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Contents

SECTION 1

Village Life

SECTION 2

The Conquerors

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• Valhalla

• Danube River valley

• clans

• chieftain

• blood feuds

• oath-helpers

• ordeal

• wergeld

• Wodan

• Thor

• Attila

• Alaric

• Odoacer

• Theodoric

Terms to Learn People to Know

Places to Locate

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Village Life• Although the Germans took part in

Roman life, they also kept much of their own culture.

• They lived in villages of thatched roof huts surrounded by farmlands and pastures.

• Women, children, and enslaved people did most farm work.

• German dress was simple.

• The Germans so strongly believed in hospitality that it was against the law to turn away anyone who came to the door.

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Village Life (cont.)

• Feasting, drinking, and dancing were favorite German pastimes.

• The Germans spoke a language that later became modern German.

• At first, they could not read or write, because their language had no alphabet.

• Gradually, they began to use Roman letters to write their own language.

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• German men were warriors, spending most of their time fighting, hunting, or making weapons.

• The Germans were divided into clans, or groups based on family ties.

• At first, the Germans gave their greatest loyalty to their clan but later shifted their loyalty to a chieftain, a military leader.

• The chieftains provided their men with leadership, weapons, and adventure.

• German warrior bands were small and did not have fixed plans of fighting.

Warriors

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• The Germans' love of battle was closely linked to their religion, and they expected warriors to win in battle or die trying.

• The chief god, Wodan, was the god of war, poetry, learning, and magic and his son Thor was the god of war and thunder.

• The Germans believed that goddesses carried warriors who died in battle into the afterlife to Wodan’s hall, called Valhalla, to feast and fight forever.

• A successful attack provided warriors with enslaved people, cattle, and other treasures.

Warriors (cont.)

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• Unlike the Romans who believed the law came from the emperor, the Germans believed that the law came from the people, requiring public approval for any changes.

• Reckless, often drunken, fighting caused problems in German villages.

• Courts were established to keep such fights from becoming blood feuds, or quarrels in which the families of the original fighters seek revenge.

Law

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Section 1-6

• Germans who were accused of a crime would profess their innocence in an oath, and that oath would be defended by an oath-helper, who swore that the accused spoke the truth.

• Sometimes guilt or innocence would be decided by ordeal, a severe trial, in which the accused would walk on red-hot coals or be bound and thrown in the water.

• If the burns healed in three days or if the accused sank, he was considered innocent.

• Courts also could impose fines called wergeld on a person judged as guilty.

Law (cont.)

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The Conquerors• The Goths were a Germanic people who

lived in the Balkan Peninsula of Europe.

• In the late 300s the Huns, led by Attila, or “Little Daddy,” attacked both the Ostrogoths (East Goths) and the Visigoths (West Goths).

• After the Huns conquered the East Goths, the West Goths asked the Roman emperor for protection.

• Before long, trouble broke out between the West Goths and Roman officials.

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The Conquerors (cont.)

• Finally, the West Goths rebelled against the Romans and defeated them at the Battle of Adrianople in 378.

• In 410, led by Alaric, they captured and looted Rome and continued on to Gaul and then to Spain, ending the Roman rule in Spain and driving out the Vandals.

• In 455, the Vandals attacked and burned Rome, but spared the lives of the Romans.

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• The Germanic invasions were one of the three main reasons the Roman Empire in the West began to fall.

• In 476, a German general named Odoacer took control and ruled the western empire in his own name for almost 15 years.

• Later the East Goths, led by Theodoric, took Italy, killed Odoacer, and set up their own kingdom.

The Conquerors (cont.)

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• By 550, the Roman Empire in the West had faded away, replaced by six major and a great many minor Germanic kingdoms.

• Many Roman beliefs and practices remained to shape later civilizations.

The Conquerors (cont.)