Noble Blood - Odoacer and Theodoric, the Barbarian Kings of the Roman Empire

Episode Date: March 19, 2024

The Western Roman Empire was conquered by Odoacer, who styled himself as the "King of Italy." But the leader of the Ostrogoths, a warrior named Theodoric, would challenge Odoacer for supremacy. But were both men just playing into the hands of the Eastern Roman Emperor? Support Noble Blood: — Bonus episodes, stickers, and scripts on Patreon — Noble Blood merch — Order Dana's book, 'Anatomy: A Love Story' and its sequel 'Immortality: A Love Story'See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

This is an I-heart podcast. Guaranteed Human. Hey, I'm Dr. Maya Shunker, a cognitive scientist and hosts of the podcast, a slight change of plans, a show about who we are and who we become when life makes other plans. I wish that I hadn't resisted for so long the need to change. We have to be willing to live with a kind of uncertainty that none of us likes. You can have opinions. You can have like a strong,

dance and then there's your body having its own program. Listen to a slight change of plans on the IHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Welcome to Noble Blood, a production of IHeart Radio and Grim and Mild from Aaron Manky. Listener discretion advised. For two and a half years, the Italian city of Ravenna had been in a living hell, under siege by the king of the Visigoths, Theodoric the Great. Theodoric would hold the city in siege for as long as it took.

His greatest enemy, Odoacer, the king of Italy, was hiding in Ravenna with what was left of his army. Theodoric had him surrounded. He had been surrounded for two and a half years. It was only a matter of time. But in the meantime, Ravenna was suffering. Starvation gripped the streets. Plagues haunted whole neighborhoods. Even an earthquake erupted in the middle of town, as though God himself were showing just how folly it was to hope that this siege would end. But on February 25, 493, the citizens of Ravina finally saw a glimmer of hope. O'Dawasar finally emerged from his foxhole. He sent word to Theodoric to begin negotiations. After a week, plenty of concessions, and even the begging of a bishop,

the two men came to an agreement. They would rule Italy together. The crowds of Ravenna erupted in celebration. The siege was over. Not all hope was lost after all. Theodoric entered the city at the head of a procession, and the two leaders finally met in person. The two men collaborated together to determine what this new Italy would look like,

in Italy with co-rulers in Italy of peace. Ten days after Theodoric entered the city, Odoacer was taking a stroll outside one of his palaces. On his stroll, two beggars approached him, and they implored their lord to offer a blessing or alms. Before Odoacer could even respond, the two beggars pulled aside their cloaks and seized Odoacer by his arms. Soldiers pour it out, hidden among the street, and they cut down Oduaser's bodyguards. Odoacer was surprised to find that none of the attackers had specifically attacked him.

His guards were dead, but he wasn't yet. The men were keeping him alive for now. but why? The answer came quickly. Someone specific wanted to be the one to cut him down. Out of the darkness, a figure approached wielding a sword. Odoacer saw his own death written all over the face of his assassin. He just didn't expect the face to look so familiar.

I'm Dana Schwartz, and this is Noble Blood. In 511, a few decades after Oduasur was assassinated, an Italian monk took to compiling the memories of his muse and master, Saint Severinus. Severinus was renowned as a holy man in his lifetime, a devoted ascetic with mysterious origins. When the Western Roman Empire collapsed in 476, Severinus accepted refugees into his monastery. He fed the poor and clothed the sick. The monk, Eugipius, was resolved to document and commemorate those selfless acts. But there was more to Severinus than his generosity. The holy man, like other early saints, professed seeing visions of the future.

