JORDANES (fl. c. 55o), the historian of the Gothic nation. In his history of the Goths (cap. 5o), he tells us that his grand father Paria was notary to Candac, the chief of a confederation of Alans and other tribes settled during the latter half of the 5th century on the south of the Danube, and that he himself was the notary of Candac's nephew, the Gothic chief Gunthigis, until he became a monk. He belonged to a confederation of Germanic tribes, embracing Alans and Scyrians, which had come under the influence of the Ostrogoths settled on the lower Danube. He is accordingly friendly to the Goths, even apart from the influence of Cassiodorus, to whom he is largely indebted for his material; but he is also prepossessed in favour of the eastern emperors in whose territories this confederation lived. This makes him an impartial authority on the last days of the Ostrogoths. His inter ests lie, as Mommsen says, within a triangle of which the three points are Sirmium, Larissa and Constantinople.
We pass from the shadowy personality of Jordanes to his works.
I. The Romana, or, as he himself calls it, De summa temporum vel origine actibusque gentis Romanorum, was composed in 551. It was begun before, but published after, the Getica. It is a sketch of the history of the world from the creation, based on Jerome, the epitome of Florus, Orosius and the ecclesiastical history of Socrates, but it is valuable only for Jordanes's own period.
2. The other work commonly called De rebus Geticis or Getica, was styled by its author, De origine actibusque Getarum. He informs us that while he was engaged upon the Romana a friend named Castalius invited him to compress the twelve books—now lost—of the senator Cassiodorus, on The Origin and Actions of the Goths. Jordanes professes to have had this work for but three days, and to reproduce the sense not the words ; but his book evidently contains long verbatim extracts. The preface is also taken almost word for word from Rufinus's translation of Origen's commentary on the epistle to the Romans. In the 18 years which elapsed between 533, the date when Cassiodorus finished his work, and the composition of the Getica of Jordanes, great events, most disastrous for the Romano-Gothic monarchy of Theodoric, had taken place. It was no longer possible to write as if the whole civilization of the Western world would sit down con tentedly under the shadow of East Gothic dominion and Amal sovereignty. And, moreover, the instincts of Jordanes, as a sub ject of the Eastern Empire, predisposed him to flatter Justinian who had overthrown the barbarian kingdom in Italy. Hence we
perceive two currents in the Getica. On the one hand, as a tran scriber of the philo-Goth Cassiodorus, he magnifies the race of Alaric and Theodoric, and on the other hand he speaks of the great anti-Teuton emperor Justinian, and of his reversal of the German conquests of the 5th century, in language which would have grated on the ears of Totila and his heroes.
The Getica falls naturally into four parts. The first (chs. i.– xiii.) gives a geographical description of the three-quarters of the world, and in more detail of Britain and Scanzia (Sweden), from which the Goths under their king Berig migrated to the southern coast of the Baltic. Their migration across what has since been called Lithuania, and their differentiation into Visi goths and Ostrogoths, are next described. The second section (chs. xiv.–xxiv.) sets forth the genealogy of the Amal kings, and describes the inroads of the Goths into the Roman Empire in the 3rd century, with the foundation and the overthrow of the king dom of Hermanric. The third section (chs. xxv.–xlvii.) traces the history of the West Goths from the Hunnish invasion to the downfall of the Gothic kingdom in Gaul under Alaric II. (376– 507), the best part being the seven chapters devoted to Attila's invasion of Gaul and the battle of the Mauriac plains. The fourth section (chs. xlviii.–lx.) traces the history of the East Goths from the same Hunnish invasion to the first overthrow of the Gothic monarchy in Italy (376-539).
Jordanes has preserved extremely precious information. The Teutonic tribes whose dim origins he records have in the course of centuries attained to world-wide dominion. The battle in the Mauriac plains of which he is really the sole historian, is now seen to have had important bearings on the destinies of the world. Thus the hasty pamphlet of a half-educated Gothic monk has been forced into prominence, almost into rivalry with finished classical productions.
The classical edition of the above works is that of Mommsen (in Mon. Germ. hist. auct. antiq., v., 1882), which supersedes the older editions, such as that in Muratori's Scriptt. rer. Ital., vol. i. See Von Sybel, De fontibus Jordanis (1838) ; Schirren, De ratione quae inter Jordanem et Cassiodorum intercedat Commentatio (Dorpat, 1858) ; Kopke's Die Anfdnge des Konigthums bei den Goshen (5859) ; Dahn's Die Konige der Germanen, vol. ii. (Munich, 1860 ; Ebert's Geschichte der Christlich-Lateinischen Literatur (Leipzig, 1874) ; Wattenbach's Deutschlands Geschichtsquellen im Mittelalter (1877) ; and the intro duction of Mommsen to his edition.