998), p. 308.
[238] Wolfram (1998), p. 308.
[239] Widukindi Res Gestæ Saxonicæ I.9, MGH SS III, p. 420.
[259] Iordanes Getarum, MGH Auct. ant. V.1, pp. 77 and 128.
[260] Wolfram (1998), p. 274.
[261] Wolfram (1998), p. 274.
Desde la página de español Wikipedia en Teodomiro (ostrogodo):
http://es.wikipedia.org/wiki/Teodomiro_(ostrogodo)
Teodomiro fue rey de los ostrogodos de la dinastía de los Amalos. Era hijo de Vandalario y sobrino del rey visigodo Turismundo.
Gobernaba conjuntamente con sus dos hermanos, Valamiro y Videmiro, y era vasallo de Atila. Participó en la batalla de los Campos Cataláunicos, que enfrentó a una coalición de romanos, comandados por el general Flavio Aecio, visigodos, dirigidos por Teodorico I, y otros pueblos germánicos como gépidos, alanos y francos contra los hunos y sus vasallos. En esta batalla lograron acabar con la imbatibilidad de Atila, y algunos de sus vasallos, como los ostrogodos, decidieron rebelarse. Tras la muerte de Atila, Teodomiro prosiguió la rebelión, consiguiendo definitivamente la victoria sobre los hunos en la Batalla de Nedao, durante el invierno de 454. Entonces se dirigió a la ciudad servia de Naissus, donde fundó un rico pero inseguro reino en lo que era la provincia romana de Panonia, que gobernó con sus dos hermanos.
Tras la guerra contra hérulos, gépidos y esciros por el control de la Panonia, Videmiro se dirigió con una porción de los ostrogodos hacia Italia, en 473. Allí, el emperador Glicerio le aconsejó dirigirse hacia la Galia junto con sus parientes los visigodos. Desde entonces, Teodomiro, que era el mayor de los hermanos, quedó como único rey de los ostrogodos de la Panonia.
Se casó con Erelieva, con quien tuvo dos hijos: Teodorico y Amalafrida. Cuando Teodomiro murió en 474, su hijo Teodorico le sucedió como rey.
From the English Wikipedia page on Theodemir:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Theodemir
Theodemir was king of the Ostrogoths of the Amal Dynasty, and father of Theodoric the Great. He had two "brothers" actually brothers-in-law named Walamir "The Faithful" and Widimir.
(According to Bulfinch's Mythology, another 13 generations of leaders can be derived from Goth legends. This was supposedly compiled by a Gothic genealogist named Jordanes.)
Theodemir was Arian, while his wife Erelieva was Catholic.
He took over the three Pannonian Goth empires after the death of Widimir, ruled jointly with his brothers-in-law Walamir and Widimir, and was a vassal of Attila the Hun. The reason is probably that this relatively long reign of the Ostrogoths in Pannonia, while his elder brother Thiudimir only for four years on the throne, followed by Theodoric.
He was married to Erelieva, with whom he had two children: Theodoric (454-526) and Amalafrida. When Theodemir died in 474, Theodoric succeeded him as king.
From the Wikipedia page on the Ostrogoths:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ostrogoth
Post-Hunnic movements
Their recorded history begins with their independence from the remains of the Hunnic Empire following the death of Attila the Hun in 453. Allied with the former vassal and rival, the Gepids and the Ostrogoths led by Theodemir broke the Hunnic power of Attila's sons in the Battle of Nedao in 454.
The Ostrogoths now entered into relations with the Empire, and were settled on lands in Pannonia. During the greater part of the latter half of the 5th century, the East Goths played in south-eastern Europe nearly the same part that the West Goths played in the century before. They were seen going to and from, in every conceivable relation of friendship and enmity with the Eastern Roman power, until, just as the West Goths had done before them, they passed from the East to the West.
And from the Wikipedia page on the Battle of Nedao:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_of_Nedao
The Battle of Nedao, named after the Nedava, a tributary of the Sava[citation needed], was a battle fought in Pannonia in 454.
After the death of Attila the Hun, allied forces of the Germanic subject peoples under the leadership of Ardaric, king of the Gepids, defeated the Hunnic forces of Ellac, the son of Attila, who had struggled with his half-brothers Irnik and Dengizich (Tengiz Khan) for supremacy after Attila's death, and eventually killed him in single combat. According to the 6th century historian Jordanes:
"
And so the bravest nations tore themselves to pieces. For then, I think, must have occurred a most remarkable spectacle, where one might see the Goths fighting with pikes, the Gepidae raging with the sword, the Rugi breaking off the spears in their own wounds, the Suavi fighting on foot, the Huns with bows, the Alani drawing up a battle-line of heavy-armed and the Heruli of light-armed warriors."[1]
Hunnic dominance in Central and Eastern Europe was broken as a result. The handful of Hunnic forces left were expelled by Ardaric after a long siege.
References
1. ^ Jordanes, Origins and History of the Goths, l.261.
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Battle of Nedao (454)
Part of War of the Hunnic Succession
Location: Pannonia
Result: Victory of Gepids and Ostrogoths
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Belligerents:
Gepids, and Ostrogoths under King Theodemir of the Ostrogoths and King Ardaric of the Gepids
Huns under King Ellac of the Huns†
Strengths, unknown
Casualties and losses: c. 30 000 of the Huns
From the Wikipedia page on the Amali Dynasty:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Amal_Dynasty
The Amali were the leading dynasty of the Goths, a Germanic people who confronted the Roman Empire in its declining years in the west. They were also called the Amals, Amaler, or Amalings they were considered highest in worth among Gothic fighters and highest in royal dignity. According to Gothic legend, the Amali were descended from an ancient hero whose deeds earned him the title of Amala or "mighty."
However, the Goths branched into two groups around the year 200: the Ostrogoths and the Visigoths. And by 395 their histories had become significantly separated.
Edward Gibbon writes, in the History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire (Chapter 31, footnote 160):
"the true hereditary right to the Gothic sceptre was vested in the Amali; but those princes, who were the vassals of the Huns, commanded the tribes of the Ostrogoths in some distant parts of Germany or Scythia."
In this vacuum, the rival Balti dynasty, predominant among the Visigoths in Italy and Gaul, was able to assume the Visigothic leadership. For it was Alaric the Visigoth, a member of the latter dynasty, who led his people in the sacking of Rome in 410 CE.
This success, and the dynasty of kings Alaric created, heightened tensions between the two families, leading to the Amali usurping the Visigothic throne in 415, making Sigeric king. But Sigeric's reign lasted only seven days before he was assassinated and the Balti dynasty resumed a powerful rule that didn't end until 531.
It can be generally said that, beginning in 395, the Amali were the royal house of the Ostrogoths while the Balti were that of the Visigoths.
At least, two families claimed they had descended from Amali. First family was Billungs, Dukes of Saxony. They were also known as Amelungs or von Ömlingen. Another family was Solovjovs, Barons of Russian Empire from 1727 (in German speaking sources known as von Solowhoff or Solowhoff von Greutungen). Solovjovs claimed Ermanaric was their ancestor.
Kings
Theodemir, until 474
Theodoric the Great, 474–526
Athalaric, 526–534
Theodahad, 534–536
References
Bradley, Henry. The Goths: From the Earliest Times to the End of the Gothic Dominion in Spain. 2nd ed. New York: G. P. Putnam's Sons, 1883.
From Bulfinch's Mythology, Chapter 2 on Theodoric the Goth (by Thomas Hodgkin):
http://bulfinch.englishatheist.org/theodoric/chapter2.htm
CHAPTER II.
THE MIGHT OF ATTILA.
The Ostrogoths under the Huns--The three royal brothers--Attila king of the Huns--He menaces the Eastern Empire--He strikes at Gaul--Battle of the Catalaunian plains--Invasion of Italy--Destruction of Aquileia--Death of Attila and disruption of his Empire--Settlement of the Ostrogoths in Pannonia.
For 80 years the power of the Ostrogoths suffered eclipse under the shadow of Hunnish barbarism. As to this period we have little historical information that is of any value.
We hear of resistance to the Hunnish supremacy vainly attempted and sullenly abandoned. The son and the grandson of Hermanric figure as the shadowy heroes of this vain resistance. After the death of the latter (King Thorismund) a strange story is told us of the nation mourning his decease for forty years, during all which time they refused to elect any other king to replace him whom they had lost. There can be little doubt that this legend veils the prosaic fact that the nation, depressed and dispirited under the yoke of the conquering Huns, had not energy or patriotism enough to choose a king; since almost invariably among the Teutons of that age, kingship and national unity flourished or faded together.
At length, towards the middle of the fifth century after Christ, the darkness is partially dispelled, and we find the Ostrogothic nation owning the sovereignty of three brothers sprung from the Amal race, but not direct descendants of Hermanric, whose names are Walamir, Theudemir, and Widemir.
"Beautiful it was", says the Gothic historian, "to behold the mutual affection of these three brothers, when the admirable Theudemir served like a common soldier under the orders of Walamir; when Walamir adorned him with the crown at the same time that he conveyed to him his orders; when Widemir gladly rendered his services to both of his brothers". (This is a partly paraphrastic and conjectural translation of a very obscure sentence of Jordanes.)
Theudemir, the second in this royal brotherhood, was the father of our hero, Theodoric.
The three Ostrogothic brethren, kings towards their own countrymen, were subjects--almost, we might say, servants--of the wide-ruling king of the Huns, who was now no longer one of those forgotten chiefs by whom the conquering tribe had been first led into Europe, but ATTILA, a name of fear to his contemporaries and long remembered in the Roman world. He, with his brother Bleda, mounted the barbarian throne in the year 433, and after 12 years the death of Bleda (who was perhaps murdered by order of his brother) left Attila sole wielder of the forces which made him the terror of the world.
He dwelt in rude magnificence in a village not far from the Danube, and his own special dominions seem to have pretty nearly corresponded with the modern kingdom of Hungary. But he held in leash a vast confederacy of nations--Teutonic, Sclavonic, and what we now call Turanian,--whose territories stretched from the Rhine to the Caucasus, and he is said to have made "the isles of the Ocean", which expression probably denotes the islands and peninsulas of Scandinavia, subject to his sway.
Neither, however, over the Ostrogoths nor over any of the other subject nations included in this vast dominion are we to think of Attila's rule as an organised, all-permeating, assimilating influence, such as was the rule of a Roman Emperor. It was rather the influence of one great robber-chief over his freebooting companions.
The kings of the Ostrogoths and Gepidæ came at certain times to share the revelries of their lord in his great log-palace on the Danubian plain; they received his orders to put their subjects in array when he would ride forth to war, and woe was unto them if they failed to stand by his side on the day of battle; but these things being done, they probably ruled their own peoples with little interference from their over-lord. The Teutonic members of the confederacy, notably the Ostrogoths and the kindred tribe of Gepidæ seem to have exercised upon the court and the councils of Attila an influence not unlike that wielded by German statesmen at the court of Russia during the last century.