Eugipius wrote that sometime before the collapse of the Western Roman Empire, Severinus met with a rag-tag band of warriors, who were crossing into Austria. They were led by a skinny young man in shabby clothes who bore the name Odoacer, gothic for he who maintains his property, a stately name for such a poor traveler. Supposedly, according to the writings of Eugipius,

St. Severinus took Odoacer aside and proclaimed a vision that this unknown warrior would one day rule as king of Rome. We can't know what impression this left on the young man, or even if the interaction happened at all. But if it did, we might guess that Odoacer went on his way, believing, probably like every other ambitious warrior of his age, that destiny was on his side. Odoacer was born in 433. His exact origins are unknown, but we do not. know that he learned to fight and lead with the Hunnic army that sat menacingly on the Roman Empire's

borders. The Huns subjected many of the ethnic groups that the Romans referred to as, quote, barbarians. And like other imperial overlords, they found a way of recruiting soldiers and even lieutenants from those same subjugated populations. Odwasser's father, Etica, happened to be one of those lieutenants. He was considered such a valuable ally to the Huns that he was eventually made a member of Attila the Hun's prestigious personal bodyguard. When the Roman emperor solicited Etyka's support to assassinate Attila, Etyka, loyal soldier that he was, alerted Attila of the conspiracy. Odoacer turned up in Italy by the time he was 28. The Italian peninsula had gone through some major shifts in the last 200 years,

and it is incredibly complicated, but to simplify for the sake of this podcast, the Italian peninsula had formerly been the beating heart of a vast and dominant Roman empire. But the Italy that Oluasar entered was one in perpetual crisis, where generals competed against one another to prop up their own emperors as figureheads. The armies that fought,

in these crises were the very barbarian warriors that the Romans had demonized in centuries prior. In the five years from 471 to 476, the Western Empire gained and lost five emperors. I say Western Empire here because, in 395, the Roman Empire was split into two parts, with two separate imperial courts to make it easier to manage. People at the time wouldn't have called themselves Eastern or Western. Those are only terms we use now looking back. Anyway, in the summer of 475, the most recent general to win out in the Western Empire was a Roman aristocrat named Orestes.

He took control of the capital of the Western Empire, Ravenna. Arrestes elected his own son, Romulus, who was not older than 14, as emperor, in the West. But Arrestes' army was only loyal as long as he was paying them. And eventually, when Arrestes wasn't able to confiscate and dole out land from Roman landowners who he also relied on, his army grew restless and decided to choose another general to support. They chose Oduasr. On August 28, 476, an army of defected warriors led by Oduoos. captured Arrestes and defeated his remaining troops. Oduwasser swarmed the capital city of Ravenna

and packed up the 14-year-old Emperor Romulus so he could live out the rest of his days in the countryside of southern Italy. Nothing up until this point was out of the ordinary. As usual, a barbarian warrior led a coalition of troops, deposed the emperor, and captured the capital city. All that was left to do for Odo Wazer Odoacer was for him to nominate his own puppet emperor or assume the title himself.

It would be difficult for the Roman Senate at the time to stomach Odoacer as the emperor, being an illiterate northerner. But surprisingly, it never came to that. Oduasers' men hailed him as King of Italy, and he happily accepted that title. The title, King, was a convenient way of justifying his rule over. Italy without alienating a potential ally in the East. Odoacer styled himself as a vassal of the Eastern Roman Emperor Zeno. A king, after all, was supposed to be less powerful than an emperor.

But as much as Oduasr wanted to retain the status quo, there was no getting around the fact that something significant, unprecedented, had just occurred. Italy had never been ruled by a king. a vassal of the Eastern Roman Emperor. After 450 years, the Western Roman Empire had been formally swept away by a little-known, illiterate man from the north. The year 476 has been treated by scholars as the end of a chapter in Roman history. In many traditional Western histories, it's treated as the end of the classical era and the beginning of the medieval era. the fall of the Roman Empire.

But in fact, the abolition of the Western Empire didn't really change much in the everyday lives of peasants, merchants, or even elites. Italy certainly wasn't any more stable after this slight political shift. Odoacer ruled on shaky foundations. He led a multi-ethnic confederation of soldiers that were only loyal to him

so long as he provided them land. He had no. remarkable reputation as a warrior in his own right. Some upstarts in his army thought themselves better and launched mutinies in 477 and 478. Zeno understood better than anyone that Odoacer didn't really intend to obey the Eastern Empire. Zeno egged on a nearby Germanic king to launch an attack against Oduasr. The attack failed, but rather than the and retaliating against Zeno, Odoacer sent a portion of his spoils to Constantinople,

the capital of the Eastern Empire, in a show of peace. It didn't matter. If Zeno couldn't assert control over Italy this way, he would surely find another way. There is another version of the St. Severinus prophecy story, one with an additional prediction that, even if it were true, he probably wouldn't have told the young Oduasr. In that version, Severinus predicted that the future king wouldn't rule Italy longer than 14 years.

