Huns, Vandals and the Fall of the Roman Empire

It was Attila the Hun who brought together the Germanic barbarians and created a series of vigorous kingdoms out of the collapsing Roman Empire. In this authoritative history, Hodgkin explores Attila's rise and rule over the Huns in the 440s, when Vandals, Ostrogoths, Gepids and Franks were also fighting under his banner and his dominion extended over Germany and Scythia from the Rhine to the frontiers of China. The power vacuum after Attila's death led to the fall of the Hunnish empire and the rise of the Vandals, who sacked Rome in 455. Out of a period of constant fighting amongst the different tribes came the first barbarian king of Italy, Odovakar, signalling the true end of the Western Roman Empire.Hodgkin's comprehensive work on this dramatic period was originally published as one volume of a larger history of Italy. He drew a vivid picture of the fifth-century collapse of the Roman Empire, making use of the texts of Latin and Greek chroniclers, describing, for example, the campaigns of Attila or life in barbarian Gaul. By using analogies with events in his own time (the late nineteenth century), and finding parallels with the state of what was then the British Empire, he brought his subject even more successfully to life. The conclusions in this classic book on what causes an empire to collapse are still valid today.