The Huns, during their 80 years of contact with Europe, had lost a little of that utter savageness which they brought with them from the Tartar deserts. If they were not yet in any sense civilised, they could in some degree appreciate the higher civilisation of their Teutonic subjects. A Pagan himself, with scarcely any religion except some rude cult of the sword of the war-god, Attila seems never to have interfered in the slightest degree with the religious practices of the Gepidæ or the Ostrogoths, the large majority of whom were by this time Christians, holding the Arian form of faith. And not only did he not discourage the finer civilisation which he saw prevailing among these German subjects of his, but he seems to have had statesmanship enough to value and respect a culture which he did not share, and especially to have prized the temperate wisdom of their chiefs, when they helped him to array his great host of barbarians for war against the Empire.
From his position in Central Europe, Attila, like Alaric before him, was able to threaten either the Eastern or the Western Empire at pleasure. For almost 10 years (440-450) he seemed to be bent on picking a quarrel with Theodosius II., the feeble and unwarlike prince who reigned at Constantinople. He laid waste the provinces south of the Danube with his desolating raids; he worried the Imperial Court with incessant embassies, each more exacting and greedy than the last (for the favour of the rude Hunnish envoy had to be purchased by large gifts from the Imperial Treasury); he himself insisted on the payment of yearly stipendia by the Emperor; he constantly demanded that these payments should be doubled; he openly stated that they were nothing else than tribute, and that the Roman Augustus who paid them was his slave.
These practices were continued until, in the year 450 the gentle Theodosius died. He was succeeded by his sister Pulcheria and her husband Marcian, who soon gave a manlier tone to the counsels of the Eastern Empire.
Attila marked the change and turned his harassing attentions to the Western State, with which he had always a sufficient number of pretexts for war ready for use. In fact he had made up his mind for war, and no concessions, however humiliating, on the part of Valentinian III, the then Emperor of the West, would have availed to stay his progress.
Not Italy however, to some extent protected by the barrier of the Alps, but the rich cities and comparatively unwasted plains of Gaul attracted the royal freebooter. Having summoned his vast and heterogeneous army from every quarter of Central and North-eastern Europe, and surrounded himself by a crowd of subject kings, the captains of his host, he set forward in the spring of 451 for the lands of the Rhine.
The trees which his soldiers felled in the great Hercynian forest of Central Germany were fashioned into rude rafts or canoes, on which they crossed the Rhine; and soon the terrible Hun and his "horde of many-nationed spoilers" were passing over the regions which we now call Belgium and Lorraine in a desolating stream. The Huns, not only barbarians, but heathens, seem in this invasion to have been animated by an especial hatred to Christianity. Many a fair church of Gallia Belgica was laid in ashes: many a priest was slain before the altar, whose sanctity was vain for his protection. The real cruelties thus committed are wildly exaggerated by the mythical fancy of the Middle Ages, and upon the slenderest foundations of historical fact arose stately edifices of fable, like the story of the Cornish Princess Ursula, who with her 11,000 virgin companions was fabled to have suffered death at the hands of the Huns in the city of Cologne.
The barbarian tide was at length arrested by the strong walls of Orleans, whose stubborn defence saved all that part of Gaul which lies within the protecting curve of the Loire from the horrors of their invasion. At midsummer Attila and his host were retiring from the untaken city, and beginning their retreat towards the Rhine, a retreat which they were not to accomplish unhindered. The extremity of the danger from these utterly savage foes had welded together the old Empire and the new Gothic kingdom, the civilised and the half-civilised power, in one great confederacy, for the defence of all that was worth saving in human society.
The tidings of the approach of the Gothic king had hastened the departure of Attila from the environs of Orleans, and, perhaps about a fortnight later, the allied armies of Romans and Goths came up with the retreating Huns in "the Catalaunian plains" not far from the city of Troyes. The general of the Imperial army was Aëtius; the general and king of the Visigoths was Theodoric, a namesake of our hero. Both were capable and valiant soldiers.
On the other side, conspicuous among the subject kings who formed the staff of Attila, were the three Ostrogothic brethren, and Ardaric, king of the Gepidæ. The loyalty of Walamir, the firm grasp with which he kept his master's secrets, and Ardaric's resourcefulness in counsel were especially prized by Attila. And truly he had need of all their help, for, though it is difficult to ascertain with any degree of accuracy the numbers actually engaged (162,000 are said to have fallen on both sides), it is clear that this was a collision of nations rather than of armies, and that it required greater skill than any that the rude Hunnish leader possessed, to win the victory for his enormous host.
After "a battle ruthless, manifold, gigantic, obstinate, such as antiquity never described when she told of warlike deeds, such as no man who missed the sight of that marvel might ever hope to have another chance of beholding", (according to Jordanes) night fell upon the virtually defeated Huns.
The Gothic king had lost his life, but Attila had lost the victory. All night long the Huns kept up a barbarous dissonance to prevent the enemy from attacking them, but their king's thoughts were of suicide. He had prepared a huge funeral pyre, on which, if the enemy next day successfully attacked his camp, he was determined to slay himself amid the kindled flames, in order that neither living nor dead the mighty Attila might fall into the hands of his enemies.
These desperate expedients, however, were not required. The death of Theodoric, the caution of Aëtius, some jealousy perhaps between the Roman and the Goth, some anxiety on the part of the eldest Gothic prince as to the succession to his father's throne,--all these causes combined to procure for Attila a safe but closely watched return into his own land.
The battle of the Catalaunian plains (usually but not quite correctly called the Battle of Châlons) was a memorable event in the history of the Gothic race, of Europe, and of the world. It was a sad necessity which on this one occasion arrayed the two great branches of the Gothic people, the Visigoths under Theodoric, and the Ostrogoths under Walamir, in fratricidal strife against each other.
For Europe the alliance between Roman and Goth, between the grandson of Theodosius, Emperor of Rome, and the successor of Alaric, the besieger of Rome, was of priceless value and showed that the great and statesmanlike thought of Ataulfus was ripening in the minds of those who came after him. For the world, yes even for us in the nineteenth century, and for the great undiscovered continents beyond the sea, the repulse of the squalid and unprogressive Turanian from the seats of the old historic civilisation, was essential to the preservation of whatever makes human life worth living. Had Attila conquered on the Catalaunian plains, an endless succession of Jenghiz Khans and Tamerlanes would probably have swept over the desolated plains of Europe; Paris and Florence would have been even as Khiva and Bokhara, and the island of Britain would not have yet attained to the degree of civilisation reached by the peninsula of Corea.
In the year after the fruitless invasion of Gaul, Attila crossed the Julian Alps and entered Italy, intending (452) doubtless to rival the fame of Alaric by his capture of Rome, an operation which would have been attended with infinitely greater ruin to "the seven-hilled city's pride", than any which she had sustained at the hands of the Visigothic leader.
But the Huns, unskilful in siege work, were long detained before the walls of Aquileia, that great and flourishing frontier city, hitherto deemed impregnable, which gathered in the wealth of the Venetian province, and guarded the north-eastern approaches to Italy. At length by a sudden assault they made themselves masters of the city, which they destroyed with utter destruction, putting all the inhabitants to the sword, and then wrapping in fire and smoke the stately palaces, the wharves, the mint, the forum, the theatres of the fourth city of Italy.
The terror of this brutal destruction took from the other cities of Venetia all heart for resistance to the terrible invader. From Concordia, Altino, Padua, crowds of trembling fugitives walked, waded, or sailed with their hastily gathered and most precious possessions to the islands, surrounded by shallow lagoons, which fringed the Adriatic coast, near the mouths of the Brenta and Adige. There at Torcello, Burano, Rialto, Malamocco, and their sister islets, they laid the humble foundations of that which was one day to be the gorgeous and wide-ruling Republic of Venice.
Attila meanwhile marched on through the valley of the Po ravaging and plundering, but a little slackening in the work of mere destruction, as the remembrance of the stubborn defence of Aquileia faded from his memory. Entering Milan as a conqueror, and seeing there a picture representing the Emperors of the Romans sitting on golden thrones, and the Scythian barbarians crouching at their feet, he sought out a Milanese painter, and bade the trembling artist represent him, Attila, sitting on the throne, and the two Roman Emperors staggering under sacks full of gold coin, which they bore upon their shoulders, and pouring out their precious contents at his feet.
This little incident helps us to understand the next strange act in the drama of Attila's invasion. To enjoy the luxury of humbling the great Empire, and of trampling on the pride of her statesmen, seems to have been the sweetest pleasure of his life. This mere gratification of his pride, the pride of an upstart barbarian, at the expense of the inheritors of a mighty name and the representatives of venerable traditions, was the object which took him into Italy, rather than any carefully prepared scheme of worldwide conquest.
Accordingly when that august body, the Senate of Rome, sent a consul, a prefect, and more than all a pope, the majestic and fitly-named Leo, to plead humbly in the name of the Roman people for peace, and to promise acquiescence at some future day in the most unreasonable of his demands, Attila granted the ambassadors an interview by the banks of the Mincio, listened with haughty tranquillity to their petition, allowed himself to be soothed and, as it were, magnetised by the words and gestures of the venerable pontiff, accepted the rich presents which were doubtless laid at his feet, and turning his face homewards recrossed the Julian Alps, leaving the Apennines untraversed and Rome unvisited.
Even in the act of granting peace Attila used words which showed that it would be only a truce, and that if there were any failure to abide by any one of his conditions, he would return and work yet greater mischief to Italy than any which she had yet suffered at his hands. But he had missed the fateful moment, and the delight of standing on the conquered Palatine, and seeing the smoke ascend from the ruined City of the World, was never to be his. In the year after his invasion of Italy he died suddenly at night, apparently the victim of the drunken debauch with which the polygamous barbarian had celebrated the latest addition to the numerous company of his wives.
With Attila's death the might of the Hunnish Empire was broken. The great robber-camp needed the ascendancy of one strong chief-robber to hold it together, and that ascendancy no one of the multitudinous sons who emerged from the chambers of his harem was able to exert.
Unable to agree as to the succession of the throne, they talked of dividing the Hunnish dominions between them, and in the discussions which ensued they showed too plainly that they looked upon the subject nations as their slaves, to be partitioned as a large household of such domestics would be partitioned among the heirs of their dead master. The pride of the Teutons was touched, and they determined to strike a blow for the recovery of their lost freedom. Ardaric, king of the Gepidæ, so long the trusty counsellor of Attila, was prime mover in the revolt against his sons. A battle was fought by the banks of the river Nedao (in Pannonia, somewhere probably in Hungary between the Save and Danube) between the Huns (with those subject allies who still remained faithful to them) and the revolted nations.
