How an Empire Ends: The Migration Era

Ancient History Fangirl

History, Society & Culture

4.5 • 518 Ratings

🗓️ 10 April 2025

⏱️ 52 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

Help keep our podcast going by contributing to our Patreon! It was the beginning of the Migration Era where the Goths’ history with the Roman Empire begins. The Migration era was a cycle of wars and conflicts lasting hundreds of years. Alaric’s sack of Rome was only a small part of it. What started it? Nobody knows. But it would have been an extremely chaotic time to be alive, when ordinary people had to leave all that they’d built and flee in the face of invaders—who were also refugees fleeing violence that had wiped out their own homes. There would have been no safety anywhere. The Migration Era was a vortex of death, where displaced victims, starving refugees, desperate people often wound up enacting the next round of violence on the populations they crashed into. And in this episode, we try to plumb the depths of that vortex. Sponsors and Advertising This podcast is a member of Airwave Media podcast network. Want to advertise on our show? Please direct advertising inquiries to advertising@airwavemedia.com. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Transcript

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1:02.9	The Huns fell upon the Allens, the Allens upon the Goths, and the Goths upon the
1:07.5	Taifali and the Sarmations, and this is not yet the end.
1:21.6	All day you can see the smoke rising from the sky at your back.
1:26.6	It's an oily smoke, a black smoke, and it curls up
1:30.6	beyond the trees into the iron-gray sky. It coats everything. As you walk, you breathe it in, all that you
1:38.3	were. Trees, homes, people, the dead coat your throat, your home up in ashes behind you. You were the lucky ones.
1:48.5	You managed to get out before the riders came. The rumors are saying they are demons from hell,
1:54.0	with their black cloaks and their hideous horses and their arrows that can punch through
1:58.4	armor. With their speed, they outstrip rumor. No army can face them.
2:03.6	You have not seen the invaders. No one yet has seen them and lived. You turn back to your team of oxen, straining against the harnesses. The cart with all your belongings is stuck in the mud, the oxen bellows strenuously.
2:19.6	You've been hauling and shoving all day.
	...

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