Cassiodorus deliberately claims the superiority of Amalasuintha to the men of her family, going back to her male ancestry. This was, after all, the appropriate way to justify her exercise of royal power in the Gothic world, where tradition demanded male rulers but where Amalasuintha was ruling like a king. Her power found legitimacy in that of her ancestors.25 To an audience of Roman senators, the alternative to the comparison with the men of her family would be not the Amal queens but rather, as Cassiodorus observed, the empresses. Cassiodorus in his panegyric claims that a comparison between his domina and the empresses could not do justice to the former: “But how could these feminine examples (exempla feminea) suffice for one who surpasses all the praise given to men (virorum laus)?”26 In reality, any comparison with recent empresses or especially with Theodora would have been inappropriate and certainly politically dangerous. The letter rhetorically suggests that Amalasuintha’s qualities are less attributable to her Amal ancestors than to her nature. The use of the term “sexus” to signify both Amalasuintha’s motherhood and her courageous regency for Athalaric is especially important: “Behold, by God’s favour, our fortunate mistress has achieved the glory of both sexes (uterque sexus): for she has both borne us a glorious king, and has secured a spreading empire by the courage of her soul (animi fortitudine).”27 Just one year later, Cassiodorus would return to this point, writing in the name of Theodahad to celebrate Amalasuintha as the glory of her ancestors for her successful regency during her son’s minority: “She, who ruled alone with her little son … not only brought praise to her ancestors, but also dignified the human race.”28
The masculine attributes ascribed to Amalasuintha in his letters may find some explanation in the letter’s intended audience: they were both addressed to the Senate. The idea of female rulership was not entirely alien to the Senate, because unlike Gothic queens, Roman empresses could have a degree of recognized political power. But even so, at that time the senatorial audience required justification for a female rulership. Ascribing masculine qualities to the female ruler may have helped Cassiodorus present Amalasuintha’s case: after all, rulers like Galla Placidia, to whom Amalasuintha is compared in this panegyric, had gone down in history as weak and feminine.29 In her study of the letter Variae 11.1, Fauvinet-Ranson fairly observes: “Amalasuintha is a woman, but she reigns as a man: Cassiodorus, like Procopius, presents a uirago, a woman-man, without the pejorative nuance we associate with this word, since in his eyes Amalasuintha, far from being a femme manquée, is fully a woman.”30
A woman, yes; and if not an empress, then perhaps a female king. In describing her virtues, Cassiodorus emphasized the Roman model that shaped the education of the princess and influenced her personality. Indeed, when one year later Cassiodorus, writing in the name of Theodahad, celebrated Amalasuintha, he acknowledged this education together with her sapientia, iustitia, and firmitas.31 The virtues listed in the letter-panegyric were previously attributed to Theoderic by Cassiodorus, perhaps representing what one scholar described as “Amal ungendered qualities transferred from the father/king to his daughter/regina.”32 Theodahad announces that his kingdom would benefit from the experience of such a sapientissima domina;33 by that time Amalasuintha had gained much experience at the palace, first at the side of Theoderic, and later as regent for her son. Cassiodorus represents her as distinguished by her composure and her meditative and silent attitude in public, and remarkable for her determination and incorruptibility.34 Her education included not only fluency in three languages, Greek, Latin, and Gothic, but also literature, which was the primary instrument for learning the wisdom of the ancients (veterum prudentia). With her political wisdom, she follows in the footsteps of her father Theoderic (sapientia, ut iam vidistis, inclitus pater).35
On the whole, the references to “masculinity” by both Procopius and Cassiodorus are meant to invoke Amalasuintha’s strong performance in the role of regent in a kingdom where only a man was entitled to rule and where terms such as vir (man) and mulier (woman) were believed to be derived respectively from virtus (strength) and mollities (softness). Amalasuintha could be called a virago, literally an ‘heroic maid,’ because she ‘acts like a man’ (vir + agere).36 Not coincidentally, both authors acknowledge in Amalasuintha the same virtues they attributed to her father. These virtues and her ability in government made her an ideal ruler in the Roman style.
While Roman Italy and the empire recognized the possibility of female power and the regency, this was not the case for a conservative Gothic leadership unfamiliar with the exercise of female power at such a level. Lacking antecedents, the best way to represent a woman in power in the post-Roman kingdoms of that period was probably the masculine characterization of Amalasuintha. Exceptional bravery in women could be characterized as masculine: Gregory of Tours would years later use the adverb “viriliter” to characterize two exceptional proofs of bravery by queens: that of Brunhild, who armed herself like a man to prevent a war, and her daughter Ingund, who in Spain resisted her mother-in-law’s pressure to abandon her Catholic faith for Arianism.37 But Amalasuintha’s strong nature, courage, and skill in government were never enough to compensate for the “weakness” represented by her female status. Jordanes understood Amalasuintha’s female sex as the main reason she eventually decided to join Theodahad to her rule: she “feared she might be despised by the Goths on account of the weakness of her sex (pro sexus sui fragilitate).”38 As a woman, she had no direct precedent that allowed her to assume the Ostrogothic throne in her own right. Amalasuintha recognized the need for a new institutional structure.
Amalasuintha’s Institutional Position in Ostrogothic Italy: The Status Quaestionis
In late 534, bearing the title of regina, Amalasuintha introduced the newly elected King Theodahad to Emperor Justinian and to the Roman Senate as consors regni, joining him to the throne in an unparalleled manner as an unmarried consort. But was this her first moment as queen? When did her queenship begin? Our sources, both Eastern and Western, do not offer clarity about her institutional position in the Ostrogothic kingdom, and so this simple question has attracted scholarly attention for more than a century. But the canonical answer to this question, that Amalasuintha assumed the queenship upon the death of her son, places us in a logically awkward position: we must believe that she created this new position of consort and selected the recipient herself immediately upon the death of her son, and that they forced it upon a hostile Gothic nobility who had no particular reason to accept it. But a careful examination of the problem suggests that Amalasuintha’s queenship was not a speedy and desperate measure in the aftermath of Athalaric’s death. Rather, it had its roots as early as the reign of Theoderic. Such a radical revision requires careful explanation.
The hypothesis that Amalasuintha did not officially take the title of regina before the death of Athalaric is generally based on the virtual absence in the Variae of the name of Queen Amalasuintha before late 534. It has thus been generally assumed that she declared herself regina through usurpation on the day of Athalaric’s death, on 2 October 534, and that, because the co-regency with Theodahad turned out to be short lived, she was a queen for only a very limited time.39 In an article published in 1889, Pflugk-Harttung gave a speculative but balanced explanation of Amalasuintha’s position: “As long as Athalaric lived, she did not have any rights in this regard, because she was not queen but only queen mother; first after his death she was able by usurpation, perhaps in cooperation with palace officials and partisans, to declare herself a real queen. It is possible, of course, that in ordinary life, by virtue of her birth and position, she was called queen, and that she only gave public expression to the (actual political) situation.”40 Almost a hundred years later, Dietrich Claude reconsidered Pflugk-Harttung’s observations in his article on the elevations to