24 II: Adam Ziółkowski (UW), Reading Iordanes in the third decade of the 21st c.: some thoughts on Getica’s Ostrogotha and Skythika’s Ostrogouthos

Abstract

One of the lessons of the explosion of discoveries bearing on the third-century crisis of the Empire made in the previous decade is, or should be, to treat Iordanes’ account in less cavalier a way than in the past. One of the greatest surprises in the most famous of these discoveries, the fragments of Dexippos’ Skythika in a Vienna palimpsest, has been the reference in fragment 194r, dealing with events just after the capture of Philippopolis by Kniva, to a Gothic ἄρχων ὀστρογουθος, certainly Ostrogotha, the name of the king who according to Iordanes during the reign of Philippus started attacks on Roman provinces which after his death culminated in Kniva’s invasion. This king, together with his res gestae, has repeatedly been consigned to the realm of mythology or, more precisely, to the ‘making of the past’ activities of Theoderic the Great and his entourage. In my paper I argue that in the light of the new discoveries Iordanes’ report on the king is basically historical and then propose to place his namesake from Dexippos’ fragment in the context of Kniva’s invasion as related in Getica.