It is he who tries to restore the Roman Empire to its state before the Migration Period from his residence in Constantinople, which requires the capture of the Italian Peninsula and specifically Rome.

The lack of a strong heir caused the network of alliances that surrounded the Ostrogothic state to disintegrate: the Visigothic kingdom regained its autonomy under Amalaric, the relations with the Vandals turned increasingly hostile, and the Franks embarked again on expansion, subduing the Thuringians and the Burgundians and almost evicting the Visigoths from their last holdings in southern Gaul.

The struggle for Rome ends in the battle of Mons Lactarius near Mount Vesuvius, where the Ostrogoths make their last stand defending a narrow pass (a scene reminiscent of the battle of Thermopylae) and, once defeated, are led back north to the island of Thule where their roots lie by a kindred Northern European people.

The book recounts the struggle of the Ostrogoth state in Italy with the Eastern Roman Empire and describes their doom.

This corpse belongs to their late and last king Teia who, throughout the story, symbolises the tragedy of his people's downfall from the moment of Theodoric the Great's death.

The novel focuses on the actual struggle for control over Ancient Rome and specifically on the acts of heroism and heroic deaths therein.

For this fact it was quickly considered a novel for boys in the German Empire, newly founded in 1871; the book was continuously handed over from the previous generation of adolescents to the next until the 1940s.

Dahn was a trained historian and – prior to the novel – had published a first scientific monography about Procopius of Caesarea (in 1865), the main source of the Gothic War (535–552), describing the history of Theoderic's realm and people and their future fates.

Amalasuntha envisions a merger with the Eastern Roman Empire, much to the dismay of the Ostrogothic people, who consider her as a traitor (an important motif throughout the book).

Theodoric's old but hardy armourer Hildebrand arranges an alliance to be made between him, Vitiges, Totila and Teia to save their kingdom.

Totila is portrayed as a handsome and charismatic young man, who (like Theodoric) wishes to combine Roman civilisation with Gothic strength.

Even though he knows this demise to be predestined, he adopts the Germanic philosophy to face fate with courage, in order to be well remembered.