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6th-century king of the Italian Ostrogoths
Vitiges
(also known as
Vitigis
,
Witiges
or
Wittigis
) (died 542) was king of
Ostrogothic Italy
from 536 to 540.
[1]
He succeeded to the throne of Italy in the early stages of the
Gothic War of 535?554
, as
Belisarius
had quickly captured
Sicily
the previous year and was in
southern Italy
at the head of the forces of
Justinian I
, the
Eastern Roman Emperor
.
Vitiges was the husband of Queen
Amalasuntha
's only surviving child,
Matasuntha
;
[2]
therefore, his royal legitimacy was based on this marriage.
[3]
The
panegyric
upon the wedding in 536 was delivered by
Cassiodorus
, the
praetorian prefect
, and survives, a traditionally Roman form of rhetoric that set the Gothic dynasty in a flatteringly Roman light. Soon after he was made king, Vitiges had his predecessor
Theodahad
murdered.
[4]
Theodahad had enraged the
Goths
because he failed to send any assistance to
Naples
when it was besieged by the Byzantines, led by Belisarius.
Belisarius took both Vitiges and Matasuntha captive to
Constantinople
,
[5]
and Vitiges died there in 542, without any children. Procopius described parallels among the deposition of Vitiges and
Croesus, king of Lydia
.
[3]
After his death, Matasuntha married the patrician
Germanus Justinus
, a cousin of Justinian I through his uncle
Justin I
.
[6]
In fiction
[
edit
]
Vitiges appears as a character in the time travel novel
Lest Darkness Fall
, by
L. Sprague de Camp
. He is portrayed by
Florin Piersic
in the 1968 film
Kampf um Rom
.
See also
[
edit
]
References
[
edit
]
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