He is sometimes cited as dux Turingorum de Taurinis, that is, as a real "national" leader of a group of Thuringians who had joined the Lombards when their kingdom fell to the Franks in 531.

His long reign was marked by the cessation of war with Francia, whose chief peacemaker Guntram, king of Burgundy, had died in 592.

A truce with the Papacy negotiated in 598 temporarily ended thirty years of Lombard terror in the Ducatus Romanus and he spent most of his war-making energies on the Byzantine threat.

In that year, he consolidated Lombard power, extending the dominion of his kingdom by taking Sutri and Perugia among other Umbrian cities from the exarchate of Ravenna, while maintaining good relations with the Bavarians.

He fought the Avars and Slavs, and entered a truce with the Byzantine emperor Maurice in 598 with the aid of Pope Gregory the Great.