Wideric, Exiled King of the Ostrogoths

Wideric is shown mistakenly as the son of Vinitharius in a chart within "Theodoric the Goth: The Barbarian Champion of Civilisation" by Thomas Hodgkin:

http://www.gutenberg.org/files/20063/20063-h/20063-h.htm

The English translation of Jordanes' Getica spells his name as Veteric:

http://www.boudicca.de/jordanes4-e.htm

(251) When (Thorismund) was dead, the Ostrogoths mourned for him so deeply that for forty years no other king succeeded in his place, and during all this time they had ever on their lips the tale of his memory. Now as time went on, Valamir grew to man's estate. He was the son of Thorismud's cousin Vandalarius. For his son Beremud, as we have said before, at last grew to despise the race of the Ostrogoths because of the overlordship of the Huns, and so had followed the tribe of the Visigoths to the western country, and it was from him Veteric was descended. Veteric also had a son Eutharic, who married Amalasuentha, the daughter of Theodoric, thus uniting again the stock of the Amali which had divided long ago. Eutharic begat Athalaric and Mathesuentha. But since Athalaric died in the years of his boyhood, Mathesuentha was taken to Constantinople by her second husband, namely Germanus, a cousin of the Emperor Justinian, and bore a posthumous son, whom she named Germanus.

From "Italy and Her Invaders"; Chapter: "The Last Years of Valens" (pg. 248):

http://www.archive.org/stream/italyandherinva12hodggoog#page/n289/m...

There was indeed a small section of the community which chose Withimir (or Winithar - Vinitharius) of the royal race of the Amals, but not a son of Hermanric (Airmanereiks), for their king, and under his leadership attempted a brave but hopeless resistance to the overpowering enemy [1]. After much slaughter he was slain in battle, and the remnant of the people, under the nominal sovereignty of the late king, but really led by his guardians Alatheus and Saphrax, made their way westward to the Dniester and joined apparently in the defense which their Visigothic kinsmen were making by that river.

For the refusal of the Visigoths to answer the call of Hermanric had brought them no immunity from the attacks of the terrible invaders. The swarthy riders on their little ponies had soon swept across the plains traversed by the Dnieper and the Bug, and Athanaric found that he had to fight for his kingdom and his life against an enemy very different from the warily marching legions of Valens. He pitched his camp by the margin of the Dniester, and apparently fortified an earthen rampart which marked the confines of the Ostrogothic and Visigothic territory. He sent forward Munderic (who afterwards entered the Imperial service and was a genearl on the Arabian frontier) with a colleague named Legariman and other Gothic nobles, to a distance of 20 miles to reconnoiter the movements of the enemy, and meanwhile he drew up his army in battle array. All was leisurely, calm, and apparently scientific in the movements of the Gothic "Judex": but unfortunately he had to deal with an utterly unscientific foe. The Huns, cleverly conjecturing where the main bulk of the Gothic army was posted, avoided that part of the river, found a ford at some distance, crossed it by moonlight, and fell upon the flank of the unsuspecting Athanaric before a single scout gave notice of their approach. The Goth, stupified by the onslaught and dismayed by the death of several of his chiefs, withdrew to the territory of his friendly neighbors, the Taifali, and began to construct a fortified position for the remnants of his army between the mountains of Transylvania and the River Sereth [2]. The Huns pursued him for some distance; but, loaded with spoils and perhaps well-nigh sated with killing, they soon relaxed the eagerness of their pursuit.

(The text appears to set this event in 376, just after the Hun conquest of the Goths, and the split of the Visigoths from those who were subjugated by the invaders. "IThe really important event, the hurling of the Visigoths against the Danube frontier of the Roman Empire, unquestionably took place in 376.)

1. The Huns seem to have left the work of crushing this inconsiderable resistance to their confederates, the Alani ("Cujus post obitum rex Vithimiris creatus restitit aliquantisper Halanis," are the words of Ammiacus.)

2. Thus, as von Wistersheim points out, we must probably correct the words of Ammianus, "A superciliis Gerasi fluminis ad uaque Danubium... muros altius erigebat." It is almost certain that Athanaric would construct his line of defense westward to the mountains, not eastward to the Danube.

