it still served to restore good relationships between Italy and the empire: Emperor Justin had adopted Eutharic per arma, and the two were consuls for the year 519. Things seemed to be moving in the right direction.
It would be Eutharic’s sudden death that threw the succession into crisis, and the final three years of Theoderic’s reign stood in stark contrast to the relative peace Italy had enjoyed for three decades. The king himself, angry and disillusioned with his Roman and imperial relationships, turned to embrace a traditional and conservative Gothic view. He was now an old man; Amalasuintha, a widow with two little children, unexpectedly became once again a central part of his plans. As he lay dying in the palace of Ravenna, Theoderic named his young grandson Athalaric as successor. Perhaps the king, in his last days, relived his disappointments of the past—including fifteen years earlier his ill-fated decision to entrust his other grandson Amalaric in Spain to his armiger. Maybe this explains why, rather than entrusting Athalaric to a member of the Gothic aristocracy, Theoderic took the unusual step of instituting the child’s own mother as regent—and likely with the title of regina.
The burden of the kingdom now rested on the shoulders of Amalasuintha. While the Goths must have looked at a female regency as an unusual decision, it would have seemed less so to Theoderic, whose own experience as a hostage in Constantinople during his youth had put him in touch with powerful female figures, such as the empress Ariadne (see Chapter 5). Not by coincidence, this woman would represent a significant model for Amalasuintha as a ruling woman and an agent in the transmission of power. And perhaps Theoderic was confident that Amalasuintha was as prepared as it was possible for her to be for such a task. After all, he himself had shaped her education on the Roman model that had so deeply informed his own reign.
Born and Raised on Italic Soil
Amalasuintha came into the world sometime between late 494 and 497.1 She was the last daughter of Theoderic, but the only one born and raised in Italy. Her two older stepsisters, Theudigotha and Ostrogotho Areagni, were both born in Moesia to a different mother, perhaps a concubine of Theoderic or (less likely) a wife who later died.2 It is possible that by the time Amalasuintha was born, her stepsisters had already left Italy and were married, Theudigotha to Alaric II, the king of the Visigoths, and Ostrogotho to Sigismund, the son of the king of the Burgundians.3 Amalasuintha was the only child that Theoderic had from Audefleda, sister of Clovis, the king of the Franks.4 Theoderic was almost forty years old when this marriage took place, perhaps around 493/4, during the last stage of his conquest of Italy, or at the latest in 495/6;5 in any case the event took place before Clovis had converted to Catholicism. Through his marriage to Audefleda, the Amal king tied his people to the Franks, thus securing an alliance with this powerful tribe in continental Europe against the Burgundians, whose kingdom lay between the Frankish and Gothic territories. Perhaps it was the Burgundians’ recent aggression against Italy that convinced Theoderic to give his daughter to Sigismund, son of their king Gundobad, in order to calm the situation; through the marriage he did achieve the release of six thousand prisoners who had been kidnapped during a raid in the north of the peninsula.6
Even if it was these violent political circumstances that created her parents’ marriage, as a child Amalasuintha was never immersed in the ongoing reality of wars between kingdoms. She was most likely born in the palace of Ravenna, the βασίλεια, which in earlier times had been the residence of most of the last Roman emperors, and which was later home to Odovacer. This palatium had been built in different stages during the fifth century by the emperors of the Theodosian dynasty, and Theoderic further extended and decorated it. He proudly had this building represented on the mosaic in his palace’s chapel, now the basilica of Sant’Apollinare Nuovo. As a member of the Amal family, Amalasuintha had Roman citizenship and the patrician title name of Flavia.7 These privileges had belonged to the family at least since 484, when Emperor Zeno appointed Theoderic consul.8 Indeed, the Amal family was slowly growing to resemble a dynasty in the late imperial style.
Amalasuintha belonged to the very first generation of Goths born and raised on Italic soil, and her lifestyle was one that Gothic rulers of previous generations could never have imagined. Unlike her ancestors, she never had to endure the continuous displacements, wandering, and wars that characterized the life of the Goths before they moved to Italy. In earlier times the group led by Theoderic wandered through the Balkans and Thrace, eventually settling in the provinces of Dacia Ripensis and Moesia Inferior, where they made the city of Novae their headquarters.9 When Theoderic finally came to Italy, according to Procopius, “he was followed by the Gothic army, who placed the women and children in their wagons and as many movable goods as they were allowed to take.” The Amal women would follow the convoy except for at the siege of Ravenna, when they remained in Ticinum.10 Ennodius with lofty words describes how the king comforted his frightened mother and sister in the rear guard before the battle of Verona.11 Unlike the older women of the family, such as her grandmother Erelieva and her aunt Amalafrida, Amalasuintha never witnessed clashes between bands of warriors, hiding with women and children in the wagons of the Gothic rear guard, aware of the terrible consequences a defeat would signify.12 She never experienced such a life of peril.
Some of the women of Amalasuintha’s family (like Amalafrida, Ostrogotho Areagni, and Amalaberga) encountered Roman culture only as hostages at the court of Constantinople or during Theoderic’s first decade in Ravenna. But this was not the case for Amalasuintha, whose father never had to send her as a hostage to the emperor or to other kings.13 She was the youngest child of the family, and perhaps the most privileged. Born and raised in the felicitas Italiae, she was protected under the umbrella of the civilitas, and unlike all her ancestors, she led a life distant from war. At the time of her youth, Theoderic was occupied with diplomacy, and his days were spent developing alliances with other gentes and promoting peace from his palace. His armies were led by his counts, who achieved important victories in the East at Sirmium and at Horreum Margi (504–505), and in the West, where they took Provence from the Burgundians (508).
The peaceful atmosphere of Ravenna shaped the early life of Amalasuintha and set her apart from her female ancestors. Her lifestyle at the palace resembled that of a Roman imperial woman, perhaps especially her education. This was the will of her father, on whom Roman culture had a strong impact. The ten years Theoderic spent at the Eastern court in Constantinople strongly influenced his views on government. At the age of seven or eight, his father, Theudimer, had sent him to Leo as a hostage, where he soon distinguished himself and gained the sympathy of the emperor.14 At the palace, he benefited from a literary education provided by the best masters;15 this experience turned out to be crucial in his future kingship. Later he would be granted the most important offices of the Romans: the title of master of the soldiers, the consulship, and the patriciate. Emperor Zeno, with whom he built a strong relationship, eventually gave him his blessing to remove Odovacer and administer Italy on his behalf. Years later, Ennodius would claim that Theoderic’s early time in Constantinople, the womb of civilitas, predicted his brilliant future.16 And Theoderic would remind Emperor Anastasius how his previous experience in Constantinople had been beneficial for the government of Italy. He claimed that the time he had spent at the imperial court was formative, for there he learned how to rule over the Romans with justice, and how, by imitating the empire, he could raise his kingdom above others.17
Strengthened by his experience in Constantinople, as king of Italy Theoderic ensured that grammarians and orators in Rome received their traditional tributes, and Ennodius praised him for having promoted eloquentia and veneranda studia in an obvious contrast to the treacherous times of Odovacer.18 Theoderic’s program of civilitas included the support of Roman culture. A later source reports that the king used to say: “a poor Roman plays the Goth, a rich Goth the Roman” (Romanus miser imitatur Gothum et utilis Gothus imitatur Romanum).19 Whether this is true or not, the fact is that some in his close entourage received an education in Roman style. One of these was his nephew Theodahad,
