The chief authorities on the career of Alaric are: the historian Orosius and the poet Claudian, both contemporary, neither disinterested ; Zosimus, a historian who lived probably about half a century after Alaric's death ; and Jordanes, a Goth who wrote the history of his nation in 551, basing his work on The Trojan War.

It was first described by the 6th century Goth scholar Jordanes in his Getica wherein he described the inhabitants of Scandza ( Scandinavia ).

The official Byzantine position, adopted by Procopius and even by the Romanized Goth Jordanes, writing just before the conclusion of the Gothic Wars, was that Totila was a usurper: Jordanes ' Getica ( 551 ) overlooks the recent successes of Totila.

The 6th-century Goth scholar Jordanes wrote in his Getica about a tribe located in Scandza which he named the Raumarici and which seems to be the same name as Raumariki, the old name for Romerike.

These mounted elite warriors are mentioned in the work of the 6th century Goth scholar Jordanes, who wrote that the Swedes had the best horses beside the Thuringians.

Variability, however, characterizes all Late Latin, and besides, the author was not writing just after his conversion ( for the meaning of the latter, see under Jordanes ), but a whole career later, after associating with many Latin speakers and having read many Latin books.

A name of that period would have to be closer to Proto-Germanic ; in fact, a word of that period does present itself and fits the geographical lore of the times: * agwjo, " island ", which Jordanes and all his predecessors writing of Scandinavia believed it to be.

Jordanes also merges Hittite history with that of the Goths, writing that a " Gothic " king Tanausis fought Vesosis, the king of Egypt in a battle at the river of Phasis and then pursued the Egyptians all the way back to Egypt.

Symmachus cultivated the ancient Roman culture, writing a Roman history in seven volumes ; this work has been lost except for a section quoted by Jordanes in his Getica.

Jordanes had read Ptolemy, but he claimed to be writing of times before those of Ptolemy.

After the heads of Sebastianus and Jovinus arrived at Honorius ' court in Ravenna in late August, to be forwarded for display among other usurpers on the walls of Carthage, relations between Ataulf and Honorius improved sufficiently for Ataulf to cement them by marrying Galla Placidia perhaps at Narbo in early 414, but Jordanes says he married her in Italy, at Forlì ( Forum Livii ).

" Collins notes that " in both of the emperor Justinian's other western interventions, Africa in 533 and Italy in 535, he came in ostensibly to uphold the rights of legitimate monarchs against usurpers ", thus agreeing with Jordanes ' version of the events.

De origine actibusque Getarum ( The Origin and Deeds of the Getae / Goths ), or the Getica, written in Late Latin by Jordanes ( or Jornandes ) in 551, claims to be a summary of a voluminous account by Cassiodorus of the origin and history of the Gothic people, which may have had the title " Origo Gothica " and which is now lost.

Jordanes states in Romana that he wrote it in the 24th year of the emperor Justinian, which began April 1, 551.

The Gothic author Jordanes, who wrote in Constantinople, ended his work Getica in 550 or 551 AD.

Scandza was the name given to a " great island " by the Roman historian Jordanes in his work Getica, written while in Constantinople around 551 AD.

Jordanes ' Getica ( 551 ) mentions Magog as ancestor of the Goths, as does the Historia Brittonum, but Isidore of Seville ( c. 635 ) asserts that this identification was popular " because of the similarity of the last syllable " ( Etymologiae, IX, 89 ).

The Gothic historian Jordanes in his work ' De origine actibusque Getarum ' - a. k. a. Getica -, written in Constantinople in c. 551 AD, mentions a people " Adogit " living in the far North.

It is mentioned as a Gothic nation by Jordanes in his work Getica from about 551 AD: " Sunt quamquam et horum positura Granii, Agadii, Eunixi, Thelae, Rugi, Harothi, Ranii.

Oium or Aujum was a name for an area in Scythia, where the Goths under their king Filimer settled after leaving Gothiscandza, according to the Getica by Jordanes, written around 551.

