Goths And Gothic Identity In The Ostrogothic Kingdom 217
soldiers were kept.79 One letter from the Variae orders Gothic soldiers from
Samnium and Picenum to assemble in Ravenna to be reviewed by Theoderic
personally and thereafter to receive their donative. These practices suggest
mechanisms for mutual identification. It is not certain that Gothic troops were
summoned before the Gothic king on an annual basis, but if they were, and
the Procopian evidence of annuality suggests that they might have been, the
combined elements of professional exclusivity, monetary reward, and contact
between soldiers and their king must have reinforced a shared and elitist sense
of Gothic identity.80
Related to debates over the functional roles of Goths and Italo-Romans
are questions about the laws governing them. Were Goths and Romans sub-
ject to separate juridical structures? Provisions from the Variae indicate that
disputes among Goths were adjudicated by a comes Gothorum, a Gothic offi-
cial appointed by Theoderic. Cases involving only Romans were settled by
Roman officials, and those with mixed disputants required that the comes con-
sult with a Roman legal expert and thereafter render a decision.81 Some see
this as a clear indication that the legal integration of Goths into Italo-Roman
society was not seamless, and that the Goths maintained their own tradi-
tions of dispute resolution.82 The nature of these practices remains unclear to
us. Ostrogothic Italy seems never to have produced a legal code similar to those
of other western successor states in which separate Roman and barbarian laws
were in use.83 The Goths in Italy possibly operated with wergilds, feuds, and
customs similar to those on the books in other barbarian kingdoms.84 Others
disagree, pointing to specific Cassiodoran language: “We do not permit those
whom we wish to defend with the same purpose to live under separate laws”;
79 Cassiodorus, Variae 5.36 records that the vir sublimis Starcedius was granted an honour-
able discharge and that his donative had been revoked. This suggests the keeping of a
central register of the Gothic soldiery: Heather, “Gens and Regnum”, p. 120; James, Europe’s
Barbarians, p. 87.
80 Heather, “Theoderic, King of the Goths”, pp. 161–2; id., “Gens and Regnum”, p. 120; Sirago,
“I Goti nelle Variae di Cassiodoro”, pp. 188–9; cf. Arnold, Theoderic and the Roman Imperial
Restoration, p. 135 n. 75, who contests that the donatives promoted Gothic identity.
81 Cassiodorus, Variae 3.13.2, 7.3.1, 8.3.4.
82 Ensslin, Theoderich der Grosse, pp. 231–2; Heather, “Gens and Regnum”, p. 122; Moorhead,
Theoderic, pp. 75–80.
83 Useful here is Lafferty, Law and Society which argues that the so-called Edict of Theoderic
is based on demonstrably Roman legal practice, but adapted to the 6th-century needs of
Ostrogothic Italy; the Edict’s preface states that it was intended to govern both Romans
and barbarians.
84 Heather, “Gens and Regnum”, p. 122.