Goths And Gothic Identity In The Ostrogothic Kingdom 229
pause. Being wrong about that is substantially different from being wrong
about the metre in a line of Vergil. One need only exchange the Goths with
a modern-day ethnic group, embattled by a more powerful imperial state, to
appreciate its rather pronounced ramifications. A certain degree of caution
and circumspection is in order in future consideration of these questions.
If it can be accepted that Goths thought themselves to be Gothic and that
Gothicness was influenced by Roman culture, questions about Gothic iden-
tity can begin to move away from the “did it exist?” variety. Instead, we might
ask: what did it look like? Or, in what ways was Gothicness substantially dif-
ferent from Romanness? These sorts of questions allow us more accurately to
assess the cultural transitions that characterized the end of the Roman period
and the dawn of the Middle Ages.
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