Jordanes

Jordanes (jôrdā`nēz), fl. 6th cent., historian of the Ostrogoths, b. in the lower Danube region. His History of the Goths, an abridgment of the lost work of Cassiodorus, is the only extant source for Ostrogothic history and one of the few works written in Vulgar Latin.

---

Jordanes 

(Jordanis), a Gothic historian of the sixth century. An Ostrogoth in origin, Jordanes was notarius (secretary) of an Alani military leader who was in the service of the Eastern Roman Empire. Jordanes’ principal work is On the Origin and Deeds of the Getae (taken up to the year 551)—one of the most important sources of the history of the Goths and the peoples of the northern Black Sea coast and of the entire period of the great migration of peoples. It also contains brief but valuable data on the ancient Slavs. An abridged version of a work of Cassiodorus which has not survived, Jordanes’ work also contains information on events occurring in his lifetime. Jordanes reflected the desires of the part of the Ostrogoth nobility that wanted an accord with Byzantium, even at the price of subordination to the latter.

WORKS

“O proiskhozhdenii i deianiiakh getov.” Getica. Introductory article, translation, and commentary by E. Ch. Skrzhinskaia. Moscow, 1960. (With bibliography.)

REFERENCE

Wagner, N. Getica: Untersuchungen zum Leben des Iordanes … Berlin, 1967.