ABSTRACT
The Germans were the nearest and most important members of a vast barbarian world which covered all of central and eastern Europe beyond the Rhine and the Danube and extended across the plains of Russia, peopled by Slavs and 'Scythians', into Asia, where roamed hordes of nomadic Huns and other tribes of Tartar extraction. The great invasions of the Roman Empire between 375 and 450 were caused by the pressure of barbarian peoples who, unknown in the first, second and third centuries, were then wandering in central Asia, in the steppes of Russia, or along the Baltic. The conditions of establishment varied according to epoch and circumstance, but throughout the first, second, third and fourth centuries we find frequent mention of such compulsory settlements in the provinces bordering the Rhine and the Danube. But in 375 the barbarian world seemed to be thrown en masse upon the Roman Empire, huge hordes of Germans and Huns hurled themselves across the frontier.
