The British academic publisher, Routledge, has launched “Routledge Revivals” to re-issue some classic works that have been long out of print. Originally published in 1983, Barbarians and Romans is a very readable survey of the complex period that saw the “Fall of Rome,” an era known in German as the Volkerwanderung (“migration of the peoples.”)

In her Preface, the author writes: “I set about the task of finding out what the world was like when rude barbarians and Roman citizens were struggling to mesh their cultures and their lives. My naive belief that a few weeks in a scholarly library and perhaps a trip or so abroad would yield the information I wanted proved to be unfounded. . . . In the event twenty trips abroad were needed. . . . My own two feet carried me through no less than ninety museums in search of material.”

The book is richly illustrated with over a hundred photographs and maps. Every place mentioned in the text is located on one of the six maps. Unfortunately, this reprint renders the original edition’s seventeen color plates in monochrome, probably for reasons of cost. Even for an academic hardcover, the list price seems excessive.

Fifteen chapters present the story in chronological order:

   1. Trier

   2. The Steppes of Asia

   3. Milan

   4. Constantinople

   5. Rome and Ravenna

   6. Narbonne, Barcelona and Arles

   8. Vandal Africa

   9. Ostrogothic Italy

   10. Lombard Italy

   11. Deserts and Holy Islands

   12. Sub-Roman and Merovingian Gaul

   13. Celtic Outposts in Britain

   14. The Anglo-Saxon Heptarchy and the City of God

   15. Epilogue: Two Stately Chairs

A great strength of this book is the frequent use of surviving artifacts to illustrate a point, for example the superb sixth century Visigothic eagle brooch (now in the Walters Museum in Baltimore, https://art.thewalters.org/object/54.422/, “The eagle, a popular symbol during the Migration period adopted from Roman imperial insignia, was favored by the Goths.”) and the ivory consular diptych (tablet) depicting emperor Anastasius I dated to 517 (now in London’s Victoria and Albert Museum: https://collections.vam.ac.uk/item/O93125/leaf-of-a-diptych-of-diptych-leaf-unknown/.)

Although Barbarians and Romans does not incorporate current scholarship on Late Antiquity, which has re-evaluated or rejected many long-established ideas (for example the pejorative term “barbarian” has fallen out of favor in academic writing,) it is still useful as a history of this fascinating era.

Justine Davis Randers-Pehrson studied at Radcliffe, the Sorbonne, the University of Heidelberg and Howard University. She was librarian of the National Library of Medicine, and an editor and translator for US government agencies.

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Our Reviewer: Mike Markowitz is an historian and wargame designer. He writes a monthly column for CoinWeek.Com and is a member of the ADBC (Association of Dedicated Byzantine Collectors). His previous reviews include The Last Viking: The True Story of King Harald Hardrada, Ancient Rome: Infographics, Byzantium and the Crusades, A Short History of the Byzantine Empire, Theoderic the Great, The New Roman Empire: A History of Byzantium, Battle for the Island Kingdom, Vandal Heaven, The Eternal Decline and Fall of Rome, Herod the Great: Jewish King in a Roman World, Caesar Rules: The Emperor in the Changing Roman World, Ancient Rome on the Silver Screen, Justinian: Emperor, Soldier, Saint, Persians: The Age of the Great Kings, Polis: A New History of the Ancient Greek City-State, At the Gates of Rome: The Battle for a Dying Empire, Roman Emperors in Context, After 1177 B.C., and Cyrus the Great.

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Note: Barbarians and Romans is also available in e-editions.

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