Visigoths - Division of The Goths: Tervingi and Vesi

Division of The Goths: Tervingi and Vesi

The first record of the Tervingi is from around that same date; the Greuthungi, Ostrogothi, and Vesi are all noted no earlier than 388. The first mention of the Tervingi occurs in a eulogy of the emperor Maximian (285–305), delivered in or shortly after 291 (perhaps at Trier on 20 April 292) and traditionally ascribed to Claudius Mamertinus, which says that the "Tervingi, another division of the Goths" (Tervingi pars alia Gothorum) joined with the Taifali to attack the Vandals and Gepidae. The term "Vandals" may have been erroneous for "Victohali", for around 360 the historian Eutropius reports that Dacia was currently (nunc) inhabited by Taifali, Victohali, and Tervingi.

According to the interpretation of Herwig Wolfram, the Notitia Dignitatum equates the Vesi with the Tervingi in a reference to the years 388–391. The Greuthungi are first named by Ammianus Marcellinus, writing no earlier than 392 and perhaps later than 395, and basing his account of the words of a Tervingian chieftain who is attested as early as 376. The Ostrogoths are first named in a document dated September 392 from Milan. Claudian mentions that they, together with the Gruthungi, inhabit Phrygia. According to Wolfram, the primary sources either use the terminology of Tervingi/Greuthungi or Vesi/Ostrogothi and never mix the pairs. All four names were used together on occasion, but the pairing was always preserved, as in Gruthungi, Austrogothi, Tervingi, Visi. That the Tervingi were the same people as the Vesi/Visigothi and the Greuthungi as the Ostrogothi is also supported by Jordanes. He identified the Visigothic kings from Alaric I to Alaric II as the heirs of the 4th-century Tervingian king Athanaric and the Ostrogothic kings from Theodoric the Great to Theodahad as the heirs of the Greuthungian king Ermanaric. This interpretation, the most common among scholars today, is not universal.

Herwig Wolfram concludes that the terms Tervingi and Greuthungi were geographical identifiers used by each tribe to describe the other. This terminology therefore dropped out of use after the Goths were displaced by the Hunnic invasions. In support of this, Wolfram cites Zosimus as referring to a group of "Scythians" north of the Danube who were called "Greutungi" by the barbarians north of the Ister. Wolfram concludes that this people were those Tervingi who had remained behind after the Hunnic conquest. On the other hand, he argues, the terms "Vesi" and "Ostrogothi" were used by the peoples to boastfully describe themselves.

The nomenclature of Greuthungi/Tervingi fell out of use shortly after 400. In general, the terminology of a divided Gothic people disappeared gradually after they entered the Roman Empire. The last indication that the Goths whose king reigned at Toulouse considered themselves Vesi is found in a panegyric on Avitus by Sidonius Apollinaris dated 1 January 456. The term "Visigoth", however, was an invention of the 6th century. Most recent scholars (notably Peter Heather) argue that Visigothic group identity emerged only within the Roman Empire. Roger Collins believes the Visigoths were a creation of the Gothic War of 376–382 and began as a collection of foederati (Wolfram's "federate armies") under Alaric I in the eastern Balkans, composed of largely Tervingi with Greuthungian and other barbarian contingents. They were thus multiethnic and cannot lay claim to an exclusively Tervingian heritage. Collins points out that no contemporaries directly link the Tervingi and Vesi.

Cassiodorus, a Roman in the service of Theodoric the Great, invented the term "Visigothi" to match that of "Ostrogothi", which terms he thought of as signifying "western Goths" and "eastern Goths" respectively. The western–eastern division was a simplification (and a literary device) of 6th-century historians. Political realities were more complex. Further, Cassiodorus used the term "Goths" to refer only to the Ostrogoths, whom he served, and reserved the geographical term "Visigoths" for the Gallo-Spanish Goths. This usage, however, was adopted by the Visigoths themselves in their communications with the Byzantine Empire and was in use in the 7th century.

Other names for other Gothic divisions abounded. A "Germanic" Byzantine or Italian author referred to one of the two peoples as the Valagothi, meaning "Roman Goths", and in 469 the Visigoths were called the "Alaric Goths".