The Migration Age is still envisioned as an onrush of expansionary
Germans pouring unwanted into the Roman Empire and subjecting it to
pressures so great that its western parts collapsed under the weight.
Further developing the themes set forth in his classic Barbarians and
Romans, Walter Goffart dismantles this grand narrative, shaking the
barbarians of late antiquity out of this Germanic setting and
reimagining the role of foreigners in the Later Roman Empire.
The Empire was not swamped by a migratory Germanic flood for the simple
reason that there was no single ancient Germanic civilization to be
transplanted onto ex-Roman soil. Since the sixteenth century, the belief
that purposeful Germans existed in parallel with the Romans has been a
fixed point in European history. Goffart uncovers the origins of this
historical untruth and argues that any projection of a modern Germany
out of an ancient one is illusory. Rather, the multiplicity of northern
peoples once living on the edges of the Empire participated with the
Romans in the larger stirrings of late antiquity. Most relevant among
these was the long militarization that gripped late Roman society
concurrently with its Christianization.
If the fragmented foreign peoples with which the Empire dealt gave Rome
an advantage in maintaining its ascendancy, the readiness to admit
military talents of any social origin to positions of leadership opened
the door of imperial service to immigrants from beyond its frontiers.
Many barbarians were settled in the provinces without dislodging the
Roman residents or destabilizing landownership; some were even
incorporated into the ruling families of the Empire. The outcome of this
process, Goffart argues, was a society headed by elites of soldiers and
Christian clergy--one we have come to call medieval.
