GEPIDI. - A people of Gothic stock who, about the middle of the third century A.D., descended from the Baltic regions toward the Carpathians. The earliest mention is found in the life of Probus in the Historia Augusta. Admitted, together with other barbarians, within the boundaries of the Empire, they behaved as brigands and were fought and driven out by Probus (Probus, 18). Attila dragged them along with him in his devastating raids. After Attila had been defeated and his kingdom dissolved, the G. succeeded in maintaining themselves in Dacia, already occupied by the Huns, and extended their boundaries also south of the Danube, occupying, among other places, the cities of Moesia, Sirmium, and Singidunum. Enemies
of the Ostrogoths, they attempted to bar their way toward the West and toward Italy, but were defeated (489).
They subsequently engaged in longer struggles with the Lombards, who had settled in Pannonia. There is record of a first war between Audoino, king of the Lombards, and Turrisendo, king of the G., who lost in battle his valiant son Turrismondo. After some years of peace, during which the G. were among Narses' mercenaries against Totila (552), they resumed their struggles with the Lombards; but their king Cunimondo was utterly defeated and killed by the Lombard Alboino. The G. then lost their independence, and Rosmunda, daughter of the last king, forcibly married to the victor, avenged her father and her people after Alboino's well-known atrocious insult. There is no record that Christian preaching ever reached them.