Witiges

Witiges or Vitiges (d. 540) was the king of the Ostrogoths from 536 to 540. He succeeded to the throne of Italy in the midst of the Gothic War, as Belisarius had quickly captured Sicily the previous year and was currently in southern Italy at the head of the forces of Justinian I, the Eastern Emperor. Witiges was the husband of Amalasuntha's only surviving child, Mathesuentha, a marriage designed to bolster his claim to kingship. 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. Witiges had Theodahad murdered after the imprisonment and death of his mother-in-law. Justinian's general Belisarius took both Witiges and Mathesuentha as captives to Constantinople, and Witiges died there, without any children. After his death Mathesuentha married Germanus the patrician, a cousin of the Emperor, in a similar dynastic union.

Related Topics:
540 - Ostrogoth - 536 - Gothic War - Belisarius - Justinian I - Amalasuntha - Cassiodorus - Theodahad

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