Either by coincidence or by intelligent design or by most likely fake sources changed after the fact, Oduasr lost the throne in exactly the 14th year of his rule to a moment. man who had the support of a prophecy of his own. Before they even ever met, Odoacer's story was strangely intermingled with Theodoric's. Odoacer's father, Etyka, eventually left the Hunnic army to lead his own band of warriors. So did Theodoric's uncle, an Ostrogoth ruler who settled in Pannonia, or what is now the North Balkans, after the death of Attila the Hun. Theodoric was born on the banks of a small sea in what is now the easternmost part of Austria. His father, Thuidemir, was a royal, but his mother was a concubine,

though that mixed lineage never posed a problem for the Austrogoths. For Theodoric's family, all that mattered in a king was that he had some claim to royal lineage and that he could fight. Thudemir and his brother Valemir almost certainly fought in their own country. battles, a compelling symbol of their right to rule, in contrast to Roman emperors at the time, who deferred to their generals from the comfort of their seaside palaces. The brothers, Valimir and Theodemir, had more than just cultural reasons to detest their more powerful Roman neighbors.

According to a new treaty, the Ostrogoths would be allowed to settle on Roman land and would be given 300 pounds of gold per year, but in return they would need to send a male hostage of royal descent, someone who the Romans could use as leverage in case future negotiations ever went south. Valimir didn't have a son, so he called upon his brother to make the sacrifice. The seven-year-old Theodoric was chosen to live in Constantinople for what would end up being a decade. Constantinople in the 5th century was the most cosmopolitan city in the Mediterranean, home to hundreds of thousands of inhabitants, dozens of languages, and several creeds.

In Theodoric's youth, he learned to read and write not only in Latin, but also in Greek. He attended the imperial court, witnessed Roman ceremonies, and learned to keep his heretical faith secret. Roman citizens couldn't quite decide what to make of Theodoric. He was a gothic boy from a barbarian family of warlords who could also recite prose in Latin. Though while Theodoric was making an impression in the imperial capital, his uncle and father existed in a constant state of warfare. It was Roman imperial policy to pit the Germanic tribes of Pannonia against one another. In the most recent cycle of violence, the shiri conducted raids against the Ostrogoths in the mid-460s.

It was during one such raid that Theodoric's uncle, Valimir, reportedly fell from his horse and died. Theodoric's father, Theodomere, took the throne and, in 469 in revenge, besieged the Sharian stronghold of Bolia, winning despite opposition from the Eastern Roman Emperor. In a twist of fate at the same time, it was Odoacer's father, Etyka, who was leading the shiri, while Theodoric's father obviously was leading the Ostergoths. Etyka, Odoacer's father, was killed in that battle, and according to some sources, and sources that I'm sure would make an excellent scene in a biopic,

Odo Wasser witnessed the death of his father on the battlefield. Theodemir won Pannonia for the Ostrogoths, but that victory was tainted by the fact that Pannonia didn't have much fertile land for his people to settle on. He left in 470 to conduct raids in the north. When he returned a year later, he was surprised to find his son Theodoric released from captivity. At 17 years old, Theodoric, was no longer a scrawny boy, but the spitting image of a young, capable leader. Without his father's knowledge, Theodoric raised a force of 6,000 warriors and single-handedly

crushed the nearby Sarmardian people, personally killing their king. Whether or not we can trust that exaggerated account, what's clear is that Theodoric was eager to prove himself in the eyes of his Gothic family. Clearly, ten years in the imperial capital did not dampen his resolve to lead his own people, even if that meant, or perhaps especially if it meant, spilling blood with his own hands. Decades later, Theodoric would trace the start of his own reign to that victory over the Sarmardians. It's no small feat that Theodoric assumed leadership over the Ostrogoths unopposed when his father died in 474. It's even more remarkable that Theodoric held his position, despite the constant poverty and insecurity his people faced.

