The greatest achievement of Rome was not art or science or civilised values - it was propaganda. In fact, we so completely bought into admiration for the Roman Empire and a contempt for the barbarians that 2000 years after Rome's collapse was still being peddled their version of the past at school. Somehow - from beyond the grave - Rome managed to pull off the most audacious con-trick in history. How did they do it? Well the answer's tied up in the Sack of Rome and the end of the Roman Empire in Europe. Rome wasn't finished yet; that would be the job of the barbarians whose name has gone down in history as a by-word for wanton destruction. The Vandals. But Vandal didn't always this connotation. Vandal or "Wandali" originally meant "wanderers"/ It was fear of the Huns that launched their great migration in midwinter 406. Tens of thousands of them crossed the frozen Rhine into Gaul. They were not a warlike people and once they were over the river a third of them would be slaughtered by the local inhabitants. Their king was killed but his baby son survived. Geiseric would spend his childhood as a refugee in this wandering band of desperate people. As tens of thousands of them moved through Gaul looking for somewhere to settle, the sheer numbers provoked violence. So much violence that it was said that the whole of Gaul became a funeral pyre. They were attacked by Romans, then Visigoths, then Romans and Visigoths together. Eventually the Vandals ended up in southern Spain, in Andalusia, which is possibly named after them. Vandalusia. By 428, Geiseric was the undisputed leader. He seems to have been a formidable man. For example, when a certain princess committed adultery, he had her ears and nose cut off. I don't think I'd have liked him particularly. I don't think the Romans did either. The reason was nothing to do with his alleged savagery but with his religion. You see Geiseric was a Christian. But wait a minute, you said the Romans were Christians and that's true. But Geiseric's problem was that he was the wrong sort of Christian. In fact, his sort of Christianity was considered worse than paganism by Rome. It was so evil that the Empire had expressed outlawed it as a criminal heresy. The version of Christianity adopted by Geiseric and his people was not Catholicism, it was Arianism. Now the Arians believed that since Jesus is the son of God he must somehow be subordinate to God the father whereas the Catholics said they were both equal in status. Now this may seem like a very minor point of divergence but it became a bitter conflict. Catholicism said that Jesus was identical with God - that rubbed off on the Emperor ... Jesus - Emperor ... Emperor - Jesus. Just like that. Both represented God on Earth. Both - according to the Romans - were infallible. Peter Heller explained - that in Roman hands - the new faith became more than a path to righteousness. "The Roman state make this claim about itself that it is put in place here by the Divinity. "The Emperor is God's right-hand man on earth. "Now if you buy into the Emperor's version of Christianity then you should be subservient to him that's what that ideology tells you. So for going for a Christian ideology but not the State-sponsored one you are making a clear statement that you are an alternative power-structure and that you are not completely subordinate to the Imperial Power." Geiseric certainly did not want to be subordinate to Imperial Power. After a lifetime of being hunted and persecuted he hated Rome and since Catholicism was now identified with the Empire he hated that too. Even here in Spain, the Empire would not let him settle. Spain didn't suit Guiseric one bit. For starters his people were constantly being attacked and secondly he wasn't recognised by Rome. He must have looked longingly across the straits to northern Africa. Perhaps beyond the sea he and his people could find a part of the Roman Empire where they could settle. Rome thought of the Mediterranean as its own property - they called it "Our Sea" (Mare Nostrum) and it was illegal even to teach a barbarian how to sail. But Guiseric had a vision of himself as the new Moses, leading his people away from the Pharaoh in Rome. He couldn't part the sea but he would embark on a huge project building hundreds of boats to transport an entire nation. In the summer of 429 they crossed the Straits of Gibraltar to North Africa. 80,000 people packed on a flotilla of small boats. Their crossing was so unexpected that it was virtually unopposed. Which is odd because North Africa was the last place that Rome wanted to be over-run by barbarians. Why? Because North Africa was fertile and it was very rich; the most Romanised province in the West outside Italy. Rome had been unopposed in this part of the world for more than 500 years. This is just one of the many magnificent cities that flourished here in Roman North Africa. Then it was ca