Preface

They were inured to hardship and coarse diet, which with nourishing liquors and constant exercise, greatly contributed to their bodily strength. Their spirits were not exhausted by speculative studies, nor were they enervated by early debaucheries, but entirely employed in manly exercise.

Thomas Nugent, The History of Vandalia, p. 50 (London, 1761)

The Vandals have not been treated kindly by history, or by historians. For almost a hundred years, the group exerted a massive influence over the crumbling Roman world. From ad 439 when the Vandals first occupied Carthage, they created a strikingly precocious kingdom in the shadow of the old empire. For half a century they dominated the politics of the Mediterranean, and for a further 50 years ruled a state which flourished both economically and culturally. But the end - when it came - was swift. In 534 the kingdom of Carthage was swept aside by the resurgent forces of Justinian’s Byzantium, and the Vandals vanished forever.

In the twenty-first century, the Vandals are remembered primarily as a metaphor for violent and uncultured destruction - the linguistic creation of an imaginative priest who wrote in the aftermath of the French Revolution. Their cause has not been helped by a peculiar neglect among professional historians. Some dedicated histories of the group have been written - including some remarkable works of scholarship - but they have been thin on the ground. The study that follows is the first dedicated history of the group to be written in English. It draws upon much recent scholarship from North Africa, Europe, and the United States, but seeks to present an original and provocative account of this much-neglected group.

This book is a collaborative project, and the different perspectives of the two authors may occasionally be glimpsed in the chapters that follow. Chapters 1-6 were written by AHM, chapters 7-9 by RTM, but all have benefited from joint criticism and discussion. It is hoped that this collaborative approach will result in a more wide-ranging assessment of the Vandals than would have been possible for one author writing alone.

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

(AHM) Much of the research for this project was completed with the support of an RCUK Fellowship at the School of Archaeology and Ancient History at the University of Leicester. It also benefited from two long and pleasurable summers as a Margo Tytus Fellow in the Blegen Classics Library at the University of Cincinnati. I am particularly grateful to Getzel Cohen, Jacqueline Riley, and Mike Braunlin for their help there.

Many individuals helped enormously by reading individual chapters, and for suggesting many improvements. In particular Simon Loseby, Christina Possel, Jen Baird, Lesley McFadyen, Neil Christie, Anna Leone, Guido Berndt, and Jeremy Taylor. David Mattingly and Dave Edwards also listened to many less structured ramblings on matters North African and shaped my thinking greatly. Bruce Hitchner, Rob Wanner, Dan Stewart, David Stone, Roland Steinacher, Frangois Furstenberg, Mark Handley, Julia Farley, and Mark Gillings also helped with many specific points. Parts of chapters 1, 4, and 5 were presented in front of audiences in the universities of Birmingham, Nottingham, Manchester, Leicester, and Palermo, and I am grateful to all participants in those discussions for their suggestions, especially Doug Lee, David Langslow, Andy Morrison, Eric Blaum, Wolf Liebeschuetz, Robert Markus, and Roey Sweet.

(RTM) The majority of the research for the later chapters in this book was undertaken whilst I held a Friedrich Solmsen Fellowship at the Institute of Research into the Humanities at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. I would like to thank the Director, Professor Susan Stanford Friedman, and the Fellows of the Institute, as well as the extraordinary Loretta Freiling for creating such a hospitable and intellectually stimulating environment in which to work. A number of the ideas that appear in this book were first aired at seminars at the universities of Cambridge, Chicago, Wisconsin-Madison, Princeton, St Andrews, and the Society of Antiquaries of London. I would like to extend particular thanks to Peter Brown, Heimo Dolenz, Peter Garnsey, Christophe Goddard, Jill Harries, Walter Kaegi, David Morgan, Brent Shaw, and Claire Sotinel for their hospitality and invaluable feedback.

We are grateful to the British Museum for permission to reproduce Cornelius Visscher’s 1650 print of a Vandal from their Prints and Drawings Collection, which provides the front cover of this book. The image of the Bord Djedid Mosaic and the selection of Vandal coins come from the same institution. We would also like to thank David Mattingly for his kind permission to reproduce the photographs at pp. 87, 155, 157, 207, 209, and 254, and Heimo Dolenz and Sue Stevens for permission to reproduce the images of the Byzantine churches in chapter 9.

In many ways, the genesis of this study can be attributed to Mike Clover who has provided invaluable support and encouragement to both of its authors. The book, however, is dedicated to the memory of Dick Whittaker, who passed away as it was being finished. Dick fought long battles on the Roman frontiers, recast Roman social and economic systems in important new ways, and was an individual who was well aware of the power of North Africa to challenge assumptions and preconceptions; the Vandals would have appreciated him.