13 Facts About Jordanes

1.

Jordanes, written as Jordanis or Jornandes, was a 6th-century Eastern Roman bureaucrat widely believed to be of Gothic descent who became a historian later in life.

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2.

Jordanes wrote in Late Latin rather than the classical Ciceronian Latin.

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3.

Jordanes was asked by a friend to write Getica as a summary of a multi-volume history of the Goths by the statesman Cassiodorus that existed then but has since been lost.

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4.

Jordanes was selected for his known interest in history and because of his own Gothic background.

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5.

Jordanes had been a high-level, or secretary, of a small client state on the Roman frontier in Scythia Minor, modern southeastern Romania and northeastern Bulgaria.

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6.

Jordanes was, or secretary to Gunthigis Baza, a nephew of Candac and a magister militum of the leading Ostrogoth clan of the Amali.

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7.

Jordanes wrote his Romana at the behest of a certain Vigilius.

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8.

The form of address that Jordanes uses and his admonition that Vigilius "turn to God" would seem to rule out this identification.

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9.

Castalius wanted a short book about the subject, and Jordanes obliged with an excerpt based on memory, possibly supplemented with other material to which he had access.

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10.

Jordanes lets the history of the Goths commence with the emigration of Berig with three ships from Scandza to Gothiscandza, in a distant past.

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11.

Jordanes tells how the Goths sacked "Troy and Ilium" just after they had recovered somewhat from the war with Agamemnon .

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12.

The less fictional part of Jordanes's work begins when the Goths encounter Roman military forces in the third century AD.

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13.

Arne Søby Christensen and Michael Kulikowski argue in their works that Jordanes developed in Getica the history of Getic and Dacian peoples, which he supplemented with probably-invented events such as a Gothic war against Egypt.

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