Among these revolted nations there can be but little doubt that the Ostrogoths held a high place, though the matter is not so clearly stated as we should have expected, by the Gothic historian, and even on his showing the glory of the struggle for independence was mainly Ardaric's. After a terrible battle the Gepidæ were victorious, and Ellak, eldest son of Attila, with, it is said, 30,000 of his soldiers, lay dead upon the field.
"He had wrought a great slaughter of his enemies, and so glorious was his end", says Jordanes, "that his father might well have envied him his manner of dying".
The Battle of Nedao, whatever may have been the share of the Ostrogoths in the actual fighting, certainly brought them freedom. From this time the great Hunnish Empire was at an end, and there was a general resettlement of territory among the nations which had been subject to its yoke.
While the Huns themselves, abandoning their former habitations, moved, for the most part, down the Danube, and became the humble servants of the Eastern Empire, the Gepidæ, perhaps marching southward occupied the great Hungarian plains on the left bank of the Danube, which had been the home of Attila and his Huns; and the Ostrogoths going westwards (perhaps with some dim notion of following their Visigothic kindred) took up their abode in that which had once been the Roman province of Pannonia, now doubtless known to be hopelessly lost to the Empire.
Pannonia, the new home of the Ostrogoths, was the name of a region, rectangular in shape, about 200 miles from north to south and 160 miles from east to west, whose northern and eastern sides were washed by the river Danube, and whose north-eastern corner was formed by the sudden bend to the south which that river makes, a little above Buda-Pest. This region includes Vienna and the eastern part of the Archduchy of Austria, Grätz, and the eastern part of the Duchy of Styria, but it is chiefly composed of the great corn-growing plain of Western Hungary, and contains the two considerable lakes of Balaton and Neusiedler See.
Here then the three Ostrogothic brethren took up their abode, and of this province they made a kind of rude partition between them, while still treating it as one kingdom, of which Walamir was the head. The precise details of this division of territory cannot now be recovered, 12 nor are they of much importance, as the settlement was of short duration. We can only say that Walamir and Theudemir occupied the two ends of the territory, and Widemir dwelt between them.
(Jordanes, in his book Getica, says: "Valamer inter Scarniungam et Aquam Nigram fluvios, Thiudimer juxta lacum Pelsois, Vidimer inter utrosque manebat". It seems to be hopeless to determine what rivers are denoted by "Scarniunga" and "Aqua Nigra".)
What is most interesting to us is the fact that Theudemir's territory included Lake Balaton (or Platten See), and that his palace may very possibly have stood upon the shores of that noble piece of water, which is forty-seven miles in length and varies from three to nine miles in width. To the neighbourhood of this lake, in the absence of more precise information, we may with some probability assign the birth-place and the childish home of Theodoric.
(Of course the location of Theudemir's palace on the actual shore of Lake Balaton can only be treated as a conjecture, but the pointed way in which Jordanes, in the passage last quoted, speaks of him as "juxta lacuna Pelsois", seems to make the conjecture a probable one. Some geographers have identified Pelso Lacus with the Neusiedler See, but apparently on insufficient grounds.)
No longer a functional link:
http://familytrees.genopro.com/318186/jarleslekt/default.htm?page=t...
One of three brothers who ruled the East Goths in Pannonia, 463-474.
Theodemir was king of the Ostrogoths of the Amal Dynasty, and father of Theodoric the Great. He had an elder brother named Valamir and a younger named Vidimir. Theodemir was Arian, while his wife Erelieva was Catholic. He took over the three Pannonian Goth empires after the death of Vidimir, ruled jointly with his brothers Valamir and Vidimir, and was a vassal of Attila the Hun. The reason is probably that this relatively long reign of the Ostrogoths in Pannonia, while his elder brother Thiudimir only for four years on the throne, followed by Theodoric, and the first in which erbenlosen Valamir part beerbte kingdom. He was married to Erelieva, with whom he had two children: Theodoric (454-526) and Amalafrida. When Theodemir died in 474, Theodoric succeeded him as King.
Na Wikipedia:
http://pt.wikipedia.org/wiki/Teodomiro
Death 0471, in Cyrrhus.
"King Thiudimer was seized with a mortal illness in the city of Cyrrhus. He called the Goths to himself, appointed Theodoric his son as heir of his kingdom and presently departed this life."
The Shorter Cambridge Medieval History, Volume 1, the Later Roman Empire to the Twelfth Century, Volume: 1 (sCMH I). C. W. Previté-Orton. Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, 1978
The Roman Empire and Its Germanic Peoples, Herwig Wolfram, University of California Press, Los Angeles, 1997. Translated by Thomas Dunlap, Isbn: 0-520-08511-6 (Wolfram, 1997 )
http://gw.geneanet.org/nobily?lang=fr;pz=elisabeth+therese+marie+he...
From the Foundation for Medieval Genealogy page on Hungary (covering Theodomir's parents and brothers:
http://fmg.ac/Projects/MedLands/HUNGARY.htm#_Toc146273199
VANDALARIUS, son of VINITHARIUS . Iordanes names "Vandiliarum" as son of "Vinitharius" and father of "Thiudemer et Valamir et Vidimir"[52]. Relative of Thorismund[53].
1. VALAMIR (-killed in battle [468/69]). Iordanes names "Thiudemer et Valamir et Vidimir" as the sons of Vandilarius[54]. He and his brothers followed Attila the Hun into Gaul in 451[55]. Valamir commanded the Ostrogoth contingent in Attila's army which was defeated at the battle of the Catalaunian fields[56]. He was considered king of all Ostrogoths in Pannonia. Iordanes records that "Valamer…ex consobrino eius genitus Vandalario" succeeded as king after "Thorismundo" was killed fighting the Gepids in the second year of his reign[57]. He shared the land with his two brothers, retaining for himself the eastern part of the territory covering lower Slavonia. In 456, he defeated an attack by the Huns, who are said to have retreated to the River Dnieper[58]. He defeated another Hun attack on Bassianae, near Belgrade, in 467/68, but was killed in battle during a similar attack the following year.
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2. THEODEMIR [Thiudimir] (-Kyrrhos 474).
Iordanes names "Thiudemer et Valamir et Vidimir" as the sons of Vandilarius[59].
King of the Ostrogoths in Pannonia, subordinate to his brother Valamir, he ruled over the western part of their domain which covered the county of Somogy and north-eastern Croatia.
He succeeded his brother in [468/49] as King of all the Pannonian Ostrogoths. Iordanes names "Theodemir" when recording that he succeeded his brother "Valamero rege Gothorum" together with "Vidimero fratre et filio Theodorico"[60].
When the Ostrogoths left Pannonia in [473], Theodemir and his contingent went towards Constantinople. They settled in Macedonia, based in the city of Kyrrhos[61].
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3. VIDIMIR (-473).
Iordanes names "Thiudemer et Valamir et Vidimir" as the sons of Vandilarius[62]. King of the Ostrogoths in Pannonia, subordinate to his brother Valamir, he ruled over the central part of their domain which covered upper Slavonia. Iordanes names "Theodemir" when recording that he succeeded his brother "Valamero rege Gothorum" together with "Vidimero fratre et filio Theodorico"[63]. When the Ostrogoths left Pannonia in [473], Vidimir went into Italy where he suffered several defeats.
References:
[52] Iordanes Getarum, MGH Auct. ant. V.1, p. 77.
[53] Wolfram, H. (1998) History Of The Goths (Berkeley, California), p. 251.
[54] Iordanes Getarum, MGH Auct. ant. V.1, p. 77.
[55] Wolfram (1998), p. 258.
[56] Wolfram (1998), p. 247.
[57] Iordanes Getarum, MGH Auct. ant. V.1, p. 122.
[58] Wolfram (1998), p. 261.
[59] Iordanes Getarum, MGH Auct. ant. V.1, p. 77.
[60] Iordanes Romanorum, MGH Auct. ant. V.1, p. 44.
[61] Wolfram (1998), pp. 267 and 269.
[62] Iordanes Getarum, MGH Auct. ant. V.1, p. 77.
[63] Iordanes Romanorum, MGH Auct. ant. V.1, p. 44.
From the Foundation for Medieval Genealogy page on Italy Kings (covering Theodomir's wife and children):
http://fmg.ac/Projects/MedLands/ITALY,%20Kings%20to%20962.htm#Theod...
THEODEMIR [Thiudimir], son of VANDALARIUS (-Kyrrhos 474).
m ---. The name of Theodemir's wife is not known.
Concubine: ERELEUVA [Erelieva].
She was baptised a Catholic as EUSEBIA[233]. Iordanes names "Erelieva concubina" as mother of Theodoric[234]. She went with her son to Italy.
Theodemir & his wife had one child:
1. AMALAFRIDA (-murdered [523/25]).
Iordanes names "Amalfridam germanam suam [Theoderici]" as the mother of "Theodehadi" and wife of "Africa regi Vandalorum…Thrasamundo"[235]. Emperor Zeno used her as ambassador to her half-brother in 487 to thwart his attack on Constantinople[236]. Her second marriage was arranged by her half-brother, Theodoric King of Italy, as part of his efforts to foster the support of the Vandals. Amalafrida's dowry was Lilybæum in western Sicily[237].
After the death of her husband, she unsuccessfully protested his successor's withdrawal of support from her brother, but she was outmanœuvred and killed[238].
m firstly [HUGO ---] (-before 500). The Widukindi Res Gestæ Saxonicæ names "Huga rex Francorum…unicam filiam Amalbergam" who married "Irminfredo regi Thuringorum"[239], but there is no indication to whom "Huga rex Francorum" could refer.
m secondly ([500]%29 THRASAMUND, King of the Vandals, son of [GENTO the Vandal or GELIMER the Vandal] (before 460-523). Amalafrida & her first husband had two children.
Theodemir had three illegitimate children by his concubine:
2. THEODORIC ([451][258]-30 Aug 526).
Iordanes names "Theodericum" as son of Theodemir, in a later passage naming his mother "Erelieva concubina"[259]. He was proclaimed THEODORIC "the Great" King of Italy in Mar 493 after defeating King Odovacar.
3. THEODIMUND.
The primary source which names him has not yet been identified. He marched westwards to Durazzo with his brother in 479, leading one of the three marching columns[260].
4. daughter (-[479]).
The primary source which records her existence has not yet been identified. She died about the time her half-brother marched westwards to Durazzo[261].
References:
[233] Wolfram, H. (1998) History Of The Goths (Berkeley, California), p. 261.
[234] Iordanes Getarum, MGH Auct. ant. V.1, p. 128.
[235] Iordanes Getarum, MGH Auct. ant. V.1, p. 132.
