556 Walter Pohl
Visigothic kingdom dominated the Iberian peninsula for two centuries, until it was
destroyed by Islamic invaders in the years after 711.
The Huns, after their initial success, were rather slow to build an empire. In the first
decades, they lived in a loose political structure. Just as the Goths had already done for
considerable time, many of them joined Roman army units or the personal guards of
powerful Roman aristocrats (such as the general Aetius, who would never have acquired
his reputation as the “last Roman” without Hun support). Around 400, the bulk of the
Huns seem to have moved westward to the Middle Danube (modern Hungary), again
prompting the flight of several groups of barbarian warriors who had been based in the
northern periphery of the Roman Danube limes. Most consequentially, the Hun advance
seems to have triggered (although perhaps not caused) the march of Vandals, Alans, and
Sueves, who ended up in Spain and Africa (Heather 2005). However, it was only during
a rather short period under the leadership of the king Attila, and with the support of a
number of subject peoples such as the Ostrogoths and the Gepids, that the Hun attacks
really threatened the Eastern and eventually also the Western empire. In the 440s, the
Huns laid waste extensive stretches of the Balkan Provinces. In 451, they turned west-
ward and attacked Roman Gaul, from where they withdrew after a bloody stand-off in
the battle at the Catalaunian fields, in which two broad coalitions of barbarians faced each
other. The following year, Attila’s army marched into Italy, this time leaving the coun-
try after extensive plundering but without encountering any serious military resistance.
Obviously, and unlike the Goths, Attila’s Huns had no intention of settling on Roman
territory. When Attila died in 453, the impressive agglomeration of force that he had
achieved soon collapsed, and the initiative along the Danube passed again to somewhat
smaller groups of barbarians.
The most successful of these groups that had regained their freedom after Attila’s death
were the Ostrogoths, led from the 470s by their king Theoderic. From Pannonia, they
moved into the Balkan provinces, repeating the game of threats and treaties with the
imperial authorities that Alaric’s Visigoths had played there almost a century before. And,
similar to those, but with an imperial consent, they then marched on to Italy, where they
defeated King Odoacer (the barbarian general who had overthrown the last Western
emperor in 476) in a 3-year war. Thanks to Theoderic’s cautious policy and to the coop-
eration of the senatorial aristocracy, Ostrogothic rule gave Italy a few decades of peace
and relative prosperity. However, soon after Theoderic’s death in 526, the emperor Jus-
tinian exploited their inner conflicts to attack the Goths in 535. After almost 20 years of
war, the impoverished and devastated ancient Roman heartland returned once more to
direct imperial rule. As a politically active group, the Goths disappeared from the scene.
Migration-Age Ethnicity: Problems and Debates
From contemporary Roman authors to modern scholars, Goths and Huns (similar to
other barbarians) have been regarded as ethnic groups who figure as principal agents in
historical narratives. The most frequently used Latin term for ethnic units,gens, is usually
rendered in English as “tribe,” “race,” or “nation”—all of these translations are, for dif-
ferent reasons, rather inadequate (Goths and Huns were bigger than “tribe” suggests, not
racially distinctive and quite unlike modern nations). I will use the word “people” here