Balamber

Balamber (Balamir, Balamur) was ruler of the Huns, mentioned by Jordanes in his Getica (c. 550 AD). Jordanes simply called him "king of the Huns" (rex Hunnorum) and tells us the story of Balamber crushing the kingdom of Ostrogoths in the 370s, somewhere between 370 and more probable 376 AD.

Jordanes recounts:

"Balamber, king of the Huns, took advantage of his ill health to move an army into the country of the Ostrogoths, from whom the Visigoths had already separated because of some dispute. Meanwhile Hermanaric, who was unable to endure either the pain of his wound or the inroads of the Huns, died full of days at the great age of one hundred and ten years. The fact of his death enabled the Huns to prevail over those Goths who, as we have said, dwelt in the East and were called Ostrogoths."

"When he had ruled with such license for barely a year, Balamber, king of the Huns, would no longer endure it, but sent for Gesimund, son of Hunimund the Great. Now Gesimund, together with a great part of the Goths, remained under the rule of the Huns, being mindful of his oath of fidelity. Balamber renewed his alliance with him and led his army up against Vinitharius. After a long contest, Vinitharius prevailed in the first and in the second conflict, nor can any say how great a slaughter he made of the army of the Huns. But in the third battle, when they met each other unexpectedly at the river named Erac, Balamber shot an arrow and wounded Vinitharius in the head, so that he died. Then Balamber took to himself in marriage Vadamerca, the grand-daughter of Vinitharius, and finally ruled all the people of the Goths as his peaceful subjects, but in such a way that one ruler of their own number always held the power over the Gothic race, though subject to the Huns."

Those events were preceded by Huns attack on the Alans at Don, who bordered the Greuthungi, and according to Ammianus Marcellinus, occurred an alliance between them.

The events and names which followed vary according to Ammianus and Cassiodorus (from whose Gothic History was summarized Getica):

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