In the mid fourth century the barbarians who inhabited the territories beyond the Rhine and the Danube frontiers presented no great threat to the survival of the Roman empire. That is not to say that they were peaceful neighbours; the Franks and the Saxons on the lower Rhine mounted numerous raids into Germania, Belgica and along the coasts of Gaul; and there was intermittent fighting against Goths settled north of the Danube. Nevertheless, these peoples could be held in check by a mixture of military force and diplomacy; military reprisals were directed against the Franks and Saxons, and the Burgundians were persuaded to take Rome's side against the Alamans.

To a large extent these policies worked because they dealt with settled peoples. Although the names of the tribes were not names which would have been familiar to the early empire, and although the tribes themselves were not static units but rather confederations which expanded and contracted according to the prestige of individual leaders, they were not nomadic. The Burgundians were said to be so-called because they lived in burgi – almost certainly a false etymology, but one which is revealing of their way of life. They were also said to be brothers of the Romans, but this origin legend probably has more to do with fourth-century politics than any real ethnogenesis. For the Gothic Tervingi, the fourth-century Passion of St Saba reveals a world of peasant villages dominated by a pagan aristocratic élite.