The Ostrogoths (Latin: Ostrogothi, Austrogothi) were a Roman-era Germanic people who, in the 5th and 6th centuries, established one of the two major Gothic kingdoms within the Western Roman Empire. The Ostrogoths were associated with the earlier Greuthungi mentioned by Roman authors such as Ammianus Marcellinus, and later identified by the historian Jordanes with the realm of Ermanaric in the 4th century. Ancient sources often referred to them simply as "Goths," but modern scholarship distinguishes them as one of the two main branches of the Gothic peoples, alongside the Visigoths. They drew on large Gothic populations settled in the Balkans and rose to prominence under Theodoric the Great, who in 493 founded the Ostrogothic Kingdom in Italy after defeating Odoacer.
Theodoric belonged to the Amal dynasty, which had gained power in Pannonia after the collapse of Attila's Hunnic empire. Backed by the Byzantine emperor Zeno, Theodoric invaded Italy and established his rule from Ravenna, preserving Roman administration, law, and culture while governing Goths and Romans under parallel systems. His reign marked the height of Ostrogothic power and stability in Italy. After Theodoric's death in 526, dynastic instability weakened the kingdom. In 535, Emperor Justinian I launched the Gothic War (535–554), aiming to restore imperial authority in the West. The Ostrogoths, revitalized under Totila, temporarily regained much of Italy, but Totila was killed at the Battle of Taginae in 552. The protracted war devastated the peninsula, and the Ostrogothic state collapsed by 554. Survivors were absorbed into the Lombards, who established their own kingdom in Italy by 568.
The Ostrogoths were one of several peoples referred to more generally as Goths. The Goths appear in Roman records starting in the third century, in the regions north of the Lower Danube and Black Sea. They competed for influence and Roman subsidies with peoples who had lived longer in the area, such as the Carpi, and various Sarmatians, and they contributed men to the Roman military. Based on their Germanic language and material culture, it is believed that their Gothic culture derived from cultures from the direction of the Vistula river in the north, now in Poland and originally from Götaland (in English Western and Eastern Gothlands) and Gotland in present-day Sweden. By the third century, the Goths were already composed of sub-groups with their own names, because the Tervingi, who bordered on the Roman Empire and the Carpathian Mountains, were mentioned separately on at least one occasion.
The Ostrogoths, not mentioned until later, are associated with the Greuthungi who lived further east. The dividing line between the Tervingi and the Greuthungi, was reported by Ammianus to be the Dniester River, and to the east of the Greuthungi were Alans living near the River Don.
The Ostrogoths in Italy used a Gothic language that had both spoken and written forms, and which is best attested today in the surviving translation of the Bible by Ulfilas. Goths were a minority in all the places they lived within the Roman empire, and no Gothic language or distinct Gothic ethnicity has survived. On the other hand, the Gothic language texts the Ostrogothic kingdom helped preserve are the only eastern Germanic language with "continuous texts" surviving, and the earliest significant remnants of any Germanic language.
The first part of the word "Ostrogoth" comes from a Germanic root *auster- meaning 'eastern'. According to the proposal of Wolfram, this was originally a boastful tribal name meaning "Goths of the rising sun", or "Goths glorified by the rising sun". By the 6th century, however, Jordanes, for example, believed that the Visigoths and Ostrogoths were two contrasting names simply meaning western and eastern Goths.
The Greuthungi and Ostrogothi before the Huns
The nature of the divisions of the Goths before the arrival of the Huns is uncertain, but throughout all their history the Ostrogoths are only mentioned by that name very rarely, and normally in very uncertain contexts. Among other Gothic group names, however, they are associated with the Greuthungi. Scholarly opinions are divided about this connection. Historian Herwig Wolfram sees these as two names for one people as will be discussed below. Peter Heather, in contrast, has written that:
Ostrogoths in the sense of the group led by Theodoric to Italy stand at the end of complex processes of fragmentation and unification involving a variety of groups—mostly but not solely Gothic it seems—and the better, more contemporary, evidence argues against the implication derived from Jordanes that Ostrogoths are Greuthungi by another name.
Some historians go much further than Heather, questioning whether we can assume any single ethnicity, even Gothic, which united the Ostrogoths before they were politically united by the Amal clan.
One dubious early mention of the Ostrogoths is found in the Historia Augusta, which was written centuries later, and is known to contain fabricated materials. It can be interpreted as distinguishing the Ostrogoths and Greuthungi. In the article for Emperor Claudius Gothicus (reigned 268–270), the following garbled list of "Scythian" peoples is given who had been conquered by the emperor when he earned his title "Gothicus": "peuci trutungi austorgoti uirtingi sigy pedes celtae etiam eruli". These words are traditionally edited by modern scholars to include well-known peoples: "Peuci, Grutungi, Austrogoti, Tervingi, Visi, Gipedes, Celtae etiam et Eruli" (emphasis added). However, this work is not considered reliable, especially for contemporary terminology.
The first record of a Gothic sub-group acting in its own name, specifically the Tervingi, was dated from 291. The Greuthungi, Vesi, and Ostrogothi are all attested no earlier than 388.
The Ostrogoths were first definitely mentioned more than one hundred years later than the Tervingi in 399, and this is the only certain mention of this name at all before the Amals created their kingdom of Italy. A poem by Claudian describes Ostrogoths who are mixed with Greuthungi and settled in Phrygia together as a disgruntled barbarian military force, who had once fought against Rome, but were now supposed to fight for it. Claudian only uses the term Ostrogoth once in the long poem, but in other references to this same group he more often calls them Greuthungi or "Getic" (an older word used poetically for Goths in this period). These Goths came to be led into rebellion by Tribigild, a Roman general of Gothic background. Much later Zosimus also described Tribigild and his rebellion against the eunuch consul Eutropius. Gainas, the aggrieved Gothic general sent to fight Tribigild, openly joined forces with him after the death of Eutropius. Zosimus believed that was conspiracy between the two Goths from the beginning. It is generally believed by historians that this Phrygian settlement of Greuthingi, referred to as including Ostrogoths, were part of the Greuthungi-led force led by Odotheus in 386, and not the Greuthungi who had entered the empire earlier, in 376 under Alatheus and Saphrax.
Starting with the 6th century writer Jordanes, whose Getica is a history of the Ostrogothic Amal dynasty, there is a tradition of simply equating the Greuthungi with the Ostrogothi. Jordanes does not mention the Greuthungi at all by that name, but he identified the Ostrogothic kings of Italy, the Amal dynasty, as the heirs and descendants of king Ermanaric. Ermanaric was described by Roman soldier and historian Ammianus Marcellinus as a king of the Greuthungi; however, the family succession described by the two classical authors is completely different, and Ammianus is considered to be the more reliable source. Jordanes also specified that around 250 (the time of Emperor Philip the Arab who reigned 244–249) the Ostrogoths were ruled by a king called Ostrogotha and they either derived their name from this "father of the Ostrogoths", or else the Ostrogoths and Visigoths got these names because they meant eastern and western Goths.