The Ostrogoths, the eastern branch of the…

The Ostrogoths, the eastern branch of the Goths, had settled and established a powerful state in Dacia, but little has been heard of the Ostrogoths for the past eighty years or so since their subjugation by the Huns in around 370.

The Huns had fiercely oppressed them, having uprooted them from their homes in the Ukraine, transferred them to Pannonia, and taken away their grain.

(However, a pocket had remained behind in the Crimea when the bulk of them moved to central Europe, and these Crimean Ostrogoths will preserve their identity through the Middle Ages.)

Their recorded history begins with their independence from the remains of the Hunnic Empire following the death of Attila the Hun in 453.

Allied with the former vassal and rival, the Gepids and the Ostrogoths led by Theodemir had broken the Hunnic power of Attila's sons in the Battle of Nedao in 454.

The Ostrogoths now enter into relations with the Empire, and are settled on lands in Pannonia on the middle Danube River as federates of the Romans.

During the greater part of the latter half of the fifth century, the East Goths will play in southeastern Europe nearly the same part that the West Goths had played in the century before.

They will be seen going to and from, in every conceivable relation of friendship and enmity with the Eastern Roman power, until, just as the West Goths had done before them, they pass from the East to the West.