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Introduction

In 1733 Carlo Goldoni presented his first play in Milan, a tragedy with the title Amalasunta. The work was critiqued so harshly that the author, despairing, finally threw it into the fireplace, and Amalasunta turned out to be the tragedy of a tragedy.¹ Popular legends about Amalasuintha’s fate in beautiful Lake Bolsena are plentiful. Still today, the fishermen claim that during the windy days of the tramontana they can hear the wailing of the Gothic queen, her desperate cries coming from the small lake island of Martana, where she is believed to have spent the last days of her life.² The northern wind that encourages the little waves whispers this melancholy story over and over again to the people of Marta, the small village that lies just southeast of the island. Almost fifteen hundred years after her death, Amalasuintha’s last days still echo on Lake Bolsena, between the little island and the still waters that surround it.

If much of this tragic, literary Amalasuintha is the stuff of legend, the woman herself was certainly real. Queen Amalasuintha was one of the most significant women of power in her day. She was the daughter of Theoderic the Great, the Gothic king and hero who defeated Odovacer and made Italy his kingdom. Her portrait is preserved not on mosaics but rather in some letters of Cassiodorus and in the histories of Procopius of Caesarea. Over the past century, the queen has become the object of scholarly interest as a political figure. More recently, her life story has attracted the attention of gender historians. But direct evidence is sparse, so she has usually been discussed in single entries in encyclopedias and occasionally in articles.³ While some scholars have attempted more comprehensive studies, no scholarly monograph has been devoted to Amalasuintha. Ginetti’s 1901 study focused on religious policy and the administration of Italy in the years 526–535 (Il governo di Amalasunta e la Chiesa di Roma). Almost a century later, Craddock’s master’s thesis, “Amalasuintha: Ostrogothic Successor A.D. 526–535” (1996), unfortunately never developed into a book. Sirago’s brief narrative book Amalasunta: La regina (ca. 495–535) (1998), is a work of popular nonfiction intended for a general audience. As such, it contains much excursus and speculation but very little direct analysis of the evidence. In 2003, Neria De Giovanni published a short novel focused on the dramatic vicissitudes of this “barbarian” queen, Amalasunta: Regina barbara.

The nature of the evidence may explain why a comprehensive scholarly study of Amalasuintha has not been attempted before now. The material is sufficient to reconstruct a portrait of her and to explore portions of her life, but it is admittedly scanty for a full biography. The first half of her life is virtually undocumented, though occasionally a detailed, deep analysis of our sources reveals some biographical elements. We could, however, claim exactly the same thing for almost all the imperial women and queens of the ancient world, including those who have been the objects of extensive research, such as Cleopatra VII, as well as the Roman empresses, beginning with Livia and the other Julio-Claudian women up to the fifth-century Galla Placidia. Many monographs have been written about Theodora, but hers is a portrait that relies almost entirely on a single author. In terms of sources, there are no fewer for Amalasuintha than there are for many empresses and queens who have been the subject of scholarly treatment in monographs. On the contrary, especially when compared to that for other barbarian queens, our evidence for her is relatively abundant.

Like Galla Placidia and Theodora, Amalasuintha was an important, powerful woman in an age of profound changes. As a bridge between the Gothic and the imperial worlds, this queen was confronted with expectations that were shaped by a variety of traditions. Her rule marks a unique experimental moment in the formation of female power in her era. An understanding of Amalasuintha is of great importance for fifth- and sixth-century politics and diplomacy between Rome and Constantinople, as well as for the idea of queenship and the power of royal women in the post-Roman kingdoms and the early Middle Ages. She needs to be understood in the political and cultural contexts of both the Roman imperial palace and the Gothic court. Amalasuintha is a key figure in the process of experimentation with power by women in the barbarian kingdoms, who would influence the development of queenship in early medieval Italy.

As we consider Amalasuintha’s experience as a woman between cultures, I try as far as possible to avoid the use of the words “German” and “Germanic” to reference the peoples and rulers of the post-Roman kingdoms, because this term generalizes very different situations. For this and other reasons, scholars now question its use. After all, contemporary authors did not refer to the tribes of the Roman-barbarian kingdoms, except for a few gentes, as “Germani.” However, the categorization of Ostrogoths, Visigoths, Burgundians, Vandals, Alemans, Lombards, and Franks, as Germanic tribes is still common in modern literature, especially because “barbarian” sounds pejorative, gentilis is too technical, and “post-Roman” is not always applicable.⁴ A satisfactory alternative term that refers to all the gentes of the Migration Period (“Völkerwanderungen”) has not yet been suggested. I therefore prefer the term “post-Roman” whenever it is appropriate.

