As If From This People I Traced my Origin: Hypotheses on the Life of Jordanes

The aim of this paper is to discuss the authorial persona of Jordanes: who he was, what was his religious/political position and how he identified himself. With this information, frequently overlooked or glossed over by Late Antique and Early Medieval scholarship, I intend to bring his famous work, called Getica, under updated scrutiny. By increasing awareness of the author, we can look at the Getica and perceive different goals and a different agenda. By leaving the “Gothic” identity behind and assuming that his ethnic background was more fluid or mixed, the Getica ceases to be just a history of the Goths and becomes an analysis of the historical development of Eastern regions and how different people, from Goths to Huns, tried to shape the fate of the place