The Fall of the Roman Empire: A New History

The death of the Roman Empire is one of the perennial mysteries of world
history. Now, in this groundbreaking book, Peter Heather proposes a
stunning new solution: Centuries of imperialism turned the neighbors
Rome called barbarians into an enemy capable of dismantling an Empire
that had dominated their lives for so long.
A leading authority on
the late Roman Empire and on the barbarians, Heather relates the
extraordinary story of how Europe's barbarians, transformed by centuries
of contact with Rome on every possible level, eventually pulled the
empire apart. He shows first how the Huns overturned the existing
strategic balance of power on Rome's European frontiers, to force the
Goths and others to seek refuge inside the Empire. This prompted two
generations of struggle, during which new barbarian coalitions, formed
in response to Roman hostility, brought the Roman west to its knees.
The Goths first destroyed a Roman army at the battle of Hadrianople in
378, and went on to sack Rome in 410. The Vandals spread devastation in
Gaul and Spain, before conquering North Africa, the breadbasket of the
Western Empire, in 439. We then meet Attila the Hun, whose reign of
terror swept from Constantinople to Paris, but whose death in 453
ironically precipitated a final desperate phase of Roman collapse,
culminating in the Vandals' defeat of the massive Byzantine Armada: the
west's last chance for survival.
Peter Heather convincingly
argues that the Roman Empire was not on the brink of social or moral
collapse. What brought it to an end were the barbarians.