[236] Wolfram (1998), p. 278.
[237] Wolfram (1998), p. 308.
[238] Wolfram (1998), p. 308.
[239] Widukindi Res Gestæ Saxonicæ I.9, MGH SS III, p. 420.
[259] Iordanes Getarum, MGH Auct. ant. V.1, pp. 77 and 128.
[260] Wolfram (1998), p. 274.
[261] Wolfram (1998), p. 274.
Desde la página de español Wikipedia en Teodomiro (ostrogodo):
http://es.wikipedia.org/wiki/Teodomiro_(ostrogodo)
Teodomiro fue rey de los ostrogodos de la dinastía de los Amalos. Era hijo de Vandalario y sobrino del rey visigodo Turismundo.
Gobernaba conjuntamente con sus dos hermanos, Valamiro y Videmiro, y era vasallo de Atila. Participó en la batalla de los Campos Cataláunicos, que enfrentó a una coalición de romanos, comandados por el general Flavio Aecio, visigodos, dirigidos por Teodorico I, y otros pueblos germánicos como gépidos, alanos y francos contra los hunos y sus vasallos. En esta batalla lograron acabar con la imbatibilidad de Atila, y algunos de sus vasallos, como los ostrogodos, decidieron rebelarse. Tras la muerte de Atila, Teodomiro prosiguió la rebelión, consiguiendo definitivamente la victoria sobre los hunos en la Batalla de Nedao, durante el invierno de 454. Entonces se dirigió a la ciudad servia de Naissus, donde fundó un rico pero inseguro reino en lo que era la provincia romana de Panonia, que gobernó con sus dos hermanos.
Tras la guerra contra hérulos, gépidos y esciros por el control de la Panonia, Videmiro se dirigió con una porción de los ostrogodos hacia Italia, en 473. Allí, el emperador Glicerio le aconsejó dirigirse hacia la Galia junto con sus parientes los visigodos. Desde entonces, Teodomiro, que era el mayor de los hermanos, quedó como único rey de los ostrogodos de la Panonia.
Se casó con Erelieva, con quien tuvo dos hijos: Teodorico y Amalafrida. Cuando Teodomiro murió en 474, su hijo Teodorico le sucedió como rey.
From the English Wikipedia page on Theodemir:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Theodemir
Theodemir was king of the Ostrogoths of the Amal Dynasty, and father of Theodoric the Great. He had two "brothers" actually brothers-in-law named Walamir "The Faithful" and Widimir.
(According to Bulfinch's Mythology, another 13 generations of leaders can be derived from Goth legends. This was supposedly compiled by a Gothic genealogist named Jordanes.)
Theodemir was Arian, while his wife Erelieva was Catholic.
He took over the three Pannonian Goth empires after the death of Widimir, ruled jointly with his brothers-in-law Walamir and Widimir, and was a vassal of Attila the Hun. The reason is probably that this relatively long reign of the Ostrogoths in Pannonia, while his elder brother Thiudimir only for four years on the throne, followed by Theodoric.
He was married to Erelieva, with whom he had two children: Theodoric (454-526) and Amalafrida. When Theodemir died in 474, Theodoric succeeded him as king.
From the Wikipedia page on the Ostrogoths:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ostrogoth
Post-Hunnic movements
Their recorded history begins with their independence from the remains of the Hunnic Empire following the death of Attila the Hun in 453. Allied with the former vassal and rival, the Gepids and the Ostrogoths led by Theodemir broke the Hunnic power of Attila's sons in the Battle of Nedao in 454.
The Ostrogoths now entered into relations with the Empire, and were settled on lands in Pannonia. During the greater part of the latter half of the 5th century, the East Goths played in south-eastern Europe nearly the same part that the West Goths played in the century before. They were seen going to and from, in every conceivable relation of friendship and enmity with the Eastern Roman power, until, just as the West Goths had done before them, they passed from the East to the West.
And from the Wikipedia page on the Battle of Nedao:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_of_Nedao
The Battle of Nedao, named after the Nedava, a tributary of the Sava[citation needed], was a battle fought in Pannonia in 454.
After the death of Attila the Hun, allied forces of the Germanic subject peoples under the leadership of Ardaric, king of the Gepids, defeated the Hunnic forces of Ellac, the son of Attila, who had struggled with his half-brothers Irnik and Dengizich (Tengiz Khan) for supremacy after Attila's death, and eventually killed him in single combat. According to the 6th century historian Jordanes:
"
And so the bravest nations tore themselves to pieces. For then, I think, must have occurred a most remarkable spectacle, where one might see the Goths fighting with pikes, the Gepidae raging with the sword, the Rugi breaking off the spears in their own wounds, the Suavi fighting on foot, the Huns with bows, the Alani drawing up a battle-line of heavy-armed and the Heruli of light-armed warriors."[1]
Hunnic dominance in Central and Eastern Europe was broken as a result. The handful of Hunnic forces left were expelled by Ardaric after a long siege.
References
1. ^ Jordanes, Origins and History of the Goths, l.261.
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Battle of Nedao (454)
Part of War of the Hunnic Succession
Location: Pannonia
Result: Victory of Gepids and Ostrogoths
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Belligerents:
Gepids, and Ostrogoths under King Theodemir of the Ostrogoths and King Ardaric of the Gepids
Huns under King Ellac of the Huns†
Strengths, unknown
Casualties and losses: c. 30 000 of the Huns
From the Wikipedia page on the Amali Dynasty:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Amal_Dynasty
The Amali were the leading dynasty of the Goths, a Germanic people who confronted the Roman Empire in its declining years in the west. They were also called the Amals, Amaler, or Amalings they were considered highest in worth among Gothic fighters and highest in royal dignity. According to Gothic legend, the Amali were descended from an ancient hero whose deeds earned him the title of Amala or "mighty."
However, the Goths branched into two groups around the year 200: the Ostrogoths and the Visigoths. And by 395 their histories had become significantly separated.
Edward Gibbon writes, in the History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire (Chapter 31, footnote 160):
"the true hereditary right to the Gothic sceptre was vested in the Amali; but those princes, who were the vassals of the Huns, commanded the tribes of the Ostrogoths in some distant parts of Germany or Scythia."
In this vacuum, the rival Balti dynasty, predominant among the Visigoths in Italy and Gaul, was able to assume the Visigothic leadership. For it was Alaric the Visigoth, a member of the latter dynasty, who led his people in the sacking of Rome in 410 CE.
This success, and the dynasty of kings Alaric created, heightened tensions between the two families, leading to the Amali usurping the Visigothic throne in 415, making Sigeric king. But Sigeric's reign lasted only seven days before he was assassinated and the Balti dynasty resumed a powerful rule that didn't end until 531.
It can be generally said that, beginning in 395, the Amali were the royal house of the Ostrogoths while the Balti were that of the Visigoths.
At least, two families claimed they had descended from Amali. First family was Billungs, Dukes of Saxony. They were also known as Amelungs or von Ömlingen. Another family was Solovjovs, Barons of Russian Empire from 1727 (in German speaking sources known as von Solowhoff or Solowhoff von Greutungen). Solovjovs claimed Ermanaric was their ancestor.
Kings
Theodemir, until 474
Theodoric the Great, 474–526
Athalaric, 526–534
Theodahad, 534–536
References
Bradley, Henry. The Goths: From the Earliest Times to the End of the Gothic Dominion in Spain. 2nd ed. New York: G. P. Putnam's Sons, 1883.
From Bulfinch's Mythology, Chapter 2 on Theodoric the Goth (by Thomas Hodgkin):
http://bulfinch.englishatheist.org/theodoric/chapter2.htm
CHAPTER II.
THE MIGHT OF ATTILA.
The Ostrogoths under the Huns--The three royal brothers--Attila king of the Huns--He menaces the Eastern Empire--He strikes at Gaul--Battle of the Catalaunian plains--Invasion of Italy--Destruction of Aquileia--Death of Attila and disruption of his Empire--Settlement of the Ostrogoths in Pannonia.
For 80 years the power of the Ostrogoths suffered eclipse under the shadow of Hunnish barbarism. As to this period we have little historical information that is of any value.
We hear of resistance to the Hunnish supremacy vainly attempted and sullenly abandoned. The son and the grandson of Hermanric figure as the shadowy heroes of this vain resistance. After the death of the latter (King Thorismund) a strange story is told us of the nation mourning his decease for forty years, during all which time they refused to elect any other king to replace him whom they had lost. There can be little doubt that this legend veils the prosaic fact that the nation, depressed and dispirited under the yoke of the conquering Huns, had not energy or patriotism enough to choose a king; since almost invariably among the Teutons of that age, kingship and national unity flourished or faded together.
At length, towards the middle of the fifth century after Christ, the darkness is partially dispelled, and we find the Ostrogothic nation owning the sovereignty of three brothers sprung from the Amal race, but not direct descendants of Hermanric, whose names are Walamir, Theudemir, and Widemir.
"Beautiful it was", says the Gothic historian, "to behold the mutual affection of these three brothers, when the admirable Theudemir served like a common soldier under the orders of Walamir; when Walamir adorned him with the crown at the same time that he conveyed to him his orders; when Widemir gladly rendered his services to both of his brothers". (This is a partly paraphrastic and conjectural translation of a very obscure sentence of Jordanes.)
Theudemir, the second in this royal brotherhood, was the father of our hero, Theodoric.
The three Ostrogothic brethren, kings towards their own countrymen, were subjects--almost, we might say, servants--of the wide-ruling king of the Huns, who was now no longer one of those forgotten chiefs by whom the conquering tribe had been first led into Europe, but ATTILA, a name of fear to his contemporaries and long remembered in the Roman world. He, with his brother Bleda, mounted the barbarian throne in the year 433, and after 12 years the death of Bleda (who was perhaps murdered by order of his brother) left Attila sole wielder of the forces which made him the terror of the world.
He dwelt in rude magnificence in a village not far from the Danube, and his own special dominions seem to have pretty nearly corresponded with the modern kingdom of Hungary. But he held in leash a vast confederacy of nations--Teutonic, Sclavonic, and what we now call Turanian,--whose territories stretched from the Rhine to the Caucasus, and he is said to have made "the isles of the Ocean", which expression probably denotes the islands and peninsulas of Scandinavia, subject to his sway.
Neither, however, over the Ostrogoths nor over any of the other subject nations included in this vast dominion are we to think of Attila's rule as an organised, all-permeating, assimilating influence, such as was the rule of a Roman Emperor. It was rather the influence of one great robber-chief over his freebooting companions.
