- Amalasuntha
Amalasuntha (also known as Amalasuentha, Amalaswintha, Amalasuintha or Amalasontha) (died 535) was a queen of the
Ostrogoths .A daughter of Ostrogothic king
Theodoric the Great , she secretly married a slave namedTraguilla . When her motherAudofleda found them together Traguilla was killed.She was married in 515 to Eutharic, an Ostrogoth noble of the old Areal line, who had previously been living in Visigothic Iberia. Her husband died, apparently in the early years of her marriage, leaving her with two children,
Athalaric andMatasuentha . On the death of her father in 526, her son succeeded him, but she held the power asregent for her son. Deeply imbued with the old Roman culture, she gave to that son's education a more refined and literary turn than suited the ideas of her Gothic subjects. Conscious of her unpopularity she banished, and afterwards put to death, three Gothic nobles whom she suspected of intriguing against her rule, and at the same time opened negotiations with the emperorJustinian I with the view of removing herself and the Gothic treasure toConstantinople . Her son's death in 534 made little change in the posture of affairs.Now queen, Amalasuntha made her cousin
Theodahad partner of her throne (not, as sometimes stated, her husband, for his wife was still living), with the intent of strengthening her position. The choice was unfortunate, for Theodahad, in spite of a varnish of literary culture, was a coward and a scoundrel. He fostered the disaffection of the Goths, and either by his orders or with his permission, Amalasuntha was imprisoned on an island in the Tuscan lake of Bolsena, where in the spring of 535 she was murdered in her bath.The letters of
Cassiodorus , chief minister and literary adviser of Amalasuntha, and the histories ofProcopius andJordanes , give us our chief information as to the character of Amalasuntha.References
*1911
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