Structure, Methods, and Goals

This book is divided into five chapters. The first considers the “masculine” representation of Amalasuintha in the sources, in combination with her political power. It also explores her institutional position as regent and queen by analyzing the juridical lexicon of the authors, and by challenging some of the traditional assumptions of modern scholars on the subject. Chapter 2 begins the biography of Amalasuintha: her life at the palace of Ravenna, her education in the Roman style, and her marriage, including its significance for international politics. This chapter also examines the years following the death of Theoderic, and the tensions at the palace between the Gothic aristocracy and Amalasuintha, now standing as regent for her son. Her external and internal political relationships with the empire, with the Roman Senate and the church, and also with the other kingdoms, are the subject of Chapter 3. Chapter 4 is dedicated to the co-regency of Amalasuintha and Theodahad; it explores the consortium regni as devised by the queen to maintain her position of power undisturbed. It also explores Amalasuintha’s diplomacy with Justinian and her secret plans, first to step down and leave the kingdom, and later to remain in power, by reconsidering the date on which Theodahad was elected king. Finally, the so-called Amalasuintha affair, the conspiracy that ended with Theodahad’s orchestration of her murder, concludes the reconstruction of the biography. Chapter 5 contextualizes Amalasuintha between the worlds of the Roman-barbarian kingdoms and the Byzantine Empire. Here, comparisons with post-Roman queens and with Byzantine empresses are used to examine Amalasuintha’s representation as a woman in power. Finally, the Epilogue considers the significance of Amalasuintha in her time and places her legacy in the broader context of the Frankish Merovingian world and Lombard Italy.

Placing the surviving evidence in careful comparison with post-Roman and Byzantine models of female power, this book intends to build a complex portrait of this queen in the context of the events in which she was the protagonist. It also analyses the adoption of imperial models for the formation of female power in Gothic Italy, relying upon detailed examination of the sources. Gothic sources are almost entirely lacking, and we are left with the post-Roman perspectives of Cassiodorus, Jordanes, and Gregory of Tours, and the imperial perspective of Procopius. Some of the sources, written as they were from the Roman view, could sometimes make seem normal or unremarkable situations that to Gothic eyes would have been extraordinary and probably even unwelcome. The close readings of the sources are placed in a wider context, including frequent comparisons with other queens and empresses as found in the accounts of both Western and Eastern authors. The deep understanding of Amalasuintha’s daring political experiments reveals key parallels and contrasts between the concepts of female power in the imperial and post-Roman worlds, at a time before female regencies and authoritative queenships became a standard practice.

This is not an effort to rewrite the history of Italy during the government of Amalasuintha, which has been well established over the past hundred and fifty years.⁵ Nor does the present work reexamine the administration of Italy in the years 526–535, a topic that also has inspired a large literature, which will be further increased by a new comprehensive translation and commentary of the Cassiodoran letters, Variae.⁶ Books 11 and 12 of this correspondence collect Cassiodorus’s orders as Praetorian prefect (late 533–537/8). Many of these letters are difficult to date precisely, and only some of them were issued during the last year of Amalasuintha’s government. While these documents are important for the study of the administration of Italy in this period, they generally do not reveal significant changes in royal policies. Books 8–10 are quite different, for they contain royal correspondence, most of which was written in the name of Athalaric but supervised by Amalasuintha. Of these documents, I have focused on the letters in her name and those that reveal her influence.

Finally, this book seeks to contribute to the discussion of gender and political authority in late antiquity, in a form that is valuable to those working on ideas of gender, power, and queenship in other epochs. Amalasuintha stood between late antiquity and the early Middle Ages, between Roman and post-Roman cultures, and between the Western and Eastern worlds. Not only was Amalasuintha multilingual, she was also bicultural, with one foot in the Gothic world and the other in the Roman. Because of the multiple chronological, geographical, and cultural intersections, the study of Amalasuintha is challenging. It requires not only a deep study of documents of different genres, different periods, and different milieus but also a parallel understanding of the perspectives of late Roman, Byzantine, and early medieval sources.

A study of Amalasuintha, a woman at once famous and elusive, demands the traditional methods of late antique and early medieval historiography—historical philology and textual analysis—combined with some of the methods of both microhistory and cultural history. And where the sources are silent, we must look carefully to the wider milieu of female power in the late fifth- and sixth-century Mediterranean and European worlds to understand the woman, her political ambitions, her struggles, and her life.

The Daughter of Theoderic the Great

The story of Amalasuintha, the only one of Theoderic’s children to be born in Italy, begins almost a decade before her birth. In the year 489, her father Theoderic came to Italy to oust King Odovacer with the blessing of the Byzantine emperor Zeno, who had promised him the right to administer Italy on behalf of Constantinople if he were victorious. Before Theoderic left the East, the emperor entrusted him with the care of the Senate and the people of Rome.⁷ After four years of intense war and a three-year siege of Ravenna, in 493 Theoderic killed Odovacer and was proclaimed king of Italy by his troops on the same day.⁸ The Romans welcomed him as the emperor’s choice, probably encouraged by the traditional Roman honors that had been granted to him during the previous decade: Theoderic had held the most illustrious titles, including the patriciate, the title of master of the soldiers, and the consulship (484), and he had been adopted per arma by the emperor Zeno (ca. 478).⁹ Even if it took a few more years before Emperor Anastasius, Zeno’s successor, acknowledged his position, by 497/8 Theoderic was well established in Italy with the consent of the emperor.¹⁰

