The Goths
Peter Heather
358 pages including index
published in 1996

Most of Peter Heather's professional output has, in one way or another, featured the Goths. Usually this has been in the context of their contribution to the fall of the Roman Empire in the west, which Heather has long argued they played a central role in. In The Goths his focus is slightly different, more concerned with the Goths themselves than with how they interacted with the Roman Empire, though that still of course is an important part of their story. The Goths is an entry in the Blackwell series The Peoples of Europe and is meant as a one volume overview of their entire history, for people largely unfamiliar with them. As Heather mentions in his introduction, the last book to attempt this was published in 1888, so it was high time for an update.

Heather's divides his book in three main parts, preceded by an introductionary chapter. In this he discusses why the Goths were important and the problem of social identities, where the old assumptions of unchanging peoples recognisable by some checklist of unique features had been challenged in the 1950ties and 60ties by new research showing how individuals could change their identity when advantageous. Heather applies a synthesis of these approaches to the Goths, arguing that while there was such a thing as a Gothic group identity, it was fluid enough for non-Goths to join into and for the group as a whole to adapt to changing circumstances. He then goes on to first explore the origins of the Goths, thentheir invasion and defeat of the East Roman Empire and further wanderings through the Balkans into Italy and Gaul and finally looks at the history of the two Gothish kingdoms established on parts of the Western Empire. In all three parts Heather puts the search for Gothish identity central.

As with all "barbarian" peoples from this period, it's difficult to get a clear view of the Goths and their history, because all sources we have on them were written by Romans, who were by and large only interested in them as they impacted on their own empire. What's more, these Roman historians who did write about the Goths did so from within a tradition which assumed all barbarians were the same throughout history and which tended to hark back to ancient terms to describe the new peoples that Rome had to deal with from around the second century CE. What historical material we have on the Goths then is not always dependable, largely only mentions them in context of their conflicts with Rome and most importantly, is only what managed to survive through the centuries -- we know of more lost histories than we have surviving histories. All of which makes putting together a history of the Goths, especially before they came into contact with the Roman Empire, quite difficult.

Archaeology can fill in some of the gaps, but as Heather makes clear, you still need to be able to relate archaeological finds with the historical Goths. It's easy enough to assume that finds in an area a Roman historical chronicle says was the ancient homeland of the Goths are Gothic remains, but it's even easier to get into a circular argument where you proof the validity of this chroncicle through these archaeological discoveries and proof the remains where Gothic because that's what the chronicle said they were... Historians need to be very careful in evaluating archaeological evidence, especially when many of the same cultural remains can be related to multiple tribes and peoples.

It's no wonder than that the origins and early history of the Goths remains the most speculative, as Heather acknowledges. He uses a carefully explained mixture of archaeological evidence and ancient sources to argue that they had their origins in Poland, migrated from there towards the Black Sea area, from where in the second and third century CE the Goths moved towards the borders of the Roman Empire in the Balkans, according to Heather under pressure of the Huns. The most important of these sources is the Getica by Jordanes, a summary of a much larger Gothic history now lost, written by the earlier Roman historian Cassiodorus; it's the only remaining complete contemporary history of the Goths, written in the later half of the sixth century CE, but its historical accuracy is doubtful, with some historians, like Michael Kulikowski rejecting it completely. Heather doesn't go that far, but is careful to check Jordanes against other sources and archaeological evidence and to make clear when he talks nonsense. He leans the most on Jordanes in the earliest chapters, before they entered Roman consciousness.

Once the Goths do come into Roman orbit, their history luckily is a lot clearer. Most of the historians I've read on them largely agree over the events after the Goths crossed the Danube, though they often do differ on how to interpret these events. So everybody agrees that in 376 CE two groups of Goths ask for permission to settle in the Roman Empire. For one this is granted, for the other this is not, but because the emperor and the bulk of the Eastern Empire's troops are engaged in war against Persia and through a series of mistakes made by the Roman commanders on the spot, the Goths granted entry revolt and with the second group, manage to defeat Roman forces, culminating in the Battle of Adrianopolis, in which the emperor Valens is killed. Several more years of warfare and plunder in the Balkans and Greece follow, until the Romans establish a "treaty" with the two Gothic groups and settle them on vacant land.

Many Goths would serve in the Roman armies after this, with one general, Alaric I would become the first king of the Visigoths, descendants of the Gothic groups which had crossed the Danube in 376 CE, who rebelled in 395 CE, roamed through the Balkans, invaded Italy and after several years of frustration sacked Rome in 410 CE. Alaric died not long after, but his successors established the first barbarian kingdom on Roman soil, when they established the Visigothic kingdom, first in Southwest Gaul, later taking over most of Roman Spain.

Their example was followed by a second group of Goths, who under Theodoric the Great conqured Italy in 488 CE, after having broken lose of Hunnic supremacy three decades earlier. This became the Ostrogothic Kingdom, which became one of the great post-Roman powers in the west. After the death of Theodoric however, without a clear adult succesor, the Byzantine Empire reconquered Italy and ended Gothic rule there.

The Visigothic kingdom survived much longer, only ended with the Muslim invasions of Spain centuries later. By that time however any distinction between the Goths and the original Spanish-Roman population of their kingdom had largely disappeared.

Much of what Heather writes about in The Goths I already knew about from his other books, as well as those of other writers, but for those people who want a good, recent one volume overview of their history, this is it.