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The Amali were the leading dynasty of the Goths, a Germanic people who confronted the Roman Empire in its declining years in the west. Also called the Amals, Amaler, or Amalings, they were considered highest in worth among Gothic fighters and highest in royal dignity. According to Gothic legend, the Amali were descended from an ancient hero whose deeds earned him the title of Amala or "mighty."

However, the Goths branched into two groups around the year 200: the Ostrogoths and the Visigoths. And by 395 their histories had become significantly separated. Edward Gibbon writes, in the History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire (Chapter 31, footnote 160):

"the true hereditary right to the Gothic sceptre was vested in the Amali; but those princes, who were the vassals of the Huns, commanded the tribes of the Ostrogoths in some distant parts of Germany or Scythia."

Therefore, in this vacuum, it would seem that the rival Balti dynasty, predominant among the Visigoths in Italy and Gaul, was enabled to assume the Visigothic leadership. For it was Alaric the Visigoth, a member of the latter dynasty, who led his people in the sacking of Rome in 410 CE.

This success, and the dynasty of kings Alaric created, heightened tensions between the two families, leading to the Amali usurping the Visigothic throne in 415, making Sigeric king. But Sigeric's reign lasted but seven days before he was assassinated and the Balti dynasty resumed a rule that didn't end until 531.

In this light it can be said generally that, beginning in 395, the Amali were the royal house of the Ostrogoths while the Balti were that of the Visigoths.

• Henry Bradley, The Goths: from the Earliest Times to the End of the Gothic Dominion in Spain. Second edition, 1883, New York: G.P. Putnam's Sons, chapter 1.