A Little History of the World

Gombrich begins this chapter by asking the reader to imagine an approaching storm. He compares the slowly changing, violent landscape to the fall of the Roman Empire: “The time I am now going to tell you about was like [a storm]. It was then that a storm broke that swept away the whole, vast Roman empire” (105). The storm he describes is the invasion of the West by the Huns, a tribe from the steppes of Asia. The Visigoths, a Germanic tribe, sought the protection of the Romans from the Huns but soon waged war on the empire itself. In 410, they sacked Rome. Other Germanic tribes now attacked Roman provinces. The Vandals captured Carthage in 439. The Huns were now led by a king named Attila, and whoever his army did not kill in their conquests was absorbed into the ranks. When the Huns headed toward Rome, Pope Leo the Great came to meet Attila’s army and somehow convinced them to turn back. Attila died two years later.

Though the Romans had survived the advancing Hun army, they were still too weakened and leaderless to go on. The last emperor of Rome was deposed in 476, and a German general named Odoacer declared himself king in Italy.