Who were the Vandals, the 'barbarians' who sacked Rome? [View all]

By Owen Jarus published about 13 hours ago

The Vandals sacked Rome and carved out a kingdom in North Africa.

The Vandals were a Germanic people who sacked Rome and founded a kingdom in North Africa that flourished for about a century, until it was conquered by the Byzantine Empire in A.D. 534.

History has not been kind to the Vandals. The word "vandal" has become synonymous with destruction, in part because the texts about them were written mainly by Romans and other non-Vandals.

Despite this modern name association, the Vandals were likely no more violent or destructive than their contemporaries. While the Vandals did sack Rome in A.D. 455, they spared most of the city's inhabitants and didn't burn down its buildings. "Despite the negative connotation their name now carries, the Vandals conducted themselves much better during the sack of Rome than did many other invading barbarians," Torsten Cumberland Jacobsen, a former curator of the Royal Danish Arsenal Museum, wrote in his book "A History of the Vandals(opens in new tab)" (Westholme Publishing, 2012).

It wasn't until after the French Revolution, in the late 18th century, that the name "Vandals" became widely associated with destruction, Stephen Kershaw, who holds a doctorate in classics, wrote in his book "The Enemies of Rome: The Barbarian Rebellion Against the Roman Empire(opens in new tab)" (Pegasus Books, 2020).

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A map of the Vandals' and other Barbarian's routes into the Roman Empire. (Image credit: North Wind Picture Archives via Alamy Stock Photo)

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