GEPIDI. – A people of Gothic stock which, in the mid-3rd 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 along with other barbarians within the borders of the Empire, they behaved as robbers and were fought and routed by Probus (Probus, 18). Attila dragged them along with him in his ruinous raids. After Attila’s defeat and the dissolution of his kingdom, the Gepids succeeded in maintaining themselves in Dacia, already occupied by the Huns, and extended their borders south of the Danube, occupying among other places the cities of Moesia, Sirmium, and Singidunum. Hostile to the Ostrogoths, they attempted to bar their path toward the West and Italy but were defeated (489).
They then waged prolonged struggles against the Lombards, who had settled in Pannonia. A first war is recorded between Audonius, king of the Lombards, and Thurisind, king of the Gepids, in which the latter lost his valiant son, Thurismond, in battle. After several years of peace, during which the Gepids served as mercenaries under Narses against Totila (532), they resumed hostilities with the Lombards, but their king, Cunimund, was utterly defeated and slain by the Lombard Alboin. The Gepids then lost their independence, and Rosamund, daughter of the last king, forcibly married by the victor, avenged her father and her people after the notorious insulting attack by Alboin. There is no record that the Christian preaching reached them.