There was never enough fertile land in Pannonia or Macedonia for them to grow crops or feed livestock. The situation was so bad that Theodoric's uncle, Vitamir, had taken his own tribe westward in hopes of greener pastures. If Theodoric was to feed and clothe his army of 10,000 warriors, he would need to win imperial favor. That would prove a difficult task, especially because there was another Gothic king, a man named Strabo, who was in the picture. Some years earlier, Strabo won an annual shipment of 2,000 pounds of gold after intimidating Constantinople, almost as much as Attila the Hun had once received in tribute. The Eastern Emperor also bequeathed Strabo with the title Supreme Commander of the Goths, which Theodoric did not take particularly well.

An opportunity presented itself to Theodoric in 474, when the sitting emperor died and a succession crisis unfolded between two upstarts. Strabo had thrown his support behind the Lerner, losing a party, and Theodoric, either by luck or prophecy, happened to choose the winning one, a man we've already met, Zeno. When Zeno took control of the Eastern Empire in 476, Zeno immediately deposed Strabo and elevated Theodoric to the position of Supreme Commander of the Goths, and even adopted Theodoric as his, quote, son in arms. But nice as they were, none of those tokens of support,

meant that the Ostrogoths were free from want. Around 477, Zeno ordered Theodoric to crush Strabo, who was holed up in a mountain pass, and in return, Zeno would give Theodoric enough grain for his people to last the winter. Zeno promised the Ostrogoths Roman soldiers, but when Theodoric came to the field of battle, the imperial forces were nowhere to be found. Zeno had lied, but Theodoric was intent on continuing the fight.

Strabo, on the other hand, offered terms of peace, and Theodoric's followers implored their leader not to engage in battle against people they considered their kin. Theodoric's 40,000 troops laid down their arms, and the two Gothic leaders issued joint demands against Zeno for grain and status. Zeno was furious and frightened at the possibility of a united enemy. He sent messengers promising 1,000 pounds of gold and 10,000 pounds of silver in addition to his daughter's hand in marriage if Theodoric could defeat Strabo.

Theodoric refused. But Zeno made a similar offer to Strabo in secret, which was, unfortunately for Theodoric, accepted. From 477 to 480, Theodoric had lost his title as Supreme Commander. He lost his ability to feed his people, and he lost his lucrative alliance with the Eastern Roman Empire. His people were on the run, traveling in baggage trains that allegedly stretched for miles, pillaging cities for survival along their trail. In 480, a Roman general successfully raided.

Theodoric's baggage train, capturing some 2,000 wagons and 5,000 prisoners, nearly abducting Theodoric's own mother and brother. But the following year, Theodoric's fortunes reversed. Strabo accidentally fell from his horse and impaled himself on a lance while riding. Suddenly, his Gothic coalition descended into chaos, and even though Strabo's son won some control over what remained, there was no doubt that Theodoric's Ostroggoths were the most powerful players in the region again. Zeno had no option but to court Theodoric's favor. He once again granted Theodoric the title of Supreme Commander in 483 and even elevated him to the prestigious position of Roman consul in 484, which was the highest possible distinction that a goth could receive from

the empire. But just to make his status secure, just in case, Theodoric also murdered Strabo's son in broad daylight. Theodoric's people won permission to settle the fertile lands to the west of Constantinople, and to top it all off, Zeno erected a statue of Theodoric atop a battlehorse right in the center of the imperial castle. But as expected, the fickle Zeno once again changed his mind, worried that Theodoric might betray him, and he sent an army against Theodoric in 485. Theodoric responded by pillaging nearby towns, and even besieging Constantinople, going so far as cutting off the city's drinking water. In 488, the two leaders finally came together and recognized that they could not both occupy

the same territory in peace. It would be better for everyone. everyone if Theodoric took his roaming Gothic army out west. Zeno had wanted to depose Odoacer for some time, and who better to do the job than the unrelenting Ostrogoth, Theodoric, two birds with one stone. If Theodoric successfully defeated Odoacer, Zeno would grant him the illustrious title of Patricius, a status normally reserved for the most elite Roman citizens.

