Goths And Gothic Identity In The Ostrogothic Kingdom 219
educated in the Gothic language at the royal court.93 And even those who
think that the army was primarily a culturally Gothic institution allow that
Italians were increasingly undertaking martial roles. Liberius, Cyprian, and
Cassiodorus held military posts.94 It is also possible that Italo-Romans from
humbler social strata found ways into the Gothic military apparatus. An oft-
cited, though variously interpreted, aphorism of Theoderic holds that while the
rich Goth acted the Roman, the poor Roman played the Goth.95 It is possible
that the range of Gothic traits adopted by lower-class Romans extended to the
military, and that Gothic regiments were reinforced by Italo-Roman recruits
making ‘sideways’ moves from garrisons to field armies.96 There is agreement
that boundaries between Goths and Romans were being eroded, and given
time Ostrogothic Italy would have experienced the same sort of socio-cultural
integration that occurred in Visigothic Spain and Frankish Gaul. Some argue,
though, that the outbreak of the Gothic War halted these processes, and that
the preceding forty years were not sufficient to collapse cultural divisions.
Staunch resistance against imperial armies for the better part of twenty years
was proof that a communal sense of Gothicness continued to operate.97
It is possible, however, to interpret the Roman-Gothic dynamic in sub-
stantially different terms. Instead of merely recognizing that cultural integra-
tion was something “in the works”, some models aim to eliminate differences
between Goths and Romans almost entirely. One approach gives specifically
Roman answers to the question of the Gothic role in Italian society. With an
emphasis on the plasticity of Romanness, it argues that Gothic traits were
subsumed and renegotiated by a Roman culture that had a thousand years
of imperialist experience folding outsiders into itself. The initial foreignness of
Goths is not denied, but any perceived Gothic difference (bellicosity, savagery)
was co-opted and recast as an established ‘Roman’ virtue (military excellence,
indomitability). Goths and Gothicness came to represent martialism, which
was itself the old idealized Roman trait of virtus. The Goths were heroized as
Italy’s defenders, vital to the protection of what was in fact the restored Roman
Empire. Under this regime, Goths and Italo-Romans became the ‘Romans’,
93 Cassiodorus, Variae 8.21.6–7. More on the Gothic language below.
94 Liberius: Cassiodorus, Variae 11.1.16; Cyprian: Variae 8.21.5; Cassiodorus: Variae 9.25.9.
It should be noted, though, that the duties of these postings were markedly different.
Liberius commanded soldiers in military engagements, while Cassiodorus was merely
responsible for dispensing to soldiers provisions from local annonarial exactions.
95 Anonymus Valesianus 12.61.
96 Halsall, Barbarian Migrations, p. 335.
97 Heather, “Merely an Ideology?”, p. 55.