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  • 5 - Slavery in Euphemia and the Goth

  • from Part II - Slavery, Cultural Discourses, and Identity
  • Edited by Chris L. de Wet, Maijastina Kahlos, University of Helsinki, Ville Vuolanto, University of Tampere, Finland
  • Book:
    Slavery in the Late Antique World, 150 – 700 CE
    Published online:
    27 January 2022
    Print publication:
    17 February 2022, pp 107-128

  • Summary

    Located somewhere between ancient fiction and Christian hagiography, the story of Euphemia and the Goth recounts the tale of a young girl from Edessa, Euphemia, whose widowed mother, Sophia, is deceived and manipulated into letting an unnamed Gothic soldier marry her daughter. Later, as the story develops, events take a turn for the worse, and the pregnant Euphemia is taken away to the Goth’s homeland, only to find that he is already married. She is then given as a slave to the Goth’s wife, and suffers terrible abuse before being miraculously rescued.

    The story is set in ca. 395 ce Edessa, in the context of the invasion of Mesopotamia by the Huns, although possibly composed decades later in the fifth century. As in some other cases from Syriac literature, Euphemia and the Goth reads in many ways like a tale from the genre of the Greek novel.