History of the Vandal persecution, trans. John Moorhead (review)

Reviews 247 transmitter and of that of the contemporary scholars, editors, and translators, and attempting a multiple reading with the purpose of looking for the poet's intended sequence, if stdl discernible. Van Vleck has developed her argument lucidly and systematically throughout with pertinent examples, inserting her work amongst that of other scholars with w h o m she sometimes takes issue, but always very courteously. Outstripping R. Guiette and P. Zumthor, she has shown real affinity with the troubadours, sound knowledge of the manuscripts, vocabulary, versification and literary analysis of the medieval Occitan lyric, as well as aptitude with statistics to demonstrate quantifiable aspects of her thesis. The book has been very carefully prepared and presented, with barely an accent awry, but the speUing of entendador (p. 200 and elsewhere), instead of entendedor, seems abenant. It is merely atinylapse in excellent and substantial new scholarship. Glynnis M . Cropp Department of M o d e m Languages Massey University Victor of Vita, History of the Vandal persecution, trans. John Moorhead (Translated Texts for Historians, 10), Liverpool, Liverpool University Press, 1992; paper; pp. xx, 110; R.R.P. UK£8.50. North Africa provides the best contrast between the Meditenanean-centred world of antiquity and the European civilization which developed from the Middle Ages onwards. It was a normal and vital part of the Roman Empire. By the end of the Western Roman Empire in the fifth century, North Africa had produced the great Augustine, w h o m Victor of Vita only half a century later would equate with Cicero as two rivers of eloquence (1.11 and 3.61) with a confidence fully justified in the hindsight of medieval civilization. In the course of thefifthcentury, four large military expeditions were mounted to get the Vandals out of Africa but failed. The introduction to thistextsmentions only three. Justinian's successful reconquest of Vandal Africa in 533, after a significant gap, can be seen as the fifth in the series. The involvement of the Eastern Roman Empire in all of these ventures was in sharp contrast to its absence from attempts to maintain Roman control of Western Europe. Obviously the Byzantines saw things differendy from us. N o w North Africa is part of the Third World. Contrary to what Pirenne argued, recent especiaUy archaeological, research indicates that the change began before Islam. All of the above means that this excellent,first-ever,English translation of the major primary source for Vandal Africa is welcome indeed. U p to this point all one could give monolingual students about Post-Roman, pre-Islamic North Africa were the fine but not extensive treatments by F. M . Clover and Denys Pringle. Unlike the misleading, commontitleof Gregory of Tours' History of 24g Reviews the Franks, the History of the Vandal persecution conveys precisely what Victor of Vita wrote about in the 480s on the spot. According to Victor, the Arian Vandals under Geiseric arrived in Africafirsttoplunder but all too soon turned to religious persecution. This became much worse during the reign of Geiseric's son Huneric because royal succession worries added yet more violence. Most of Victor's History is concerned with the reign of Huneric. It is a unified work throughout including the royal and episcopal documents it contains, even the long Book of the Catholic faith, which is bestreadout loud and with expression as the only way to get through such material. Otherwise Victor's History of the Vandal persecution has the usual fascination of fifthcentury texts as evidence of times of crisis and cultural mixing, but more than usual power. It comes to a real climax at the end,towhich the translation does justice. Barbarians are condemned as cruel and anti-Roman. Support is begged from the world's Catholics, angels, patriarchs, prophets, and apostles for African Catholics, who are movingly mourned in terms of the destruction of the city of God. The main issue raised by the text and posed in the introduction is this: 'assuming that some degree of reatity underUes Victor's tale of woe, we may ask why the Vandals behaved in a way which allows them to be seen as more ferocious than their Gothic co-religionists...