Despite intermittent turbulence and destruction, much of the Roman West came under barbarian control in an orderly fashion. Goths, Burgundians, and other aliens were accommodated within the provinces without disrupting the settled population or overturning the patterns of landownership. Walter Goffart examines these arrangements and shows that they were based on the procedures of Roman taxation, rather than on those of military billeting (the so-called hospitalitas system), as has long been thought. Resident proprietors could be left in undisturbed possession of their lands because the proceeds of taxation,rather than land itself, were awarded to the barbarian troops and their leaders.

This historical analysis of Roman-Barbarian relations from the Republic into late antiquity offers a striking new perspective on the fall of the Empire. The barbarians of antiquity, often portrayed simply as the savages who destroyed Rome, emerge in this colorful, richly textured history as a much more complex factor in the expansion, and eventual unmaking, of the Roman Empire. Thomas S. Burns marshals an abundance of archeological and literary evidence to bring forth a detailed and wide-ranging account of the relations between Romans and non-Romans along the frontiers of western Europe. Looking at a 500-year time span beginning with early encounters between barbarians and Romans around 100 B.C. and ending with the spread of barbarian settlement in the western Empire, Burns reframes the barbarians as neighbors, friends, and settlers. His nuanced history subtly shows how Rome’s relations with the barbarians slowly evolved from general ignorance, hostility, and suspicion toward tolerance, synergy, and integration. This long period of acculturation led to a new Romano-barbarian hybrid society and culture that anticipated the values and traditions of medieval civilization.

Demonstrates how food-growing gardens in early medieval cities transformed Roman ideas and economic structures into new, medieval values.

A study of the clash between the Roman Empire and the barbarians beyond its imperial frontiers from the viewpoints of four of the major ethic groups on the borders of that empire.