Ostrogothic Kingdom

The Gothic state that governed Italy better than the empire it replaced, and was destroyed by the empire trying to take it back. Theodoric invaded Italy in 489 on the authority of the eastern emperor, who wanted him out of the Balkans, defeated Odoacer, and then killed him personally at a banquet after agreeing to share power. He ruled from Ravenna for over thirty years. His system rested on a strict division: Goths were the army and Romans the civil administration, Goths were Arian Christians and Romans Catholic, and the two populations kept separate law and separate churches. The Roman senate continued to meet, the consulship continued to be filled, aqueducts and public buildings were repaired, and the philosopher Boethius and the administrator Cassiodorus served the regime - though Theodoric had Boethius executed on a charge of treason, and Boethius wrote the Consolation of Philosophy in prison awaiting it. The mosaics Theodoric commissioned in Ravenna are a World Heritage site, and his mausoleum is roofed with a single block of stone weighing hundreds of tonnes. The arrangement did not survive him. Justinian invaded in 535 to reclaim Italy, and the Gothic War ground on for eighteen years, wrecking the country far more thoroughly than the Gothic conquest had. Rome changed hands repeatedly and its aqueducts were cut. The Ostrogoths were destroyed as a people by 553. The Lombards arrived fifteen years later. The kingdom governed Italy, Dalmatia and parts of the Alps from 493 to 553. Ravenna was the capital and is a World Heritage site for its mosaics. Theodoric had been raised as a hostage in Constantinople. Cassiodorus preserved the kingdom's official correspondence in a collection that survives.

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