Introduction 9
and the diplomatic significance of marriage alliances were hardly Ostrogothic
inventions; rather, they were central features of several 4th- and 5th-century
imperial courts.10
Demography, the Environment, and the Economy
The barbarian kings and queens of Italy rose to power in an age marked by
demographic decline and the narrowing of economic horizons, especially with
respect to interregional trade. The remarkable downward trajectory of the city
of Rome’s population, from ca. 500,000 in 400 to less than 50,000 after the
Gothic War (535–54) is perhaps an extreme example. As Squatriti argues here,
in what is the first study of Ostrogothic environmental history, a population
like classical Rome’s was “ecologically unsustainable” without dramatic forms
of state intervention, which it received through the first half of the 5th century,
when African grain and oil poured into the city without difficulty. However,
its loss of people is part of a less dramatic demographic decline that occurred
throughout the peninsula (and beyond), in both urban and (somewhat less
clearly) rural locations.11 These population changes were well underway by the
late 5th century, when Theoderic entered Rome, and continued apace into the
7th century long after the Ostrogoths had ceased to rule Italy. Studies have also
shown that the climates of Europe and the Mediterranean became colder and
wetter during the 5th and 6th centuries, though responses to and outcomes of
these environmental changes varied enormously from region to region within
the Ostrogothic kingdom. Nevertheless, a colder, wetter, and less populated
Italy was also one whose material needs were shifting. The Ostrogothic period
witnessed the gradual abandonment and/or repurposing of Italy’s once exten-
sive and, in some cases, luxurious villas (with notable exceptions such as San
Giovanni in Ruoti) as well as shifts toward more extensive forms of agricul-
ture, woodland crops (e.g. chestnuts), and animal husbandry. And as ceramic
evidence shows, while a few coastal Italian cities such as Rome, Ravenna, and
Naples still received oil, wine, and other products from North Africa and the
eastern Mediterranean, inland areas were slowly cut off from such commodi-
ties and became increasingly reliant on local production centres. Whether
people were actually healthier living a more narrowly circumscribed material
10 McEvoy, Child Emperor Rule.
11 African food imports dwindled substantially after 439 by which time the Vandals con-
trolled Carthage and the North African fleet and deliveries of the annona became increas-
ingly irregular and dependent upon troubled diplomacy between Italy and Africa.