HISTORIOGRAPHY IN THE MIDDLE AGES - Julian Emperor

48 JOAQUÍN MARTÍNEZ PIZARROofficial grounds for the campaigns against the Vandals and the Goths(170–71, 305–07); he states that he once borrowed Cassiodorus’sHistory of the Goths, his main source, for three days from Cassiodorus’ssteward, a loan that could hardly have taken place outside ofConstantinople (preface). It is certain, therefore, that he wrote in thecapital of the Eastern Empire, and from a strong Constantinopolitanperspective. The preface, in the form of a letter to Castalius, a friendwho lives “close to the Goths”, i.e., in Italy, informs Castalius thathis request for a short version of Cassiodorus’s History has causedJordanes to interrupt his work on “a summary of the chronicles”,that he does not have the History at hand, but can remember it wellfrom the three-day loan, and that he has added a considerableamount of material that is either his own or taken from variousGreek and Latin authors. The Getica is not a wholly independentwork but part of a diptych. It shares a preface addressed to Vigilius,another friend, with the Romana, a two-part text consisting of a chronicleof world history from the Creation to the age of Augustus, plusa Roman history that reaches from the legendary founding of Rometo the Gothic wars of Jordanes’s own day. The Romana is that “summaryof the chronicles” that Jordanes had had to interrupt in orderto compose the Getica and to which he clearly returned.Jordanes wrote early in 551, after the patricius Germanus haddied as he was preparing to leave for Italy at the head of the Imperialarmies. A posthumous son, named after his father, had just beenborn to Germanus’s wife Matasuntha, granddaughter of Theodericand former wife of Vitiges. Jordanes mentions only the defeat ofVitiges, not the subsequent victories of Totila or the appointment ofNarses to replace Germanus and lead the army sent against theGoths. It is difficult to draw any conclusions as to the reasons forhis silence about Totila, since he does mention him briefly in theRomana (383–85). The absence of Narses from both works and theauthor’s constant praise of Belisarius suggest that in one respectJordanes did not agree with Justinian’s strategy and may have belongedto a faction that wished to keep Belisarius in command of the Gothicwar. 16 This point excepted, Jordanes appears to be strongly in favorof government policies at this moment of increased imperial intransigenceand explicitly subordinates the greatness of the Goths to that16Croke (1987), 128–29.