566 Walter Pohl
until they were ultimately destroyed. Their identities provided a very flexible matrix in
which rather different communities could unfold. To claim that ethnicity did not matter
to them does not help us to understand the dynamics of the situation. Identities matter
most when they are threatened or seem to slip away. In the crisis of identity in the fifth-
and sixth-century West, a broad range of ethnic, political, religious, and regional iden-
tifications were at stake. The ethnic identities of Goths and Huns enjoyed brief periods
of glory until they faded away, but the texts that related their awe-inspiring success gave
them a lasting impact on the European historical imagination.
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