section_path: Early Middle Ages/Post-Roman kingdoms
section_name: Post-Roman kingdoms
paragraph_text: Post-Roman kingdoms
  
  In the post-Roman world, the fusion of Roman culture with the customs of the invading tribes is well documented. Popular assemblies, which allowed free male tribal members more say in political matters than had been common in the Roman state, developed into legislative and judicial bodies. Much of the scholarly and written culture of the new political entities was based on Roman intellectual traditions. Many no longer supported their armies through taxes, instead relying on granting them land or rent; with less need for large tax revenues, the taxation systems declined.
  
  In Britain, the Celtic Britons ' culture had little impact on the Anglo-Saxon way of life, but the linguistic assimilation of the natives to the newcomers is evident. By c. 600, new political centres emerged; some local leaders accumulated considerable wealth, and a number of small kingdoms (such as Wessex and Mercia) were formed. Smaller kingdoms in present-day Wales and Scotland were still under the control of the native Britons and Picts. Ireland was divided into even smaller political units, perhaps as many as 150 tribal kingdoms.
  
  The Ostrogoths moved to Italy from the Balkans under Theoderic the Great (r. 493–526). He set up a kingdom marked by its co-operation between the natives and the conquerors. Power struggles between Romanised and traditionalist Ostrogothic groups followed his death, providing the opportunity for the Byzantines to reconquer Italy. The Burgundians settled in Gaul, where they reorganised their kingdom. Elsewhere in Gaul, the Franks and Celtic Britons established stable polities. Francia was centred in northern Gaul, and the first king about whom much is known is Childeric I (d. 481). Under his son Clovis I (r. 509–11), the founder of the Merovingian dynasty, the Frankish kingdom expanded and converted to Christianity. Unlike other Germanic peoples, the Franks preferred mainstream Christianity to Arianism; this facilitated their cooperation with the native Gallo-Roman aristocracy. Britons fleeing from Britannia —present-day Great Britain—settled in what is now Brittany.
  
  Other monarchies were established by the Visigoths in the Iberian Peninsula, the Suebi in northwestern Iberia, the Vandals in North Africa, and the Lombards in northern Italy. Coming from the Asian steppes, the nomadic Avars conquered most Slavic, Turkic and Germanic tribes in the lowlands along the lower and middle Danube by the end of the 6th century. Another steppe people (the Bulgars) defeated a Byzantine imperial army in 681 and established the First Bulgarian Empire, subjugating the local Slavic tribes near the Danube Delta.
  
  The settlement of peoples was accompanied by changes in language. Latin, the literary language of the Western Roman Empire, was gradually replaced by vernacular languages (which evolved from Latin) collectively known as Romance languages. Greek remained the language of the Byzantine Empire, but Slav migrations expanded the area of Slavic languages in central and eastern Europe.