Map courtesy of The General Libraries, University of Texas at Austin

The year 406 CE marked an immense influx of Germanic peoples across the Rhine. One tribe was the Vandals, although their original homeland probably lay near that of the Goths. They quickly moved through Gaul and into Spain, then set sight on Africa. The campaign was to be led by Guntheric and his illegitimate brother Gaiseric. When Guntheric died suddenly, Gaiseric was the sole leader. Like some many of the early Germanic Christians, Gaiseric was an Arian (a member of a schismatic sect that did not hold God and Christ to be of the same substance); unlike most Arians, he had an intense hatred of Catholicism. (One tradition has it that he was an apostate Catholic.) In May 428 he crossed the Straits of Gibraltar with 80,000 people, including as many as 20,000 warriors. At the same time, a Vandal fleet was beginning to dominate the Western Mediterranian. The Vandal army swept eastward, doing extreme damage, especially to churches. In 439 Carthage fell; the "Roman Breadbasket" was in Vandal hands. In 455 Gaiseric raided Rome, and the damage done far surpassed the "gentle sack" of the Visigoth Alaric. The Vandals dominated Africa until 533, when a Byzantine army invaded and defeated them in 535. Surviving adult males were immediately sent to the Persian front. The Vandals were obliterated, but the viciousness of their earlier depredations has left us the verb "to vandalize."