When the Huns suddenly burst upon Europe in AD 370, the eastern Goths (Ostrogoths) were overrun and subjugated. After the Huns had moved deeper into Europe some eighty years later, the Ostrogoths also migrated, invading Italy in 488 under the brilliant leadership of Theodoric.
The latter had spent his youth as a hostage of the Romans and was well educated in Roman culture, statesmanship and the arts of war. He founded a kingdom in northern Italy that made excellent use of the existing Roman administrative system, retaining Romans in high office, but also ruling the Goths through their traditional institutions.
His Gothic subjects having less interest in the advantages of civilization than Theodoric, the kingdom became an easy target for reconquest by the Eastern Roman Empire after his death in 526.
