Vandals Sacked Rome, But Weren't All That Bad

The Vandals were a "barbarian" Germanic people who sacked Rome, battled the Huns and the Goths, and founded a kingdom in North Africa that flourished for about a century until it succumbed to an invasion force from the Byzantine Empire in A.D. 534.

History has not been kind to the Vandals. The name "Vandal" eventually became a synonym for destruction, in part because the texts about them were written mainly by Romans and other non-Vandals.

While the Vandals did sack Rome in A.D. 455, they spared most of the city's inhabitants and did not burn down its buildings.