Tribigild ( la, Tribigildus; grc-gre, Τριβιγίλδος; 399) was an

Ostrogoth The Ostrogoths ( la, Ostrogothi, Austrogothi) were a Roman-era Germanic people. In the 5th century, they followed the Visigoths in creating one of the two great Gothic kingdoms within the Roman Empire, based upon the large Gothic populations who ...

ic general whose rebellion against the

Eastern Roman Empire The Byzantine Empire, also referred to as the Eastern Roman Empire or Byzantium, was the continuation of the Roman Empire primarily in its eastern provinces during Late Antiquity and the Middle Ages, when its capital city was Constantino ...

precipitated a major political crisis during the reign of Emperor

Arcadius Arcadius ( grc-gre, Ἀρκάδιος ; 377 – 1 May 408) was Roman emperor from 383 to 408. He was the eldest son of the ''Augustus'' Theodosius I () and his first wife Aelia Flaccilla, and the brother of Honorius (). Arcadius ruled the ...

. Tribigild appears in the historical record as the leader of a colony of Ostrogoths in Nakoleia,

Phrygia In classical antiquity, Phrygia ( ; grc, Φρυγία, ''Phrygía'' ) was a kingdom in the west central part of Anatolia, in what is now Asian Turkey, centered on the Sangarios River. After its conquest, it became a region of the great empir ...

and a military confederate of the Roman state (with the rank of ''

comes ''Comes'' ( ), plural ''comites'' ( ), was a Roman title or office, and the origin Latin form of the medieval and modern title "count". Before becoming a word for various types of title or office, the word originally meant "companion", either i ...

'' or count) during a period when his people lived under the dominance of the

Huns The Huns were a nomadic people who lived in Central Asia, the Caucasus, and Eastern Europe between the 4th and 6th century AD. According to European tradition, they were first reported living east of the Volga River, in an area that was part ...

. In 399, his honour wounded by an insufficiently extravagant reception at the imperial court in Constantinople, he broke with Arcadius and began to sack the interior of

Asia Minor Anatolia, tr, Anadolu Yarımadası), and the Anatolian plateau, also known as Asia Minor, is a large peninsula in Western Asia and the westernmost protrusion of the Asian continent. It constitutes the major part of modern-day Turkey. The re ...

. The resulting population upheavals and rumours of Tribigild's increasing power forced Arcadius's prime minister, the eunuch Eutropius, to send an expeditionary force across the

Hellespont The Dardanelles (; tr, Çanakkale Boğazı, lit=Strait of Çanakkale, el, Δαρδανέλλια, translit=Dardanéllia), also known as the Strait of Gallipoli from the Gallipoli peninsula or from Classical Antiquity as the Hellespont (; ...

. In fact, Tribigild had met with increasing difficulty in fending off peasant militias, but when the imperial legions arrived he was easily able to subvert the loyalty of the fellow barbarians that were the fighting core of the force and scatter the rest. This left fellow Goth

Gainas Gainas ( Greek: Γαϊνάς) was a Gothic leader who served the Eastern Roman Empire as '' magister militum'' during the reigns of Theodosius I and Arcadius. Gainas began his military career as a common foot-soldier, but later commanded the ...

in control of Constantinople's military fate; sent against Tribigild (who may have been a kinsman), he returned to report that the rebel was insurmountable and that negotiation would be the safest tactic. A demand for the lifeblood of Eutropius, perhaps negotiated in advance by Gainas and Tribigild, was met. But Gainas soon overplayed his hand and allied openly with his rebel cousin, and Tribigild was apparently killed during the combined Gothic army's movement toward Constantinople.

Sources

*A. Richard Diebold Center for Indo-European Language and Cultur

*Noel Lenski, review of Wolfgang Hagl's ''Arcadius Apis Imperator: Synesios von Kyrene und sein Beitrag zum Herrscherideal der Spätantike, Bryn Mawr Classical Review'', 98.3.0

*Biography of John Chrysostom from Smith's ''Greek and Roman Biography and Mythology'

*Gibbon's ''Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire'', vol.

*Arcadius page at romanemperors.or

4th-century Gothic people Byzantine generals Byzantine rebels Gothic warriors 400 deaths Comites 4th-century Byzantine people Year of birth unknown Ancient rebels {{Byzantine-bio-stub