Eriulf (died 391) was a Gothic warlord. He was a leader of the

Thervingi The Thervingi, Tervingi, or Teruingi (sometimes pluralised Tervings or Thervings) were a Gothic people of the plains north of the Lower Danube and west of the Dniester River in the 3rd and the 4th centuries. They had close contacts with the Gre ...

, who under

emperor The word ''emperor'' (from , via ) can mean the male ruler of an empire. ''Empress'', the female equivalent, may indicate an emperor's wife (empress consort), mother/grandmother (empress dowager/grand empress dowager), or a woman who rules ...

Theodosius I Theodosius I ( ; 11 January 347 – 17 January 395), also known as Theodosius the Great, was Roman emperor from 379 to 395. He won two civil wars and was instrumental in establishing the Nicene Creed as the orthodox doctrine for Nicene C ...

had been settled as

foederati ''Foederati'' ( ; singular: ''foederatus'' ) were peoples and cities bound by a treaty, known as ''foedus'', with Rome. During the Roman Republic, the term identified the '' socii'', but during the Roman Empire, it was used to describe foreign ...

along the lower

Danube The Danube ( ; see also #Names and etymology, other names) is the List of rivers of Europe#Longest rivers, second-longest river in Europe, after the Volga in Russia. It flows through Central and Southeastern Europe, from the Black Forest sou ...

through a treaty concluded in 382. Eriulf led one of the factions among the Goths who crossed the Danube in 376 while the other followed

Fravitta Flavius Fravitta ( Greek: ; died 404/405) was a leader of the Goths and a top-ranking officer in the army of the Eastern Roman Empire. Fravitta was a member of the Thervingi aristocracy. He was also a pagan, and for this reason he was praised by ...

. These two leaders struggled to fill the leadership vacuum among the Thervingi that had existed since 382.

Death

In the year 391, some of the Thervingi rebelled against

Roman Roman or Romans most often refers to: *Rome, the capital city of Italy *Ancient Rome, Roman civilization from 8th century BC to 5th century AD *Roman people, the people of Roman civilization *Epistle to the Romans, shortened to Romans, a letter w ...

rule. Eriulf was the leader of these rebels, and was opposed by Fravitta, who remained loyal to the Romans. He was murdered by the latter in 391 at a banquet with Theodosius. As a consequence, Fravitta had to flee Gothic society with his Roman wife and joined the East Roman army, where he was given a command in the regular army.

Sources

Arnold Hugh Martin Jones Arnold Hugh Martin Jones Fellow of the British Academy, FBA (9 March 1904 – 9 April 1970), known also as A. H. M. Jones or Hugo Jones, was a prominent 20th-century British historian of classical antiquity, particularly of the later Roman Empire ...

, John R. Martindale, John Morris:

The Prosopography of the Later Roman Empire ''Prosopography of the Later Roman Empire'' (abbreviated as ''PLRE'') is a work of Roman prosopography published in a set of three volumes collectively describing many of the people attested to have lived in the Roman Empire from AD 260, the date ...

. Band 1: A. D. 260 – 395. Cambridge University Press, Cambridge 1971, S. 372 f. *

Herwig Wolfram Herwig Wolfram (born 14 February 1934) is an Austrian historian who is Professor Emeritus of Medieval History and Auxiliary Sciences of History at the University of Vienna and the former Director of the . He is a leading member of the Vienna Schoo ...

: Die Goten. Von den Anfängen bis zur Mitte des sechsten Jahrhunderts. Entwurf einer historischen Ethnographie. 4. Auflage. Beck, München 2001, .

References

391 deaths Year of birth unknown 4th-century Gothic people Gothic warriors Magistri militum People murdered in Greece {{AncientRome-bio-stub