Complex sentence: Of Gothic ancestry, Jordanes served as a notarius for a Byzantine Master of the Soldiers before entering into the ranks of the Catholic clergy and writing his two surviving books, the "Romana" and the "Getica".
Split into simpler sentences: Of Gothic ancestry, Jordanes served as a notarius for a Byzantine Master of the Soldiers before entering into the ranks of the Catholic clergy. It is at this point that he wrote his two surviving books, the "Romana" and the "Getica".