The Vandals

The Ancients

This episode explores the true story of the Vandals, challenging their infamous reputation as destructive barbarians who sacked Rome and brought down

Key takeaways

• The Vandals were not inherently destructive; their reputation was shaped by Roman propaganda and later cultural metaphors.
• Their origins in the Danube region are obscure, with limited evidence of early existence before the 5th century.

Main topics

• Vandal origins and migration across Europe
• The rise of the Vandal Kingdom in North Africa

Notable quotes

They're remembered, if at all, as being incredibly destructive. But in fact, lots of people are quite surprised to discover that the Vandals were in fact a group who existed in the 5th and 6th centuries, rather than just being a bunch of people who smash up telephone kiosks.

Conclusion

The Vandals were not the mindless destroyers of legend; their story reveal

Transcript preview

Speaker 3 (0:00) Ever wondered why the Romans were defeated in the Teutoburg Forest? What secrets lie buried in prehistoric Ireland? Or what made Alexander truly great? With a subscription to History Hit, you can explore our ancient past alongside the world's leading historians and archaeologists. You'll also unlock hundreds of hours of original documentaries with a brand new release every single week covering everything from the ancient world to World War II. Just visit historyhit.com slash subscribe. Speaker 3 (0:44) Hello, I hope you are doing well and welcome to this episode of The Ancients. Now, the story of late antiquity, especially in Europe, is dominated by these various so-called barbarian groups that descend on parts of the Roman Empire, particularly in the western Mediterranean. You've got groups like the Huns, you've got the Franks, you've got the Goths, you've got the Saxons in Britain, but you also have a group which are my personal favourites, the Vandals. The Vandals, from which we get the name, you Vandal today, but a group that descended from the Rhine in the early 5th century into the Western Roman Empire, went through France, down into Spain, and ultimately created a kingdom in North Africa. Think modern day Tunisia, places like Carthage and so on, and who would ultimately go on to sack Rome. in the mid-5th century AD. The story of the Vandals is a brilliant one, and we did an episode all about them three years ago now, at the end of 2023, when I headed up to Leicester to interview one of the leading experts on the Vandals, their archaeology, their story, Dr. Andy Merrills. Now, this is a time, you know, still quite early on in the ancient story, but I was very much wanting to get out there and interview experts in person, so I brought along my audio recording kit, headed over to Andy's house, and we did this episode all about The Vandals. I really do hope you enjoy. I'm glad that this episode is getting its time in the spotlight once again because it was one of my favourites from 2023, and I really do hope you enjoy it. Let's go. Speaker 3 (2:29) Andy, pleasure to have you on the podcast. Very happy to Speaker 2 (2:32) be here. And to talk all about the Vandals. Speaker 3 (2:35) Now, an extraordinary group of people who almost were the death knell for the Western Roman Empire, and yet they've fallen into relative obscurity in more recent times. Speaker 2 (2:44) That's true. I think to a certain extent, they've been overcome by the metaphor of their name in some ways that they're remembered, if at all, as being incredibly destructive. But in fact, lots of people are quite surprised to discover that the Vandals were in fact a group who existed in the 5th and 6th centuries, rather than just being a bunch of people who smash up telephone kiosks. Speaker 3 (3:03) And you mentioned 5th and 6th centuries, so they're rising, they're falling. It's pretty quick in the scale of things. Speaker 2 (3:08) Yeah, relatively speaking. So the first accounts that we can really trust that we have of the Vandals date to the 3rd or 4th centuries. There are one or two earlier references in some Roman and Greek sources from the 1st and 2nd centuries, but they're just... individual names among lots of names, and it's not completely clear where exactly they lived or what exactly the label referred to. So they first appear in a plausible way in the third or fourth centuries, somewhere around the middle Danube region, so roughly what's now Hungary. And then they rose to prominence with the creation of a kingdom in North Africa, what's now northern Tunisia, in the early fifth century, lasted for about a century, and then more or less drop off the map. Speaker 3 (3:45) So let's kind of also almost follow that route from Hungary. all the way to North Africa. If we start in Hungary, so you say we've got these few references from those earlier centuries. Do we know much about their origins, about them living in that area of the world? Speaker 2 (3:59) Not