![]() ![]() ![]() These tribes, originating in Eastern Europe, finally conquered large tracts of the old Empire, sacking Rome itself and defeating Roman armies on land and sea.Īdmittedly, I have very little knowledge about the Roman Empire. What had happened? Covering the last 100 years of Empire, a period full of great battles, treachery, and characters as wild as Attila the Hun, Peter Heather shows how the Empire gave way before the relentless and deliberate onslaught of the Huns, Goths and Vandals. However, within a generation, the foundations of this order were shaken to their core, and Roman armies, as one contemporary put it, "vanished like shadows". ![]() Two hundered years later the Romans still seemed invincible, routing 30,000 Alamanii at the battle of Strasbourg. The opening scenes of Gladiator are based on the victories of Marcus Aurelius over one such tribe, the Marcommani. But beyond these frontiers lay other lands, the lands of seemingly anarchic warrior tribes, the land of the Barbarians. For half a millenium the empire of Rome stretched from Hadrians Wall to the river Euphrates, a massive fortified state founded on military might and the pilllars of civilizationwritting, the city, and the rule of law. ![]()
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