ABSTRACT
Much of the way that barbarians were commonly perceived during Late Antiquity revolved around literary and artistic images of violence: a barbarian propensity for violence, violent acts barbarians performed, and, paradoxically, the violence necessary to keep them from being violent. This perception has been propagated into the modern day, where violent barbarians are still blamed for the destruction of classical civilization and the inception of the “Dark Ages,” and where violent barbarians pervade popular culture.1 In antiquity, the presumed barbarian penchant for violent behavior was manifested in several different ways. Collectively and individually, barbarians often surfaced in the sources when there was fighting going on.2 In this sense, barbarians certainly did indulge in some very real violence. Currently, the theme of collective barbarian violence is manifested most spectacularly in the popular theme of “the barbarian invasions.”3 Modern histories 1 On the term “Dark Ages,” see W. Goffart, The Narrators of Barbarian History (A.D. 550800) (Princeton, 1988) 12, as a “neutral way to refer to the earliest medieval centuries,” but 231, “Gregory…certifies to modern men that the Dark Ages were, at least for a moment, authentically dark…. This idea of early medieval gloom resulting from Rome’s fall has a strong hold on the European historical imagination and shows no sign of losing its appeal…the pejorative sense…remains vigorous.” Also Av. Cameron, “Social Language and its Private Deployment,” in E. Chrysos and I. Wood (eds), East and West: Modes of Communication (Brill, 1999) 111-25 at 118: “The concept of the ‘Dark Ages’ is one which needs as much discussion as that of ‘fall’ or ‘collapse.’ For some, the Dark Ages are dark because they are undocumented in the way we would like that is, by secular, and to some extent analytical, histories.” 2 See, inter alios, C. Trzaska-Richter, Furor Teutonicus: Das römische Germanenbild in Politik und Propaganda von den Anfangen bis zum 2. Jahrhundert n. Chr. (Trier, 1991). 3 For various views on the role of the barbarians in the fall of the western Roman Empire, see J.B. Bury, The Invasion of Europe by the Barbarians (London, 1928); M. Chambers, nd edn New York, 1970]); A.
