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CHAPTER 4
Ostrogothic Provinces: Administration
and Ideology
Jonathan J. ArnoldIntroduction
This chapter focuses on the non-Italian lands that were part of the Ostrogothic
kingdom, here referred to as ‘provinces’, but not to be confused with the prov-
inces that constituted the two dioceses of Italy. Indeed, those Italian lands
were at the core of the Ostrogothic realm and so synonymous with it that the
term ‘Ostrogothic Italy’ is commonly used. Yet even in its earliest years, the
Ostrogothic kingdom included lands that lay beyond the diocesan boundaries
of Italy and were thus, strictly speaking, not Italian. Moreover, through military
campaigns and acts of annexation, these territories increased, particularly dur-
ing the reign of Theoderic (compare Figures 1.1 and 1.2). To the north and east,
the Ostrogothic regime claimed the Illyrian provinces of Noricum, Pannonia
Savia, and Dalmatia, later capturing Sirmium and re-establishing Italian con-
trol over Pannonia Sirmiensis. To the west, it annexed portions of eastern Gaul
(Mediterranean Provence), later adding the entirety of the Visigothic kingdom
and expanding into Burgundy. A realm of this magnitude had not existed in
the West since the mid 5th century, and both the Ostrogothic administration
and its Italian subjects, as self-conscious heirs to the western Roman Empire,
celebrated these achievements as a bona fide imperial restoration. Theoderic,
it was claimed, had conquered the barbarians and returned civilitas and liber-
tas to the Gauls; Amalasuentha, likewise, had made the Danube Roman again.
As former imperial territories, the very acquisition of these provinces helped
to legitimize contemporary understandings of the Ostrogothic kingdom as a
revived Roman Empire. But as reintegrated provinces governed according to
a Roman scheme, their possession and administration were also important
and lent further legitimacy to the Ostrogothic regime. That Sirmium produced
coins associating Theoderic with an unconquered Rome is significant; so, too,
the facts that Gaul and Spain were ruled again by a praetorian prefect and a
Gallo-Roman served as consul. No less significant were the taxes and resources
that provincials were expected to yield to the Ravenna government and its