Late Antique Historiography

History of the Goths

Title(s):
  • History of the Goths
  • De origine et actibus Getarum
    (De origine et actibus Getarum, On the origins and deeds of the Goths)
  • Getica
  • Historia Getarum
    (Historia Getarum, History of the Goths)
Author:
Period covered:
Mythical origins-540
Language:
Latin
State of Preservation:
Full
Genre:
  • Secular history (ethnic history)
  • Form (epitome)
  • Secular history (general)
Remarks:
The work is an epitome of Cassiodorus' History of the Goths, with additions. The editions by A. Grillone are problematic; the one by Mommsen preserves best the vulgar Latin in which Jordanes wrote.
Edition - Translation:
  • F. Giunta, A. Grillone (1991) Iordanis De origine actibusque Getarum (Istituto storico italiano per il medio evo: Fonti per la storia d'Italia). Rome.
  • T. Mommsen (1882) Iordanis Romana et Getica (Monumenta Germaniae historica: Auctores antiquissimi, 5.1). Berlin.
  • C.C. Mierow (1908) The origins and deeds of the Goths by Jordanes. Diss. Princeton.
  • O. Devillers (2008) Jordanès: Histoire des Goths. Paris.
  • L. Möller (2012) Jordanes: Die Gotengeschichte. Wiesbaden.
  • G. Pilara (2016) Iordanes: Storia dei Goti. Rome.
  • E. Bartolini (1991) Jordanes: Storia dei Goti. Milan.
  • W. Martens (1913) Jordanis Gotengeschichte nebst Auszügen aus seiner Römischen Geschichte. Leipzig.
  • A. Savagner (1942) Jordanes: De la succession des royaumes et des temps, et De l'origine et des actes des Goths. Paris.
  • L. Van Hoof, P. Van Nuffelen (2020) Jordanes: Romana and Getica (Translated texts for historians). Liverpool.
  • A. Grillone (2017) Iordanes: Getica (Auteurs Latins du Moyen Age). Paris.
Fragments:
Users:
Sources:
Bibliography:
  • (1995) Clavis patrum Latinorum (CPL) 913
  • A.S. Christensen (2002) Cassiodorus, Jordanes and the history of the Goths: Studies in a migration myth. Copenhagen.
  • B. Croke (1987) 'Cassiodorus and the Getica of Jordanes'. Classical Philology 82: 117-134.
  • B. Croke (2005) 'Jordanes and the immediate past'. Historia 54: 473-494.
  • S. Ghosh (2016) Writing the barbarian past: Studies in early medieval historical narrative. Leiden.
  • F. Giunta (1952) Jordanes e la cultura dell'alto medio evo. Palermo.
  • W. Goffart (1988) The narrators of barbarian history (A.D. 550-800): Jordanes, Gregory of Tours, Bede and Paul the Deacon. Princeton.
  • P. Heather (1991) Goths and Romans: A.D. 332-489 (Oxford historical monographs). Oxford - New York.
  • W. Liebeschuetz (2011) 'Why did Jordanes write the Getica?'. Antiquité tardive 19: 295-303.
  • A.H. Merrils (2005) History and geography in Late Antiquity (Cambridge studies in Medieval life and thought, 4. 64). Cambridge.
  • A. Momigliano (1984) 'Cassiodorus and Italian culture of his time'. In: Secondo contributo alla Storia degli Studi Classici. Rome.
  • L. Van Hoof, P. Van Nuffelen (2017) 'The historiography of crisis: Jordanes, Cassiodorus and Justinian in mid sixth-century Constantinople'. The Journal of Roman Studies 107: 275-300.