A thirty-year period of peace followed Theoderic’s defeat of Odovacer, during which Italy flourished.¹¹ While his Goths continued to engage in both defensive and expansionist wars against other kingdoms, the king pursued his program of encouraging harmony between the Goths and the Romans. This program is also known as civilitas, and it included the integration of the Gothic army as the Roman exercitus into the social and political texture of Italy. While the Goths had military duties, the Romans enjoyed their freedom and kept their traditional administrative offices. Prudentia Romanorum and virtus Gothorum: in this way the two peoples of the kingdom are represented in the Variae as complementing each other.¹² Italy’s still-large population was rooted in the municipal tradition. Though the Senate of Rome had been reduced in size, it still played a significant role, and many of its members were active in the administration of the kingdom.¹³ As ruler over the cradle of Roman civilization, Theoderic was particularly open to the Roman world, showing a deep interest in its culture. He welcomed imperial propaganda that presented him, the Gothic king, in the manner of an emperor of the glorious Roman past. The tragedies of the final years of his long reign would ultimately compromise his Roman legacy,¹⁴ but at the time of his death Theoderic had been the most successful Gothic king ever to rule, and later he became a legend. Medieval German literature would glorify the wisdom and the military prowess of Dietrich von Bern (Theoderic of Verona, from his victory over Odovacer in the battle of Verona).¹⁵ But not even the reverence that the Goths had for Theoderic could compel them to accept his last decision, in 526, to leave the throne to his ten-year-old grandson under the guardianship of a woman.

Amalasuintha was the product of a new generation. Born and raised on Italic soil, she had not grown up wandering or waiting for a permanent settlement but instead grew up holding a recognized place as the daughter of a king in a court located in a Roman palace. She had not experienced wars but rather had enjoyed the benefits of the longest period of peace that Italy had known during the previous century. Her aunt and her grandmother had been exposed to Roman culture only partially, but Amalasuintha was raised in the civilitas promoted by her father, the product of a monarchy far more Romanized than those in the other parts of the former Western Roman Empire. Educated in Roman style and immersed in Roman culture, she became deeply familiar with imperial models of government at the palace of Ravenna. Her imperial vision of the monarchy would, years later, become an important part of her unexpected government. Yet although the court was largely Romanized, it remained first and foremost the headquarters of a conservative Gothic aristocracy, which had never totally abandoned the traditional views of a monarchy in which the nobility of the king was necessarily combined with his value on the battlefield. This elite was unprepared to embrace a woman in power, even if this power was based on motherhood and had examples in the imperial tradition. As a result, Amalasuintha’s political ambitions would still meet obstruction in the palace of Ravenna.

Amalasuintha’s regency for her son (526–534) spanned some of the most critical events of the sixth century. While she waited for Athalaric to reach majority, Amalasuintha occupied a turbulent political position at the palace of Ravenna, caught between traditional Gothic culture, which would relegate her to the political background, and the Roman world, which had precedents for female power and rule. She lived at the palace under the pressure of the most conservative Goths as part of an unusual, if not bizarre, situation that was inconvenient to the nobility. The struggle for power between the queen mother and the Gothic aristocracy created a stifling atmosphere at the court. Seeking to establish and solidify her regency in the Roman imperial style, Amalasuintha cultivated relationships with Emperor Justinian, and also with the Senate and the Roman Church (though she herself was Arian): the latter especially had been badly damaged in the last three years of Theoderic’s reign, and both now, with her support, enjoyed a period of relative freedom. Her pro-Roman inclinations were also reflected in her efforts to promote culture (as Cassiodorus and Procopius testify), and in the education that she wanted to give to her son.

International politics, however, would ultimately force Amalasuintha to seek a new alliance to support her rule. The dramatic growth of the Frankish kingdom was unfolding, as the Merovingian kings expanded into the weak Visigothic kingdom of Amalaric in Spain. The Burgundians and Thuringians, former allies of Theoderic, also fell victim to the Franks, and by 534 most of Gaul was under Frankish control. It was perhaps the pressure of these events and the threats of the palace aristocracy that convinced Amalasuintha to “entrust” herself and Athalaric to the protection of Emperor Justinian (the sources unanimously make reference to the commendatio). By 532/3, with a careful pro-Roman policy, she wielded full control over military and political officials of the Gothic kingdom. She had some of her political enemies assassinated, and she appointed key figures of the Roman Senate to the most important offices.

This situation was short lived, however. In 534, shortly before reaching the age of majority, Athalaric became seriously ill. Amalasuintha knew that, as an unmarried woman, she could not rule over the Goths for long. Probably it was at this point that she first began to consider leaving Ravenna for Constantinople. But when Athalaric ultimately died later that same year, the Ostrogothic kingdom urgently needed a monarch. Struggling to keep her power and to preserve Theoderic’s kingdom under the Amal royal name, Amalasuintha conceived a brave political plan to rule in her own right. She created a new paradigm of power, the consortium regni, that allowed her to continue to rule as queen while still presenting a public face that honored conservative Gothic tradition. She now emerged officially as a regina (a title she had carried previously), but she was no traditional Gothic queen, living in the shadow of a royal husband. Instead, in late 534 she appointed her older cousin Theodahad, the last surviving direct male heir of the royal family, to rule as her coregent—not as husband and wife, but as male and female monarchs sharing power. Even more astounding, her proposal of a co-regency consisted of a full gender reversal in the rhetoric of power. As the “male” character of the ruling unmarried couple, Amalasuintha would make final decisions; the coregent would follow her guidance and provide her with advice. This was Amalasuintha’s condition for Theodahad to rule.

Radical as this development must have seemed to the Gothic aristocracy, the co-regency was not without precedent in the Roman world. In fact, the idea drew from imperial models (though real husband-wife rulership was also exceptionally rare in the East). The biggest difference between Amalasuintha’s co-regency and Roman/Byzantine examples lay in her decision not to marry the new king: after all, Theodahad already had a wife. And for Amalasuintha, a marriage would jeopardize her position and relegate her to the same position as other queens of that generation, whose powers were much more limited in comparison to those of the Roman empresses.

