Balti dynasty
The
Balti dynasty existed among the
Visigoths, a
Germanic people who confronted the
Roman Empire in its declining years in the west. The Balti took their name from the Gothic word
balþa (
baltha) or bold. It thus meant the Bold ones or Bold men. Also called the Balthi dynasty or the Balthings, its members can be called Balths.
The Balti were considered next in worth among Gothic fighters, and next in royal dignity, to the
Amali. But it was
Alaric the Visigoth, a Balth, who led his people to the sacking of
Rome in
410 CE and founded a dynasty that would come to rule much of
Roman Gaul for a century and all of Roman
Hispania for longer, establishing a kingdom in the latter that would last until early in the
eighth century.
The Balti dynasty of Visigothic kings reigned from
395 to
531, comprising the following:
*
Alaric I *
Ataulf *
Wallia *
Theodoric I *
Thorismund *
Theodoric II *
Euric *
Alaric II *
Gesalec *
AmalaricEdward Gibbon in footnote 4, Chapter 30, of the
History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire, adds::This illustrious race long continued to flourish in France, in the Gothic province of Septimania, or Languedoc; under the corrupted appellation of Boax; and a branch of that family afterwards settled in the kingdom of Naples (Grotius in Prolegom. ad Hist. Gothic. p. 53). The lords of Baux, near Arles, and of seventy-nine subordinate places, were independent of the counts of Provence, (Longuerue, Description de la France, tom. i. p. 357).
