End of Custom Shows

1. End of Custom Shows WARNING! Do Not Remove This slide is intentionally blank and is set to auto-advance to end custom shows and return to the main presentation. End of Custom Shows

2. SECTION 1 Village Life SECTION 2 The Conquerors Contents

3. Terms to Learn People to Know • clans • Wodan • chieftain • blood feuds • oath-helpers • ordeal • wergeld • Thor • Attila • Alaric • Odoacer • Theodoric Places to Locate • Danube River valley • Valhalla

4. 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.

5. 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.

6. 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.

7. 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.

8. 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.

9. 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 wergeldon a person judged as guilty. Section 1-6

10. 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.

11. 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.

12. 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.

13. 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.