Jordanes in The origin and deeds of the Goths ( 551 ) traces the line of the Amelungs up to Hulmul son of Gapt, purportedly the first Gothic hero of record.

Jordanes wrote in 551 that the Gothic king Ermanaric was upset with the attack of a subordinate king and had his wife Sunilda ( i. e. Svanhild ) torn to pieces by horses, and as revenge Ermanaric was pierced with spears by her brothers Ammius ( Hamdir ) and Sarus ( Sörli ) and died from the wounds.

Jordanes wrote in 551 AD that Ermanaric, king of the Gothic Greuthungi, was upset with the attack of a subordinate king and had his young wife Sunilda ( i. e. Svanhild ) torn apart by four horses.

According to Jordanes ’ Getica, written in the mid-6th century, the earliest migrating Goths sailed from Scandza ( Scandinavia ) under King Berig in three ships and named the place at which they landed after themselves.

Having said that, the literary sources of Priscus and Jordanes preserve only a few names, and three words, of the language of the Huns, which have been studied for more than a century and a half.

Jordanes, also written Jordanis or, uncommonly, Jornandes, was a 6th century Roman bureaucrat, who turned his hand to history later in life.

The less fictional part of Jordanes ' work begins when the Goths encounter Roman military forces in the third century AD.

The 6th century chronicler Jordanes reports a tradition that they had been driven out of their homeland by the North Germanic Dani, which places their origins in the Danish isles or southernmost Sweden.

In his description of Scandza ( from the 6th century work, Getica ), the ancient writer Jordanes says that the Dani were of the same stock as the Suetidi ( Swedes, Suithiod?

The 6th century AD Getica of Jordanes records a persecution and expulsion of witches among the Goths in a mythical account of the origin of the Huns.

The Vidivarii themselves are described by Jordanes in his Getica as a melting pot of tribes who in the mid-6th century lived at the lower Vistula.

In later interpretations, which begin with Jordanes ( 6th century AC ) and have proliferated during the 19th and 20th century, mainly in Romania, he was regarded as the sole god of the Getae ( not to be confounded in this context with the Thracians or their relatives, the Dacians ) or as a legendary social and religious reformer of the Getae people to which he would have taught, following Herodotus, the belief in immortality, so that they considered dying merely as going to Zalmoxis.

The " reform of Deceneus " is the result of the elaborations of the 6th century bishop and historian Jordanes who includes the Getae in his history of the Goths: here he describes how Deceneus teaches the Getae people philosophy and physics.

The less fictional part of Jordanes ' work begins when the Goths encounter Roman military forces in the 3rd century AD.

Because the original work of Cassiodorus has not survived, the work of Jordanes is one of the most important sources for the period of the migration of the European tribes, and the Ostrogoths and Visigoths in particular, from the 3rd century CE.

The evidence allows a wide range of views, the most skeptical being that the work is mainly mythological, or if Jordanes did exist and is the author, that he describes peoples of the 6th century only.

Not only that but it seems that Jordanes has distorted Cassiodorus's narrative by presenting us a cursory abridgement of the latter, mixed with 6th century ethnic names.

Another example is the name of the king Cniva which David S. Potter thinks is genuine because, since it doesn't appear in the fictionalized genealogy of Gothic kings given by Jordanes, he must have found it in a genuine 3rd century source.

In the mid-6th century, the Vistula estuary is mentioned by Jordanes, describing it as the home of the Vidivarii.

Ermanaric is mentioned in two Roman sources ; the contemporary writings of Ammianus Marcellinus and in Getica by the 6th century historian Jordanes.

Though Jordanes is the only author to make these claims, the Tabula Peutingeriana, originating from the 4th century AD, separately mentions the Venedi on the northern bank of the Danube somewhat upstream of its mouth, and the Venadi Sarmatae along the Baltic coast.

According to the 6th century historian Jordanes:

The Egðir are believed to be the same etymologically as the Augandzi people mentioned in the Getica of Jordanes, who wrote of Scandza ( Scandinavia ) in the 6th century.

They are mentioned in the 6th century in Jordanes ' Getica, by Procopius, and by Gregory of Tours.