Transcript Chapter 17 The Germans

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SECTION 1
Village Life
SECTION 2
The Conquerors
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Terms to Learn
• clans
• Wodan
• chieftain
• Thor
• blood feuds
• Attila
• oath-helpers
• Alaric
• ordeal
• Odoacer
• wergeld
• Theodoric
People to Know
Places to Locate
• Danube River valley
• Valhalla
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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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Warriors
• 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.
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Warriors (cont.)
• A successful attack provided warriors with
enslaved people, cattle, and
other treasures.
• 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.
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Law
• 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.
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Law (cont.)
• 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.
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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 Conquerors (cont.)
• 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.
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The Conquerors (cont.)
• 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.
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