Culture in Vandal Africa - what's changed?

The prevailing view, in conscious or unconscious reaction to the unhistorical keyword of "vandalism", is that a cultural and scientific center existed at the Vandal court from the reign of Thrasamund (AD 496-523) at the latest, and sometimes even from Huneric onwards. As a worthy successor and heir to the Roman Empire, the king would have played the role of patron of the arts, as would any sovereign of late antiquity. Emphasis has been placed on sources that attest to a different version of events. While they attest to the existence of literary circles in Carthage, they also show that these circles only remotely involved the Vandal elite and the king. This situation only changed under Hildéric (AD 423-430).