Witiges or Vitiges (died
540) was King of the
Ostrogoths in Italy from 536 to
540. He succeeded to the throne of
Italy in the early stages of the
Gothic War, as
Belisarius had quickly captured
Sicily the previous year and was currently in
southern Italy at the head of the forces of
Justinian I, the
Eastern Roman Emperor. Witiges was the husband of
Amalasuntha's only surviving child, Mathesuentha, a marriage designed to bolster his claim to kingship. 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. Witiges had
Theodahad murdered after the imprisonment and death of his mother-in-law. Justinian's general Belisarius took both Witiges and Mathesuentha as captives to
Constantinople, and Witiges died there, without any children. After his death Mathesuentha married the patrician
Germanus, a nephew of Justinian I by his sister Vigilantia.
See more at Wikipedia.org...