The Alans

I'm reading a very good book about the fall of the Roman Empire at the moment, the details of which I shall no doubt bore you with later.

I love the fact there was a tribe of particularly ferocious barbarians who stormed across the Rhine in the early 5th century called the Alans. I mean, did they succeed because the Romans just laughed at them and were taken off guard? They were followed by the equally mundane sounding Franks.

What is also quite amusing is that the Alans were wiped out in Spain by the Goths. I imagine a bunch of gloomy teenagers destroying a bunch of used car salesmen on the Sierra Nevada.

There was also a tribe called the Gepids which simply sounds silly.

The only tribe that sounds remotely threatening is the Vandals, but they just make me wonder why the Romans didn’t just slap on an ASBO.

So, one of the greatest civilisations the world has seen was brought to its knees by Alans, Franks, Goths, Vandals and Gepids. Way out.