Balt dynasty

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The Balt dynasty

Latin: Balti or Balthi, i.e., Balts) was the first ruling family of the Visigoths from 395 until 531. They led the Visigoths into the Western Roman Empire
in its declining years.

According to the historian

Ostrogothic Amals.[6] He claims that the family was named from long ago for its daring: "Baltha, which [in Gothic] means bold" (Baltha, qui est audax).[7] Historian Herwig Wolfram theorizes that the name may derive from Pliny the Elder's island of Baltia (i.e., isle of the Balts), which he also calls Basilia (i.e., royal land).[4]

The Visigoths as a nation were formed under the rule of

Theoderic the Great intervened to depose the Balt king Gesalec. He ruled himself until his death in 526, when Amalaric succeeded him. Theoderic's intervention is often credited with saving the Visigothic kingdom, but it ended the Balt dynasty.[3]

The private wealth (res privata) of the Balt kings, which had been a foundation of their legitimacy, was transformed into the royal treasury (thesaurus regalis) and became state property after 531.

fall of the Visigothic kingdom in 711.[1]

List of rulers

Notes

  1. ^ a b Roger Collins, Visigothic Spain, 409–711 (Blackwell, 2008), p. 45.
  2. ^ Guy Halsall, Barbarian Migrations and the Roman West, 376–568 (Cambridge University Press, 2007), p. 510.
  3. ^ a b A. Barbero and M. I. Loring, "The Formation of the Sueve and Visigothic Kingdoms in Spain", in Paul Fouracre (ed.), The New Cambridge Medieval History, Volume 1: c.500–c.700 (Cambridge University Press, 2005), pp. 175 and 178.
  4. ^ a b Herwig Wolfram, History of the Goths (University of California Press, 1979), pp. 32–34, has theories on family connections and Baltic connections.
  5. ^ a b Peter Heather, "Balti", in Oiver Nicholson (ed.), The Oxford Dictionary of Late Antiquity (Oxford University Press, 2018), p. 202.
  6. ^ post Amalos secunda nobilitas Balthorumque
  7. ^ Arne Søby Christensen, Cassiodorus, Jordanes and the History of the Goths: Studies in a Migration Myth (Museum Tusculanum Press, 2002), pp. 320–21.
  8. Janet L. Nelson
    (eds.), Rituals of Power: From Late Antiquity to the Early Middle Ages (Brill, 2000), p. 69.

Further reading

  • Peter Heather: Cassiodorus and the Rise of the Amals. Genealogy and the Goths under Hun Domination, in: Journal of Roman Studies 79 (1989), S. 103–128.
  • Peter Heather: Goths and Romans, 332–489, Oxford 1991.
  • H. Kuhn/R. Wenskus: Amaler, in:
    Reallexikon der germanischen Altertumskunde
    , Bd. 1, S. 246–248.* Henry Bradley, The Goths: from the Earliest Times to the End of the Gothic Dominion in Spain. Second edition, 1883, New York: G.P. Putnam's Sons, chapter 1.
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