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Of the two great Gothic groups, the most commonly known is the history of the one that merged with our own: the Ostrogoths, or Eastern Goths, from their settlement on the shores of the Black Sea, whereas the Visigoths (or "Western Goths", although the original meaning of the term "Visi" is rather attributable to a title of nobility) were settled to the west of the Pontus and its great outlet, the Dniester.
After a period of unitary monarchy, which can be traced back to the mid-4th century when both groups acknowledged Hermanaric as king—who was later overwhelmed by the Hunnic invasion—Ostrogoths and Visigoths created their own leaders and acted independently. Under the Amals, of the dynasty perhaps of Hermanaric and even earlier of a mythical progenitor, Ostrogota, the eastern group fought Vandals and Slavs, succeeding in forming a vast kingdom on both sides of the Vistula. But the Hunnic attack shattered the attempt at its inception and contributed to driving the Visigoths across the Danube and bringing the Ostrogoths, as federates, into Rome's orbit. Having revolted, Stilicho defeated them. But they returned to the alliance with the Empire, without deriving any help from it, when the Huns, in their warlike fury, dragged them along on their march toward the west. Already around the middle of the 5th century, the path to Italy appeared in the intentions of the Ostrogoths: Aëtius, an ally of the Visigoths, stopped them. Upon the death of Attila and the dissolution of the fleeting Hunnic power, the Ostrogoths renewed their federate bond with the Empire (an unstable alliance, given that they invaded Illyricum) and fought once again, under their king Theodemir, against Suebi, Rugii, Quadi, and Marcomanni. The king's son, Theodoric (v.), was welcomed at the court of Byzantium, both guest and hostage, until in 474 he inherited power over his people, leading them to new and greater fortunes.
In 489, after Theodoric requested for himself and his people to pass into Italy as patricii to fight Odoacer, the Ostrogoths migrated to Italy. The Eastern Emperor, Zeno, rather than favoring a stable settlement for the Goths, aimed evidently at removing such a dangerous ally. It was a migrating people, not an army of warriors, that descended into the peninsula. In a long struggle, Odoacer was defeated, his people dispersed, and the conquerors assigned themselves well over a third of the lands, in accordance with barbarian custom.
The long reign of Theodoric (v.), which Emperor Anastasius recognized in 498, could thus unfold—not without sagacity and foresight, as shown first by the attempt at fusion between vanquished and victors, Italians and Goths, and later by a matrimonial policy aimed at strengthening relations with the other major barbarian kingdoms (the Franks, Burgundians, Visigoths, and Vandals). Lands even beyond the Alps, to the west and east, were joined to the Gothic Kingdom of Italy; but later, relations with the Vandals and Franks entered a crisis, the matrimonial policy suffered setbacks, and the contrast between Romans and barbarians also perpetuated itself: a difference above all in culture and religion, which was reflected in the sad twilight of the old King, bloodied by the clash with the Senate and the Church of Rome, and the trial of Boethius.
The twilight of Theodoric also became that of the Ostrogoths: with the Kingdom weakened during the regency of Amalasuntha due to the split between pro-Roman and anti-Roman factions, Justinian was able to seize the opportunity and simultaneously stimulate Roman resistance to undertake the imperial reconquest of the peninsula. Resistance was feeble at first, then heroic under Totila and Teia. The Ostrogothic people were exterminated in wars of annihilation, such as those of Taginae and Mons Lactarius, after which they disappeared from history, finally led to merge with the Italians or other Germanic stocks they had hoped to dominate.
The conversion of the Ostrogoths in Italy from Arianism matured during the 6th century, hand in hand with the fusion with the people they wished to dominate.
The Visigoths, on the other hand, after reaching an initial moment of great power at the end of the 4th century under Alaric, following the defeat suffered at the hands of Stilicho at Pollentia, and after the attempt to cross into Africa—shattered by the leader's death in Calabria in 410—had reached Gaul under Ataulf, and then Spain, establishing the Kingdom of Toulouse there.
The Visigoths of Spain, among whom a concept of independence and an anti-Roman tendency prevailed under Euric, after defeating the Suebi of Galicia, the Gallo-Romans of Auvergne, and the Saxon pirates, failed to complete the occupation of the Iberian peninsula and, once again due to religious conflict, suffered the backlash of the rise of the Frankish power. The end of the anti-Catholic persecution and the regulation of relations with the Romans (which occurred with the Breviarium Alaricianum) arrived late. The Third Council of Toledo, celebrated in 589, which received the abjuration of King Reccared—whose conversion had taken place two years earlier—marked the official end of Visigothic Arianism and the beginning of the great development of the Catholic Church in Spain. Having ceased all influence outside the borders of the Tolosan Kingdom, the Visigothic monarchy, after having for two centuries intertwined its history with the original history of Spanish civilization, came to an end in 711 with the Arab invasion.