The kings of the Ostrogoths and Gepidæ came at certain times to share the revelries of their lord in his great log-palace on the Danubian plain; they received his orders to put their subjects in array when he would ride forth to war, and woe was unto them if they failed to stand by his side on the day of battle; but these things being done, they probably ruled their own peoples with little interference from their over-lord. The Teutonic members of the confederacy, notably the Ostrogoths and the kindred tribe of Gepidæ seem to have exercised upon the court and the councils of Attila an influence not unlike that wielded by German statesmen at the court of Russia during the last century.
The Huns, during their 80 years of contact with Europe, had lost a little of that utter savageness which they brought with them from the Tartar deserts. If they were not yet in any sense civilised, they could in some degree appreciate the higher civilisation of their Teutonic subjects. A Pagan himself, with scarcely any religion except some rude cult of the sword of the war-god, Attila seems never to have interfered in the slightest degree with the religious practices of the Gepidæ or the Ostrogoths, the large majority of whom were by this time Christians, holding the Arian form of faith. And not only did he not discourage the finer civilisation which he saw prevailing among these German subjects of his, but he seems to have had statesmanship enough to value and respect a culture which he did not share, and especially to have prized the temperate wisdom of their chiefs, when they helped him to array his great host of barbarians for war against the Empire.
From his position in Central Europe, Attila, like Alaric before him, was able to threaten either the Eastern or the Western Empire at pleasure. For almost 10 years (440-450) he seemed to be bent on picking a quarrel with Theodosius II., the feeble and unwarlike prince who reigned at Constantinople. He laid waste the provinces south of the Danube with his desolating raids; he worried the Imperial Court with incessant embassies, each more exacting and greedy than the last (for the favour of the rude Hunnish envoy had to be purchased by large gifts from the Imperial Treasury); he himself insisted on the payment of yearly stipendia by the Emperor; he constantly demanded that these payments should be doubled; he openly stated that they were nothing else than tribute, and that the Roman Augustus who paid them was his slave.
These practices were continued until, in the year 450 the gentle Theodosius died. He was succeeded by his sister Pulcheria and her husband Marcian, who soon gave a manlier tone to the counsels of the Eastern Empire.
Attila marked the change and turned his harassing attentions to the Western State, with which he had always a sufficient number of pretexts for war ready for use. In fact he had made up his mind for war, and no concessions, however humiliating, on the part of Valentinian III, the then Emperor of the West, would have availed to stay his progress.
Not Italy however, to some extent protected by the barrier of the Alps, but the rich cities and comparatively unwasted plains of Gaul attracted the royal freebooter. Having summoned his vast and heterogeneous army from every quarter of Central and North-eastern Europe, and surrounded himself by a crowd of subject kings, the captains of his host, he set forward in the spring of 451 for the lands of the Rhine.
The trees which his soldiers felled in the great Hercynian forest of Central Germany were fashioned into rude rafts or canoes, on which they crossed the Rhine; and soon the terrible Hun and his "horde of many-nationed spoilers" were passing over the regions which we now call Belgium and Lorraine in a desolating stream. The Huns, not only barbarians, but heathens, seem in this invasion to have been animated by an especial hatred to Christianity. Many a fair church of Gallia Belgica was laid in ashes: many a priest was slain before the altar, whose sanctity was vain for his protection. The real cruelties thus committed are wildly exaggerated by the mythical fancy of the Middle Ages, and upon the slenderest foundations of historical fact arose stately edifices of fable, like the story of the Cornish Princess Ursula, who with her 11,000 virgin companions was fabled to have suffered death at the hands of the Huns in the city of Cologne.
The barbarian tide was at length arrested by the strong walls of Orleans, whose stubborn defence saved all that part of Gaul which lies within the protecting curve of the Loire from the horrors of their invasion. At midsummer Attila and his host were retiring from the untaken city, and beginning their retreat towards the Rhine, a retreat which they were not to accomplish unhindered. The extremity of the danger from these utterly savage foes had welded together the old Empire and the new Gothic kingdom, the civilised and the half-civilised power, in one great confederacy, for the defence of all that was worth saving in human society.
The tidings of the approach of the Gothic king had hastened the departure of Attila from the environs of Orleans, and, perhaps about a fortnight later, the allied armies of Romans and Goths came up with the retreating Huns in "the Catalaunian plains" not far from the city of Troyes. The general of the Imperial army was Aëtius; the general and king of the Visigoths was Theodoric, a namesake of our hero. Both were capable and valiant soldiers.
On the other side, conspicuous among the subject kings who formed the staff of Attila, were the three Ostrogothic brethren, and Ardaric, king of the Gepidæ. The loyalty of Walamir, the firm grasp with which he kept his master's secrets, and Ardaric's resourcefulness in counsel were especially prized by Attila. And truly he had need of all their help, for, though it is difficult to ascertain with any degree of accuracy the numbers actually engaged (162,000 are said to have fallen on both sides), it is clear that this was a collision of nations rather than of armies, and that it required greater skill than any that the rude Hunnish leader possessed, to win the victory for his enormous host.
After "a battle ruthless, manifold, gigantic, obstinate, such as antiquity never described when she told of warlike deeds, such as no man who missed the sight of that marvel might ever hope to have another chance of beholding", (according to Jordanes) night fell upon the virtually defeated Huns.
The Gothic king had lost his life, but Attila had lost the victory. All night long the Huns kept up a barbarous dissonance to prevent the enemy from attacking them, but their king's thoughts were of suicide. He had prepared a huge funeral pyre, on which, if the enemy next day successfully attacked his camp, he was determined to slay himself amid the kindled flames, in order that neither living nor dead the mighty Attila might fall into the hands of his enemies.
These desperate expedients, however, were not required. The death of Theodoric, the caution of Aëtius, some jealousy perhaps between the Roman and the Goth, some anxiety on the part of the eldest Gothic prince as to the succession to his father's throne,--all these causes combined to procure for Attila a safe but closely watched return into his own land.
The battle of the Catalaunian plains (usually but not quite correctly called the Battle of Châlons) was a memorable event in the history of the Gothic race, of Europe, and of the world. It was a sad necessity which on this one occasion arrayed the two great branches of the Gothic people, the Visigoths under Theodoric, and the Ostrogoths under Walamir, in fratricidal strife against each other.
For Europe the alliance between Roman and Goth, between the grandson of Theodosius, Emperor of Rome, and the successor of Alaric, the besieger of Rome, was of priceless value and showed that the great and statesmanlike thought of Ataulfus was ripening in the minds of those who came after him. For the world, yes even for us in the nineteenth century, and for the great undiscovered continents beyond the sea, the repulse of the squalid and unprogressive Turanian from the seats of the old historic civilisation, was essential to the preservation of whatever makes human life worth living. Had Attila conquered on the Catalaunian plains, an endless succession of Jenghiz Khans and Tamerlanes would probably have swept over the desolated plains of Europe; Paris and Florence would have been even as Khiva and Bokhara, and the island of Britain would not have yet attained to the degree of civilisation reached by the peninsula of Corea.
In the year after the fruitless invasion of Gaul, Attila crossed the Julian Alps and entered Italy, intending (452) doubtless to rival the fame of Alaric by his capture of Rome, an operation which would have been attended with infinitely greater ruin to "the seven-hilled city's pride", than any which she had sustained at the hands of the Visigothic leader.
But the Huns, unskilful in siege work, were long detained before the walls of Aquileia, that great and flourishing frontier city, hitherto deemed impregnable, which gathered in the wealth of the Venetian province, and guarded the north-eastern approaches to Italy. At length by a sudden assault they made themselves masters of the city, which they destroyed with utter destruction, putting all the inhabitants to the sword, and then wrapping in fire and smoke the stately palaces, the wharves, the mint, the forum, the theatres of the fourth city of Italy.
The terror of this brutal destruction took from the other cities of Venetia all heart for resistance to the terrible invader. From Concordia, Altino, Padua, crowds of trembling fugitives walked, waded, or sailed with their hastily gathered and most precious possessions to the islands, surrounded by shallow lagoons, which fringed the Adriatic coast, near the mouths of the Brenta and Adige. There at Torcello, Burano, Rialto, Malamocco, and their sister islets, they laid the humble foundations of that which was one day to be the gorgeous and wide-ruling Republic of Venice.
Attila meanwhile marched on through the valley of the Po ravaging and plundering, but a little slackening in the work of mere destruction, as the remembrance of the stubborn defence of Aquileia faded from his memory. Entering Milan as a conqueror, and seeing there a picture representing the Emperors of the Romans sitting on golden thrones, and the Scythian barbarians crouching at their feet, he sought out a Milanese painter, and bade the trembling artist represent him, Attila, sitting on the throne, and the two Roman Emperors staggering under sacks full of gold coin, which they bore upon their shoulders, and pouring out their precious contents at his feet.
This little incident helps us to understand the next strange act in the drama of Attila's invasion. To enjoy the luxury of humbling the great Empire, and of trampling on the pride of her statesmen, seems to have been the sweetest pleasure of his life. This mere gratification of his pride, the pride of an upstart barbarian, at the expense of the inheritors of a mighty name and the representatives of venerable traditions, was the object which took him into Italy, rather than any carefully prepared scheme of worldwide conquest.
Accordingly when that august body, the Senate of Rome, sent a consul, a prefect, and more than all a pope, the majestic and fitly-named Leo, to plead humbly in the name of the Roman people for peace, and to promise acquiescence at some future day in the most unreasonable of his demands, Attila granted the ambassadors an interview by the banks of the Mincio, listened with haughty tranquillity to their petition, allowed himself to be soothed and, as it were, magnetised by the words and gestures of the venerable pontiff, accepted the rich presents which were doubtless laid at his feet, and turning his face homewards recrossed the Julian Alps, leaving the Apennines untraversed and Rome unvisited.
Even in the act of granting peace Attila used words which showed that it would be only a truce, and that if there were any failure to abide by any one of his conditions, he would return and work yet greater mischief to Italy than any which she had yet suffered at his hands. But he had missed the fateful moment, and the delight of standing on the conquered Palatine, and seeing the smoke ascend from the ruined City of the World, was never to be his. In the year after his invasion of Italy he died suddenly at night, apparently the victim of the drunken debauch with which the polygamous barbarian had celebrated the latest addition to the numerous company of his wives.
With Attila's death the might of the Hunnish Empire was broken. The great robber-camp needed the ascendancy of one strong chief-robber to hold it together, and that ascendancy no one of the multitudinous sons who emerged from the chambers of his harem was able to exert.
Unable to agree as to the succession of the throne, they talked of dividing the Hunnish dominions between them, and in the discussions which ensued they showed too plainly that they looked upon the subject nations as their slaves, to be partitioned as a large household of such domestics would be partitioned among the heirs of their dead master. The pride of the Teutons was touched, and they determined to strike a blow for the recovery of their lost freedom. Ardaric, king of the Gepidæ, so long the trusty counsellor of Attila, was prime mover in the revolt against his sons. A battle was fought by the banks of the river Nedao (in Pannonia, somewhere probably in Hungary between the Save and Danube) between the Huns (with those subject allies who still remained faithful to them) and the revolted nations.