Amalasuintha’s ingenious solution must have disappointed not only the Goths but also Justinian, who had his own plans for Italy. Justinian had been planning to bring both Amalasuintha and Theodahad, the only possible Amal heirs to the throne, to Constantinople, freeing the way for him to take control over Italy as part of his plan to reconquer the western Mediterranean. So Amalasuintha’s ingenious solution to her predicament ultimately sealed her fate. Not long after his election, Theodahad, supported by Amalasuintha’s old enemies, deposed his cousin and ultimately imprisoned her in one of his many Tuscan properties, on a little island-fortress in Lake Bolsena. It was there, in this lonely and isolated prison, that Amalasuintha was assassinated in early May 535.

Theodahad probably did not act alone. We might wonder if the imperial hand lay behind the murder. Procopius in his Secret History claimed that Theodora was involved in the conspiracy against Amalasuintha, whom she viewed as a rival. Certainly, if he had wished to, Justinian could have saved Amalasuintha. Our sources suggest that before he acted, Theodahad first came to an understanding with the emperor, who eventually recognized his position as king. But in carrying out this secret intrigue of the imperial couple, Theodahad had violated the protection that Justinian had officially granted to Amalasuintha a few years earlier, the commendatio. Theodahad may have thought he was carrying out the desires of the emperor and ensuring his own future as king; in fact his murder of his cousin gave Justinian a perfect pretext to invade Italy. As soon as Theodahad’s order to kill his cousin was carried out, Justinian’s legate made clear that a war with the empire was inevitable.

Amalasuintha shaped an important decade in the history of Italy, the years 526–535. She was an unconventional woman who tried to combine the traditional Gothic model of power with the imperial one. A few decades later, women began claiming a stronger role in the politics of Merovingian Gaul; and in Lombard Italy, Queen Theodelinda may have considered Amalasuintha’s example as she looked for models to support her own position as a ruling mother of a rex puer. Though Amalasuintha’s experiment failed, the legacy of the Gothic queen had an impact on the vision of female royalty in early medieval Italy.

The Sources

The lives and careers of the queens of the fifth and sixth centuries, even historically important figures like Clotilde, Brunhild, and Theodelinda, are not well attested in the sources. Amalasuintha is something of an exception. The sources for her life, while sparse, are abundant enough to allow comparisons both with queens from the post-Roman world and with Roman/Byzantine empresses. The sources are diverse, however, and their interpretation requires a multifaceted methodology. The most important source for Amalasuintha’s life at the palace and her ruling activity is the work of Procopius of Caesarea, particularly three sections of the Gothic War, a few passages from the Vandalic War, and one chapter of the Secret History. This material is complemented by some of the letters of the Roman courtier Cassiodorus, which are published in the collection of the Variae and date to the years between late 533 and 535. Gregory of Tours offers an unconventional sketch of a few episodes of Amalasuintha’s life, albeit in an account that is largely unreliable except for some details. Jordanes gives a short but interesting account of the main political events of Athalaric’s reign in both the Getica and the Romana, and Agnellus of Ravenna in his Book of Pontiffs of the Church of Ravenna refers to some of the events, probably drawing from the mid-sixth-century Chronicle of Maximianus and/or the Annals of Ravenna. A few more details are provided by Count Marcellinus and by the biographer of the Book of the Popes (Liber Pontificalis). But these last authors, while important for the understanding of the chronology of events and some juridical issues, do not help us place Amalasuintha in a broader historical context. The portrait of Amalasuintha rests therefore on Procopius and Cassiodorus, even if the narrative of the former does not always find support in the details provided by the latter. These two authors were both contemporaries of the queen, and they witnessed events from two opposite but complementary sides: the palace of Ravenna and the court of Justinian.

The works of both Cassiodorus and Procopius have become objects of new discussions in recent European and American scholarship, based on the goals of these authors. The Cassiodoran collection has been rightly interpreted not just in the traditional way, as a product of the palatine bureaucracy, but also as an expression of the social and cultural context to which Cassiodorus belonged. The Variae have been restudied as a literary product of the genre of epistolography and as an expression of the rhetorical mannerisms of a figure active in the political life of his age, following in the footsteps of Pliny and of Symmachus the orator. These authors served as important models for Cassiodorus’s letters and panegyrics.¹⁶ Cassiodorus published the documents at the very end of his political career, around 538–540. In selecting the letters, he had precise aims, including an apologetic one regarding his long career at the palace.¹⁷ The Variae also offer portraits of the Gothic rulers, and recently one contribution has gone so far as to consider them as evidence of a program of “Roman imperial restoration” started by Theoderic (though this view is entirely based on literature produced by the Roman elite at his court).¹⁸ It is likely that the Amals of Italy used imperial models to present themselves to their Roman subjects, as Amalasuintha would also do. Cassiodorus’s collection, however, was compiled at a time when the Gothic monarchy had lost the support of most Romans. Cassiodorus may have reworked some of the documents with self-aggrandizing elements or adjusted them to make the collection more uniform. The Variae remain his final message, his account of his palatine experience, the recollection of memories by a politician very close to the kings, who knew many state secrets.

