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The Vandals sack Rome

On 2 June AD 455, Rome, the Eternal City and once the envy of the ancient world, was ransacked by an army of ‘barbarians’ known as the Vandals. e largely unchallenged raid was yet another signal that the Sun was setting on a power that had dominated western Europe for almost five centuries. is was the third time Rome had been sacked, following an incursion by the Gauls in 390 BC and a more recent attack from the Visigoths in AD 410. Although no longer the o cial capital of the western Roman empire, the city was still considered its spiritual heart. e prelude to this particular sacking came in March AD 455, when Emperor Valentinian III was assassinated and Petronius Maximus – the man believed to be responsible for the murder – declared himself as the new ruler. What he hadn’t accounted for was that Valentinian had, prior to his grisly demise, pledged his daughter Eudocia to the son of Genseric, king of the Vandals. e Vandals, a Germanic tribe that in years past had fled the Huns and attempted to settle in Spain, had arrived on the empire’s north African doorstep in cAD 429. ey quickly upset the region’s balance of power, pre-empting a peace treaty with Rome in AD 435.

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BBC History Revealed Magazine
June 2020
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