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It is most likely to have been written in Constantinople about 551 AD. It is a summary of the now lost Gothic History of Cassiodorus. That Jordanes owed almost everything in his recension to the original work of Cassiodorus, now lost, is scarcely disputed, for in his Preface Jordanes presents his simple plan "to condense in my own style in this small book the twelve volumes of the Senator on the origin and deeds of the Getae from olden time to the present day."
This work claims to have the Gothic "Folk songs" - the "Carmina Prisca" (Latin) as a prime source. Recent scholarship regards this as highly questionable. The main purpose of the original work (Cassiodorus's) was to give the gothic ruling class a glorius past - to match the past of the senatorial families of Roman Italy.