The impact of Roman civilisation on the Empire"s clients in the West forms the subject of the initial parts of this volume. Even the most successful Germanic kingdoms of the 5th-6th century, the author argues, such as that of the Vandals in North Africa, could not escape the grasp of the Roman Empire: their politics and culture remained conditioned by imperial models and by the continuing reality of imperial power throughout late antiquity. The subsequent articles deal with the "Historica Augusta", but approaching that difficult text from the periphery, by first attempting to establish its broad literary and topical context before considering questions of its nature and date.