Ostrogoths (himself a Rugian), sent a certain Caballarius as envoy to
Constantinople, having chosen him „among his most intimate and loyal
friends“ (Procopius Bell.Goth. Ill 2,16). According to Tjader and Lazard there
is a possibility that a certain Latinus, vir honestus, witness in a document of
539, might be an Ostrogoth with a Latin name, but in my opinion the evidence
is uncertain.v It is quite probable that Petrus and Paulus, two Arian priests
mentioned in the bilingual papyrus of 551, were Goths with Latin religious
names.9 11 12’
Further, there is in 514 a Gothic comes called Petia (ace. Petiam, in Cont.
Havniens. I, 331): a name of Greek origin, like Pitza, Pitzia, and probably
Pitione. Both Pitza and Pitzia are recent variant renderings, with -tz-, -tzi-, and
the -ti- of Petia, of forms corresponding to the classical Greek spelling -0i-.u
The name Pitione belongs to this group too.1- Finally, the difficult name Piss a
could be probably explained as another form of the same Greek name Pitzia,
equally treated like a Gothic hypocoristic.13
A saio with the Alan name of Candacis is mentioned by Cassiodorus
(Variae I 37, years 507-511 ).14 He could have been an Alan associated to the
Ostrogoths or a Goth with an Alanic name; such a case would not be isolated,
as there was at the end of the 5th century a Goth belonging to the Amal clan,
called Gunthigis Baza, whose second name was Alanic (Jordanes Get. 51).
9 Tjader P30, I, 1955, p. 56, 260-61; Lazard 2002, p. 1208. The assumption is based
on the reading lec Latinus vh, interpreted as Goth, ik ,ego, I, Latinus v(ir)
h(onestus)’ with a unique Gothic pronoun included in the Latin text. But the two
letters of [l]cc are not clear at all (see picture in Tjader 1954), besides the fact that
the name does not belong to a list of signatures beginning with Ego... The older
edition (Marini 1805) read cl (=Claudius).
10 Tjader P34; Lazard 2002, p. 1211, n. 26.
11 nii^ac;; was a Goth who surrendered to Belisarius in Samnium in 536 {Procopius
Bell.Goth. I, 15). Pitzia, -ae was the famous comes and general that fought against
the Gepids at Sirmio on the Danube in 504-514 (Ermodius Paneg. XII; Cassiodorus
Variae v29); he is also referred to as Petza nom., Pitzamum ace. in Jordanes Get.
58. All these are related to the Greek name FluOiag, and assimilated to Gothic
masculine hypocoristics ending in ~a (cp. Goth. Gevica, Sibia, etc.).
12 Pitione (abl., papyrus of about 600 AD, Marini no. 124) was a vir honestus married
to Petronia. In this case the name has been strongly romanised and inflected
according to the Latin pattern in -o, -onis (Pition- < *Pitzian-). Such a high degree
of Latinisation can easily be due its late date.
13 fUaaav (acc., Procopius Bell.Goth. 116) was a Commander in Perugia under king
Vitiges in 537; his name could also be compared to the Lombard Pissa, in turn of
obscure origin, recorded in the Historia Langobardorum Codicis Gothani (early
ninth Century).
14 Amory 1997, p, 368.
47