In truth, Theodoric didn't need all that much convincing to leave. Even when times were good, the emperor's payments only came irregularly. His people continued to go hungry in infertile pastures. Many of them were uprooted from the sedentary lives of their forefathers. Theodoric knew better than any leader that the only thing worse than a hungry population was a hungry population with no one to fight and nowhere to go. According to the Chronicles, which should always be taken with a grain of salt, Theodoric set out from Macedonia at the head of a hundred thousand people. While we refer to all of them as Ostraths, they were in fact a motley mix of displaced people, many Germanic who scraped by to survive in times of nearly constant crisis.

Some of them may have been lured by the growing legend of Theodoric, the man who had slated by the man who had slated by the man who had slated. a king as a teenager and brought the city of Constantinople to its knees. To contemporaries, Theodoric was a fairly unique leader, not quite a barbarian king and not quite a Roman prince. We can imagine that Theodoric relished his renown. He marched the thousand kilometers into Italy, intent on fulfilling his destiny. In the dead of winter 488, Odoacer, king of Italy, received a message that sent a shiver down his spine. To the northeast of Italy, a Germanic people known as the Gepids ruled an independent kingdom, which they proudly defended after decades of Hunnic rule and Roman incursions.

Unfortunately for the Gepids, they lived on the road to Italy. Odoacer got a message that an army of about 20,000 warriors, commissioned by the Emperor Zeno, crushed the once-proud-Gepid people, and killed their king. Oduasser knew what was coming next. Zeno would certainly be sending an army to dethrone him. That much was clear when the emperor refused Oduaser's white flags, which came to Constantinople in the form of chests of gold. But what Odowasser could not have predicted was that,

the famed warmonger Theodoric was at the army's helm. At the battle against the Geppids in 488, when it seemed like the Goths might lose, Theodoric heroically led the charge that turned the tides. The 5th century Bishop Inodius wrote an embellished account of the battle addressed directly to Theodoric. As a torrent devastates crops, as a lion devastates flocks, so did you devastate. state. No one who met you could resist or escape your pursuit. You were transported everywhere as the spears ran out, yet your rage still grew. For you, venerable one, who has sought out the savior of battle unaccompanied, drove forward fortified by thousands. Oduasser wasted no time preparing for what he knew was an incoming invasion. He fortified a bridge over the river Isonzo, which Theodoric would need to pass in order to reach Italy proper, but that didn't do much to slow the invaders.

Odoacer retreated to the city of Verona, but there too the Ostergoth's overwhelmed Odoacer's forces. One of our few sources for an account of the battle comes from that bishop in odious, but his text is particularly problematic because not only was he not an eyewitness to the events, but his intention for writing at all was to make Theodoric fit the mold of Greek and Roman heroes from legends past, like Achilles in the Iliad. Before the Battle of Verona, Theodoric turns to his mother and sister to bid them farewell, where he presents himself as a selfless hero, duty bound to make good on his family's royal name. It looks like the battle might be won by Odoacer's forces, but Theodoric's arrival. once again personally turns the tide. But Odo Osser managed to wriggle free from his enemy's grasp and live to fight another day.

At this point, it seemed to most observers that Theodoric would surely conquer all of Italy. Opportunistic warlords took advantage of Odoacer's weakness to invade Sicily in the south and the Alps in the north. Even Odwosar's chief general briefly defected to Theodoric's side. Archaeologists have excavated coins from this period during Odweser's rule. These silver pieces bear a portrait of a bare-headed king entitled Flavius Odwasser, meaning Odwasser, servant of the emperor. No Germanic king before him had minted silver coins, let alone coins in the style of the Roman Empire. Meanwhile, Odoacer elevated his son, Thela, to the position of Caesar of the West.

Now, some of this is a little strange. Why would Odoacer be concerning himself with the prestige of coins and titles at the very moment that control was very literally slipping from his grasp? Did he truly believe that the prophecy was on his side, that he would in the end prevail? Or did he decide after suffering defeat after defeat that if he couldn't actually have an empire to himself, he could at least pretend through trappings. Any chances Oduasor had a victory were crushed on August 11, 490, one year from the start of the invasion. The two sides met at a river outside Milan, and both suffered enormous losses in the war. in a battle that Theodoric technically won.

