traveled to what was described as the previous homeland of the Goths, and thereafter, according to historian Herwig Wolfram, wanted to establish an alliance with the Heruli king Rodulf. According to Wolfram, Rodulf "probably included in his sphere of influence the region north of Lake Balaton." In another letter from the collection of Cassiodorus, probably from between 507 and 514, Theodoric asks for the assistance of the kings of the Heruli, Thuringi and Varni for a counter-attack against the pressure from the Franks. Procopius implied that the battle which led to Rodulf's death took place around 494, it is therefore considered unlikely to have occurred about 508. A later account of the battle with the Lombards by Paul the Deacon gives Rodulf a more legitimate casus belli against the Lombards. Rodulf purportedly declared war against the Lombards because his brother was murdered by Tato's daughter Rumetruda, after a falling-out between the two, during his brother's return home. In the Historia Langobardorum ("History of the Lombards"), Paul the Deacon mentions that Rodulf was among the dead in a battle against the Lombards under Tato, probably in 508. Theodoric did not manage to intervene in time, and the Heruls thus suffered a crushing defeat. The Heruls were split up as a result of the defeat in the battle. The Lombards took both Rodulf's standard (vexillum) and his helmet, and Paul the Deacon claimed that this broke the courage of the Heruli such that they never had a king again. However Procopius, who was much closer to the events, notes that the Heruli divided and moved, but still had kings. King in Scandza King Rodulf (Roduulf rex) of the Ranii is only mentioned once, in the Getica (De origine actibusque Getarum; "The Origin and Deeds of the Goths") which was written by the Roman historian Jordanes. Although he wrote some generations later, one of his sources was the now lost Historia Gothorum ("History of the Goths") of Cassiodorus, who had written his account at the request of Theodoric the Great, King of the Ostrogoths and ruler of Italy. In the 19th century, the German classicist Theodor Mommsen argued that the Rodulf of the Ranii tribe and the Rodulf of the Heruli tribe constituted the same person. He proposed that Rodulf could have arrived to Theodoric in 489, when he was in Moesia. Some modern historians have speculated that it could have been this