Killing barbarians went down extremely well with the average Roman audience. Roman amphitheaters saw many different acts of violence, from gladiatorial combat to highly inventive forms of judicial execution. A staggering 200,000 people, it has been calculated, met a violent death in the Colosseum alone, and there were similar, smaller, arenas in every major city of the Empire. Watching barbarians die was a standard part of the fun. In 306, to celebrate his pacification of the Rhine frontier, the emperor Constantine had two captured Germanic Frankish kings, Ascaricus and Merogaisus, fed to wild beasts in the arena of Trier. He also made very sure that a wider audience around the Empire heard of his triumph. If no barbarian kings were available, there were always alternatives.

From Peter Heather’s The Fall of the Roman Empire: A New History, London: Pan Books, 2006 (first published in 2005), p. 68.