really. So most of the accounts that we have are Greek or Roman accounts, so written from the perspective of the Roman Empire, talking about a whole range of different groups who are living all along that northern frontier of the empire. And there are lots of them. There are dozens of different barbarian names in these areas. It's rarely completely clear what form, what social or political forms these groups took. They're obviously bound up with the Roman army in these regions and the presence of the Roman military along the frontier is also having a dramatic effect on barbarian populations living nearby. So lots of these groups are serving within the Roman army, either practically serving the Roman army or are kind of economically dependent on these large military populations in these regions. And the Vandals who appear as that name or as a group called the Astingi, which is later on the royal dynasty of the Vandals, the Hasdings, or one name amongst lots in that kind of sphere. Speaker 3 (4:52) So is it almost like with the Goths and how they kind of divide up into their own different groups, the Vandals is an overarching name for several different distinct groups in that area of the world? Speaker 2 (5:03) It's very hard to Speaker 3 (5:03) say. I think they're Speaker 2 (5:05) less important than the Goths. I think the Goths are kind of illustrious. example of a group who turned out to be really important and probably are quite important in the world of the third and fourth centuries. The Vandals are one of the many small groups who are perhaps kind of hovering in their orbit and perhaps changing in that period as well. Speaker 3 (5:21) And culture-wise, obviously the Romans see them as barbarian, but will we define them today as a Germanic culture? I mean, what do we kind of know about that? Speaker 2 (5:29) So Germanic is a term that refers to the groups of languages that they spoke rather than to the peoples themselves. So they spoke an Eastern Germanic dialect. It would seem, there's a lot that we don't know about Vandalic as a language, but it's probably related to Gothic, which is an Eastern Germanic language. Culturally speaking, it's really hard to say. I mean, they're an Iron Age community living within this Roman military sphere, so profoundly affected by both of those traditions is probably the easiest thing to say. But one of the difficulties is that it's really hard to associate any of these dozens of barbarian names with a precise material archaeological assemblage. that we can dig up from the ground. So there are various different archaeologists working in Central Europe who've identified individual graves as being a vandalic grave, which is fair enough as one interpretation, but I don't think we can be at all confident that the individual who happens to be buried there would identify themselves as a vandal, if that makes sense. Speaker 3 (6:25) Well, yeah, absolutely. And you're mentioning that, of course, at that time within the Roman occupation in that area of the world. Do we know much about... that interaction between Vandals and Roman soldiers who were living on that frontier of the Roman Empire in those earlier centuries? Speaker 2 (6:39) Not very much specifically at all. So we've got a decent picture of what's going on with the Roman military presence along the frontiers in general terms and the degree to which barbarian federates are being incorporated within the Roman army in a range of different ways. But we can't say very much at all about the Vandals specifically in that world. If anything, they're an incredibly minor player, I think it would be fair to say, until the beginning of the 5th century, really. They're kind of cropping up as one name amongst many in occasional lists of victories of Roman emperors or incursions of barbarian groups, but that's about as far as it goes. And in some senses, I think that's posed a bit of a problem for scholars. wanting to trace the origins of the Vandals because they go on to become quite important. And there's a strong temptation to assume they must have had glorious origins. So even early medieval historians, in fact, writing a hundred years or so after the fall of the Vandal Empire or the fall of the Vandal Kingdom, suggest that the Vandals must have come from glorious origins in Scandinavia or something, as they suppose the Goths did as well. But I think that's possibly a kind of false bit of reasoning. And the same thing has sometimes happened with modern historians. making the sort of similar claims of saying, these people became great, so they must have always had this kind of glorious origin from somewhere. I Speaker 3 (7:51) think it's more interesting if it's the fact that actually in those earlier centuries, they were one of the more insignificant peoples. And as you say, if the Romans did not consider them on the other level of some other perhaps tribes or peoples who lived in that area of the