Just looking for the origin of a word - vandal - and came upon a curious history event, full of violence, race and stereotyping in ancient Rome. So Roman.
The Vandals were a tribe from today's Germany that entered the late Roman empire during the 5th century, perhaps best known for their sack of Rome in 455. Although they were not notably more destructive than other invaders of ancient times, Renaissance and Early Modern writers who idealized Rome tended to blame the Vandals for its destruction. This led to the coinage of "vandalism", meaning senseless destruction, particularly the defacing of artworks that were completed with great effort.
Later Alaric and the Visigoths invaded Italy, capturing much of the peninsula in the south. Vandal auxiliary general Flavius Stilicho defends and saves Rome, eventually defeating Alaric at Pollentia and the battle of Verona, forcing him to retire from the peninsula.
You may think the inhabitants of Rome were grateful, not quite. They just never appreciated a foreigner in their soil, and eventually killed Stilicho on a revolt. So Roman ... so modern.
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