Barbarian Kingdoms
Find a map of Europe and run your finger across it: France. England. Burgundy. Lombardy. Say them out loud. Not one is a Roman name. Rome ruled every inch of that ground for centuries and called it by Latin words like Gaul, Britannia, and Hispania. Yet the names that won, the names still printed on maps and stamped on passports today, belong to ethnic groups who were not there when Rome was young. They walked in from somewhere else. And they stayed.
Key Terms
- Barbarian
- From the Greek barbaroi, mocking foreign speech as "bar-bar" babble — never a measure of a people’s worth.
- Migration
- The large-scale movement of a whole people, driven by land pressure, hunger, or war.
- Limes
- Rome’s fortified frontier border, mainly along the Rhine and Danube.
- Foederati
- "Federates": barbarian fighters taken into the Roman army as allied troops.
- Hospitalitas
- Roman system kept by Germanic kings — landowners shared land and labor with the settling warriors.
- Weregild
- "Man-price": set fines for injury or death, ending the endless blood-feud.
- Huns
- Steppe horsemen whose westward push set the whole map moving at once.
- Attila
- The most dreaded king ate plain meat from a wooden plate while his guests dined on gold.
- Goths
- Crossed the Danube in AD 376 fleeing the Huns; crushed the legions at Adrianople two years later.
- Angles
- North Sea people whose name became Angle-land — England.
- Vandals
- Walked across the frozen Rhine on December 31, AD 406 — and did not stop until Africa.
- Gaiseric
- The Vandal king who took Carthage and held the power to shut off Rome’s food.
- Franks
- Kept the Roman roads, governed in Latin, taxed like Romans — and gave their name to France.
- Clovis
- Beat the Alemanni at Tolbiac, then crushed the Visigoths at Vouillé in AD 507.
- Lex Salica
- "The Salian law," written down between AD 500 and 511 — fines in place of the blood-feud.
- Sutton Hoo
- A king buried inside an 88-foot oak ship, with a belt buckle of nearly a pound of solid gold.
- Patrick
- Seized at sixteen, enslaved six years in Ireland, escaped 200 miles on foot — and returned by choice.
- Lombards
- Pushed from Pannonia by the Avars; crossed the Alps in AD 568 and left their name on northern Italy.
- Iron Crown of Lombardy
- Six plates of gold, 22 jewels, six inches across — and a legend bigger than the metal.
- Burgundians
- Shared the land with Roman farmers under hospitalitas; their name still sits on the map of France.