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Athanaric
Athanaric or Atanaric (; died 381) was king of several branches of the Thervingian Goths () for at least two decades in the 4th century. Throughout his reign, Athanaric was faced with invasions by the Roman Empire, the Huns and a civil war with Christian rebels. He is considered the first king of the Visigoths, who later settled in Iberia, where they founded the Visigothic Kingdom. Life Athanaric made his first appearance in recorded history in 369, when he engaged in battle with the Roman emperor Valens and ultimately negotiated a favorable peace for his people. During his reign, many Thervingi had converted to Arian Christianity, which Athanaric vehemently opposed, fearing that Christianity would destroy Gothic culture. According to the report of Sozomen, more than 300 Christians were killed in Athanaric's persecution during the 370s. Fritigern, Athanaric's rival, was an Arian and had the favor of Valens, who shared his religious beliefs. In the early 370s, Athanaric succe ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Athanaric And Valens On The Danbue
Athanaric or Atanaric (; died 381) was king of several branches of the Thervingian Goths () for at least two decades in the 4th century. Throughout his reign, Athanaric was faced with invasions by the Roman Empire, the Huns and a civil war with Christian rebels. He is considered the first king of the Visigoths, who later settled in Iberia, where they founded the Visigothic Kingdom. Life Athanaric made his first appearance in recorded history in 369, when he engaged in battle with the Roman emperor Valens and ultimately negotiated a favorable peace for his people. During his reign, many Thervingi had converted to Arian Christianity, which Athanaric vehemently opposed, fearing that Christianity would destroy Gothic culture. According to the report of Sozomen, more than 300 Christians were killed in Athanaric's persecution during the 370s. Fritigern, Athanaric's rival, was an Arian and had the favor of Valens, who shared his religious beliefs. In the early 370s, Athanaric success ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Goths
The Goths were a Germanic people who played a major role in the fall of the Western Roman Empire and the emergence of medieval Europe. They were first reported by Graeco-Roman authors in the 3rd century AD, living north of the Danube in what is now Ukraine, Moldova, and Romania. From here they conducted raids into Roman territory, and large numbers of them joined the Roman military. These early Goths lived in the regions where archaeologists find the Chernyakhov culture, which flourished throughout this region during the 3rd and 4th centuries. In the late 4th century, the lands of the Goths in present-day Ukraine were overwhelmed by a significant westward movement of Alans and Huns from the east. Large numbers of Goths subsequently concentrated upon the Roman border at the Lower Danube, seeking refuge inside the Roman Empire. After they entered the Empire, violence broke out, and Goth-led forces inflicted a devastating defeat upon the Romans at the Battle of Adrianople in 378. Ro ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Fritigern
Fritigern (fl. 370s) was a Thervingian Gothic chieftain whose decisive victory at Adrianople during the Gothic War (376–382) led to favourable terms for the Goths when peace was made with Gratian and Theodosius I in 382. Name ''Fritigern'' appears in the Latinized form ''Fritigernus''. The Gothic name is reconstructed as *''Frithugairns'' "desiring peace". The Germanized name under which Fritigern is honored in the Walhalla temple (1842) is ''Friediger''. Conflicts against Athanaric The earliest references to Fritigern concern the period between the attack on the Thervingi by Valens (367/9) and the Hunnic raids on the Thervingi (ca. 376). In this time, a civil war may have broken out between Fritigern and Athanaric, a prominent Therving ruler. The conflict between Fritigern and Athanaric is mentioned by Socrates Scholasticus, Sozomen, and Zosimus, but not by Ammianus Marcellinus and Philostorgius. Before or during this civil war, Fritigern converted to A ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Valens
