ABSTRACT
The empire was always threatened at its edges, and began to unravel under the pressure of what historians, from a Roman perspective, have called 'the barbarian invasions', beginning in the second century of the Christian era, but becoming irresistible in the fifth. Vikings, Danes, Saxons, Sueves, Franks, Burgundians, Vandals, Lombards, Goths, H uns, Magyars, A vars - amongst others! - undid the Roman ecumene and plunged Europe into what even contemporary commentators thought was a dark age. In the sixth century the spread of Islam formed part of this expansion and movement of peoples, coming to a stop, after one hundred and fifty years, in Spain. This huge movement of peoples, possibly prompted by climate change, petered out in the ninth and tenth centuries. The Norman invasion of England was one of its last throws. What followed, in Europe, the Middle East and North Africa, was a period of consolidation.
