Yale professor Paul Freedman surveys the kingdoms that replaced the Western Roman Empire, part of his course The Early Middle Ages, 284-1000. He opens with Tacitus's account of Germanic tribes, then turns to the successor states themselves: Ostrogoths and Visigoths in Italy, the Franks in Gaul, and the Vandals in North Africa. Because nearly all surviving sources come from Roman observers, Freedman flags how hard it is to judge how organized these societies actually were, and argues that internal feuding and limited economic development were common features. He also touches on intellectual life after Rome's fall before closing with a close look at the Burgundian Code, using its legal provisions as direct evidence of how one barbarian kingdom actually governed itself. Chapter markers divide the lecture into six segments moving from Tacitus through specific tribal groups to the Burgundians.