Portal de Periódicos da CAPES

El papel de la épica en la confección de la dinastía goda de Tolosa: una hipótesis

1995; Brepols; Volume: 3; Linguagem: Inglês

10.1484/j.at.2.301094

2295-9718

Ana M Jiménez Garnica,

Archaeological and Historical Studies

The belonging of the Visigothic royal family to the Ballho's lineage is only mentioned in lordanes' Getica.ln the Cassiodorus's History, dated AD. 533 A.D., a detailed information about the divine origin and heroic ancestry of the royal Ostrogoths Amals was probably found. On the contrary, nothing of the kind is mentionned about the Balths. except the fact that they descend from Baltha. During the Late Antiquity, a German epic poem -Waltharius -circulated throughout Europe, whose action is located in the 5th century and whose protagonist is Waltharius, son of the Aquitania's king. His ethnic group is not indicated. Provided that he appears as a neighbour of Franks and Burgundians and an enemy of the Huns, we may deduce that he is a Visigoth. The poem, though fully modified in its form, still preserves traditional German values from the times before Christianity. The protagonist has also the characteristical moral features of the first and second function gods. This leads to the conclusion that he was originally thought as a nontemporal and mythic heroical character, maybe Baltha, due to the phonetic similarities between both of them. This story, orally spread, would be used by the Amals as a divine justification to demonstrate the inferiority of Tolosa' s dinasty [Author].