Opening paragraphs...............

On that last, cold day of December in the dying year we count as 406, the river Rhine froze solid, providing the natural bridge that hundreds of thousands of hungry men, women, and children had been waiting for.  They were the barbari - to the Romans and undistinguished, matted mass of Others, not terrifying, just troublemakers, annoyances, things one would rather not have to deal with - non-Romans.  To themselves they were, presumably, something more, but as the illiterate leave few records, we can only surmise their opinion of themselves.
-Thomas Cahill,  How The Irish Saved Civilization:  The Untold Story of Ireland's Heroic Role from the Fall of Rome to the Rise of Medieval Europe