The account by Procopius presents challenges of a different nature. His work has also recently been regarded with a more critical eye. Such scholars as Brodka and Kaldellis see in this author not only the Byzantine historian with Christian views but also the classicist in all his complexity. His plural aims, which are often concealed in cryptic passages of the narrative, are offered to the reader through such models as Thucydides and Plato; dialogues and letters often express his own moralizing vision. This reevaluation of Procopius is stimulating, because it leads us to consider the account of this historian of the Justinianic era from a new point of view. This perspective, however, does not discredit Procopius as a historical source, nor it should discourage us from analyzing the message that is concealed behind the narrative. In this, I concur with Greatrex’s view.¹⁹

In my recent monograph, Theodahad, I suggested a balanced way to deal with these sources in parallel when approaching Ostrogothic Italy. On the one hand, we need to separate the rhetorical component from the propaganda in the Cassiodoran letters, and highlight as much as possible the juridical elements and the political messages that these documents contain. On the other hand, Procopius’s account, whose propaganda is an expression of a different agenda, needs to be considered with the awareness of some limitations of the narrative. Dialogues and letters, which are embedded in the Histories according to the Thucydidean style of the author, need to be contextualized in the narrative, and the events can be better understood in parallel with the other sources, particularly when they find corroboration in the Cassiodoran documentation. For different reasons, and with different aims, Procopius and Cassiodorus have preserved motifs of the propaganda of the Gothic kingdom, including the portraits of the Gothic rulers. Especially where the two authors consistently and strongly substantiate each other, the information they provide can be considered as basically reliable, particularly as there is no evidence that the two knew each other’s work and yet they show consistent similarities in their approaches to the main issues of the Gothic kingdom.²⁰ I therefore believe that these authors remain fundamental for biographical purposes.

Both Cassiodorus and Procopius have transmitted a portrait of Amalasuintha that is highly positive. This contrasts with their critical view of her cousin and later coregent, Theodahad, who is depicted as a greedy landowner.²¹ The choices made by Cassiodorus in the compilation of the Variae should not, however, lead us to the assumption that he hated Theodahad. Although this king became the murderer of his beloved queen, Cassiodorus continued to support the Gothic cause, serving as Praetorian prefect under Theodahad and later under Witiges. This contrast of images between Amalasuintha and Theodahad is explained if we consider the probable scenario that Cassiodorus collected the Variae in Ravenna under the rule of Witiges, who, having killed Theodahad, proclaimed himself the avenger of Amalasuintha and married Amalasuintha’s daughter, Matasuintha, in order to join the Amal family and legitimize his position.²² In such a situation, it seems unlikely that Cassiodorus would have been free to engage in any indirect critique of the Amal kings except for Theodahad. Not surprisingly, Witiges is positively represented in the few letters in his name, which conclude book 10 of the Variae.²³

Our evidence is not sufficient to untangle the complex web of relationships and intrigues between Amalasuintha and Theodahad and Justinian and Theodora. Certainly the authors do not tell the whole story of the conspiracy against the Gothic queen, the Amalasuintha affair. Cassiodorus knew the state secrets of the kingdom, but he could not—or rather he preferred not to—make any direct reference to them. A skilled politician, he embedded the messages of his letters within strong rhetorical propaganda. Procopius was not as well informed on the state secrets and on the details of the Amalasuintha affair, though he offered what little information he had in a highly narrative manner. When later he decided to tell a different story in his Secret History, he claimed that he had not been free to tell “the truth” in the Gothic War. This time his version seems to corroborate some ambiguous statements by Cassiodorus.²⁴

Procopius and Cassiodorus represent different but complementary views on the Gothic monarchy. Procopius offers the historical perspective of a Byzantine official, at least outwardly supporting Justinian, while Cassiodorus is the skilled Western Roman bureaucrat, immersed in the culture of the palace of Ravenna, and probably a confidant of Amalasuintha. These two most important authors require further introduction.

Flavius Magnus Aurelius Cassiodorus Senator

It is not wrong to state that Cassiodorus grew up beside Amalasuintha, of whom he was the elder by a few years.²⁵ Born around 490, he moved when very young to the court of Ravenna, where he joined his father, the Praetorian prefect, as consiliarius. His success in eulogizing Theoderic brought Cassiodorus, as soon as he reached the age of majority in 507, the appointment of quaestor of the palace until circa 511. He was consul in 514 and soon afterward became patrician. Later he again took an active role at court as master of the offices for the years 523–527; he was therefore employed at the palace at the time of Theoderic’s death. In 528 he disappeared from the political scene, and he does not reemerge in our records until 533, when Amalasuintha appointed him Praetorian prefect. This was one of the most important offices that a Roman of that time could hold. Only one year later, Cassiodorus witnessed the unfolding drama of the arrest and exile of his queen, Amalasuintha, ordered by the newly elected King Theodahad. Some senators, as well as other key figures of the kingdom, such as Liberius, were able to escape to the East,²⁶ but Cassiodorus’s closeness to the court and his leading administrative position bound him to the political scene. Eventually he supported Theodahad and also his successor, Witiges, in the capacity of Praetorian prefect. After 538, he left the palatine administration, which he concluded by publishing a selection of the letters that he had written over the years in the name of the rulers. This collection, in twelve books, is also known as the Epistulae Variae. Because Cassiodorus arranged this collection at the time of his departure from the political scene, scholars have speculated variously about the criteria of composition and the purposes of this work.

