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<p>[QUOTE=&quot;Tejas, post: 7947315, member: 84905&quot;]Sorry, I don&#039;t want to come across as know-it-all, however, this is my favourite period in late antique history. </p><p><br /></p><p>The Goths were divided in several groups and two large and powerful kingdoms before the Hunnic onslaught. In the east ruled Ermaneric over a large kingdom that reportedly included many peoples and streched from the Black Sea to the Baltic Sea. Ermaneric died in 376, when he committed suicide after repeated defeats by the Huns and Alans. </p><p><br /></p><p>He is still remembered as a great Germanic hero in German legends (as Ermenrich). Ermaneric&#039;s Goths are called Greuthungi (and possibly Taifali) and at a different layer may be refered to as Ostrogothae. In the Germanic-Gothic world Ermaneric&#039;s &quot;title&quot; was likely that of a &quot;thiudans&quot;, who ruled over many &quot;kunja&quot;= clans, who in turn were governed by &quot;reiks&quot;.</p><p><br /></p><p>West of Ermaneric&#039;s kingdom was the large realm of Athanaric, who is decribed as Iudex, in Roman sources, and to his own people was likely a &quot;kindins&quot;. Athanaric ruled over the Tervingian Goths, which, in some ways that we don&#039;t exactly understand, are also refered to as Vesi or Visi. This term gave much later, i.e. in the 6th century rise to the term Vesigoths or Visigoths to mach the older term Ostrogoths. </p><p><br /></p><p>The term Greuthungi means steppe dwellers and Tervingi means forest dwellers in Germanic. After the fall of Ermaneric&#039;s kingdom and the shift to the west these terms lost significance and the people converged towards new names like Vesi or reverted to older names like Ostrogothae or simply Gothae for the Romans. </p><p><br /></p><p>The battle of Adrianople was won by mostly Tervingian Goths under Fridigern, who had been a reiks under the kindins Athanaric. These Tervingian Goths were much later renamed as Visigoths, but who have no direct connection to the Visigoths of later decades and centuries, as well as Greuthungian, Taifalian and Alanic units which joined the battle at a crucial stage.[/QUOTE]</p><p><br /></p>

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