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Jordanes
Late Roman historian and writer, author of Getica · Writers · Lived 490 to 560 · aged 70
A bureaucrat who turned historian in middle age and left behind the only surviving Roman account of the Goths' early centuries - written in three days from borrowed notes and whatever he remembered.
Jordanes is read about 185 times a day, in 60 languages.
A typical day, 30 days to 12 November 2026
The middle day of the days counted, so one week of news cannot move it. The line under it is the last 400 days, one point a day.
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_-_repr._F._Wilken%2C_Geschichte_der_..._Heidelbergischen_B%C3%BCchersammlungen%2C_Heidelberg_1817%2C_Taf._2%2C_Nr_2.jpg?width=1200)
Codex Heidelbergensis 921 (Heidelberg-Universitätsbibliothek, Palat. Lat. 921) - repr. F. Wilken, Geschichte der ... Heidelbergischen Büchersammlungen, Heidelberg 1817, Taf. 2, Nr 2_-_Titelblatt..jpg?width=1200)
Iordanis Romana et Getica, ed. Th. Mommsen, Berlin 1882 (Monumenta Germaniae Historica. Auctores Antiquissimi 5,1) - Titelblatt.About this person
Jordanes was a 6th-century Eastern Roman official of Gothic ancestry who spent his career in administration before taking up the pen. He produced two histories: one surveying Rome (Romana) and another on his people's past (Getica). The Gothic work, composed in Late Latin rather than the polished Ciceronian style, drew on Cassiodorus's now-lost writings - which Jordanes claimed to have consulted for only three days, forcing him to rely heavily on his own recall. Getica became one of just two ancient texts on the early Goths to survive antiquity, the other being Isidore of Seville's later chronicle. Scholars have scrutinized it ever since for what it preserved and what it may have misremembered.
