page_title: Thervingi
section_title: Relationship with the Visigoths
hierarchical_section_title: Thervingi / Relationship with the Visigoths
caption_attribution_description: English: Gutthiuda
context_page_description: The Thervingi, Tervingi, or Teruingi 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 Greuthungi, another Gothic people from east of the Dniester, as well as the Roman Empire. They were one of the main components of the large movement of Goths and other peoples over the Danube in 376, and they are seen as one of the most important ancestral groups of the Visigoths.
context_section_description: Based upon the medieval writer Jordanes who described identified the Visigothic kings from Alaric I to Alaric II as the heirs of the 4th-century Thervingian "judge" (iudex) Athanaric, Visigoths have traditionally been treated as successors of the Thervingi.
  In defense of this equation, Herwig Wolfram, interprets the Notitia Dignitatum to equate the Vesi with the Thervingi in the period 388–391; According to Herwig Wolfram, the primary sources either use the terminology of Thervingi/Greuthungi or Vesi/Ostrogothi and never mix the pairs.
  On the other hand, another other recent interpretation of the Notitia is that the two names, Vesi and Tervingi, are found in different places in the list, "a clear indication that we are dealing with two different army units, which must also presumably mean that they are, after all, perceived as two different peoples". Peter Heather has written that Wolfram's position is "entirely arguable, but so is the opposite".
  Wolfram believes that the terms Thervingi and Greuthungi were older geographical identifiers used by each tribe to describe the other. The terminology therefore dropped out of use after the Goths were displaced by the Hunnic invasions.In contrast he proposes that the terms "Vesi" and "Ostrogothi" were used by the peoples to boastfully describe themselves. Thus, the Thervingi would have called themselves Vesi.
caption: Gutthiuda, the country of Visigoths (Thervingi)
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