ABSTRACT
Was the nature of Barbarian ethnicity instrumental or primordial? What were the mechanisms for creating group identities or even uniting two different groups in a process called ethnic assimilation? What were the strategies of maintaining group boundaries?
For example, Procopius of Caesarea claims that the Rugians in Italy avoided intermarriage with the Ostrogoths and therefore preserved their ethnic distinctiveness. This chapter has a few purposes. The first is to discuss the debate on Barbarian Ethnicity. The second, to demonstrate the strengths and the weaknesses of both models of ethnicity. The third purpose is to discuss the strategies used by different barbarian groups to maintain ethnic boundaries (as we have seen in the example of the Rugi) or—to the contrary—assimilate or incorporate tribal aliens and foreign groups into a larger polyethnic groupings.
