The Roman Empire and its Germanic Peoples (review)

Reviews 335 Wolfram, Herwig, The Roman Empire and its Germanic Peoples, trans. Thomas Dunlap, Berkeley/Los Angeles/London, University of California Press, 1997; cloth; pp. xx, 361; 4 genealogical charts, 4 chronological tables, 2 maps; R.R.P. US$39.95. Herwig Wolfram's rivetting History of the Goths established him a major scholar of the interactions between the R o m a n world and the barbarians. This work is less monumental, more diffuse, and ultimately less impressive than the History, but this is intended as a 'popular' study, and the result has m u c h to recommend it. The brief introduction looks at the origin and development of the term 'German'. Chapter One, 'Kings, Heroes and Tribal Origins' sketches Germanic proto-history, discussing kings and lineages, the figure of the hero, and tribal origin myths. The Germanic 'ethnogenesis' question has been the subject of m u c h scholarly debate, but it seems that Wolfram is justified in concentrating on myths of origin throughout this study as their meanings are important even if they do not reflect historical reality accurately. Although Wolfram does not explicitly say so, m u c h of this book is concerned with historiographical issues, which supports this approach to the origins of the Germanic peoples. Chapters T w o to Four focus on the'political and military interactions of the barbarians with the R o m a n Empire from the Marcomannic Wars to the fifth century. Wolfram explicates the political and social structures of the Empire and the Germanic tribes, and traces the origins of the barbarian kingdoms on R o m a n soil. Unsurprisingly much of his discussion centres on the Goths, and his coverage of some of the other Germanic tribes feels a little thin by comparison. The rest of the book is individual case studies. Chapters Five to Eight cover the Huns, the Visigothic kingdom of Toulouse, the Vandals, and the Goths in Italy. Chapter Nine is an interesting 336 Reviews comparison of the careers of the brothers-in-law Clovis the Frank and Theodoric the Ostrogoth. This comparison was first mooted in Germany in the 1930s by von den Steinen, and Wolfram stresses his historiographic interests in tackling the comparison again sixty years later. His conclusions are interesting: conventionally enough he notes Clovis' Catholicism and the success of the Frankish kingdom, and Theodoric's Arianism and failure; but his support for the apparently sentimental notion that the Frankish reality fails to move modern readers where the mythologized Amal Gothic tradition—with its king w h o has not really died and w h o lives on in the medieval legends of Dietrich von Bern—still can, seems at a second glance remarkably perceptive in an age of Star Wars films, sciencefictionand fantasy. Although the study of Theodoric and Clovis is fascinating and indulges readers w h o enjoy personalities and stories rather than institutional or constitutional history, it is a major failing of the book that there is no coverage of the Franks as a people and a state. Frankish interactions with the Goths, Burgundians and Alamanni are covered in some detail, but the information is scattered through multiple chapters and it is necessary to know the material very well to successfully connect the disparate sections. Chapters Ten to Fourteen cover Britain and the Anglo-Saxons (so briefly that it scarcely seems worth it), the Burgundians, the Spanish Visigothic kingdom and the Longobards in Italy. Other barbarians groups such as the Gepids, the Heruli, the Thuringians and the Rugi are discussed in passing, as their history affects that of the greater confederations. Chapter Fifteen, "The Transformation of the R o m a n World', states that the book's aim is to 'describe and explain the most important non-Frankish successor states on R o m a n soil' (p. 301). This explains the lack of a chapter on the Franks, and suggests that Wolfram m a y later produce a study of them. This chapter considers alternative models to the Roman-barbarian regna: the Arabs (very Reviews 337 briefly); the Slavs; and the Avars. There is a brief re-visiting of the Pirenne thesis and...