2. From the 2nd century BCE, Germanic people had been coexisting with Romans and each admired certain qualities about the other.
3. However, things changed in the 3rd century AD as Germanic people first migrated to get away from the Huns, and then themselves turned into invaders and raiders, attacking the Eastern Roman Empire and then Western Europe, even sacking Rome in 410.
4. Later in the 5th century, Roman and Germanic armies joined forces to save Europe from the Asiatic Huns at the Battle of Chalons in 451; however, after the Hunnic Empire fell, other Asian nomadic invaders followed from the sixth to the ninth centuries.
5. As the Romans recalled troops to defend Italy from the Visigoths (the Germanic tribe that sacked Rome in 410), the outer parts of the Roman frontier, such as Gaul and England, were overrun by barbarian invaders.
6. Yet another barbarian culture, the Vandals, crossed the Rhine into Gaul, and made a great raid around the Western Mediterranean, including Spain, North Africa, Sicily, and Italy; this culture was finally conquered by the armies of Emperor Justinian (Byzantines) in the mid-500s.
7. The Germanic tribes often fought each other for control of prized areas, such as Rome, which fell to Germans led by Odoacer in 476 AD (the traditional date for the "fall of Rome").