The Civic Platform - A Political Journal of Ideas and Analysis

ISBN 9780750943970; 2007

During the second month of Maximus’ rule at Rome, news reached the
city that the mighty fleet of Gaiseric, had appeared at the mouth of
the Tiber. The hordes of Gaiseric stole methodically anything of
value they could find. Every region of Rome was plundered
simultaneously.

The Vandals left Rome after fourteen interminable days, taking with
them the Empress Eudoxia, her daughter Eudocia, and Gaudentius, one
of the sons of Aetius. Moreover, they took into captivity thousands
of Romans: it has been suggested that Rome lost nearly 200,000 of her
citizens during the two weeks of the sack. Exactly as the Visigoths
had behaved forty-five years earlier, they forced no changes in the
government and did not initiate a military occupation. But they left
behind a profoundly humiliated and impoverished city with ugly scars
caused by their rapacity and dead bodies decomposing in the streets.

In Africa, Rome’s granary, the Vandals had taken over the lands of
the Roman nobility and the Roman Church. Most of the senatorial
families were now destitute, and famous ancient families vanished.

Rome and the End of the Empire in the West

The antagonistic presence of the Vandals in Africa, their control
over the grain supply to Rome and Italy, and the vigorous raids of
their navy seriously enfeebled the Roman strength in the Western
provinces. Moreover, during the four decades that followed the rapid
disintegration of the Hunnic Empire in 454, the Germanic barbarians
gradually expanded their territories in Gaul and Spain. And with the
assassination of Aetius by Valentinian III in 455 the Roman power in
the West had received a last, violent body-blow.

The continuing crisis in the Western Empire, fueled by unremitting
barbarian incursions, the haemorrhaging of her once great wealth
through raids and to the Church, and the growing power of Christian
leaders, finally drove the empire over the edge. Its demise paved the
way for the complete triumph of the barbarians and the onset of the
Middle Ages.