Among these revolted nations there can be but little doubt that the Ostrogoths held a high place, though the matter is not so clearly stated as we should have expected, by the Gothic historian, and even on his showing the glory of the struggle for independence was mainly Ardaric's. After a terrible battle the Gepidæ were victorious, and Ellak, eldest son of Attila, with, it is said, 30,000 of his soldiers, lay dead upon the field.
"He had wrought a great slaughter of his enemies, and so glorious was his end", says Jordanes, "that his father might well have envied him his manner of dying".
The Battle of Nedao, whatever may have been the share of the Ostrogoths in the actual fighting, certainly brought them freedom. From this time the great Hunnish Empire was at an end, and there was a general resettlement of territory among the nations which had been subject to its yoke.
While the Huns themselves, abandoning their former habitations, moved, for the most part, down the Danube, and became the humble servants of the Eastern Empire, the Gepidæ, perhaps marching southward occupied the great Hungarian plains on the left bank of the Danube, which had been the home of Attila and his Huns; and the Ostrogoths going westwards (perhaps with some dim notion of following their Visigothic kindred) took up their abode in that which had once been the Roman province of Pannonia, now doubtless known to be hopelessly lost to the Empire.
Pannonia, the new home of the Ostrogoths, was the name of a region, rectangular in shape, about 200 miles from north to south and 160 miles from east to west, whose northern and eastern sides were washed by the river Danube, and whose north-eastern corner was formed by the sudden bend to the south which that river makes, a little above Buda-Pest. This region includes Vienna and the eastern part of the Archduchy of Austria, Grätz, and the eastern part of the Duchy of Styria, but it is chiefly composed of the great corn-growing plain of Western Hungary, and contains the two considerable lakes of Balaton and Neusiedler See.
Here then the three Ostrogothic brethren took up their abode, and of this province they made a kind of rude partition between them, while still treating it as one kingdom, of which Walamir was the head. The precise details of this division of territory cannot now be recovered, 12 nor are they of much importance, as the settlement was of short duration. We can only say that Walamir and Theudemir occupied the two ends of the territory, and Widemir dwelt between them.
(Jordanes, in his book Getica, says: "Valamer inter Scarniungam et Aquam Nigram fluvios, Thiudimer juxta lacum Pelsois, Vidimer inter utrosque manebat". It seems to be hopeless to determine what rivers are denoted by "Scarniunga" and "Aqua Nigra".)
What is most interesting to us is the fact that Theudemir's territory included Lake Balaton (or Platten See), and that his palace may very possibly have stood upon the shores of that noble piece of water, which is forty-seven miles in length and varies from three to nine miles in width. To the neighbourhood of this lake, in the absence of more precise information, we may with some probability assign the birth-place and the childish home of Theodoric.
(Of course the location of Theudemir's palace on the actual shore of Lake Balaton can only be treated as a conjecture, but the pointed way in which Jordanes, in the passage last quoted, speaks of him as "juxta lacuna Pelsois", seems to make the conjecture a probable one. Some geographers have identified Pelso Lacus with the Neusiedler See, but apparently on insufficient grounds.)
No longer a functional link:
http://familytrees.genopro.com/318186/jarleslekt/default.htm?page=t...
One of three brothers who ruled the East Goths in Pannonia, 463-474.
Theodemir was king of the Ostrogoths of the Amal Dynasty, and father of Theodoric the Great. He had an elder brother named Valamir and a younger named Vidimir. Theodemir was Arian, while his wife Erelieva was Catholic. He took over the three Pannonian Goth empires after the death of Vidimir, ruled jointly with his brothers Valamir and Vidimir, and was a vassal of Attila the Hun. The reason is probably that this relatively long reign of the Ostrogoths in Pannonia, while his elder brother Thiudimir only for four years on the throne, followed by Theodoric, and the first in which erbenlosen Valamir part beerbte kingdom. He was married to Erelieva, with whom he had two children: Theodoric (454-526) and Amalafrida. When Theodemir died in 474, Theodoric succeeded him as King. -------------------- Na Wikipedia:
http://pt.wikipedia.org/wiki/Teodomiro -------------------- Death 0471, in Cyrrhus.
"King Thiudimer was seized with a mortal illness in the city of Cyrrhus. He called the Goths to himself, appointed Theodoric his son as heir of his kingdom and presently departed this life."
The Shorter Cambridge Medieval History, Volume 1, the Later Roman Empire to the Twelfth Century, Volume: 1 (sCMH I). C. W. Previté-Orton. Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, 1978
The Roman Empire and Its Germanic Peoples, Herwig Wolfram, University of California Press, Los Angeles, 1997. Translated by Thomas Dunlap, Isbn: 0-520-08511-6 (Wolfram, 1997 )
http://gw.geneanet.org/nobily?lang=fr;pz=elisabeth+therese+marie+he...
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From the Foundation for Medieval Genealogy page on Hungary (covering Theodomir's parents and brothers:
http://fmg.ac/Projects/MedLands/HUNGARY.htm#_Toc146273199
VANDALARIUS, son of VINITHARIUS . Iordanes names "Vandiliarum" as son of "Vinitharius" and father of "Thiudemer et Valamir et Vidimir"[52]. Relative of Thorismund[53].
1. VALAMIR (-killed in battle [468/69]). Iordanes names "Thiudemer et Valamir et Vidimir" as the sons of Vandilarius[54]. He and his brothers followed Attila the Hun into Gaul in 451[55]. Valamir commanded the Ostrogoth contingent in Attila's army which was defeated at the battle of the Catalaunian fields[56]. He was considered king of all Ostrogoths in Pannonia. Iordanes records that "Valamer…ex consobrino eius genitus Vandalario" succeeded as king after "Thorismundo" was killed fighting the Gepids in the second year of his reign[57]. He shared the land with his two brothers, retaining for himself the eastern part of the territory covering lower Slavonia. In 456, he defeated an attack by the Huns, who are said to have retreated to the River Dnieper[58]. He defeated another Hun attack on Bassianae, near Belgrade, in 467/68, but was killed in battle during a similar attack the following year.
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2. THEODEMIR [Thiudimir] (-Kyrrhos 474).
Iordanes names "Thiudemer et Valamir et Vidimir" as the sons of Vandilarius[59].
King of the Ostrogoths in Pannonia, subordinate to his brother Valamir, he ruled over the western part of their domain which covered the county of Somogy and north-eastern Croatia.
He succeeded his brother in [468/49] as King of all the Pannonian Ostrogoths. Iordanes names "Theodemir" when recording that he succeeded his brother "Valamero rege Gothorum" together with "Vidimero fratre et filio Theodorico"[60].
When the Ostrogoths left Pannonia in [473], Theodemir and his contingent went towards Constantinople. They settled in Macedonia, based in the city of Kyrrhos[61].
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3. VIDIMIR (-473).
Iordanes names "Thiudemer et Valamir et Vidimir" as the sons of Vandilarius[62]. King of the Ostrogoths in Pannonia, subordinate to his brother Valamir, he ruled over the central part of their domain which covered upper Slavonia. Iordanes names "Theodemir" when recording that he succeeded his brother "Valamero rege Gothorum" together with "Vidimero fratre et filio Theodorico"[63]. When the Ostrogoths left Pannonia in [473], Vidimir went into Italy where he suffered several defeats.
References:
[52] Iordanes Getarum, MGH Auct. ant. V.1, p. 77.
[53] Wolfram, H. (1998) History Of The Goths (Berkeley, California), p. 251.
[54] Iordanes Getarum, MGH Auct. ant. V.1, p. 77.
[55] Wolfram (1998), p. 258.
[56] Wolfram (1998), p. 247.
[57] Iordanes Getarum, MGH Auct. ant. V.1, p. 122.
[58] Wolfram (1998), p. 261.
[59] Iordanes Getarum, MGH Auct. ant. V.1, p. 77.
[60] Iordanes Romanorum, MGH Auct. ant. V.1, p. 44.
[61] Wolfram (1998), pp. 267 and 269.
[62] Iordanes Getarum, MGH Auct. ant. V.1, p. 77.
[63] Iordanes Romanorum, MGH Auct. ant. V.1, p. 44.
From the Foundation for Medieval Genealogy page on Italy Kings (covering Theodomir's wife and children):
http://fmg.ac/Projects/MedLands/ITALY,%20Kings%20to%20962.htm#Theod...
THEODEMIR [Thiudimir], son of VANDALARIUS (-Kyrrhos 474).
m ---. The name of Theodemir's wife is not known.
Concubine: ERELEUVA [Erelieva].
She was baptised a Catholic as EUSEBIA[233]. Iordanes names "Erelieva concubina" as mother of Theodoric[234]. She went with her son to Italy.
Theodemir & his wife had one child:
1. AMALAFRIDA (-murdered [523/25]).
Iordanes names "Amalfridam germanam suam [Theoderici]" as the mother of "Theodehadi" and wife of "Africa regi Vandalorum…Thrasamundo"[235]. Emperor Zeno used her as ambassador to her half-brother in 487 to thwart his attack on Constantinople[236]. Her second marriage was arranged by her half-brother, Theodoric King of Italy, as part of his efforts to foster the support of the Vandals. Amalafrida's dowry was Lilybæum in western Sicily[237].
After the death of her husband, she unsuccessfully protested his successor's withdrawal of support from her brother, but she was outmanœuvred and killed[238].
m firstly [HUGO ---] (-before 500). The Widukindi Res Gestæ Saxonicæ names "Huga rex Francorum…unicam filiam Amalbergam" who married "Irminfredo regi Thuringorum"[239], but there is no indication to whom "Huga rex Francorum" could refer.
m secondly ([500]%29 THRASAMUND, King of the Vandals, son of [GENTO the Vandal or GELIMER the Vandal] (before 460-523). Amalafrida & her first husband had two children.
Theodemir had three illegitimate children by his concubine:
2. THEODORIC ([451][258]-30 Aug 526).
Iordanes names "Theodericum" as son of Theodemir, in a later passage naming his mother "Erelieva concubina"[259]. He was proclaimed THEODORIC "the Great" King of Italy in Mar 493 after defeating King Odovacar.
3. THEODIMUND.
The primary source which names him has not yet been identified. He marched westwards to Durazzo with his brother in 479, leading one of the three marching columns[260].
4. daughter (-[479]).
The primary source which records her existence has not yet been identified. She died about the time her half-brother marched westwards to Durazzo[261].
References:
[233] Wolfram, H. (1998) History Of The Goths (Berkeley, California), p. 261.
