You can help expand this article with text translated from the corresponding article in Italian. (February 2023) Click [show] for important translation instructions.
View a machine-translated version of the Italian article.
Machine translation, like DeepLorGoogle Translate, is a useful starting point for translations, but translators must revise errors as necessary and confirm that the translation is accurate, rather than simply copy-pasting machine-translated text into the English Wikipedia.
Do not translate text that appears unreliable or low-quality. If possible, verify the text with references provided in the foreign-language article.
You must provide copyright attribution in the edit summary accompanying your translation by providing an interlanguage link to the source of your translation. A model attribution edit summary is Content in this edit is translated from the existing Italian Wikipedia article at [[:it:Vitige]]; see its history for attribution.
You may also add the template {{Translated|it|Vitige}} to the talk page.
Vitiges was the husband of Queen Amalasuntha's only surviving child, Matasuntha;[2] therefore, his royal legitimacy was based on this marriage.[3] The panegyric upon the wedding in 536 was delivered by Cassiodorus, the praetorian prefect, and survives, a traditionally Roman form of rhetoric that set the Gothic dynasty in a flatteringly Roman light. Soon after he was made king, Vitiges had his predecessor Theodahad murdered.[4] Theodahad had enraged the Goths because he failed to send any assistance to Naples when it was besieged by the Byzantines, led by Belisarius.
Belisarius took both Vitiges and Matasuntha captive to Constantinople,[5] and Vitiges died there in 542, without any children. Procopius described parallels among the deposition of Vitiges and Croesus, king of Lydia.[3] After his death, Matasuntha married the patrician Germanus Justinus, a cousin of Justinian I through his uncle Justin I.[6]