Nowadays, the expressions "barbarian" and "barbarism" they can have meanings very different from their original meaning. The adjective barbaric can suggest either that something can be very good (“This ice cream is barbaric!”) or very bad, cruel (“A barbaric crime scared the town last night). However, in the context of the old Roman Empire, the expression “barbarian” was applied to designate those who did not speak Latin (the official language of the empire), that is, the barbarians were foreigners, outsiders. Since the republican phase the Romans had contact with barbarian peoples, however, it was during the imperial phase that the so-called barbarian invasions.
But what precisely did these invasions consist of? The Roman Empire enormously expanded its borders in all directions of the European continent in the phase of the wars of conquest. During this period, the Romans, in addition to administering the occupied lands, also used the slave labor of conquered peoples. The barbarian peoples came from the far north of the European continent or the Asian continent at a time when the scarcity of food and the harsh winter pressured us towards the parts of South-Central Europe, that is, into the heart of the Empire Roman.
This pressure towards the core of the empire caused the Romans to transform their offensive wars into defensive wars against barbarian invasions. As they gained ground, the barbarians were establishing themselves in ancient Roman provincial domains. You Anglo-Saxons and the Celts, for example, occupied the islands that are now the United Kingdom and Ireland. You Normans occupied a part of present-day France, while the Germans they settled in other parts of that same country and in the regions of present-day Germany and Austria. In the far North, in the region of Scandinavia, the Vikings.
In the central portion of the continent, the Ostrogoths and the Lombards, the latter having reached the Italian and Balkan Peninsulas, where the Visigoths. In the far west of the continent, settled those who were considered some of the most violent barbarian peoples: the Vandals. The Vandals occupied the Iberian Peninsula, together with the Swabians, North Africa and some islands in the Mediterranean.
From Asia came the Huns, which had a looting system and a battle mechanism quite different from that used by the Romans. The “home” of the Huns was practically the horse on which they moved. Their passage was overwhelming, as they did not have a sedentary lifestyle in mind, or fixation on a territory. They practiced a nomadic life and were in the habit of extreme plunder. Your leader, Attila, became notorious for besieging Rome.
The end of the Western Roman Empire is commonly identified as the moment when a barbarian leader, odoacer, of the Germanic tribe Herulos, deposed the last of the emperors who lived in Rome, in the year 476 d. Ç.
By Me. Cláudio Fernandes
