ABSTRACT
Our image of Vandal Africa is heavily coloured by the different sources and different voices that predominate at different periods under different rulers. One can contrast the panegyric of a Florentinus1 with a sermon of Quodvultdeus.2 Then there are the (to some extent) neglected voices of figures such as Martianus Capella, who can be dated and localized in Vandal Africa, but who does not attest its barbarian overlords in any specific way.3 A variety of sources, some local (for example, Victor of Tunnuna), some external (for example, Procopius) speak of and about the Vandals, but to their detriment, the group lacked a Gregory of Tours or a Bede, or indeed any sort of sympathetic ‘national’ historiographer to set out the achievements and intentions of their greatest ruler, the redoubtable Geiseric, let alone those of one of his lesser and more dysfunctional descendants.4 One could, with a little imagination, reconstruct what a writer with Gregory’s talents and grim sense of humour5 might have made of Huneric’s bamboozling of the Nicene bishops over the Vandal succession.6 It is not that there is a substantial dearth of sources in comparison to other kingdoms, but that there is no systematic account of the origins of the Vandals to pique the attention of the lovers of mythical history,
1 Florentinus, In laudem regis (sc. Thrasamundi): AL R.376 (S.371). 2 Quodvultdeus, Sermo de tempore barbarico, 1 and 2, R. Braun (ed.), CCSL 60,
(Turnhout, 1974), pp. 423-37 and 473-86. For more on this text see P. P. Courcelle, Histoire littéraire des grandes invasions germaniques (Paris, 1964), vol. 3, pp. 126-9.
