Barbarian Tides radically subverts the grand narrative of a "Germanic" migration and reinvents the role of barbarians in the Later Roman Empire. Goffart sets out how the fragmented foreign peoples once living on the edges of the Empire participated with the Romans in the larger stirrings of late antiquity.

Barbarian Tides
The Migration Age and the Later Roman Empire

Walter Goffart

2006 | 384 pages | Cloth $69.95 | Paper $26.50
History
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Table of Contents

Preface

Introduction
1 A Clarification: The Three Meanings of "Migration Age"
2 A Recipe on Trial: "The Germans Overthrow the Roman Empire"
3 An Entrenched Myth of Origins: The Germans before Germany
4 Jordanes's Getica and the Disputed Authenticity of Gothic Origins from Scandinavia
5 The Great Rhine Crossing, a.d. 400-420, a Case of Barbarian Migration
6 The "Techniques of Accommodation" Revisited
7 None of Them Were Germans: Northern Barbarians in Late Antiquity
8 Conclusion: The Long Simplification of Late Antiquity

Appendices
1. Alexander Demandt on the Role of the Germans in the End of the Roman Empire
2. Chronicle Evidence for the Burgundian Settlement
3. The Meaning of agri cum mancipiis in the Burgundian Kingdom

List of Abbreviations
Notes
Bibliography
Index