s later the names of these non-Lombard
tribes still survived in certain villages of Italy which had formed
their centers.[146] The army which Attila the Hun brought into Gaul was a
motley crowd, comprising peoples of probable Slav origin from the
Russian steppes, Teutonic Ostrogoths and Gepidae, and numerous German
tribes, besides the Huns themselves. When this horde withdrew after the
death of Attila, Gepidae and Ostrogoths settled along the middle Danube,
and the Slavonic contingent along the Alpine courses of the Drave and
Save Rivers.[147] The Vandal migration which in 409 invaded Spain
included the Turanian Alans and the German Suevi. The Alans found a
temporary home in Portugal, which they later abandoned to join the
Vandal invasion of North Africa, while the Suevi settled permanently in
the northwestern mountains of Spain. The Vandals occupied in Spain two
widely separated districts, one in the mountain region of Galicia next
to the Suevi, and the other in the fertile valley of Andalusia in the
south, while the northeastern part of the peninsula was occupied by
intruding Visigoths.[148] Add to these the original Iberian and Celtic
stocks of the peninsula and the Roman strain previously introduced, and
the various elements which have entered into the Spanish people become
apparent.[149]

[Sidenote: Cultural modification during migration.]

The absorption of foreign elements is not confined to large groups whose
names come down in history, nor is the ensuing modification one of blood
alone. Every land migration or expansion of a people passes by or
through the territories of other peoples; by these it is inevitably
influenced in point of civilization, and from them individuals are
absorbed into the wandering throng by marriage or adoption, or a score
of ways. This assimilation of blood and local culture is facilitated by
the fact that the vast majority of historical movements are slow, a
leisurely drift. Even the great _Voelkerwanderung_, which history has
shown us generally in the moment of swift, final descent upon the
imperial city, in reality consisted of a succession of advances with
long halts between. The Vandals, whose original seats were probably in
central or eastern Prussia, drifted southward with the general movement
of the German barbarians toward the borders of the Empire late in the
second century, and, after the Marcomannic War (175 A.D.), settled in
Dacia north of the lower Danube under the Roman