also the discussions in Ralph W. Mathisen and Hagith S. Sivan, eds. Shifting Frontiers in Late
Antiquity (Aldershot: Variorum, 1996), introduction and Part I.
5 Procopius, Wars IV.1.1–8; Anon. Val. 37–38.
6 For eastern reactions: W.E. Kaegi Jr, Byzantium and the Decline of Rome (Princeton, NJ: Prin-
ceton University Press, 1968). Christopher Wickham, The Inheritance of Rome. A History of
Europe 400–1000 (London: Allen Lane, 2009), is an excellent guide (see his chapter 4 ‘Crisis
and continuity, 400–550’).
7 See below, and Wickham, The Inheritance of Rome, 102–4.
8 Sidonius was an accomplished author of poems and letters, whose attitude towards barbar-
ian settlers became more and more pessimistic during the period from 450 to the 470s: see
Jill Harries, Sidonius Apollinaris and the Fall of Rome, AD 407–485 (Oxford: Clarendon Press,
1994).
9 Wickham, The Inheritance of Rome, 88; Life of Severinus, trans. L. Bieler (Washington, DC: Cath-
olic University of America Press, 1965).
10 Heather, Empires and Barbarians, 246–56.
11 See Christopher Kelly, Attila the Hun. Barbarian Terror and the Fall of the Roman Empire (Lon-
don: Bodley Head, 2009), 35.
12 Amm., Hist. 31.4f.; Eunapius, fr. 42; see Peter Heather, Goths and Romans 332–489 (Oxford:
Oxford University Press, 1991), chap. 4.
13 Olympiodorus, fr. 9; Zos., New Hist. V.26; Heather, The Fall of the Roman Empire, 192–9:
four major incursions across the Rhine between 405 and 408.
14 Oros. VII.37; Zos. New History, VI. 2–3.
15 Ibid., 199.
16 Zos., New Hist. VI.10.
17 See I. Wood, ‘The end of Roman Britain: continental evidence and parallels’, in M. Lapidge
and D. Dumville, eds., Gildas: New Approaches (Woodbridge, Suffolk: Boydell Press, 1984),
1–25; id., ‘The fall of the western empire and the end of Roman Britain’, Britannia 18 (1987),
251–62; R. Hodges, The Anglo-Saxon Achievement (London: Duckworth, 1989); S. Esmonde
Cleary, The Ending of Roman Britain (London: Batsford, 1989).
18 Zos., New Hist. VI.6–13; above, Chapter 1.
19 Wickham, The Inheritance of Rome, 80–1.
20 Jordanes, Getica180ff.
21 John Vanderspoel, ‘From empire to kingdoms in the late antique west’, in Rousseau, ed., A
Companion to Late Antiquity, 427–40; Wickham, The Inheritance of Rome, 82–87, with chapters
5–7; James, Europe’s Barbarians, AD 200–600; P.S. Barnwell, Emperors, Prefects and Kings. The
Roman West, 395–565 (London: Duckworth, 1992); P.H. Sawyer and I.N. Wood, eds., Early
Medieval Kingship (Leeds: University of Leeds, 1977).
22 See Ian Wood, The Merovingian Kingdoms 450–751 (London: Longman, 1994); Edward James,
The Franks (Oxford: Blackwell, 1988).
23 Trans. Penguin Classics; for the division of the kingdom between Clovis’ four sons after his
death see I. Wood, ‘Kings, kingdoms and consent’, in Sawyer and Wood, eds., Early Medi-
eval Kingship, 6–29; the sixth-century historian Agathias includes a history of the Meroving-
ian dynasty in his Histories, written early in the 570s (see Averil Cameron, Agathias (Oxford:
Clarendon Press, 1970) 120–1).
24 On the Alamanni, see J. Drinkwater, The Alamanni and Rome 213–496 (Caracalla to Clovis)
(Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2007).
25 See T.S. Brown, Gentlemen and Offi cers. Imperial Administration and Aristocratic Power in Byzantine
Italy AD 554–800 (London: British School at Rome, 1984); brief description in Christopher
Wickham, Early Medieval Italy: Central Power and Local Society, 400–1000 (London: Macmillan,
1981), 74–9; in general, Paul Fouracre, ed., The New Cambridge Medieval History I, c. 500–700
(Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2005).
26 Cf. Wickham, Early Medieval Italy, 15: ‘The holocaust in Italy came in the great age of wars,
535–93: the shifts of balance under the German rulers, fi rst Odoacer (476–93) and then the
Ostrogothic kings (490–553) were trivial by contrast.’
NOTES TO CHAPTER 2