What were the most important barbarian peoples?
Image: The Bard Challenge - blogger
The barbarian peoples, with their small sporadic invasions throughout the 3rd century AD. C., were weakening the Western Roman Empire until causing his downfall. Already in the V century is when they begin to create their own kingdom as invaders, since until now they had been nomads moving from one place to another. Next, in this lesson from a TEACHER we offer you a brief summary to know which were the most important barbarian peoples.
Index
- Why were they called barbarians?
- The Goths: Ostrogoths and Visigoths
- The Franks
- The Lombards
Why were they called barbarians?
Today the information and testimonies of the barbarian peoples are scarce and what little is known is through Greek and Roman historians who had, in addition, a very subjective view of them and they only tell curious anecdotes, but not basic questions such as society or the economy, they therefore had a concept stereotyped.
The name of barbarian is given by the Greeks and meant "foreigner"
, not having the same culture and language, it was a pejorative term, so to speak, they also had some connotations of contempt, that, if they were nomadic, savage, they were covered in furs, with long and disheveled beards, smelly... although some magnificent Warriors.According to archeology, they show us that these testimonies are not true, since it is known that they had a remarkable culture, settled on the border with Rome, with some grave goods that had nothing to envy the Romans, because until the fall of the empire they began to infiltrate peacefully, since they were the Romans themselves who began to require that potential warrior at certain times, to the point that little by little these peoples began to go in their against.
Now, we refer to the barbarian peoples in a general way, but nevertheless they are constituted by a series of very numerous towns that we could group into three different categories:
- The germans: and within this we find the Franks, the Goths who in turn were divided into Ostrogoths in the East and Visigoths in the West, the Swabians, the Angles, the Burgundians, the Jutes, the Saxons, the Vandals, the Alemanni and the Alans.
- The Tatars and Mongols:among which we highlight the Huns, Turks and Hungarians.
- Slavs: made up of Serbs, Moravians, Muscovites or Russians, Croats, Venetians, Poles, Slavs and Bosnians.
In this other lesson from a TEACHER we show you a brief summary of the barbarian invasions.
Image: Slideshare
The Goths: Ostrogoths and Visigoths.
The Goths until the third century were a single people, only after the barbarian invasions and for geographical reasons they were divided into two, the Ostrogoths to the east and the Visigoths to the west, or what is the same, the Ostrogoths in the Eastern Roman Empire and the Visigoths in the Western Roman Empire.
The Ostrogoths
They were really important because they continually fought to eliminate Odoacer, the military chief of the tribe of Heruli that wiped out the last emperor of Rome. The Ostrogoths to take his place during the reign of Theodoric managed to defeat him in the year 493, at which time the Ostrogoths managed to settle in Italy as an independent kingdom with capital in Ravenna.
To maintain the kingdom then, what Theodoric did was respect the Roman culture and traditions, that over time became their own, it was let's say the way to maintain a good relationship with the Romans.
The Visigoths
They were one of the first barbarian peoples to reach the borders of the western Roman empire in order to seek riches, hence for the year 410 they sacked the city of Rome for the first time, taking large booties that came in their great majority of the temples, in addition they also managed to gain a large number of soldiers for their armies by freeing many of the slaves of the town.
By the year 412 these were already part of the Western Roman Empire as an independent kingdom and like the Ostrogoths these too they made a pact, in this case with the emperor Honorius because to continue maintaining their empire, the Visigoths offered to pacify Hispania and Gaul from the rest of the barbarian peoples as they were possessions of the Roman Empire, so that they allied with the Romans and became their empire.
In this other lesson we will discover the origin of the Visigoths and we also offer you a summary of the Visigoths in Spain.
The Franks.
We have evidence of this other Germanic people since the year 258 because according to some writings the Roman troops on more than one occasion had run into them when they tried to pacify the area of the river Rhine that was where they came from.
Like the Visigoths, there are sources that confirm that they also entered the borders of the Roman Empire invited by the Romans from Gaul, since it washe only barbarian people who accepted the Catholic religion and therefore they did not come from Arianism as heresy, becoming the main defenders of Christianity.
In addition, the Franks together with the Visigoths was one of the most cultured and civilized peoples, it is said that they were also great artisans and good farmers.
In this other lesson we discover you who were the francs.
The Lombards.
The Lombards They were the last people to enter and pass the borders of the Roman Empire, and they did so around the year 568, settling in the northernmost part of Italy, reaching the areas of the cities of Pavia, Aquilea, Verona, Milan and Benevento.
The Lombards did not have any problems when settling, however, They made a serious mistake and it was to storm the Papal States who ended up asking for the help of the Franks who ended up defeating them specifically in the year 774, which at that time was in Charlemagne's hands, thus becoming the empire that he had and that once this area was completely disintegrated, it was renamed the Holy Roman German Empire.
If you want to read more articles similar to What were the most important barbarian peoples?, we recommend that you enter our category of Story.