world. But you mentioned early 5th century, beginning of the 5th century. What happens then that makes the Vandals almost go to the next level? Speaker 2 (8:10) So there's a crucial series of events that take place in the very first years of the 5th century, so in the 400s, that are related to crises within the eastern and western halves of the Roman Empire, movements of troops around the Western Empire in particular, and a succession of usurpations or rebellions within the western half of the empire. And this has a series of knock-on effects, the most famous and spectacular of which is the crossing of the River Rhine by a group of... barbarians, including the Vandals, Swabes, who are another barbarian group, and the improbably named Alans, who are another barbarian group, all of whom supposedly crossed the Rhine on New Year's Day 406, and come into northern Gaul, so the northern territories of what's now France. And they're there for three years. occupy that region, then move south across the Pyrenees in 409, and those three groups basically divide up Spain amongst themselves. Well, that's the claim the One-at-All chroniclers make. The crucial thing to remember here is they are having a dramatic effect on these regions, especially in southern Gaul and Spain, which have never been particularly heavily militarised. So having armed groups of people wandering around can make a massive difference to a previously relatively peaceful region. But simultaneously, you've also got various military power brokers, generalissimos, landlords who are deciding to go it alone, towns who are deciding that they need protection from these other groups of rebels or usurpers or barbarians who are wandering around the place. So effectively, the Vandals, Swaves and Allens are finding a place for themselves in this fragmenting world. One of the really interesting things I think about this is even during this period where they're coming to the attention of writers from all over the Roman world. So Jerome, who's living in Bethlehem, Saint Jerome, guy who translates the Bible into Latin, living in Bethlehem at this time and is aware of the Vandals making their appearance in Gaul in the 400s. So this is news that's going around the world. But even in this period, there's still not this dramatic fighting force that is winning entirely by force of arms. So we know of 10 historically attested battles that the Vandals fought in from that kind of dim and distant third or fourth century past, right through to the late 420s. These aren't particularly well attested battles, but we just hear of references to conflicts in the chroniclers or the historians and so on. And of those 10 battles, the Vandals lose the first nine. So this is a world that's falling apart, but being an armed group still gives you some power in that, even if you're not necessarily winning your battle. Speaker 3 (10:43) And other vandals, are they losing their battles against what's left of the Western Roman Empire, or is it against other groups that are now trying to make their mark in this area? Speaker 2 (10:51) Both of those things, effectively. So they're still being influential, but they are, for the most part, losing out. in this kind of fight for supremacy, to the degree actually that there is one fifth century writer, a Christian writer called Salvian of Marseille, who refers to the Vandals as being almost a byword for not being very good at fighting. And within 20 years, that picture will dramatically change. But at that point in this collapsing world, when they're still quite well known, they're still not overwhelmingly militarily successful. But this is not to underplay the fact that this is a large armed group of... men and their followers who are moving around and creating a major bit of difference to the balance of social life in these regions. Speaker 3 (11:33) Well, that's really interesting right there. I mean, the whole, the nature of this Vandal group that's crossed the Rhine and then makes their way through Gaul and down into Spain. Should we just be imagining lots of... young men warriors or mercenaries, or was this more of a migration and Speaker 2 (11:50) a whole Vandal people going west? This is a much debated topic, so different historians have different views on this. My view is that this is primarily best viewed as a relatively small war band, which can include lots of followers coming along with them. But it's important to bear in mind that the period between the crossing of the Rhine in 406 and their eventual crossing into North Africa in the late 420s is around about 25 years. So it's getting on for a generation. So there is a significant churn in terms of the people involved. There are other historians who think that this is a more significant migration of population. So we're actually looking at a big movement of people into Gaul and then into Spain. But actually, in some ways, I think both schools of thought