The letters in the name of Amalasuintha, as well as those that refer to her, are generally propagandistic and shaped as short panegyrics. The most detailed example is Variae 11.1. This is a panegyric addressed to the Roman Senate, a laus with which Cassiodorus thanked Amalasuintha for having promoted him to the Praetorian prefecture. This letter indicates that she, rather than Athalaric, was the mind behind his promotion, although the promotion letters (Variae 9.24 and 9.25) were written in King Athalaric’s name, as was customary. Published as the first document of the two final books of the collection, this letter, or “letter-panegyric,” an unusual document in the Variae, focuses on the praises of Amalasuintha as ruler, and Cassiodorus included it for a purpose. Perhaps this letter was originally meant to prepare the senators for a government of Amalasuintha after the death of Athalaric, who was ill at the time.²⁷ Cassiodorus could have easily avoided publishing this piece. By placing it as the first document of the two books containing his correspondence as Praetorian prefect, however, he celebrated Amalasuintha and her governance for Athalaric, leaving to posterity a positive portrait of the queen and suggesting that at the palace it was Amalasuintha who made the important decisions for her son. Amalasuintha’s legacy as a strong female ruler in premodern Europe is based largely on this panegyric.²⁸ In combination with Procopius’s account, this letter has strongly influenced the opinion of modern historians about the Gothic queen, in a clear contrast with the negative image transmitted by Gregory of Tours.

Other letters from this collection particularly useful for a study of Amalasuintha’s political activities include Variae 10.4, which was modeled partially on the letter-panegyric Variae 11.1 and which was addressed one year later to the Roman Senate in the name of Theodahad. There are also other letters in Amalasuintha’s name, which are addressed respectively to Emperor Justinian and to the Roman Senate to announce the election of Theodahad (Variae 10.1 and 10.3). These erudite documents concern high diplomatic matters. Two more letters were addressed by the queen to Justinian and to Theodora during the weeks or months of her co-regency with Theodahad (Variae 10.8 and 10.10).

Procopius of Caesarea

Procopius accompanied Belisarius during his military campaign in Italy in the first years of the Gothic war (until ca. 540/2), as his consiliarius and later as his adsessor.²⁹ After the Byzantine general took Rome in December 536, the historian came into contact with people of the senatorial elite of the old capital, and he later included in his account the vicissitudes of some of them.³⁰ He probably collected much of his information about Amalasuintha in Rome or in Ravenna, although it is likely that during his career he was in touch with key people at the palace of Ravenna who could provide him with more solid information about the events of the Gothic court. Liberius and Maximianus may have been among Procopius’s informers.³¹ Possibly the historian met the senator Liberius, who was close to Amalasuintha, and who betrayed Theodahad as soon he arrested the queen. Liberius was among those senators who were sent to the East to announce Amalasuintha’s deposition, but he deserted the embassy and never went back. He embraced Justinian’s cause, and the emperor rewarded him with different appointments.³² Or perhaps the historian met with Maximianus, who was presumably the court poet of Theodahad and who was about the same age as Cassiodorus. At some point Maximianus was sent to the East with an embassy, and if he ever returned, it was probably as Justinian’s prefect of Italy a few years later. Procopius makes various references to him in his narrative.³³ Another potential source is Peter the Patrician, Justinian’s ambassador, who, although not a friend of Procopius,³⁴ was a high-ranking diplomat sent a few times to Theodahad during the imprisonment of Amalasuintha and the first years of the Gothic war. Finally, while we cannot dismiss the possibility that Procopius met Cassiodorus in Constantinople, we do not have any evidence of contact between them, either in the Gothic War or in any of the other works of the two authors.

In the first chapters of the Gothic War (especially book 1, sections 2–4) Procopius provides us with a colorful portrait of Amalasuintha, particularly her personal and political vicissitudes; the historian occasionally also refers to these in the Vandalic War. Years later, in his invective against Theodora he would clarify in the Secret History (or Anecdota) “the truth”—or rather his own understanding of the truth—behind the Amalasuintha affair.³⁵ The letters and speeches he attributes to Amalasuintha are rhetorical, following the Thucydidean model. Some historical and juridical elements contained within them, however, are confirmed by other sources.

Procopius’s narrative intent does not undermine the reliability of his account. His representation of Amalasuintha’s reign is consistent with the internal problems of the Gothic kingdom, and it finds some confirmation in the Cassiodoran letters. His chronology of events, however, even if it is often detailed, is not always accurate, as we see when we compare his account of the events of the years 533–535 with the evidence of other authors, especially Jordanes and Cassiodorus. Some of the differences are due to the complexity of the “state secret” around the affair of Amalasuintha—the authors had different sources and different levels of access to intrigues at that high level. For Procopius, as for all these authors, modern historians have the difficult task of evaluating the historical and diplomatic context of the sources.