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The text then describes the arrival of 200,000 fighting men, along with all their dependents (women and children) at the Danube River, the frontier between Dacia (modern Romania) and Moesia (modern Bulgaria). The Visigoths requested asylum, to which the authorities said they could not grant on their own responsibility, but would seek from the Emperor, located at the time in Antioch (near present Syria). Emperor Valens agreed to accept them, but on "hard and ignominious" conditions.

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The conditions upon which the Emperor permitted, and even undertook to accomplish, the transportation of the Goths to the territory of the Empire were:

- first, that all the boys who were not yet fit for military service (that is, no doubt, all those whose fathers were men of influence in the Gothic host) should be given up as hostages, and distributed to different parts of the Empire; and

- second, that the weapons should be handed over to the Roman officials, and that every Goth who crossed the river should do so absolutely unarmed.

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The conditions which were imposed destroyed all the grace of the Imperial concessions, wounded the home-loving Goth in his affections and his pride, and brought him, with a rankling sense of injury in his heart, within the limits of the Empire. But having been imposed, these conditions should have been impartially enforced. As i was, the one stipulation which had now become all-important was disgracefully neglected by the two officers, Lupicinus, Count of Thrace, and Maximus (probably Duke of Moesia [1]), who had charge of the transportation of the barbarians. All day and all night, for many days and nights, the Roman ships of war were crossing and recrossing the stream, conveying to the Moesian shore a multitude which they tried in vain to number. But as they landed, the Roman centurions, thinking only of the shameful plunder to be secured for themselves or their generals, picking out here a fair-faced damsel or a handsome boy for the gratification of the vilest lust, there appropriating household slaves for the service of the villa or strong laborers for the farm, elsewhere pillaging from the wagons the linen tissues or costly fringed carpets that had contributed to the state of the late lords of Dacia - intent on all these mean or abominable depredations, suffered the warriors of the tribe to march past them with swelling hearts, and with the swords that were to avenge all these injuries not extracted from their scabbards. This hateful picture of sensuality and fatuous greed is drawn for us not by a Goth, but by two Roman historians (Zosimus and Eunapius); and in looking upon it we seem to understand more clearly why Rome must die.

1. Tillemont gives him this title, but I am not able to trace his authority for it. Ammianus calls him, I think, only "dux exitiosus."

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Everything was left to chance: chance, of course meant famine; and according to the concurrent testimony of Goths and Romans (Jordanes and Ammianus), even famine itself was made more severe by the "forestalling and regrating" of Lupicinus and Maximus. These men sold to strangers at a great price, first, beef and mutton, then the flesh of dogs (requisitioned from the Roman inhabitants), diseased meat and filthy offal. The price of provisions rose with terrible rapidity. The hungry Visigoths would sell a slave - they evidently still possessed slaves - for a single loaf, or pay ten pounds of silver (equivalent to 40 pounds Sterling) for one joint of meat. Slaves, money, and furniture being all exhausted, they began - even the nobles of the nation - to sell their own children. Deep must have been the misery endured by those free German hearts before they yielded to the cruel logic of the situation. "Better that our children live as slaves than that they perish before our eyes of hunger."

Through the winter months of 376-377, apparently this systematic robbery went on, and still the Goths would not break their plighted faith to the Emperor. Even as in reading the ghastly history of the Terror in 1793, we are bound to keep ever in the memory of the miserable lot of the French peasant under the ancien regime, so the thought of this cold and calculated cruelty inflicted by men who had agreed to receive them as allies, and who called themselves their brothers in the faith of Christ, should be present to our mends when we hear of the cruel revenges that in Thrace, in Greece, and in Italy "Gothia" took on Rome. At length, murmurs of discontent reached the ears of Lupicinus, who concentrated his forces round the Gothic settlements. The movement was perceived and taken advantage of by the Ostrogothic chieftains Alatheus and Saphrax, who, with the young King Wideric under their charge, after sharing in Athanaric's campaign against the Huns, had fled to the Danube shores and had asked in vain for the same permission that was accorded to the Christian Visigoths. Watching their opportunity, they made a dash across the Danube, probably lower down the stream than the point where their countrymen had crossed. Thus, the peril in Moesia, already sufficiently grave, was increased by the arrival of a new and considerable host who were bound by no compact with the Empire, and had given no hostages of their fidelity. Fritigern, who was not yet prepared for an open breach with the Romans but nevertheless would fain fortify himself by an alliance with these powerful chiefs, slowly marched towards Marcianople [1], the capital of the Lower (or Eastern) division of Moesia. When he arrived there with his comrade in arms Alavivus, an event occurred that turned discontent into rebellion, and suspicion into deadly hate. The story is told by Jordanes, with some added details from Ammianus.

