The Technique of Barbarian Settlement in the Fifth Century: A Reply to Walter Goffart

Abstract

Walter Goffart's article prompts me to reply on several general points. First, I gladly concede the importance of his recent works on the meaning of "land," which further nuances his 1980 thesis and accept that my own 2007 discussion suffered from a failure to think in these terms. That said, his article completely misrepresents my own discussion of the subject of hospitalitas. Attention is drawn to these distortions and to inconsistencies in Goffart's own reasoning, both at a general level and in the discussion of the meanings of land. Overall, it is argued that the preferable way of thinking about the fifth-century settlement of "barbarians" is to maintain flexible interpretations, attentive to context and receptive to the multiple meanings that the documents will sustain, rather than trying to force the evidence into single, one-size-fits-all explanations and claiming the latter to be the only interpretation possible.

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