Tribes speaking Finno-Ugric languages are by now settled around the northeast of the Baltic, in modern Estonia and Finland

The Goths split into two major groups, the Visigoths northwest of the Black Sea and the Ostrogoths further east

The Picts win a dominant position among tribes in the northern regions of Britain, or Scotland

The Jews of the Diaspora have by now spread through much of the Roman empire, where they are treated with tolerance

The Huns, moving from the steppes north of the Black Sea, defeat the Ostrogoths and drive the Visigoths westwards - starting a chain reaction

The Visigoths inflict a devastating defeat on a Roman army at Adrianople, and win for themselves the status of Roman federates

The Vandals cross the Rhine into Gaul and move into Spain, from which the Visigoths soon push them on into Africa

The Roman city of Nîmes is sacked by the Vandals, in an early indication of the gradual loss of Gaul to the Germanic tribes

Alaric and the Visigoths enter Rome and plunder the city - the first foreign intruders for eight centuries

The Burgundians cross the Rhine and settle round Worms, before moving south to the Savoy region

The Visigoths, after twenty years of destructive wandering, settle in southwest France as Roman federates

Halted by a Roman army in their push southwards, the Franks settle in the Roman province of Belgica, around Tournai

Gaiseric captures Carthage and makes it his base for Vandal raids across the Mediterranean

Attila murders his brother and becomes the sole ruler of the Huns, who are now pressing through Dacia and across the Danube

Angles, Saxons and other Germanic groups invade southern England and steadily push the Celts westwards

Attila and the Huns invade Gaul but are defeated, somewhere near Troyes, by a Roman army supported by Visigoths and Burgundians

Attila invades and ravages northern Italy, but turns back before reaching Rome - possibly influenced by the diplomacy of Leo I

Gaiseric and the Vandals enter Rome and sack the city, but their violence is perhaps restrained by Leo I

The Czechs are the most powerful of the various Slav tribes by now settled in Bohemia

The Slavs cross the Danube and press southwards into the Roman provinces of Moesia and Thracia

The Slavs arrive in the Balkans and settle in all parts of the region except Albania

Most of Spain is by now in the hands of the Visigoths, though for a while the Byzantines win back territories in the south

If there is any historical basis for the legendary King Arthur, it is as a Celtic chieftain resisting the Anglo-Saxons in the sixth century

The Lombards invade northern Italy, and within four years occupy it as far south as the Po

Fugitives from the Lombard invasion of northern Italy take refuge on islands in the Venetian lagoon - and become the founders of Venice