METHOD AND PURPOSE

Few individuals from sixth-century Italy are called “Goth” or “Roman” outside the works of Procopius. In order to understand the force of the label “Goth,” and by implication its occasional antithesis “Roman,” this prosopography assembles every attested individual in Italy from the period of Ostrogothic rule who could have been classified as a “Goth” according to the various contemporary criteria identifying the group: a Germanic personal name (or one in the family), military service, Arian belief, membership in the Arian clergy, and knowledge of the Gothic language, and anyone related to people showing these characteristics (since classical ethnography assumes family ties among the people that it describes). The subsequent set of tables in Part III strains out these criteria to illustrate the extent to which they match up among different groups in Italian society at different dates.

This “prosopography of identity” thus serves a different function from traditional prosopography. It examines the ways in which individuals are not connected as much as the ways in which they are connected, within the limits of a community as defined by contemporary sources. Different groups inside and outside Italian society defined Goths in various ways: as Arian believers and clergymen, as soldiers, as saiones and military comites, as speakers of a Germanic language, and as the enemies of Justinian's armies in Italy. To what extent do these criteria coincide in an attested individual?