Valens (; ; 328 – 9 August 378) was Roman emperor from 364 to 378. Following a largely unremarkable military career, he was named co-emperor by his elder brother Valentinian I, who gave him the Byzantine Empire, eastern half of the Roman Empire to rule. In 378, Valens was defeated and killed at the Battle of Adrianople against the invading Goths, which astonished contemporaries and marked the beginning of barbarian encroachment into Roman territory. As emperor, Valens continually faced threats both internal and external. He defeated, after some dithering, the usurper Procopius (usurper), Procopius in 366, and campaigned against the Goths across the Danube in 367 and 369. In the following years, Valens focused on the eastern frontier, where he faced the perennial threat of Sasanian Empire, Persia, particularly in Kingdom of Armenia (antiquity), Armenia, as well as additional conflicts with the Saracens and Isaurians. Domestically, he inaugurated the Aqueduct of Valens in Cons ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Gothic Persecution Of Christians
There is a record of Gothic persecution of Christians in the third century. According to Basil of Caesarea, some prisoners taken captive in a Gothic raid on Cappadocia around 260 preached the gospel to their captors and were martyred. One of their names was Eutychus. Bishop Dionysius of Caesarea sent messengers to the Goths to ransom captives and there was still a written record of these attempts in Basil's time. History Two main outbreaks of persecution of Christians by the 4th-century Gothic authorities are recorded, in 347/8 under Aoric (according to Auxentius of Durostorum) and between 367 and 378 under Aoric's son, the ''iudex'' ('' kindins'') Athanaric. The persecution of Christians under Athanaric shows that Christians were still a minority among the Tervingi in the 370s, but that they had become numerous enough to be considered a threat to Gothic culture. It is remarkable that Athanaric did not persecute Christians in general, but specifically converted ''Goths'', while ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Thervingi
The Thervingi, Tervingi, or Teruingi (sometimes pluralised Tervings or Thervings) were a Gothic people of the plains north of the Lower Danube and west of the Dniester River in the 3rd and the 4th centuries. They had close contacts with the Greuthungi, another Gothic people from east of the Dniester, and they also had significant interactions with the Roman Empire. They were one of the main components of the large movement of Goths and other peoples over the Danube in 376, and they are seen as one of the most important ancestral groups of the Visigoths. Etymology According to a proposal made by Moritz Schönfeld in 1911, and still widely cited, the name ''Tervingi'' was probably related to the Gothic word "''triu''", equivalent to English "tree", and thus means "forest people".Wolfram, ''History of the Goths'', trans. T. J. Dunlop (Berkeley, University of California Press, 1988), p. 25. Herwig Wolfram agrees with the older position of Franz Altheim that such geographical name ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Visigothic Kingdom
The Visigothic Kingdom, Visigothic Spain or Kingdom of the Goths () was a Barbarian kingdoms, barbarian kingdom that occupied what is now southwestern France and the Iberian Peninsula from the 5th to the 8th centuries. One of the Germanic peoples, Germanic successor states to the Western Roman Empire, it was originally created by the settlement of the Visigoths under King Wallia in the province of Gallia Aquitania in southwest Gaul by the Roman government and then extended by conquest over all of Hispania. The Kingdom maintained independence from the Eastern Roman or Byzantine Empire, whose attempts to re-establish Roman authority in Hispania were only partially successful and short-lived. The Visigoths were Romanization (cultural), romanized central Europeans who had moved west from the Danube, Danube Valley. They became foederati of Rome, and sought to restore the Roman order against the hordes of Vandals, Alans and Suebi. The Fall of the Western Roman Empire, Western Roman Emp ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Gothic Paganism
Gothic paganism or Gothic polytheism was the original religion of the Goths before their conversion to Christianity. History The Goths first appear in historical records in the early 3rd century and were Christianised in the 4th and the 5th centuries. Information on the form of Germanic paganism practiced by the Goths before Christianisation is thus limited to a comparatively narrow and sparsely documented time window in the 3rd and the 4th centuries. The centre of the Gothic cult was the village or clan (''Kuni'') and the ritual sacrificial meal held by the villagers under the leadership of the ''reiks''. The reiks saw themselves as the guardians of ethnic tradition. That was expressed starkly in the Gothic persecution of Christians in the 370s in which the reiks Athanaric saw his privilege threatened by the new religion. He responded by the persecution of converted Goths but not of Christian foreigners. According to the Passio of Sabas the Goth, Sabas was executed for ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Alaric I
