Urban Life And Culture 253
and especially strategically important ones would have had a population of
Goths, at least soldiers but perhaps also their families in some cases.
As with other aspects of urban life, we have better evidence about urban
Gothic populations from Ravenna, the capital of the Ostrogothic kingdom.120
Ravenna’s central role in Ostrogothic policy can be seen in the fact that Gothic
soldiers had to pick up their donatives in person in Ravenna.121 We know,
however, that Goths were not just soldiers. The early 8th-century Anonymous
Cosmographer of Ravenna identifies three authors of his sources as ‘Gothic
philosophers’; it is usually assumed that he was using geographical texts writ-
ten by Goths for Theoderic.122 One Gothic scribe who was producing books
in Ravenna may have been Wiliarit (or Viliaric), identified in a papyrus docu-
ment as a spodeus and bokareis and in an Orosius manuscript as a magister
antiquarius. Fragments of manuscripts also attest the production of bilingual
Gothic-Latin texts in Ravenna.123 Finally, Ravenna and its suburbs had several
Arian churches that are assumed to have been for worship by Goths, including
one that was later known as the ecclesia Gothorum.124
One often-repeated idea is that there was a Gothic zone, a particular area
of the city where Goths lived and worshiped, in the north-eastern part of
Ravenna.125 This has been argued primarily on the basis of maps showing the
distribution of churches identified as Arian, namely the Arian episcopal com-
plex and two other ‘Gothic’ churches. However, Arian churches also existed in
other parts of Ravenna: there was a church dedicated to St Eusebius outside the
120 Brown, “Ebrei e orientali a Ravenna”, p. 82; Procopius (BG 5.11) notes a large number of
Goths in the city in 536, although this was at a moment when Goths from other cities
taken by the Byzantine troops had withdrawn to Ravenna.
121 Wolfram, Goths, p. 298.
122 Ravennatis anonymi cosmographia, ed. J. Schnetz, Itineraria Romana 2 (Leipzig, 1940); on
this text, see Staab, “Ostrogothic Geographers” and Dillemann/Janvier, La Cosmographie
du Ravennate.
123 Lazard, “Goti e Latini a Ravenna”, p. 119, has noted that no other artisans and business-
men mentioned in the surviving texts have recognizably “Gothic” names. Wiliarit is men-
tioned in Marini, no. 119, pp. 180–3; Tjäder, 1954, vol. 2, no. 34, pp. 91–104. The Orosius
manuscript is Biblioteca Laurenziana, Florence, Plut. 65.1. See Bertelli, “The production
and distribution of books”, p. 55. Cavallo, “La cultura scritta a Ravenna”, p. 84, notes that
another manuscript, Paris lat. 2235, is in the same hand, and that two other related manu-
scripts may also have come from Ravenna or Vivarium. See also Tjäder, “Der Codex argen-
teus in Uppsala”. On the bilingual manuscripts see Radiciotti, “Codici latini di ambiente
ostrogoto”.
124 These are identified only in the 9th-century Liber pontificalis ecclesiae Ravennatis (ch. 86
and 121).
125 See, e.g. Budriesi, “Ortodossi e ariani”, p. 109.