Justinian that she purposely delayed informing the emperor of both Athalaric’s death and Theodahad’s promotion. This suggests that no official agreement about her position after Athalaric’s death had ever been made with Justinian.55 In addition, in the same account in which he discusses Amalasuintha’s fear for her son’s illness, Procopius claims that the queen had entered into secret negotiations with Justinian to hand over full control of Italy to the emperor and then retire to the East.56 Yet if this is true, how could Amalasuintha simultaneously negotiate with Justinian both a position that allowed her to stay in Italy and rule and an agreement that allowed her to give up her throne and retire to Constantinople? Here also, the Cassiodoran evidence should be differently interpreted. It seems at least equally plausible that the foedus was not an agreement about her ruling status but rather referred to the privileged conditions of peace that Amalasuintha at that time still enjoyed. This interpretation is supported by the context in the letter. Immediately after the sentence quoted above there is a reference to the concordia that joined the queen to the emperor.57 This peace was perhaps the one granted by Justinian to Amalasuintha a few years earlier, following the war against the Gepids. Consolino recently noted that the rare expression pacem conferre, which is used in this letter with the particular meaning of “to confer the peace,” can otherwise be found in the Variae only in the letter-panegyric of the year before. In that case, Cassiodorus, referring to the victory of the Goths against the Gepids, specified that Justinian, although upset by the event, eventually agreed to confer his peace on the kingdom (pacem contulit laesus).58 On this basis, it is more reasonable to explain the quotation above as Amalasuintha asking the emperor to extend the peace that had been granted to her a few years earlier.59
These two passages are the primary basis for the traditional chronology in which Amalasuintha became queen after the death of her son, and yet neither really offers evidence that Amalasuintha acquired royal status on the day of Athalaric’s death. We have no evidence that explains how and when she gained this power. What is very clear from our sources, however, is that Amalasuintha had the authority to raise Theodahad to the throne.
Rather than concentrating on the one-day period between Athalaric’s death and Theodahad’s election and talking of a silent “usurpation” for which we have no evidence, we may better understand the royal power of Amalasuintha as a development that occurred during the reign of Theoderic. It was most likely her father who enabled her to use the royal title; this may have happened back in 515, when she married Eutharic,60 or in the last years of Theoderic’s reign, when the king was carefully preparing his succession. As the daughter of Theoderic and the mother of the acknowledged king of Italy, Amalasuintha ruled alone for her son; our sources agree that on her shoulders rested the weight of the kingdom. And it is most likely, as we shall see, that Amalasuintha called herself regina in front of her subjects, while her authority and political power grew during the eight-year period of her regency. An analysis of the political lexicon of our sources will help us trace the development of her status and assess her position before Athalaric’s death.
Mater Regens or Regina? Amalasuintha and the Regency
Despite the wide use of the term “regina” in Roman literature, fifth- and early sixth-century authors did not often use the word to designate the wife of the king; indeed, recent statistical studies have demonstrated that the use of the term was infrequent.61 Chancery sources of the late sixth and early seventh century, such as the Epistulae Austrasicae and the correspondence of Gregory the Great, used it on the headings of documents written in the name of queens or addressed to them, but generally it is not to be found in the body of the texts. For example, Gregory the Great generally addressed the Frankish Brunhild, the Lombard Theodelinda, and the Anglo-Saxon Bertha as excellentia vestra or gloria vestra in the body of his letters, though all were queens.62 We also find these and other similar forms in the Epistulae Austrasicae.
Cassiodorus, following the chancery style, used the title of regina with reference to queens only in the headings of letters written in the name of Amalasuintha and of Theodahad’s wife, Gudeliva. These are among the rare instances in the Variae of letters written in women’s names. And this point has great significance here, because, as we saw above, the question of when Amalasuintha assumed the title of regina has traditionally revolved around the use of the term in Cassiodorus’s letter headings: Amalasuintha appears for the first time as regina in the headings of the letters written in her name only after Athalaric’s death.63 Similarly, Gudeliva bears the title of regina only in the headings of the two letters of the Variae in her name, which follow Amalasuintha’s deposition.64
Except for one particular case, which I shall analyze below, in the body of his letters as well as in non-chancery documents, such his panegyrics,65 Cassiodorus refers to all Amal royal women, including Amalasuintha, as dominae, even those who were queens in other kingdoms. We see him use this terminology to reference Amalafrida, the former Vandal queen; Queen Gudeliva, wife of Theodahad;66 Amalasuintha, both as regent of Athalaric and coregent of Theodahad;67 and Mathasuintha, Amalasuintha’s daughter and wife of King Witiges.68 This is in keeping with other chancery sources from the fifth and sixth centuries. Cassiodorus did use the term “regina” in references to very ancient figures with whom Amalasuintha is compared; these are Queen Semiramis (a regent mother of the ninth century B.C.), whom he praised for having built the walls of Babylon, and the Queen of Sheba, who came to learn the wisdom of Solomon.69 But while these documents, certainly the second one, were produced when Amalasuintha was regina, Cassiodorus nevertheless still refers to her in them as domina.
After his career at the palace was over, Cassiodorus composed the introduction to the Variae, declaring that he had often proclaimed the praises of queens and kings: dixisti … frequenter reginis ac regibus laudes.70 It is clear that Cassiodorus was referring to his orations for Amalasuintha and Matasuintha, which survive in fragments, as well as to his letter-panegyric Variae 11.1, and it is certainly possible that he also wrote pieces for Audefleda and Gudeliva. But when we leave the introduction and turn to the documents themselves, we find that Cassiodorus, singing the praises of the queens, uses the word “domina,” never “regina.” Certainly, any identification of domina as regina in Cassiodorus’s work must be done carefully.71 But if the title of regina for Amalasuintha is not found until late 534, this is most likely due to the lack of letters in her name preceding the loss of her son.
Outside the chancery, two authors writing a few decades after the publication of the Variae attributed the title “regina” to the wives of the Merovingian kings with a certain regularity. These are Gregory of Tours in his History and Venantius Fortunatus in his panegyrics and poems. Interestingly, Gregory uses this term for the women who belonged through birth or marriage to the Merovingian dynasty, but he does not grant this title to royal women outside the Frankish world and especially the queens with an Arian creed and/or the wives of kings who were enemies of the Franks. (The lack of a royal title for Basina, the mother of Clovis, is perhaps due to the fact that she left her husband, the king of the Thuringians, to marry Childeric well before the Franks’ conversion to Catholicism). Gregory refers to Amalasuintha, whom he despises for her Arianism, as the filia Theudorici regis Italici.72 We could easily speculate that the lack of a royal title for Amalasuintha is due to the fact that in Gregory’s eyes she was technically not a queen. But this is not a satisfactory explanation, because in the same account the author does not use the term “regina” for her Arian mother, Audefleda, Clovis’s sister, nor does he accord it to Ostrogotho Areagni, the wife of the Catholic Burgundian King Sigismund, who for Gregory remains another filia Theudorici regis Italici. Interestingly, in Gregory’s account the second wife of Sigismund also lacks the royal title, as does Theoderic’s niece Amalaberga in the Thuringian kingdom, who was nothing more to Gregory than King Herminafrid’s uxor iniqua atque crudelis.73
Cassiodorus’s letters lack references to two other Gothic queens, Audefleda and Erelieva, respectively,