Alaric I (; , 'ruler of all'; ; – 411 AD) was the first Germanic kingship, king of the Visigoths, from 395 to 410. He rose to leadership of the Goths who came to occupy Moesia—territory acquired a couple of decades earlier by a combined force of Goths and Alans after the Battle of Adrianople. Alaric began his career under the Gothic soldier Gainas and later joined the Roman army. Once an ally of Rome under the Roman emperor Theodosius I, Theodosius, Alaric helped defeat the Franks and other allies of a would-be Roman usurper. Despite losing many thousands of his men, he received little recognition from Rome and left the Roman army disappointed. After the death of Theodosius and the disintegration of the Roman armies in 395, he is described as reiks, king of the Visigoths. As the leader of the only effective field force remaining in the Balkans, he sought Roman legitimacy, never quite achieving a position acceptable to himself or to the Roman authorities. He operated ma ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Aoric
Aoric (Latinized ''Aoricus'') was a Thervingian Gothic king (''reiks'' and '' kindins'') who lived in the 4th century. Aoric was son of Ariaric and father of Athanaric, he was raised in Constantinople, where a statue was erected in his honour. He was recorded by Auxentius of Durostorum leading a persecution of Gothic Christians in 347/348. Herwig Wolfram noted that "alliteration, variation, and rhythm in the line of names Athanaric, Aoric, Ariaric resemble the 'ideal type' of Hadubrand, Hildebrand, Heribrand". He considered the similarities and comparison suggested that all three kings were members of the Balti dynasty The Balt dynasty Roger Collins, ''Visigothic Spain, 409–711'' (Blackwell, 2008), p. 45.A. Barbero and M. I. Loring, "The Formation of the Sueve and Visigothic Kingdoms in Spain", in Paul Fouracre (ed.), ''The New Cambridge Medieval History'', Vol .... References {{reflist Gothic kings Balt dynasty 4th-century monarchs in Europe 4th-century Gothic peop ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Theodosius I
Theodosius I ( ; 11 January 347 – 17 January 395), also known as Theodosius the Great, was Roman emperor from 379 to 395. He won two civil wars and was instrumental in establishing the Nicene Creed as the orthodox doctrine for Nicene Christianity. Theodosius was the last emperor to rule the entire Roman Empire before its administration was permanently split between the Western Roman Empire and the Eastern Roman Empire. He ended the Gothic War (376–382) with terms disadvantageous to the empire, with the Goths remaining within Roman territory but as nominal allies with political autonomy. Born in Hispania, Theodosius was the son of a high-ranking general of the same name, Count Theodosius, under whose guidance he rose through the ranks of the Roman army. Theodosius held independent command in Moesia in 374, where he had some success against the invading Sarmatians. Not long afterwards, he was forced into retirement, and his father was executed under obscure circumstanc ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Visigoths
The Visigoths (; ) were a Germanic people united under the rule of a king and living within the Roman Empire during late antiquity. The Visigoths first appeared in the Balkans, as a Roman-allied Barbarian kingdoms, barbarian military group united under the command of Alaric I. Their exact origins are believed to have been diverse but they probably included many descendants of the Thervingi who had moved into the Roman Empire beginning in 376 and had played a major role in defeating the Romans at the Battle of Adrianople in 378. Relations between the Romans and Alaric's Visigoths varied, with the two groups making treaties when convenient, and warring with one another when not. Under Alaric, the Visigoths invaded Italy and sack of Rome (410), sacked Rome in August 410. The Visigoths were subsequently settled in southern Gaul as ''foederati'' to the Romans, a relationship that was established in 418. This developed as an independent kingdom with its Capital city, capital at Toulou ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
