Peter Heather

Yeah.

And the Eastern Empire is still willing to play.

It never writes the West a blank check.

But again, the idea that the East leaves the West to its fate is just not supported in the evidence.

So there are three...

projected and actual expeditions to recapture North Africa from the Vandals, two of which the East are substantially involved in.

The first one we got, it's immediately afterwards in 442.

We're gathering huge armies in Sicily from the East and West for a major expedition.

But then, blow me, Attila sees the opportunity and he invades across the Danube.

And that's what stops the 442 expedition from going.

Right.

Because the East Roman contingents have come from the Danube front.

Attila is threatening Eastern territories, so the East withdraws its armies to fight him instead.

Rome falls.

After this, don't go away.

Exactly.

And what Attila has done...

is it's only, I don't know, maybe a third of Rome's frontier clans had run over the border in the 370s and 400s.

And he's pulled a lot of the rest into a nomadic empire, which contains a lot of the Germanic-speaking frontier clans of the Roman Empire.

They do, absolutely.