Theodoric Founds the Ostrogothic Kingdom of Italy
Theodoric killed Odoacer with his own hands at a banquet in Ravenna in March 493 and ruled Italy for thirty-three years. He had been sent by the eastern emperor Zeno, who had two problems and solved both at once: Odoacer, the Germanic commander who had deposed the last western emperor in 476 and was becoming independent, and Theodoric's Ostrogoths, who were raiding the Balkans and could not be defeated cheaply. Zeno commissioned one to remove the other. Theodoric had spent ten years as a hostage in Constantinople as a boy and understood the Roman world from inside it. The war took four years and ended with a negotiated agreement to rule jointly, which lasted ten days. What he then built was the most successful of the successor kingdoms. Roman civil administration continued unchanged under Roman officials — Cassiodorus and Boethius served him — with the Senate sitting, the consulship filled, the law applied, and the grain dole maintained. Goths did the fighting and were settled on a share of the land; Romans paid the taxes and held the offices. He restored aqueducts, drained marshes, repaired the walls of Rome, and built at Ravenna, where his mausoleum and San Apollinare Nuovo survive. He was an Arian ruling Catholics and left them alone for most of his reign. The last years soured. He executed Boethius on a charge of treasonable correspondence with Constantinople in 524, and Boethius wrote the Consolation of Philosophy in prison waiting. Justinian destroyed the kingdom within twenty years of his death.
- Year: 489 CE
- Category: Political
