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Witiges or Vitiges (died 540) was King of the Ostrogoth
Ostrogoth

The Ostrogoths were a branch of the Goths, an East Germanic tribes that played a major role in the political events of the late Roman Empire. The other branch was the Visigoths....
s in Italy from 536 to 540.

He succeeded to the throne of Italy
Italy

Italy , officially the Italian Republic , is a country located on the Italian Peninsula in Southern Europe and on the two largest islands in the Mediterranean Sea, Sicily and Sardinia....
 in the early stages of the Gothic War, as Belisarius
Belisarius

Flavius Belisarius is often described as one of the greatest generals of the Byzantine Empire. He was instrumental to Byzantine Emperor Justinian I's ambitious project of reconquering much of the Western Roman Empire, which had been lost just under a century previously....
 had quickly captured Sicily
Sicily

Sicily is an Autonomous regions with special statute of Italy. Of all the regions of Italy, Sicily covers the largest land area at 25,708 km? and currently has just over five million inhabitants....
 the previous year and was currently in southern Italy at the head of the forces of Justinian I
Justinian I

Flavius Petrus Sabbatius Iustinianus , AD 482 or 483 ? 13 or 14 November 565, was the second member of the Justinian Dynasty and List of Roman Emperors from 527 until his death....
, the Eastern Roman Emperor
Byzantine Empire

Byzantine Empire and Eastern Roman Empire are conventional names used to describe the Roman Empire during the Middle Ages, centered on its capital of Constantinople....
. Witiges was the husband of Amalasuntha
Amalasuntha

Amalasuntha was a queen of the Ostrogoths from 516 to 534.A daughter of Ostrogothic king Theodoric the Great, she secretly married a slave named Traguilla....
's only surviving child, Matasuntha, a marriage designed to bolster his claim to kingship.






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Witiges or Vitiges (died 540) was King of the Ostrogoth
Ostrogoth

The Ostrogoths were a branch of the Goths, an East Germanic tribes that played a major role in the political events of the late Roman Empire. The other branch was the Visigoths....
s in Italy from 536 to 540.

He succeeded to the throne of Italy
Italy

Italy , officially the Italian Republic , is a country located on the Italian Peninsula in Southern Europe and on the two largest islands in the Mediterranean Sea, Sicily and Sardinia....
 in the early stages of the Gothic War, as Belisarius
Belisarius

Flavius Belisarius is often described as one of the greatest generals of the Byzantine Empire. He was instrumental to Byzantine Emperor Justinian I's ambitious project of reconquering much of the Western Roman Empire, which had been lost just under a century previously....
 had quickly captured Sicily
Sicily

Sicily is an Autonomous regions with special statute of Italy. Of all the regions of Italy, Sicily covers the largest land area at 25,708 km? and currently has just over five million inhabitants....
 the previous year and was currently in southern Italy at the head of the forces of Justinian I
Justinian I

Flavius Petrus Sabbatius Iustinianus , AD 482 or 483 ? 13 or 14 November 565, was the second member of the Justinian Dynasty and List of Roman Emperors from 527 until his death....
, the Eastern Roman Emperor
Byzantine Empire

Byzantine Empire and Eastern Roman Empire are conventional names used to describe the Roman Empire during the Middle Ages, centered on its capital of Constantinople....
. Witiges was the husband of Amalasuntha
Amalasuntha

Amalasuntha was a queen of the Ostrogoths from 516 to 534.A daughter of Ostrogothic king Theodoric the Great, she secretly married a slave named Traguilla....
's only surviving child, Matasuntha, a marriage designed to bolster his claim to kingship. The panegyric
Panegyric

A panegyric is a formal public speech , or written verse, delivered in high praise of a person or object , a generally highly studied and discriminating eulogy, not expected to be critical....
 upon the wedding in 536 was delivered by Cassiodorus
Cassiodorus

Flavius Magnus Aurelius Cassiodorus Senator , commonly known as Cassiodorus, was a Roman Empire statesman and writer, serving in the administration of Theodoric the Great, king of the Ostrogoths....
, the praetorian prefect
Praetorian prefecture of Italy

The praetorian prefecture of Italy was one of four large Praetorian prefectures into which the Late Roman Empire was divided. It comprised the Italian peninsula, the Western Balkans, the Danubian provinces and parts of North Africa....
, and survives, a traditionally Roman form of rhetoric that set the Gothic dynasty in a flatteringly Roman light. Witiges had Theodahad
Theodahad

File:Theodahad.jpgFile:Theodahad_534_536_Ostrogoth_minted_in_Rome.jpgTheodahad was the King of the Ostrogoths from 534 to 536 and a nephew of Theodoric the Great through his sister....
 murdered after the imprisonment and death of his mother-in-law. Justinian's general Belisarius took both Witiges and Mathesuentha as captives to Constantinople
Constantinople

Constantinople was the empire capital of the Roman Empire , the Byzantine Empire , the Latin Empire , and the Ottoman Empire . Strategically located between the Golden Horn and the Sea of Marmara at the point where Europe meets Asia, Byzantine Constantinople had been the capital of a Christendom empire, successor to ancient ancient Greece...
, and Witiges died there, without any children. After his death Mathesuentha married the patrician Germanus Justinus
Germanus Justinus

Germanus Iustinus was a General of the Byzantine Empire and member of the Justinian Dynasty.The paternal nephew of Justinian I, and whose father was born ca 485, he became Magister Militum for Thracia ca 525, a Roman Patricius in 536 and a Diplomat, and was placed in charge of Imperial forces in the Gothic War in 550....
, a nephew of Justinian I by his sister Vigilantia.