[gothic-l] Amal Descent

[Anþanarik]

Hails Group!
 
This is what Herweg Wolfram has to say about Amalian descent:

>From p. 30 - 

The Amali and Balthi are families of "kings and heroes"; each of the two  calns personifies its people. Thus the Amalli are the genealogia Ostrogotharum, the "family of the Ostrogoths." When this branch of the Goths recognized the divine  charisma of its Amal leaders, proceres, it acclaimed and revered the Amali as Ansis, as Aesir. This is   probably why Cassiodorus does not bother to explain the name of the Amali. 
        The Ansis stand for the divine descent of the Amal clan. Their genealogy    begins with Gaut, the Scandinavian god of war ancestor of many peoples. His son is  Humli-Hulmul, the divine founding/father of the Danes.   Amal is mentioned only in the fourth generation. The next eponymous hero   is Ostrogotha, two generations younger than Amal and already at home in , the Pontic area. Between these two stands Hisarna, who perhaps represents
the Celtic-dominated layer of the Gothic ethnogenesis. As the "noblest of  the Amali," Ermanaric belongs to the tenth generation; he is the first of  his family who is mentioned by a source other than the Origo Gothica and  the first to be noticed by Roman contemporaries. With him the catalogus Amalorum begins to become historical. The names that previously reflected , theogony, ethnogeneses, and charismatic power are now replaced by names  that once belonged to human beings of flesh and blood. Whereas the theogonic part contained only a relative, though highly important, chronology of the Gothic ethnogenesis, the generations after Ermanaric can be syn- chronized with historical events. But the first to step fully into the light of history are the Amal brothers Valamir, Thiudimir, and Vidimir, who around 450 were the leaders of the Hunnic Ostrogoths. Thiudimir's son is Theodoric the Great. Theodoric's grandson Athalaric, son of the Visigothic Amal Eutharic and Theodoric's daughter and heir Arnalasuintha, concludes the genealogy, which was certainly drawn up before Theodoric's death in 526. In early 533 Cassiodorus chose from the genealogy ten of Amalasuintha's ancestors in order to legitimize her as queen of the Gothic army through the royal ancestral line: tot reges quot parentes. The shortened family tree of this highly educated woman lets the GautidScandinavian origins recede  into the background and it drops altogether the pagan barbarian Ermanaric. Though Ermanaric does appear in Athalaric's family tree, he does not belong to the direct ancestral line of the Ostrogothic king. Athalaric  was legitimized through his descent, which taught him that he-Iike an- other Romulus, the founder of Rome-"possessed the royal dignity in the seventeenth generation. "  



I scanned a picture of Amalian descent,
I hope it is legible.

Anþanarik




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