Ostrogothic Provinces: Administration and Ideology

CHAPTER 4 Ostrogothic Provinces: Administration and Ideology

Jonathan J. Arnold

Introduction

This chapter focuses on the non-Italian lands that were part of the Ostrogothic kingdom, here referred to as ‘provinces’, but not to be confused with the provinces that constituted the two dioceses of Italy. Indeed, those Italian lands were at the core of the Ostrogothic realm and so synonymous with it that the term ‘Ostrogothic Italy’ is commonly used. Yet even in its earliest years, the Ostrogothic kingdom included lands that lay beyond the diocesan boundaries of Italy and were thus, strictly speaking, not Italian. Moreover, through military campaigns and acts of annexation, these territories increased, particularly dur- ing the reign of Theoderic (compare Figures 1.1 and 1.2). To the north and east, the Ostrogothic regime claimed the Illyrian provinces of Noricum, Pannonia Savia, and Dalmatia, later capturing Sirmium and re-establishing Italian con- trol over Pannonia Sirmiensis. To the west, it annexed portions of eastern Gaul (Mediterranean Provence), later adding the entirety of the Visigothic kingdom and expanding into Burgundy. A realm of this magnitude had not existed in the West since the mid 5th century, and both the Ostrogothic administration and its Italian subjects, as self-conscious heirs to the western Roman Empire, celebrated these achievements as a bona fide imperial restoration. Theoderic, it was claimed, had conquered the barbarians and returned civilitas and liber- tas to the Gauls; Amalasuentha, likewise, had made the Danube Roman again. As former imperial territories, the very acquisition of these provinces helped to legitimize contemporary understandings of the Ostrogothic kingdom as a revived Roman Empire. But as reintegrated provinces governed according to a Roman scheme, their possession and administration were also important and lent further legitimacy to the Ostrogothic regime. That Sirmium produced coins associating Theoderic with an unconquered Rome is significant; so, too, the facts that Gaul and Spain were ruled again by a praetorian prefect and a Gallo-Roman served as consul. No less significant were the taxes and resources that provincials were expected to yield to the Ravenna government and its

representatives nor the justice and acts of succour that they were supposed to receive in exchange.1 This chapter, therefore, will provide an overview of these non-Italian lands, focusing on their acquisition and administration, ideological importance, and finally loss. Indeed, though the Ostrogothic kingdom claimed many non- Italian lands and prided itself on their possession, none of these provinces remained within its grasp beyond the opening years of Justinian’s invasion. In the end, and despite its lofty claims and achievements, this revived Roman Empire remained at its core an ‘Empire of Italy’.2

Provinces from Odovacer to Theoderic

By 476 the western Roman Empire had been greatly reduced in size, becoming essentially a truncated version of the prefecture of Italy. To the south, Africa had been lost to the Vandals, who wrested the islands of Corsica, Sardinia, and possibly Sicily from Italia Suburbicaria. To the north, the Alpine reaches of Raetia and Noricum had been overrun by peoples like the Alamanni and Rugi and were devolving to self-rule. And to the west and east, only a handful of provinces bordering Italy remained, the rest having been lost piece by piece over the course of the 5th century.3 Following his successful coup, Odovacer yielded Italy’s remaining Gallic territories to the Visigoths, who had overrun Provence in the interim. At the same time he secured a treaty with the Vandals, who relinquished their claims to most of Sicily in exchange for an annual payment of tribute. Odovacer’s deal- ings with the former imperial territories to the north and east of Italy, in the diocese of Western Illyricum, were more complicated. Across the Adriatic, Dalmatia was ruled independently by Julius Nepos, who was still viewed in Constantinople as the legitimate emperor of the West. At the insistence of the eastern emperor Zeno, therefore, Odovacer agreed to rule Italy as Nepos’ sub- ordinate and agent and did so, at least nominally, until the exiled emperor’s

1 For an elaboration: Arnold, Theoderic, especially pp. 231–3. 2 For the term, which was used in reference to the late western empire and the Ostrogothic kingdom: Prostko-Prostyński, Utraeque res publicae, pp. 100–1, and Arnold, Theoderic, pp. 15, 22, 43–4. 3 Broadly: Stein, Bas-Empire 1, pp. 377–97; also Alföldy, Noricum, pp. 213–24; Heuberger, “Rätien”, pp. 83–8; Clover, “Bluff”, pp. 236–8; and Drinkwater, Alamanni, pp. 331–44.