[sb057]

>during periods when the Romans were more racist/classist/etc they had trouble

I'm afraid you might be attributing some false causality. It seems more obvious to me that during periods of peace, any social rifts are unproblematic, but when people start to go hungry and their wealth is threatened, any societal wedges are utilized by the domineering group to protect their interests.

[shadowofneptune]

It does become an issue when the only competent administrators of Rome were Germanic in origin and discriminated against, or when the army's best men are also Germanic. A massacre of the families of german soldiers both alienated the king of the Vandals and strengthened his position, leading eventually to the Sack of Rome. Duncan asks near the end of the show why there was not a series of German emperors, as there were Dalmatian emperors.

[cheaprentalyeti]

Technically there were a bunch of German "emperors" although they called themselves kings. They're the people that Justinian fought against, more or less, when he reconquered Italy and in the process killed large parts of the population.

I'll have to double-check Duncan's podcast to see if he ends it in the 470s or in the 530s or so. Personally I think the Gothic War/Lombard Invasion makes a much better ending point for civilization in the West than 472.

[thaumasiotes]

> there were a bunch of German "emperors" although they called themselves kings.

What does that mean? "King" was the word for the concept in every language except Latin, where it was still the word for the concept, but was avoided due to a cultural taboo.

A Roman emperor held many titles. English "emperor" derives from imperator, "commander", an honorific title given to generals. He was addressed as Caesar, originally a personal name, which survives in the German Kaiser and the Russian Tsar. To the Greeks, he was basileus, "king", because there was no Greek taboo on the word "king".

There was no title analogous to Near Eastern "king of kings" or Chinese 皇帝, explicitly set above the level of a "king".

[User23]

For some reason introductory history doesn’t much cover the Visigothic Roman Kingdom, but it’s quite interesting. L. Sprague de Camp set his marvelous Lest Darkness Fall in that time period.