[234] Iordanes Getarum, MGH Auct. ant. V.1, p. 128.
[235] Iordanes Getarum, MGH Auct. ant. V.1, p. 132.
[236] Wolfram (1998), p. 278.
[237] Wolfram (1998), p. 308.
[238] Wolfram (1998), p. 308.
[239] Widukindi Res Gestæ Saxonicæ I.9, MGH SS III, p. 420.
[259] Iordanes Getarum, MGH Auct. ant. V.1, pp. 77 and 128.
[260] Wolfram (1998), p. 274.
[261] Wolfram (1998), p. 274.
Desde la página de español Wikipedia en Teodomiro (ostrogodo):
http://es.wikipedia.org/wiki/Teodomiro_(ostrogodo)
Teodomiro fue rey de los ostrogodos de la dinastía de los Amalos. Era hijo de Vandalario y sobrino del rey visigodo Turismundo.
Gobernaba conjuntamente con sus dos hermanos, Valamiro y Videmiro, y era vasallo de Atila. Participó en la batalla de los Campos Cataláunicos, que enfrentó a una coalición de romanos, comandados por el general Flavio Aecio, visigodos, dirigidos por Teodorico I, y otros pueblos germánicos como gépidos, alanos y francos contra los hunos y sus vasallos. En esta batalla lograron acabar con la imbatibilidad de Atila, y algunos de sus vasallos, como los ostrogodos, decidieron rebelarse. Tras la muerte de Atila, Teodomiro prosiguió la rebelión, consiguiendo definitivamente la victoria sobre los hunos en la Batalla de Nedao, durante el invierno de 454. Entonces se dirigió a la ciudad servia de Naissus, donde fundó un rico pero inseguro reino en lo que era la provincia romana de Panonia, que gobernó con sus dos hermanos.
Tras la guerra contra hérulos, gépidos y esciros por el control de la Panonia, Videmiro se dirigió con una porción de los ostrogodos hacia Italia, en 473. Allí, el emperador Glicerio le aconsejó dirigirse hacia la Galia junto con sus parientes los visigodos. Desde entonces, Teodomiro, que era el mayor de los hermanos, quedó como único rey de los ostrogodos de la Panonia.
Se casó con Erelieva, con quien tuvo dos hijos: Teodorico y Amalafrida. Cuando Teodomiro murió en 474, su hijo Teodorico le sucedió como rey.
From the English Wikipedia page on Theodemir:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Theodemir
Theodemir was king of the Ostrogoths of the Amal Dynasty, and father of Theodoric the Great. He had two "brothers" actually brothers-in-law named Walamir "The Faithful" and Widimir.
(According to Bulfinch's Mythology, another 13 generations of leaders can be derived from Goth legends. This was supposedly compiled by a Gothic genealogist named Jordanes.)
Theodemir was Arian, while his wife Erelieva was Catholic.
He took over the three Pannonian Goth empires after the death of Widimir, ruled jointly with his brothers-in-law Walamir and Widimir, and was a vassal of Attila the Hun. The reason is probably that this relatively long reign of the Ostrogoths in Pannonia, while his elder brother Thiudimir only for four years on the throne, followed by Theodoric.
He was married to Erelieva, with whom he had two children: Theodoric (454-526) and Amalafrida. When Theodemir died in 474, Theodoric succeeded him as king.
From the Wikipedia page on the Ostrogoths:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ostrogoth
Post-Hunnic movements
Their recorded history begins with their independence from the remains of the Hunnic Empire following the death of Attila the Hun in 453. Allied with the former vassal and rival, the Gepids and the Ostrogoths led by Theodemir broke the Hunnic power of Attila's sons in the Battle of Nedao in 454.
The Ostrogoths now entered into relations with the Empire, and were settled on lands in Pannonia. During the greater part of the latter half of the 5th century, the East Goths played in south-eastern Europe nearly the same part that the West Goths played in the century before. They were seen going to and from, in every conceivable relation of friendship and enmity with the Eastern Roman power, until, just as the West Goths had done before them, they passed from the East to the West.
And from the Wikipedia page on the Battle of Nedao:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_of_Nedao
The Battle of Nedao, named after the Nedava, a tributary of the Sava[citation needed], was a battle fought in Pannonia in 454.
After the death of Attila the Hun, allied forces of the Germanic subject peoples under the leadership of Ardaric, king of the Gepids, defeated the Hunnic forces of Ellac, the son of Attila, who had struggled with his half-brothers Irnik and Dengizich (Tengiz Khan) for supremacy after Attila's death, and eventually killed him in single combat. According to the 6th century historian Jordanes:
"
And so the bravest nations tore themselves to pieces. For then, I think, must have occurred a most remarkable spectacle, where one might see the Goths fighting with pikes, the Gepidae raging with the sword, the Rugi breaking off the spears in their own wounds, the Suavi fighting on foot, the Huns with bows, the Alani drawing up a battle-line of heavy-armed and the Heruli of light-armed warriors."[1]
Hunnic dominance in Central and Eastern Europe was broken as a result. The handful of Hunnic forces left were expelled by Ardaric after a long siege.
References
1. ^ Jordanes, Origins and History of the Goths, l.261.
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Battle of Nedao (454)
Part of War of the Hunnic Succession
Location: Pannonia
Result: Victory of Gepids and Ostrogoths
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Belligerents:
Gepids, and Ostrogoths under King Theodemir of the Ostrogoths and King Ardaric of the Gepids
Huns under King Ellac of the Huns†
Strengths, unknown
Casualties and losses: c. 30 000 of the Huns
From the Wikipedia page on the Amali Dynasty:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Amal_Dynasty
The Amali were the leading dynasty of the Goths, a Germanic people who confronted the Roman Empire in its declining years in the west. They were also called the Amals, Amaler, or Amalings they were considered highest in worth among Gothic fighters and highest in royal dignity. According to Gothic legend, the Amali were descended from an ancient hero whose deeds earned him the title of Amala or "mighty."
However, the Goths branched into two groups around the year 200: the Ostrogoths and the Visigoths. And by 395 their histories had become significantly separated.
Edward Gibbon writes, in the History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire (Chapter 31, footnote 160):
"the true hereditary right to the Gothic sceptre was vested in the Amali; but those princes, who were the vassals of the Huns, commanded the tribes of the Ostrogoths in some distant parts of Germany or Scythia."
In this vacuum, the rival Balti dynasty, predominant among the Visigoths in Italy and Gaul, was able to assume the Visigothic leadership. For it was Alaric the Visigoth, a member of the latter dynasty, who led his people in the sacking of Rome in 410 CE.
This success, and the dynasty of kings Alaric created, heightened tensions between the two families, leading to the Amali usurping the Visigothic throne in 415, making Sigeric king. But Sigeric's reign lasted only seven days before he was assassinated and the Balti dynasty resumed a powerful rule that didn't end until 531.
It can be generally said that, beginning in 395, the Amali were the royal house of the Ostrogoths while the Balti were that of the Visigoths.
At least, two families claimed they had descended from Amali. First family was Billungs, Dukes of Saxony. They were also known as Amelungs or von Ömlingen. Another family was Solovjovs, Barons of Russian Empire from 1727 (in German speaking sources known as von Solowhoff or Solowhoff von Greutungen). Solovjovs claimed Ermanaric was their ancestor.
Kings
Theodemir, until 474
Theodoric the Great, 474–526
Athalaric, 526–534
Theodahad, 534–536
References
Bradley, Henry. The Goths: From the Earliest Times to the End of the Gothic Dominion in Spain. 2nd ed. New York: G. P. Putnam's Sons, 1883.
From Bulfinch's Mythology, Chapter 2 on Theodoric the Goth (by Thomas Hodgkin):
http://bulfinch.englishatheist.org/theodoric/chapter2.htm
CHAPTER II.
THE MIGHT OF ATTILA.
The Ostrogoths under the Huns--The three royal brothers--Attila king of the Huns--He menaces the Eastern Empire--He strikes at Gaul--Battle of the Catalaunian plains--Invasion of Italy--Destruction of Aquileia--Death of Attila and disruption of his Empire--Settlement of the Ostrogoths in Pannonia.
For 80 years the power of the Ostrogoths suffered eclipse under the shadow of Hunnish barbarism. As to this period we have little historical information that is of any value.
We hear of resistance to the Hunnish supremacy vainly attempted and sullenly abandoned. The son and the grandson of Hermanric figure as the shadowy heroes of this vain resistance. After the death of the latter (King Thorismund) a strange story is told us of the nation mourning his decease for forty years, during all which time they refused to elect any other king to replace him whom they had lost. There can be little doubt that this legend veils the prosaic fact that the nation, depressed and dispirited under the yoke of the conquering Huns, had not energy or patriotism enough to choose a king; since almost invariably among the Teutons of that age, kingship and national unity flourished or faded together.
At length, towards the middle of the fifth century after Christ, the darkness is partially dispelled, and we find the Ostrogothic nation owning the sovereignty of three brothers sprung from the Amal race, but not direct descendants of Hermanric, whose names are Walamir, Theudemir, and Widemir.
"Beautiful it was", says the Gothic historian, "to behold the mutual affection of these three brothers, when the admirable Theudemir served like a common soldier under the orders of Walamir; when Walamir adorned him with the crown at the same time that he conveyed to him his orders; when Widemir gladly rendered his services to both of his brothers". (This is a partly paraphrastic and conjectural translation of a very obscure sentence of Jordanes.)
Theudemir, the second in this royal brotherhood, was the father of our hero, Theodoric.
The three Ostrogothic brethren, kings towards their own countrymen, were subjects--almost, we might say, servants--of the wide-ruling king of the Huns, who was now no longer one of those forgotten chiefs by whom the conquering tribe had been first led into Europe, but ATTILA, a name of fear to his contemporaries and long remembered in the Roman world. He, with his brother Bleda, mounted the barbarian throne in the year 433, and after 12 years the death of Bleda (who was perhaps murdered by order of his brother) left Attila sole wielder of the forces which made him the terror of the world.
He dwelt in rude magnificence in a village not far from the Danube, and his own special dominions seem to have pretty nearly corresponded with the modern kingdom of Hungary. But he held in leash a vast confederacy of nations--Teutonic, Sclavonic, and what we now call Turanian,--whose territories stretched from the Rhine to the Caucasus, and he is said to have made "the isles of the Ocean", which expression probably denotes the islands and peninsulas of Scandinavia, subject to his sway.
Neither, however, over the Ostrogoths nor over any of the other subject nations included in this vast dominion are we to think of Attila's rule as an organised, all-permeating, assimilating influence, such as was the rule of a Roman Emperor. It was rather the influence of one great robber-chief over his freebooting companions.
