2 de Junho de 455.

The Vandals plundered Rome. In 455, the Vandals lead by Genseic took Rome and plundered the city for two weeks starting June 2. They departed with countless valuables, spoils of the Temple in Jerusalem brought to Rome by Titus, and the Empress Eudoxia and her daughters Eudocia and Placidia. By 468 they destroyed an enormous Byzantine fleet sent against them.

Pope Leo I could not prevent the sack of the city by Genseric in 455, but murder and arson were repressed by his influence.

Vandals are a Germanic people belonging to the family of East Germans. According to Tacitus, they were originally settled between the Elbe and Vistula. At the time of the War of the Marcomanni (166-81) they lived in what is now Silesia, and in about 271 the Roman Emperor Aurelian was obliged to protect the middle course of the Danube against them. Constantine the Great (about 330) granted them lands in Pannonia on the right bank of the Danube. Through the Emperor Valens (364-78) they accepted Arian Christianity, yet there were also some scattered orthodox Vandals, among whom was Stilicho the minister of the Emperor Honorius. In 406 the Vandals advanced from Pannonia by way of Gaul, which they devastated terribly, into Spain, where they settled in 411. From 427 their king was Genseric (Gaiseric), who in 429 landed in North Africa with about 80,000 of his followers.

It is a disputed point whether or not he was called to Africa by the Roman governor Boniface on account of the intrigues of Aetius. Peace was made between the Romans and Vandals in 435 but it was broken by Genseric in 439, who made Carthage his capital after he had thoroughly plundered it. During the next thirty-five years with a large fleet he ravaged the coasts of the Eastern and Western Empires. In 455 he plundered Rome itself during two weeks. It is asserted that the Empress Eudoxia had asked him to free her from her hated marriage with the Emperor Petronius Maximus, the murderer of her husband Valentinian III. This story, however, is probably a fable.

It is said that on 2 June, 455, Leo the Great received Genseric and implored him to abstain from murder and destruction by fire, and to be satisfied with pillage. Whether the pope's influence saved Rome is, however, questioned; moreover, the Vandals had only booty in mind, nor was the plundering as extreme as later tradition and the expression "Vandalism" would imply. From 462 the Vandal kingdom included Africa and the islands of the Mediterranean, that is Sicily, Sardinia, Corsica, and the Balearic Islands, but like the other Germanic kingdoms on Roman soil the kingdom of the Vandals in Africa began to decay from the lack of unity of religion and of race among the two populations.