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The Visigoths were never called Visigoths, only Goths, until Cassiodorus used the term, when referring to their loss against Clovis I in 507. Cassiodorus apparently invented the term based on the model of the "Ostrogoths", but using the older name of the Vesi, one of the tribal names which the fifth-century poet Sidonius Apollinaris, had already used when referring to the Visigoths.
The Visigoths were a new Gothic political unit brought together during the career of their first leader, Alaric I. [186] Following a major settlement of Goths in the Balkans made by Theodosius in 382, Goths received prominent positions in the Roman army. [187]
The Visigoths with their capital at Toulouse, remained de facto independent, and soon began expanding into Roman territory at the expense of the feeble Western empire. Under Theodoric I (418–451), the Visigoths attacked Arles (in 425 [10] and 430 [11]) and Narbonne (in 436), [11] but were checked by Litorius using Hunnic mercenaries.
The Visigoths ravaged Campania, Lucania, and Calabria. Nola and perhaps Capua were sacked, and the Visigoths threatened to invade Sicily and Africa. [104] However, they were unable to cross the Strait of Messina as the ships they had gathered were wrecked by a storm. [85] [105] Alaric died of illness at Consentia in late 410, mere months after ...
Imaginative portrait of Alaric in C. Strahlheim, Das Welttheater, 4.Band, Frankfurt a.M., 1836. According to Jordanes, a 6th-century Roman bureaucrat of Gothic origin—who later turned his hand to history—Alaric was born on Peuce Island at the mouth of the Danube Delta in present-day Romania and belonged to the noble Balti dynasty of the Thervingian Goths.
Visigoths had fewer cavalry, Ostrogoths had more cavalry than the Roman army, while Vandals were dominated by cavalry. [5] Cavalry mainly took the form of heavy, close combat cavalry armed with sword and lance. [4] Goths and likely Vandals as well favoured a long heavy lance of Sarmatian origin, the contus, which stood at 3
The only remaining examples of Visigothic architecture from the 6th century are the church of San Cugat del Vallés in Barcelona, the hermitage and church of Santa Maria de Lara in Burgos, Saint Frutuoso Chapel in Braga, the church of São Gião in Nazaré and the few remnants of the church at Cabeza de Griego in Cuenca.
After the Goths had settled in Scythia in the 2nd century, it is probable that a process of ethnogenesis was set in motion, and that most of the "Goths" of the 3rd and the 4th centuries were not in fact descended from Scandinavia but, much as was the case with the "Huns" in the following century, consisted of a heterogeneous population, which ...