The Origin and Deeds of the Goths (Getica)
A short Latin history of the Goths from their legendary origins to the author’s own day, written in the middle of the sixth century and based on a lost work of Cassiodorus. It preserves Gothic traditions found nowhere else.
Read the text at thelatinlibrary.com ↗English translation by Charles C. Mierow, The Gothic History of Jordanes (1915), at the Internet Archive ↗
Jordanes was of Gothic descent and wrote under the emperor Justinian. He says in his preface that he is abridging the twelve books of Cassiodorus on Gothic history, which are lost, with additions of his own.
For the fourth century he stands two hundred years from the events and mixes sound information with legend. His notice of Ulfilas is a single sentence (51.267): there were other Goths, called the Lesser, a numerous people, with Vulfila as their bishop and primate, “who is said to have taught them letters”; they live to this day in Moesia in the district of Nicopolis at the foot of Mount Haemus, numerous but poor and unwarlike. The value of the notice is that it describes the community as it still existed in his own time.
Cited in
- about AD 341, estimated date