The Ostrogoths pursued Odoacer all the way to his capital city, Ravena, where they established a camp in a pine grove just outside the city walls. There was no way Theodoric could storm the city, which sat in the middle of a lagoon, so he dug in for a siege. He ordered his army to block all land routes to the city, cutting off access to food and water. Meanwhile, his men, as with many other invading armies in Italy's history, rampaged across the nearby countryside, searching for supplies and families to enslave. We can't accurately portray the toll that the invasion took on the people living in Italy at the time, but some sources

refer to their suffering in passing. Mass famines in the north, thousands abducted and held for ransom, city is displaced by pillaging warriors on both sides. Those that fled for their lives mainly ended up in Rome, but the church could feed only so many hungry mouths. Rumors spread like wildfire that the war signaled the coming of the Antichrist. Needless to say, these accounts temper the usual depiction of Theodoric as a great and selfless, almost godlike ruler. In fact, Like all other kings of the era, he was just as ruthless, just as power-hungry, and just as callous as the worst of them. That was a lesson that Oduasar was about to learn. The siege that started in the summer of 490 became utterly intolerable for the citizens of Ravana by the middle of 492,

when Theodoric used ships to block the city's actions. access to the sea. It was official. The city was fully surrounded. No supplies were getting in or out, and the city barely had enough to last the year. It's reported that at the start of 493, the citizens of Ravana resorted to eating weeds and leather. Odoacer requested to begin negotiations in February, though Theodoric would only agree if Oduasser sent his son, Thela, as a hostage. What choice did Oduesser have? He sent his son and bargaining commenced on February 25, 493. Messengers scurried back and forth between Ravana and Theodoric's encampment.

Even the local bishop traveled between both sides, imploring both men for an end to the hostilities. After nearly four years of civil war in Italy, of pillaged towns and scorched fields, Theodoric and Odoacer came to an agreement. They would resurrect the Western Roman Empire and rule it jointly. On March 5th, Theodoric and his retinue paraded into Ravana, no doubt full of applauding citizens hopeful for the future. Perhaps it was an especially meaningful day for the few fathers. followers who remembered that Theodoric's father had defeated and possibly killed Odoacer's father

in battle some three decades before. History did not have to repeat itself. Vendettas could turn into truces, sieges into celebrations. The two co-emperors communicated daily in the first week of this new chapter in Roman history. In the midst of the buzz, Odoacer did decided to visit a palace in the city known as the Laurel Grove. This was March 15th. As he was taking a stroll, Odoacer was approached by two shrouded beggars, who were asking for help from their imperial master. But, as you might recall from the introduction, before he could respond, the two men grabbed his arms, and a swarm of Ostergothic soldiers made quick work of Odoacer's bodyguard. Then, out of the shadows, a middle-aged man appeared with a sword drawn. It was Theodoric himself.

The famed warrior took his blade and slashed Oduaser from the collarbone to the hip, at which point Oduaser yelled out, where is God? According to one, probably apocryphal source. Theodoric murdered Oduaser, his co-emperor, in a single stroke. As predicted by St. Severinus, Oduassar's reign as King of Italy ended after 14 years. Strangely, it's reported that Theodoric shouted, This is exactly what you did to my relatives at the dying Oduasr. We have no record of Oduasar killing a relative of Theodoric's. Instead, we do have a record of Theodoric's father killing Oduasar's father, in all likelihood, Theodoric was using whatever justification he could to carry out the execution. In fact, the assassination was just one part in a meticulously planned massacre

in which Oduassar's chief lieutenants were all shot down within the city. Soldiers chased Oduaser's brother into a church, where they were prevented from slaying him according to the rules of sanctuary. But they technically didn't need to be inside the church to kill him with arrows. Soldiers captured Oduasar's mother and threw her in prison where she died of starvation. Theodoric released Oduaser's son, Thela, but he too was eventually hunted down. There would be no joint rule in Theodoric's New Italy. He had spent too long managing his relationships with anxious emperors and fickle allies. After all, a gothic king proved his right to rule by the blood on his hands, not the treaties he signed. And what greater show of might

than to bend prophecy to your will? That's the story of Oduasar and Theodoric, but keep listening after a brief sponsor break to hear a little bit more about how Theodoric story specifically evolved into one very particular folk legend. Will Ferrell's Big Money Players and IHeart Podcasts presents soccer moms. So I'm Leanne. This is my best friend Janet. And we have been joined at the hips since high school. Absolutely.