The kings of the Ostrogoths and Gepidæ came at certain times to share the revelries of their lord in his great log-palace on the Danubian plain; they received his orders to put their subjects in array when he would ride forth to war, and woe was unto them if they failed to stand by his side on the day of battle; but these things being done, they probably ruled their own peoples with little interference from their over-lord. The Teutonic members of the confederacy, notably the Ostrogoths and the kindred tribe of Gepidæ seem to have exercised upon the court and the councils of Attila an influence not unlike that wielded by German statesmen at the court of Russia during the last century.
The Huns, during their 80 years of contact with Europe, had lost a little of that utter savageness which they brought with them from the Tartar deserts. If they were not yet in any sense civilised, they could in some degree appreciate the higher civilisation of their Teutonic subjects. A Pagan himself, with scarcely any religion except some rude cult of the sword of the war-god, Attila seems never to have interfered in the slightest degree with the religious practices of the Gepidæ or the Ostrogoths, the large majority of whom were by this time Christians, holding the Arian form of faith. And not only did he not discourage the finer civilisation which he saw prevailing among these German subjects of his, but he seems to have had statesmanship enough to value and respect a culture which he did not share, and especially to have prized the temperate wisdom of their chiefs, when they helped him to array his great host of barbarians for war against the Empire.
From his position in Central Europe, Attila, like Alaric before him, was able to threaten either the Eastern or the Western Empire at pleasure. For almost 10 years (440-450) he seemed to be bent on picking a quarrel with Theodosius II., the feeble and unwarlike prince who reigned at Constantinople. He laid waste the provinces south of the Danube with his desolating raids; he worried the Imperial Court with incessant embassies, each more exacting and greedy than the last (for the favour of the rude Hunnish envoy had to be purchased by large gifts from the Imperial Treasury); he himself insisted on the payment of yearly stipendia by the Emperor; he constantly demanded that these payments should be doubled; he openly stated that they were nothing else than tribute, and that the Roman Augustus who paid them was his slave.
These practices were continued until, in the year 450 the gentle Theodosius died. He was succeeded by his sister Pulcheria and her husband Marcian, who soon gave a manlier tone to the counsels of the Eastern Empire.
Attila marked the change and turned his harassing attentions to the Western State, with which he had always a sufficient number of pretexts for war ready for use. In fact he had made up his mind for war, and no concessions, however humiliating, on the part of Valentinian III, the then Emperor of the West, would have availed to stay his progress.
Not Italy however, to some extent protected by the barrier of the Alps, but the rich cities and comparatively unwasted plains of Gaul attracted the royal freebooter. Having summoned his vast and heterogeneous army from every quarter of Central and North-eastern Europe, and surrounded himself by a crowd of subject kings, the captains of his host, he set forward in the spring of 451 for the lands of the Rhine.
The trees which his soldiers felled in the great Hercynian forest of Central Germany were fashioned into rude rafts or canoes, on which they crossed the Rhine; and soon the terrible Hun and his "horde of many-nationed spoilers" were passing over the regions which we now call Belgium and Lorraine in a desolating stream. The Huns, not only barbarians, but heathens, seem in this invasion to have been animated by an especial hatred to Christianity. Many a fair church of Gallia Belgica was laid in ashes: many a priest was slain before the altar, whose sanctity was vain for his protection. The real cruelties thus committed are wildly exaggerated by the mythical fancy of the Middle Ages, and upon the slenderest foundations of historical fact arose stately edifices of fable, like the story of the Cornish Princess Ursula, who with her 11,000 virgin companions was fabled to have suffered death at the hands of the Huns in the city of Cologne.
The barbarian tide was at length arrested by the strong walls of Orleans, whose stubborn defence saved all that part of Gaul which lies within the protecting curve of the Loire from the horrors of their invasion. At midsummer Attila and his host were retiring from the untaken city, and beginning their retreat towards the Rhine, a retreat which they were not to accomplish unhindered. The extremity of the danger from these utterly savage foes had welded together the old Empire and the new Gothic kingdom, the civilised and the half-civilised power, in one great confederacy, for the defence of all that was worth saving in human society.
The tidings of the approach of the Gothic king had hastened the departure of Attila from the environs of Orleans, and, perhaps about a fortnight later, the allied armies of Romans and Goths came up with the retreating Huns in "the Catalaunian plains" not far from the city of Troyes. The general of the Imperial army was Aëtius; the general and king of the Visigoths was Theodoric, a namesake of our hero. Both were capable and valiant soldiers.
On the other side, conspicuous among the subject kings who formed the staff of Attila, were the three Ostrogothic brethren, and Ardaric, king of the Gepidæ. The loyalty of Walamir, the firm grasp with which he kept his master's secrets, and Ardaric's resourcefulness in counsel were especially prized by Attila. And truly he had need of all their help, for, though it is difficult to ascertain with any degree of accuracy the numbers actually engaged (162,000 are said to have fallen on both sides), it is clear that this was a collision of nations rather than of armies, and that it required greater skill than any that the rude Hunnish leader possessed, to win the victory for his enormous host.
After "a battle ruthless, manifold, gigantic, obstinate, such as antiquity never described when she told of warlike deeds, such as no man who missed the sight of that marvel might ever hope to have another chance of beholding", (according to Jordanes) night fell upon the virtually defeated Huns.
The Gothic king had lost his life, but Attila had lost the victory. All night long the Huns kept up a barbarous dissonance to prevent the enemy from attacking them, but their king's thoughts were of suicide. He had prepared a huge funeral pyre, on which, if the enemy next day successfully attacked his camp, he was determined to slay himself amid the kindled flames, in order that neither living nor dead the mighty Attila might fall into the hands of his enemies.
These desperate expedients, however, were not required. The death of Theodoric, the caution of Aëtius, some jealousy perhaps between the Roman and the Goth, some anxiety on the part of the eldest Gothic prince as to the succession to his father's throne,--all these causes combined to procure for Attila a safe but closely watched return into his own land.
The battle of the Catalaunian plains (usually but not quite correctly called the Battle of Châlons) was a memorable event in the history of the Gothic race, of Europe, and of the world. It was a sad necessity which on this one occasion arrayed the two great branches of the Gothic people, the Visigoths under Theodoric, and the Ostrogoths under Walamir, in fratricidal strife against each other.
For Europe the alliance between Roman and Goth, between the grandson of Theodosius, Emperor of Rome, and the successor of Alaric, the besieger of Rome, was of priceless value and showed that the great and statesmanlike thought of Ataulfus was ripening in the minds of those who came after him. For the world, yes even for us in the nineteenth century, and for the great undiscovered continents beyond the sea, the repulse of the squalid and unprogressive Turanian from the seats of the old historic civilisation, was essential to the preservation of whatever makes human life worth living. Had Attila conquered on the Catalaunian plains, an endless succession of Jenghiz Khans and Tamerlanes would probably have swept over the desolated plains of Europe; Paris and Florence would have been even as Khiva and Bokhara, and the island of Britain would not have yet attained to the degree of civilisation reached by the peninsula of Corea.
In the year after the fruitless invasion of Gaul, Attila crossed the Julian Alps and entered Italy, intending (452) doubtless to rival the fame of Alaric by his capture of Rome, an operation which would have been attended with infinitely greater ruin to "the seven-hilled city's pride", than any which she had sustained at the hands of the Visigothic leader.
But the Huns, unskilful in siege work, were long detained before the walls of Aquileia, that great and flourishing frontier city, hitherto deemed impregnable, which gathered in the wealth of the Venetian province, and guarded the north-eastern approaches to Italy. At length by a sudden assault they made themselves masters of the city, which they destroyed with utter destruction, putting all the inhabitants to the sword, and then wrapping in fire and smoke the stately palaces, the wharves, the mint, the forum, the theatres of the fourth city of Italy.
The terror of this brutal destruction took from the other cities of Venetia all heart for resistance to the terrible invader. From Concordia, Altino, Padua, crowds of trembling fugitives walked, waded, or sailed with their hastily gathered and most precious possessions to the islands, surrounded by shallow lagoons, which fringed the Adriatic coast, near the mouths of the Brenta and Adige. There at Torcello, Burano, Rialto, Malamocco, and their sister islets, they laid the humble foundations of that which was one day to be the gorgeous and wide-ruling Republic of Venice.
Attila meanwhile marched on through the valley of the Po ravaging and plundering, but a little slackening in the work of mere destruction, as the remembrance of the stubborn defence of Aquileia faded from his memory. Entering Milan as a conqueror, and seeing there a picture representing the Emperors of the Romans sitting on golden thrones, and the Scythian barbarians crouching at their feet, he sought out a Milanese painter, and bade the trembling artist repres
Om Theodomir, king of the Ostrogoths (Norsk)
Theodemir konge i Amal-dynastiet fra 451 sønn av Vandalari døde på Kyrrhos i 474
Han og hans brødre fulgte huneren Attila inn i Gallia i 451. Broren Valamir ble drept i et slag i nærheten av Beograd i 467.
Jordanes skriver "Thiudemer et Valamir et Vidimir" sønner av Vandilarius,
Theodemir var konge av østgoterne i Pannonia, under sin bror Valamir, han regjerte over den vestre delen av deres område som dekket landet Somogy i Ungarn og nordøst Croatia. Broren døde og han etterfulgte han i i 468(49 som konge av hele østgoternes område av Pannonian, De forlot stedet i 473 og han og hans folk reiste mot Konstantinopel Det slo seg ned i Makedonia i byen Kyrrhos.
Hans kone er ikke kjent, de hadde datteren Amalafreda. Theodemir hadde en elskerinne Erelieva. med henne hadde han minst 2 barn som en kjenner til.
http://fmg.ac/Projects/MedLands/ITALY,%20Kings%20to%20962.htm#Theod...
http://fmg.ac/Projects/MedLands/HUNGARY.htm#Theodemirdied474A
I Wikipedia er hun beskrevet som hans kone og mor til alle hans barn.
Teodemir var østgoternes konge fra amal-dynastiet. Han hersket sammen med sine to brødre, og var Attilas vasall. Han var gift med Erelieva som han fikk to barn sammen med, Teoderik (454-526) og Amalafrida. Da Teodemir døde i 474, etterfulgte Teoderik ham som konge
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Theodomir, king of the Ostrogoths's Timeline
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413
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Scythia (Present Ukraine), Hun Empire
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| 454 |
454
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Lake Nieusedl, Pannonia (Present Hungary), Hun Empire
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455
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Pannonia (Present Hungary), Kingdom of the Ostrogoths
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| 474 |
474
Age 61
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Kyrros, West Macedonia, (Present Pella Prefecture), Roman Empire (Within present Greece)
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King of, Ostrogoths, came to, Italy
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King of, Ostrogoths, came to, Italy
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King of, Ostrogoths, came to, Italy
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