A barbarian was more or less what Romans just called anyone who wasn’t Roman or Greek.
-primarily from northern Europe around Germany and Scandinavia
-nomadic people
-were not a united group, but lived in individual tribes

Tacitus, a Roman historian, wrote a book about them around 110AD
-he talks about how great and monogamous and sober they were, which is dumb because barbarians were totally the exact opposite of sober
-also he mentions that no one wants to live in Germany because it sucks
▪ please go back to Rome, Tacitus. you are so mean.

If you asked a barbarian where he was from, he would name his tribe. If you asked who he was loyal to, he’d give the name of his chieftan
-Romans called this whole institution “comitatus”

In exchange for swearing loyalty to a chieftan and fighting to defend him, he would like give you tons of gold
-I have no idea what barbarians even did with gold but I guess that’s okay
-they had no real government system beyond this

When their chieftan died they would bury him with tons of riches and other cool shit. They like seriously loved their chieftan it was a big god damn deal.

This one time a lady living in England in this town called Sutten Hoo wanted to build a new garden shed in her backyard, but there is like this random big ass mound of dirt in the way
-So she hires some guys to dig it out and it turns out it’s the tomb of some barbarian chieftan and there’s piles of gold and shit in there

Sutten Hoo lady is like holy crap

And then the government is like holy crap

And then the government is like umm okay that is ours actually and takes all of her gold

So the Sutten Hoo lady takes them to court because apparently only “buried treasure” belongs to the government under English law, not things buried in tombs
-She has some bitchin lawyers and totally wins, and then donates all the gold to the government anyway
▪ So basically that was all kind of a big fuck you to them
▪ presumably after this she goes and builds that garden shed

So anyway at this time the Roman law and justice system is very sophisticated, they have judges, courts, written legislation, testimonies, evidence, blah blah blah

The barbarian system of law and justice is the most fuckin ridiculous, arbitrary thing I’ve ever heard of

So basically they have no written laws, everyone just kind of “knows” what you can and can’t do

So let’s say someone finds like Hrothgar dead and everyone recognize it’s Alaric’s dagger in his back (because they had fancy decorative daggers and stuff).

Alaric would be brought to a tribal gathering, and how his trial proceeded would depend on how much everyone liked him. There were 2 options…

Option One: Compurgation
You bring with you to the trial three oath-helpers. These oath-helpers take an oath that promises your statements are true
-You then take an oath saying you didn’t do it

That sounds really simple, but the oath was actually thing long ass speech and if you stuttered, forgot a word, or otherwise fucked it up, it was proof that the Gods made you mess up because you are mad guilty and then they kill you or whatever.
-this made it difficult to get oath-helpers if people thought you probably did it, because you would be in trouble if the person you were oath-helping messed his oath up.
▪ oath oath oath oath oath oath oath

Option Two: Ordeals
This is what you get when you had no friends and no one wanted to oath-help for you.

There were two possible ordeals you could do. The first was the ordeal of Hot Iron.
-in the ordeal of hot iron a religious dude in the tribe heats up a chunk of iron until it’s red and makes you hold it for a certain amount of time. Then, the horrible burn you probably just received is wrapped up for a few days. When they take the bandages off, if it is healing properly, you’re innocent. If it’s infected, you’re guilty
▪ oh okay, well that sounds reasonable to me.

There was also the ordeal of Cold Water
-in this ordeal you take an oath promising your innocence. The religious guy says some stuff, then they tie you up, and throw you into the middle of a lake
▪ if you float, then you’re guilty, because the waters rejected you
▪ if you sink, you’re not guilty, because the waters accepted your innocence. but this is still really stupid because you’ll probably drown before they decide you’ve been down there long enough for it to count.

This isn’t just like a short phase or anything. The barbarians do this for hundreds of years.
– they even keep doing it after they convert to Christianity. They just call the religious dude a priest now, oaths are replaced with confession, and so on.

Eventually in 1216 the Pope is like HEY

knock that shit off.

so that’s the end of that.

But that’s like way later, because right now it’s the 370’s and the HUNS HAVE ARRIVED to ruin everybody’s shit ohhh no!!!
-they used to spend their time ruining China’s shit, but then china made that giant wall, and the Huns were like man whatever let’s just go somewhere else

The Huns are waaay better at fighting than the barbarians, so the barbarians send a petition to the Roman emperor at the time asking to be let into the empire as allies against the Huns.
– the emperor is like yeah okay, but on a few conditions

▪ like they have to be disarmed, and they can only live in certain areas
▪ (only the shitty areas no one from Rome wants, of course)

The emperor hopes to just integrate the barbarians into Roman society and make them new German taxpayers
-but the move really just happens too quickly and it doesn’t work out, because you have like ten thousand barbarian guys suddenly wandering around the Roman empire and that’s stupid

The Goths (which is what these particular barbarians were called, I guess? why didn’t you just tell us that at the beginning of class) basically entrusted themselves to the Romans. They expected to be taken care of when it came to food & territory
-this totally does not happen. The emperor really fucks them over. He barely feeds them or does anything else he said he would do.

Here is the REALLY SILLY part

At this point Rome is having trouble getting actual Romans to be in the army, so they hire some of the barbarians to do it
-So when the barbarians decide to revolt because they’re tired of being treated like shit, they are incredibly well armed and prepared

This all culminates in the Battle of Adrianople in 378
-the Roman emperor led a force of troops up to the crappy German refugee area to “teach them a lesson”
– the Goths absolutely slaughter the Romans, which no one (including the Goths) really expected

and then I guess some more stuff happened but I was right next to the window so I started watching some birds and spaced out for the rest of class

Day One – Germanic Barbarians Are Fucking Crazy
Day Two – Are You Tired of Barbarians Yet? Me Neither.
Day Three – King Clovis Has No Time For Your Bullshit
Day Four – King Clovis Thinks Christianity is Silly
Day Five – In Which Jesus Scolds Some Rowdy Teen Zealots
Day Six – Heresy and Hissy Fits

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