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Oh. Listen to soccer moms on the IHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Theodoric ruled for 33 years after his betrayal of Odwazer. Contemporary Chronicles treat the new king of Italy as an enlightened ruler. He settled his people in the north of Italy, revived games in the Coliseum, and even rebuilt some of Rome's monuments. He styled himself heir to the Roman imperial throne, but never lost his mantle as king of the Ostrogoths. He went as far as to conquer Spain and North Africa. But Theodoric's legend far exceeded his century. For one thousand years following his rule,

Theodoric's legend seeped into central European popular culture and literature. His history slowly evolved into the myth of a Germanic hero named Dietrich von Bern. While Theodoric came to Italy as an invader from Pannonia, the legendary Dietrich was born in Verona and reclaimed Italy as its rightful heir. Theodoric conquered fearsome Germanic foes on his path to a kingdom in Italy, but those foes were all merely human. Dietrich fought giants, dragons, and worms. In some medieval texts, he has even described as a fire breather.

As with many other oral traditions, Dietrich's story intermingled with other heroic narratives from Norse and German mythology. In one example, the German hero Siegfried encounters a fire-breathing Dietrich as he attempts to protect the princess crimehild. Stories like this are often depicted in tapestries that once adorned the halls of German, nobility. One of Dietrich's most famous medieval stories begins with three giants sitting around complaining over the fact that Dietrich has one favor for his heroic deeds, whereas the giants never do. A queen approaches the leader of the giants, the giant named Eck, and requests that he bring Dietrich to her alive. For the mission, the queen gives Eck armor and a sword which have been soaked in dragon blood and thereby rendered unbeatable.

Eck travels to the Alps and challenges Dietrich to a duel, but our hero refuses. The giant has done him no wrong. Eck calls him a coward, and that seals the deal. Dietrich pounces on him, but after a prolonged fight, he realizes that his foes, dragon blood armor, can't be penetrated. According to the myth, Dietrich is forced to dishonorably stab act through a gap in his armor, at which point the leader of the giants dies. Dietrich takes the armor and the sword for himself and goes on to slay the remaining two giants after him. In some stories,

the queen admits to having wanted the giants slain all along. In another, the last giant treacherously leads Dietrich to murder the remaining giants in his family. One version of the myth, an attempt to connect the fantastical Dietrich with the historical Theodontos, Jorik, explains that the sword Dietrich won from Eck became the very blade that Dietrich used to murder O'Duwaser. O'Dwasser, mortal man that he was, was no match for a blade soaked in dragon's blood and its fire-breathing master. Noble Blood is a production of I-Heart Radio and Grim and Mild from Aaron Manky. Noble Blood is created and hosted by me, Dana Schwartz.

with additional writing and researching by Hannah Johnston, Hannah Zwick, Mira Hayward, Courtney Sender, and Lori Goodman. The show is edited and produced by Noemi Griffin and Rima Il Kali, with supervising producer Josh Thane and executive producers Aaron Manky, Alex Williams, and Matt Frederick. For more podcasts from IHeartRadio, visit the IHartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.

Hey, I'm Dr. Maya Shunker, a cognitive scientist and hosts of the podcast, a slight change of plans, a show about who we are and who we become when life makes other plans. I wish that I hadn't resisted for so long the need to change. We have to be willing to live with a kind of uncertainty that none of us likes. You can have opinions. You can have like a strong stance. and then there's your body having its own program. Listen to a slight change of plans on the IHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. This is an IHeart podcast. Guaranteed human.