Were the Barbarian invaders of Rome actually friendly?

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#Maiorianus

[SuchIsLife]

The Vandals did so much damage that it became a word, Vandalism.

[bigfrazier]

I’ve never ever heard someone say it was “peaceful settling”

[zigzagzipbag]

I never heard anyone ever claim that the Germanic invaders were nice or that the dark ages were pleasant.

[wafikiri_]

In the Iberian peninsula, up to the Vandals invasion, there were many beautifully crafted tombs. Almost none after. The Vandals really wreaked total havock.

[stevenmyrick]

Dude Vlad the impaler was actually the nicest host at parties that served kabobs

[cohortConnor]

I’ve never heard of this “whitewashing” of the fall of Rome

[vikingen]

I don’t think whitewashing is the right word. Perhaps revisionism is a better fit.

[andresalvarez]

I’ve heard more people say the dark ages were more complex than initially thought and that’s fair to a point but I haven’t heard anything about people saying the barbs were friendly people

[EwingAmaterasu]

In 1000 years: the Nazis peacefully committed genocide.

[Mystic]

What I will say, in response to this, is that while yes the Germanic invaders did take Rome by conquest and brutally sack cities it was not because they just felt like doing so. They existed with and in Roman lands for a long time and it took a mix of suffering invasions in their own lands outside the empire and incredible Roman incompetence in their settlement to cause the revolts. This isn't an issue that can be fully summed in a Shorts video.

[inigom]

Who's actually saying these were peaceful times? I think people are mostly saying the were no different than any other period. The difference is people like to gloss over the brutality of the romans because they identify with the romans. Romes entire expansion and conquest was brutal, their entire state was built on their brutality. And yes their downfall was equally brutal but that goes back to what I'm trying to say; which is the dark ages were no more brutal than any other age.

They are referred to as the dark ages bc there is little written history in comparison to the times before and after because the civilizations that won out against the romans didn't have the same tremendous record keeping that the romans did, atleast until near the medieval period.

[basileus.imperator]

Little precisions :
Off course, the narrative of the Barbarians as nice innocents guys is completely illusionnal. But we musn't fall in the opposite trap. They mostly weren't savages that were only here to sack. Barbarians mostly didn't want to DESTROY the Empire. They were indeed trying to find a way of integration by taking cities in hostage. I explain :

Since the times of the Republic, many Barbarians were admirative of the lifestyle of romans. The closest in particularity. A lot of Barbarians only saw the prosperity of the Empire as a cake they could plunder. But a lot wanted to go in the Empire to be part of it, for more protection and a better life. The Emperors loved that ! It was a good way to repopulate an area that had been striked by a plague. The problem came in the end of the IIIrd century. The army was weakened and the numbers of barbarians that wanted to enter the empire increased. So the tribes didn't bother to ask permission to enter or didn't bother to respect a negative answer to their demands. They entered. In all logic the Romans answered by a militar force. You can't enter the territory of someone and cease lands with no repercussions. And so it is how the escalation of violence began. Barbarians tried then to cease cities for themselves or to pressure the authorties to give them lands.

An example is the sack of Rome in 410. Alaric didn't really want to sack Rome for the fun of it. His plan was to take Rome in hostage to force Emperor Honorius to give to his people a province on the Danube or lands an titles. Alaric sended countless emissaries and stopped the siege three times. But Honorius, being the incompetent he was, didn't understand the danger and the seriousness of the situation. Alaric even tried to convince him, he sent italians bishops to supplicate Honorius to not let the majesty of the buildings of Rome be destroyed by the fire. He even sent the Pope Innocent I. But Honorius said that he would never "give anything to someone of his race". So in the end, Alaric understood that the Emperor wouldn't give him what he wanted and sacked Rome as a counsolation price.

My point is that, if some barbarians were the savages that are remembered, some were indeed just desesperate mens fleeing povrety, war and other things and that they saw in violence the only way to pressure romans to gave them a better life. But at the end they destroy the Empire that they were desesperatly trying to be part of.

Off course everything is more complicate that what we can say in a few lines but it is one of the causes of the Fall of the Empire.

My sources are : my lessons in universiy and the french book "Les dernies jours : la fin de l'Empire romain d'Occident (The last days : the end of the western roman Empire)" by Michel de Jaeghere.

[jonathanwilliams]

The “dark ages” were not especially brutal compared to the times before and after them, but were called dark because we simply don’t know much about them

[michaelmcgee]

I need historical proof of this trend more than just "it seems"

[nerfyed]

bru yea the conquerors getting conquered so hard that the based contemporary historians had to literally invent a new word 'vandalism' to describe how brutally the civilised people were screwed by barbarians is the most humorous thing ive ever came across

[chimera]

As a general rule the most f*cked up take on history is usually the accurate one.

[robertortiz-wilson]

What's referred to as the "Dark Ages" was an extremely hard time to be alive and there was far less record keeping. That said however, that time period gets way over-vilified, oversimplified, and dismissed. It really has a lot to do with certain individuals who came out of the Enlightenment propping themselves up by making a ridiculous caricature of that time. It saw the creation of improved farming, large community festivals, grand works of art and music, and Christian monks working their best to keep as much knowledge alive as possible well also setting up monasteries they would eventually go on to function as the future universities and pillars of known and even added knowledge.

[TetsuShima]

0:22-0:32
For those of you wondering, that footage is from a BBC docu-movie called "Heroes and Villains: Attila", which is the most accurate depiction of the invasions of Attila the Hun. The fact that the Romans appear wearing historically accurate armor is reason enough to watch it. It is complete on Youtube in case you are interested in watching it

[Leptospirosi]

It depends on the tribes and how they were integrated to the Roman society. We know for example that Visigoths were probably more then justified in their perceived brutality as Romans tried to exploit them as much as possible as they were in a weaker position. Ostrogoths instead integrated quite peacefully on the Italian peninsula, probably because they were seen as a source of stability. I took the Gothic War and several backstabbing to really turn them against the Roman population like in the case of the massacre of Mediolanum. Vandals had a grudge against West Africa, being fiercely Arians in a land quite zealous on Orthodoxy. In general we see the the more Germans tried to conform and become Romans, the less they were accepted by the Romans themselves, to the point that even after years of living in the eastern empire the Ostrogoths taken prisoners after Narses victory and part of the army of Heraclius were still considered "Goths". On the contrary the populations that did nothing to integrate themselves, like the Lombards and the Franks coexisted side by side with the Roman populations with much less problems. until the war of religion started and the Papacy did it's best to create conflict.

[salfetka]

Bulgaria, Greece, Serbia etc were under Ottoman rule, pretty much treated like slaves. Recently though for some unknown reason Bulgaria changed the narrative in its school books to say the Ottomans were quite friendly and they co-existed. A bit like the Vandals and the Germanic tribes with Rome - it was all fun and games 😂😂