The Heroine and the Historian 303
Moesian concubine. Her cousin Amalaberga was queen of Thuringia, having
married its ruler Hermanfrid.28
The marriages of Audofleda to Theoderic and of Amalasuentha’s half-
sister Ostrogotho to Sigismund of Burgundy had taken place around the time
of the Burgundian king Chilperic’s death in 493, as the emerging Frankish,
Ostrogothic, and Burgundian rulers sought to establish a stable balance of
power. (The Frankish Clovis also married the Burgundian princess Clothild
around this time.) Once established, these alliances only had value as long as
those who valued them were alive and in a position to exert influence. The
balance of power was unstable and the lifespans of the parties to agreements
were often short. All three of Theoderic’s sons-in-law predeceased him, and by
the time of his death in 526 a number of his alliances were no longer in force.
An alliance with the Vandals had been settled in 500 when King Thrasamund
married Theoderic’s sister Amalafrida, but after Thrasamund’s death in 523
Amalafrida came into open conflict with his successor Hilderic. Similarly,
Ostrogotho had married Sigismund in the mid 490s, and up to the time of
Amalasuentha’s marriage in 515 Theoderic was able to suggest to Sigismund
that he and Ostrogotho might produce an heir to the Ostrogothic kingdom.29
Yet in 522, after Ostrogotho’s death, Sigismund put their son Sigiric to death
as a threat to his own power;30 Sigismund himself was deposed and killed not
long afterward.31
Amalasuentha’s own marriage to her father’s protégé Eutharic was informed
by a different strategy, that of marrying a daughter to a powerful general or
potential heir.32 This was a practice in wide currency by the Roman emperors
in the years leading up to Theoderic’s reign. In 467 the Emperor Anthemius
married his daughter Alypia to the magister militum Ricimer, while in 479 the
Emperor Zeno offered the hand of Anicia Juliana, daughter of the short-lived
western emperor Probus and granddaughter of Valentinian III, to Theoderic
himself.33 At its most effective, kinship diplomacy allowed dynasties to survive
in the face of adverse circumstances. A son-in-law could step in as a potential
heir if a son was missing and a grandson had not yet come of age. Daughters
could serve to bind promising young men to ageing mentors, a strategy which
28 The centrality of marriage diplomacy in this period has often been noticed, e.g. by
Wemple, Women in Frankish Society, and more recently, Herrin, Unrivalled Influence.
29 Shanzer, “Two Clocks and a Wedding”, pp. 225–58.
30 On this episode see Wood, “Clermont and Burgundy”, pp. 119–25.
31 Gregory of Tours, Histories 3.5, ed. Krusch/Levinson.
32 On the examples that follow see MacGeorge, Late Roman Warlords, pp. 235–9.
33 Malchus of Philadelphia, pp. 401–62.