GE´PIDAE, GEPIDI(γήταιδες), one of the principal tribes of the Goths. They are first mentioned by Vopiscus ( Prob. 18). After their first migration, they are said to have settled in the country between the Oder and the Vistula, from which they expelled the Burgundiones. In the fifth century we find them, under their king Ardaric, joining the hosts of Attila, with whom they traversed Gaul, and afterwards settled in Dacia, on the banks of the Danube. As they were retarded as dangerous neighbours to the Eastern Empire, Justinian invoked the aid of the Langobardi against them. The consequence of this was that the Gepidae and their kingdom were destroyed. (Paul. Diac. 1.27; Exceirpt. e Menand. Historia, pp. 303, 310, 340, 387, ed. Bekker and Niebuhr; Procop. B. G. 4.5; comp. Latham, Epileg to Tac. Germ. p. lxxxvi.)
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