Peter Heather

What is this political situation?

I think he was concerned that Constantinople might intervene.

Exactly.

Yeah, because actually the person who takes over from him, Theodoric the Ostrogoth, he does the same kind of thing.

He projects himself as an emperor.

He allows his subjects to respond to him as though he's an emperor, but he never calls himself an emperor.

Certainly in the first instance, yeah.

In the first generation or so, it would have seemed that way.

In some places, the end of the empire takes different forms in different places.

Yeah.

So in North Africa, for instance, the Vandals settled themselves in the richest provinces, but those were estates owned by absentee Roman sanatoriums.

So there's no sign of massive economic dislocation within the North African provinces.

That archaeology is quite well known.

That's right, yeah.

So the vandals are concentrated in what's now Tunisia.

They don't pay taxes.

The tax structures break down there.

But Western Algeria and Southern Tunisia, the two other provinces, they do pay taxes.

And that carries on as normal.

Likewise, certainly in much of Southern Gaul,