Rome's Final Conquest: The Barbarians

Abstract The standard account of Rome's dealing with the barbarians in late antiquity describes dynamically expanding Germans and an Empire succumbing beneath their pressure. Offered here is an alternative scenario. Its starting point is that the barbarians and Rome, instead of being in constant conflict with each other, occupied a joined space, a single world in which both were entitled to share. What we call the barbarian invasions was primarily a drawing of foreigners into Roman service, a process sponsored, encouraged, and rewarded by Rome. Simultaneously, the Romans energetically upheld their supremacy. Many barbarian peoples were suppressed and vanished; the survivors were persuaded and learned to shoulder Roman tasks. Rome was never discredited or repudiated. The future endorsed and carried forward what the Empire stood for in religion, law, administration, literacy, and language.