Rome and the Barbarians, 100 B.C.-A.D. 400

"The barbarians of antiquity, long fixed in Western imaginations as the savages who sacked and destroyed Rome, now emerge in this colorful, richly textured history as a much more complex - and far more interesting - factor in the expansion, and eventual unmaking, of the Roman Empire. Thomas S. Burns marshals an abundance of archeological and literary evidence, as well as three decades of study and experience, to bring forth a perceptive and wide-ranging account of the relations between Romans and non-Romans along the frontiers of western Europe from the last years of the Republic into late antiquity." "Surveying 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 within the western Empire around A.D. 400, Burns removes the barbarians from their former narrow niche as invaders and conquerors and places them in the broader context of neighbors, (sometimes bitter) friends, and ultimately settlers and prospective Romans, themselves." "This nuanced history shows how Rome's relations with the barbarians - and vice versa - slowly but inexorably evolved from general ignorance, hostility, and suspicion toward tolerance, synergy, and integration. What he describes is, in fact, a drawn-out period of acculturation, characterized more by continuity than by change and conflict, leading to the creation of a new Romano-barbarian hybrid society and culture that anticipated the values and traditions of medieval civilization."--Jacket.