Gregory of Tours

In addition to Cassiodorus and Procopius, we have the voice of Merovingian propaganda, represented by Gregory of Tours (538–594).³⁶ This Frankish source, which postdates Amalasuintha by several decades, presents its own interpretative issues, and it merits a separate discussion. Gregory’s Ten Books of Histories (Decem Libri Historiarum, also known as History of the Franks) is based upon various classical and Christian literary models. His historical vision is both biblical and Roman: for example, Gregory considers King Chilperic Nero nostri temporis et Herodis.³⁷ He also blends oral traditions with a biblical vision of history. The result is a kind of source very different from those produced by late antique historians. Gregory’s models for representing male and female royalty generally derived from the Old Testament. Gregory’s story of the life of Amalasuintha, especially her vicissitudes at court, strongly differs from all our other sources. Immoral, rebellious, and even the murderer of her own mother, Gregory’s Amalasuintha deserved the punishment inflicted upon her by Theodahad. Gregory may have known of Amalasuintha’s eight-year regency, but he does not expend a single word on this period of the queen’s life; rather, he relates an otherwise unknown (and unlikely) story of her life. In his flawed chronology, Amalasuintha lost her father when she was little and grew up with her mother, Audefleda. Her mother wished to find a royal husband for her daughter, but Amalasuintha disobeyed her and instead “took her slave named Traguila (servum suum Traguilanem nomen accepit), and fled with him to a city where she hoped to defend herself.”³⁸ Her mother’s pleas to protect her family’s honor with a suitable marriage fell on deaf ears, and Amalasuintha remained obdurate until an army came, killed Traguila, and brought her home.³⁹

Amalasuintha’s evil nature is fantastically revealed in her plot to murder her mother by poisoning her with the wine of Communion during Arian Mass: “Now they belonged to the Arian sect, and as it is their custom that of those going to the altar the kings receive one cup and the lesser people another, she put poison in the cup from which her mother was going to receive the communion. And she drank it and died forthwith. There is no doubt that such harm is from the devil. What shall the wretched heretics answer to this charge that the enemy dwells in their holy place?”⁴⁰ Gregory’s anti-Arian stance no doubt fueled this account; about the murder, he claims: “For us who confess the Trinity in one similar equality and omnipotence, even if we should drink a deadly draught in the name of the Father, Son and Holy Spirit, the true and incorruptible God, it would not do us any harm.”⁴¹ Gregory tells us that the Italians were “indignant” that this woman was to reign, and so they invited Theodahad to take the throne. Theodahad, in vengeance for her crimes, ordered her death: “When he learned what the harlot had been guilty of, how she had slain her mother on account of a slave whom she had taken, he gave orders that a bath be raised to a great heat, and that she be shut in the same with one maid. And when she entered the hot vapors she fell at once on the pavement, and died, and was consumed.”⁴²

The sins Gregory ascribes to Amalasuintha are many and horrendous: she is a harlot, a murderer, and the lover of a slave. Not only does she commit the most unspeakable crime of matricide, she does so at the very altar of the church, polluting the holy wine of Communion with poison. Perhaps unsurprisingly, Gregory’s account finds no confirmation in any other early source. One century later, Pseudo-Fredegar, who acknowledged Gregory of Tours as one of his sources, followed the same tradition.⁴³ The many inaccuracies that Gregory’s account contains are mixed with a few elements of historical value. Some scholars have even considered the possibility of replacing some of the names of the protagonists of this story in order to produce an account slightly closer to the historicity of the events; that is, understanding Amalasuintha and Athalaric as the characters in the story instead of Audefleda and Amalasuintha.⁴⁴ Gregory’s work, however, is the product of a different milieu. It reflects the views of an author hostile to Arianism who (like Eugippius with the Rugian queen Giso) was often critical toward queens who were not Catholic, and to women who interfered in the politics of their kingdoms.⁴⁵

Gregory’s depictions of royal women show a sharp contrast between Arian and Catholic, particularly with respect to pious figures, such as Basina, Clotilde, and Radegund. The contrast also applies to good and bad widows.⁴⁶ Catholic princesses and queens, some of whom spent the final part of their lives in monasteries and supporting the church, greatly contributed to the triumph of the Catholic faith and, as a consequence, to the historical success of the Merovingians, and they fare well in Gregory’s history (with the exception of some Merovingian royal women, such as Fredegund, Deoteria, Marcatrude, and Austrechild Bobila). In contrast, all Gregory’s Arian women are wicked queens, as are most of the wives of the Franks’ enemies.⁴⁷ For Gregory, Arianism was the primary source of the other kingdoms’ disgrace, and defeating it was the basis for the success of the Catholic Merovingian Franks. In his work there is no evidence of any Merovingian royal woman abandoning Catholicism when marrying kings of other faiths. But his Arian queens and princesses caused the ruin of their kingdoms, both by their own actions and by the bad advice they gave their husbands and their children.⁴⁸

Amalasuintha became the murderer of her mother, Clovis’s sister, whom the author also scorned for her Arianism. Other stories explaining the misfortunes of kingdoms that were eventually defeated or conquered by the Christian Merovingians were often similarly fabricated or altered, reflecting the same theme of the triumph of Catholicism over Arianism. Gregory’s History recounts the bleak fate not only of the Ostrogoths but also of the Visigoths and of the Burgundian and Thuringian kings, most of them married to Arian women. Clovis attacked the Visigothic kingdom, and at the battle of Vouillé (507) he killed Alaric II, Amalaric’s father, who was married to Theoderic’s daughter. Later, Amalaric was killed because he disrespected the Catholic faith of his wife. The Thuringian Herminafrid conquered his brother at the instigation of Amalaberga; later, he would be conquered by the Franks. The Burgundian Sigismund—who converted to Catholicism between circa 500 and 507⁴⁹—murdered his own child under the evil influence of his second wife.⁵⁰

Unlike the other regna, which fell victim to the Frankish expansion, the Ostrogothic kingdom was barely touched by the Franks. Therefore, in Gregory’s account the Arian sinner Amalasuintha was punished by her own cousin Theodahad; the (Catholic) Italians had appealed to him for help, and Gregory interestingly omits to specify that this king was also of the Arian creed. But the Franks too play a role in this story: Gregory reports the otherwise unattested news that Theodahad had to pay Wergild to the Frankish kings for murdering their cousin.

