Out of Africa: The Vandal Court of Thrasamund

Abstract

In 429 a group of Vandals, mixed with some Alans and Goths, crossed the Straits of Gibraltar and entered Roman Africa.1 Their advance was rather slow and calculated. In 431 Hippo Regius, the site of Augustine’s bishopric, was captured after a siege of three years and was burned to ashes; in 435 parts of Numidia were conceded to the Vandals by a treaty with the Byzantine Emperor Valentian III (425–455); Carthage was conquered in 439; and in 442, after a Vandal fleet had reached Sicily, a second treaty with Byzantium gave the Vandals control over the Roman North-African provinces of Proconsularis, Byzancena, Tripolitania and other parts of Numidia. Little by little the Vandals also gained control of Mauritania and the Mediterranean islands of Corsica, Sardinia and the Balearics, and thus became the most powerful military force in the south west of the Mediterranean and the unrivalled rulers of North Africa. By the early 450s, still under the leadership of Geiseric (428–477), the Vandals were secure enough in their position to participate in Roman factional politics, and consequently in 455 they even sacked Rome, taking with them Valentian III’s widow, Eudoxia, and her two daughters, Eudocia and Galla Placidia.2