Origin stories of the Goths

There were several origin stories of the Gothic peoples recorded by Latin and Greek authors in late antiquity (roughly 3rd–8th centuries AD), and these are relevant not only to the study of literature, but also to attempts to reconstruct the early history of the Goths, and other peoples mentioned in these stories.

The earliest accounts of Gothic origins were influenced by biblical commentary, and the assumption that the Goths were related to peoples who had lived earlier in the same region north of the Black Sea and Lower Danube, especially the Getae, and Scythians. The three most important surviving histories of the Goths in late antiquity are those by Jordanes, Isidore of Seville, and Procopius, although Jordanes focused especially on the Amal clan's supposed history, and Procopius focused less on early origins than the other two.

Jordanes' Getica has been categorized among the most important examples of the origo gentis (origin of a people) genre of literature as understood for example by historian Herwig Wolfram, but whether this category should be described as a genre is questioned, for example by Walter Goffart, because of doubts that the authors understood themselves to be following a shared traditional model.^[1]