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Front Page  Titles (by Subject) 2.: VISIGOTHS AND OSTROGOTHS — ( P. 8 ) - The History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire, vol. 2
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2.: VISIGOTHS AND OSTROGOTHS — ( P. 8 ) - Edward Gibbon, The History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire, vol. 2 [1776]Edition used:The History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire, ed. J.B. Bury with an Introduction by W.E.H. Lecky (New York: Fred de Fau and Co., 1906), in 12 vols. Vol. 2.
Part of: The History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire, 12 vols.
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2.VISIGOTHS AND OSTROGOTHS — (P. 8)We cannot say with certainty at what period the Gothic race was severed into the nations of East and West Goths. The question is well discussed by Mr. Hodgkin, in Italy and her Invaders, chap. i. Appendix. The name Ostrogoth occurs first in the Life of Claudius Gothicus in the Historia Augusta (written about the beginning of the fourth century), and next in Claudian, in Eutrop. ii. 153 (at the end of the same century). Our first testimony to the existence of the Visigothic name is later. In the fifth century Sidonius Apollinaris speaks of the Vesi in two places (Pan. in Avit. 456; Pan. in Major. 458). Is there any ground for inferring that the Ostrogothic name is the older? It looks rather as if at first (c. 300-400) the distinction was between Ostrogoths and Goths; and that the name Visigoth was a later appellation. We must emphatically reject the view that Gruthungi and Thervingi were old names for Ostrogoths and Visigoths respectively and expressed the same distinction. Mr. Hodgkin has noticed the objections supplied by the passages in the Vita Claudii and Claudian; and they are decisive. |
