Iacopo Filiasi e le origini del sintagma ‘Guerra Greco-Gotica’

In Italian historical works written during the last century, the war between the Ostrogoths and Justinian is frequently designated as the ‘Greek-Gothic’ War (‘Guerra Greco-Gotica’ in Italian). This expression was first coined by the Venetian scholar Iacopo Filiasi in 1812 and enjoyed little success for several decades, since it was only used by Filiasi himself and a small number of historians who had read his works. However, it was employed in a textbook on Medieval History for secondary school students at the end of the nineteenth century and subsequently became widespread. Present-day historians continue to use this expression on a regular basis, but they should be aware that it is inaccurate for both historical and historiographical reasons, since the identity and self-perception of sixth-century East Romans was not connected with ‘Greekness’, the few occurrences of Graecus in sixth-century sources are used in a derogatory sense, and the war between the Ostrogoths and Justinian was consistently called Gothic War (‘Guerra Gotica’) by the most prominent Italian historians of the seventeenth, eighteenth, and nineteenth centuries.