We cannot exclude the possibility that Gregory tarnished the image of Amalasuintha because she was daughter of Theoderic, Arian heretic and persecutor of Catholics, about whom the author knew much more than he actually reported. While the Ten Books of Histories do not discuss Theoderic, he does appear in Gregory’s Liber in gloria martyrum. Here Gregory reports a story which he claims to have heard from Catholic believers but which in fact shows a few similarities with the account of the Book of the Popes. While the plot of this story is largely fictional, Theoderic is labeled as inprobus rex, the persecutor of the Catholic Church, and he is responsible for the martyrdom of Pope John I. His brutal death shortly after, his inflicted wounds, and his consignment to the perpetual flames of hell were God’s punishment for his misbehavior.⁵¹

We can only imagine how dark our view might be of Amalasuintha if (as we do for many other royal women of the post-Roman kingdoms of Europe) we had to rely entirely upon Gregory of Tours with his unflattering vocabulary: mulier, meretrix, in matrem parricida.

The Chronology of the Regency and the Limitations of the Sources

While there is little direct documentation of the early life of Amalasuintha, this is fortunately not the case for her regency, for which scholars have traditionally distinguished four main phases:

(1) After the death of Theoderic in August of 526, Amalasuintha, now regent for her son, initially broke with her father’s policy and attempted to rebuild relationships with the Romans through the help of Cassiodorus (526/7).

(2) After the “fall of Cassiodorus” (that is how some scholars interpret Cassiodorus’s five-year period of unemployment at the palace) the leaders of Gothic conservatism exerted new influence, which Amalasuintha tried unsuccessfully to oppose (527–532).

(3) Consequently, Amalasuintha eliminated her most prominent rivals in the Gothic aristocracy. Only then she was able to return to her original policy (532–534).

(4) After the death of Athalaric in October 534, Amalasuintha attempted to secure her own throne by nominating Theodahad as coregent (534–535).⁵²

This comprehensive sketch depicts the main phases of Amalasuintha’s political activity at court. No source speaks to all four periods, but fortunately the periods covered by Procopius sometimes overlap with those covered by Cassiodorus, allowing us to view specific phases through the lens of more than one witness (unlike, for example, the sources for the life of Theodahad).⁵³ It is necessary to use the account of Gregory of Tours only with great caution, and Cassiodorus and Procopius remain our central sources. Procopius’s account of Amalasuintha’s regency is primarily limited to three introductory chapters of the Gothic War,⁵⁴ while Cassiodorus’s letters shed some light on the years 526–528 and 533–535. Very little evidence speaks to the period 528–532, during which Amalasuintha was experiencing strong pressure from the Gothic aristocracy at the palace.

The surviving evidence makes it difficult to further define the contours of the first two phases. We cannot determine whether, in that first year of her regency, Amalasuintha was willing or able to break with her father’s anti-Roman policy of his final years—especially given the fact that it was very likely Theoderic and not Amalasuintha who decided the appointments for the year 527;⁵⁵ and we should not overestimate the influence of Cassiodorus on Amalasuintha’s political activity. The fact that he held the most significant offices at the palace, as well as the fact that his collection of letters survives, do not necessarily make him the primary political mind behind Amalasuintha’s decisions, nor a real protagonist at the court—especially considering that he was officially unemployed in the years 528–533.

Cassiodorus’s evidence on Amalasuintha is far more limited than that which he offers for the other Amals. Only part of the letters reveal, with a margin of certainty, Amalasuintha’s mind and political hand; it would be hazardous to envision the Gothic queen behind all the letters in Athalaric’s name that are included in books 8 and 9 of the Variae. Only occasionally does Procopius’s narrative of the Ostrogothic kingdom in those years find direct correspondence in the Variae. In addition, Procopius’s chronology, when compared with other evidence, often generates more questions than solutions. This is especially true for the dark period between the deposition and death of Amalasuintha, about which Procopius may not have been well informed. Most of the information provided by Cassiodorus and Procopius on Amalasuintha refers to the very first phase of her regency, between late 526 and 527, and to the very last years of her life, between 532 and 535. The hypothesis that Procopius’s informer was someone close to the Gothic queen could explain not only his knowledge of Amalasuintha’s life at the palace but also his general lack of information concerning later events, such as the activities of Theodahad in Ravenna and in Rome.

The works of Procopius and Cassiodorus are differently structured and have different chronological limits and intentions, though they agree in their representation of Amalasuintha and in the way they portray her as a woman in power. Nonetheless, these two authors are of fundamental importance, for our understanding of the sixth century is largely founded upon their evidence. A reconstruction of the portrait of Amalasuintha therefore requires a most careful analysis of their work. A close reading of all our evidence discloses important elements about Amalasuintha’s life and self-presentation. These sources have often been studied or interpreted independently, but bringing them in conversation with each other opens a window onto the wider world in which they were produced. Amalasuintha’s historical significance in the Mediterranean world emerges when the results of these analyses are contextualized with other authors writing in other kingdoms and in the empire during the fifth and the sixth centuries.