"It happened in that miserable time that the Roman general Lupicinus invited the kings Alavivus and Fritigern to a banquet, at which as the event showed, he plotted their destruction. But the chiefs, suspecting no guile, went with a small retinue to the feast. Meanwhile, the multitude of the barbarians thronged to the gates of the town and claimed their right as loyal subjects of the Empire to buy the provisions that they had need of in the market. By order of Lupicinus, the soldiers pushed them back to a distance from the city. A quarrel arose and a band of the soldiers were slain and stripped by the barbarians. News of this disturbance was brought to Lupicinus as he was siting at his gorgeous banquet, watching the comic performers and heavy with wine and sleep. He at once ordered that all the Gothic soldiers, who partly to do honor to their rank and partly as a guard to their persons, had accompanied the generals into the palace, should be put to death. Thus, while Fritigern was at the banquet, he heard the cry of men in mortal agony, and soon ascertained that it proceeded from his own followers, shut up in another part of the palace, whom the Roman solders at the command of their general were attempting to butcher. He drew his sword in the midst of the banqueters, exclaimed that he alone could pacify the tumult that had been raised among his followers, and rushed out of the dining hall with his companions. They were received with shouts of joy by their countrymen outside; they mounted their horses and rode away, determined to avenge their slaughtered comrades [2]

1. Marcianople corresponds to the modern Shumla. The strength of this position as commanding several of the Balkan passes, and near both to the Danube and the Euxine, has been sufficiently impressed upon us by recent events. It and Hadrianople were the great arsenals of Moesia and Thrace, respectively.

2. It seems possible that Alavivus was slain at the banquet. Ammianus, who has scrupilously mentioned his name with Fritigern's up to this point, now speaks of him no more.

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The text tells of the first battle, in which the Romans under Lupicinus are routed at the ninth milestone outside of Marcianople (Shumla), and the uprising of the Goths against their abusive Roman hosts. As the Goths approached Hadrianople, the Roman authorities refuse to give rations to a loyal but mercenary Gothic force under Sueridus and Colias while vacating the city, and this causes them to fight their way out of the city to join the invaders. In vengeance, the Goths kill children in front of their mothers and old men in front of their ruined homesteads, dragging away the rest into slavery. Emperor Valens, hearing of the insurrection, leaves the fight to his generals in 377, securing peace with Persia and carrying out the withdrawal of his troops from Armenia for use in Thrace under Generals Profuturus and Trajan (their arrogance apparently greater than their capabilities).

The indecisive bloody Battle of the Willows followed as both sides battled until after dark. The Romans withdrew to Marcianople while the Goths remain encamped for a week. This ended the campaign for 377. In 378, the Romans fielded less troops while the Goths negotiated a new alliance with the Huns and Alani, their former enemies. Roman General Frigeridus, who held the westward approaches to Moesia, was replaced with the less capable Count Maurus; the Pass of Succi fell to the Goths under his watch, and eventually Rome itself faced the Visigoths.

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Wideric's role in all this was to give courage to the Visigoths to start the rebellion that provided impetus for their westward march through Rome to Iberia, where they founded a new Gothic kingdom well outside the reach of the Huns.

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Ben M. Angel notes: There is obviously a major chronological error going on here. Wideric/Veteric is tied to two events in history, one being the invasion of the Huns into the Goth Kingdom in 376 (he was a child when Alatheus and Saphrax, acting as his guardians, took him from present Ukraine to Dacia and Moesia, and onward to Iberia), and the other being the birth of Eutharic in c.480, who would later become Roman Consul Flavius Eutharicus Cilliga. At age 110, he would not be fathering any children.

There has to be another 2-3 generations in there somewhere. Unfortunately, records don't exist of any additional generations. But likely Wideric the child king in exile and Wideric the father of Eutharic are two different people.