Gepids

The Gepids (Latin: Gepidae, Gipedae) were an East Germanic tribe. They were closely related to, or a subdivision of, the Goths.

They are first recorded in 6th-century historiography as having been allied with the Goths in the invasion of Dacia in c. 260. In the 4th century, they were incorporated into the Hunnic Empire. Under their leader Ardaric, the Gepids united with other Germanic tribes and defeated the Huns at the Battle of Nedao in 454. The Gepids then founded a kingdom centered on Sirmium, known as Gepidia, which was defeated by the Lombards a century later. Remnants of the Gepids were conquered by the Avars later in the 6th century.

Jordanes reports that their name is from gepanta, an insult meaning "sluggish, stolid" (pigra). An Old English form of their name is recorded in Widsith, as Gefþ-, alongside the name of the Wends.

The Gepids were the "most shadowy of all the major Germanic peoples of the migration period", according to historian Malcolm Todd. Neither Tacitus nor Ptolemy mentioned them in their detailed lists of the "barbarians", suggesting that the Gepids emerged only in the 3rd century AD. The first sporadic references to them, which were recorded in the late 3rd century, show that they lived north of the frontier of the Roman Empire. The 6th-century Byzantine writer, Procopius, listed the Gepids among the "Gothic nations", along with the Vandals, Visigoths and Goths proper, in his Wars of Justinian. According to historian Walter Goffart, Jordanes' remark shows that Byzantine scholars had invented a concept of the "Gothic nations, sharing the same language, white bodies, blond hair, and Arian form of Christianity".

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