What sequence of events led to the sack of Rome in 410?

Visigoth siege and looting of Rome in 410

Sack of Rome (410)
Part of the autumn of the Western Roman Empire
The Sack of Rome past the Barbarians in 410 past Joseph-Noël Sylvestre, 1890
Appointment 24 August 410 AD Location Rome Result Decisive Visigothic victory
Belligerents
Visigoths	Western Roman Empire
Commanders and leaders
Alaric I Ataulf	Honorius
Strength
Possibly 40,000 soldiers[ane] Unknown number of civilian followers	Unknown
Casualties and losses
Unknown	Unknown

The Sack of Rome on 24 Baronial 410 Advert was undertaken by the Visigoths led by their king, Alaric. At that time, Rome was no longer the capital of the Western Roman Empire, having been replaced in that position first by Mediolanum in 286 and and so by Ravenna in 402. Nevertheless, the city of Rome retained a paramount position as "the eternal city" and a spiritual centre of the Empire. This was the kickoff time in almost 800 years that Rome had fallen to a foreign enemy, and the sack was a major daze to contemporaries, friends and foes of the Empire akin.

The sacking of 410 is seen equally a major landmark in the autumn of the Western Roman Empire. St. Jerome, living in Bethlehem at the fourth dimension, wrote; "the city which had taken the whole world was itself taken."^[2]

Background [edit]

The Germanic tribes had undergone massive technological, social, and economic changes after four centuries of contact with the Roman Empire. From the first to 4th centuries, their populations, economical production, and tribal confederations grew, and their ability to conduct warfare increased to the signal of challenging Rome.^[three]

The Goths, ane of the Germanic tribes, had invaded the Roman Empire on and off since 238.^[4] But in the late 4th century, the Huns began to invade the lands of the Germanic tribes, and pushed many of them into the Roman Empire with greater fervor.^[five] In 376, the Huns forced many Therving Goths led by Fritigern and Alavivus to seek refuge in the Eastern Roman Empire. Presently after, starvation, high taxes, hatred from the Roman population, and governmental corruption turned the Goths against the empire.^[6]

The Goths rebelled and began annexation and pillaging throughout the eastern Balkans. A Roman army, led past the Eastern Roman emperor Valens, marched to put them down. At the Battle of Adrianople in 378, Fritigern decisively defeated emperor Valens, who was killed in battle.^[6] Peace was eventually established in 382 when the new Eastern emperor, Theodosius I, signed a treaty with the Thervings, who would become known as the Visigoths. The treaty made the Visigoths subjects of the empire as foederati. They were allotted the northern part of the dioceses of Dacia and Thrace, and while the land remained under Roman sovereignty and the Visigoths were expected to provide military service, they were considered democratic.^[seven]

Fritigern died around 382.^[8] In 391, a Gothic chieftain named Alaric was declared king by a group of Visigoths, though the exact time this happened (Jordanes says Alaric was made king in 400^[9] and Peter Heather says 395^[10]) and nature of this position are debated.^{[11] [12]} He then led an invasion into Eastern Roman territory outside of the Goths' designated lands. Alaric was defeated by Theodosius and his full general Flavius Stilicho in 392, who forced Alaric back into Roman vassalage.^{[eleven] [13]}

In 394, Alaric led a force of Visigoths equally part of Theodosius' army to invade the Western Roman Empire. At the Battle of the Frigidus, around half the Visigoths present died fighting the Western Roman army led by the usurper Eugenius and his full general Arbogast.^[14] Theodosius won the battle, and although Alaric was given the title comes for his bravery, tensions between the Goths and Romans grew as it seemed the Roman generals had sought to weaken the Goths by making them bear the brunt of the fighting. Alaric was also enraged he had not been granted a higher office in the imperial administration.^[15]

Visigothic invasion of Rome [edit]

The administrative divisions of the Roman Empire in 395, nether Theodosius I

When Theodosius died on January ten, 395, the Visigoths considered their 382 treaty with Rome to have ended.^[16] Alaric speedily led his warriors back to their lands in Moesia, gathered most of the federated Goths in the Danubian provinces under his leadership, and instantly rebelled, invading Thrace and approaching the Eastern Roman capital letter of Constantinople.^{[17] [18]} The Huns, at the same moment, invaded Asia Small-scale.^[17]

The decease of Theodosius had also wracked the political structure of the empire: Theodosius' sons, Honorius and Arcadius, were given the Western and Eastern empires, respectively, simply they were young and needed guidance. A ability struggle emerged between Stilicho, who claimed guardianship over both emperors but was yet in the Westward with the army that had defeated Eugenius, and Rufinus, the praetorian prefect of the E, who took the guardianship of Arcadius in the Eastern uppercase of Constantinople. Stilicho claimed that Theodosius had awarded him with sole guardianship on the emperor's deathbed and claimed authority over the Eastern Empire as well as the Due west.^[19]

Rufinus negotiated with Alaric to become him to withdraw from Constantinople (perhaps by promising him lands in Thessaly). Whatever the case, Alaric marched away from Constantinople to Greece, annexation the diocese of Macedonia.^{[20] [21]}

Magister utriusque militiae Stilicho marched east at the head of a combined Western and Eastern Roman army out of Italy. Alaric fortified himself behind a circumvolve of wagons on the plain of Larissa, in Thessaly, where Stilicho besieged him for several months, unwilling to seek battle. Eventually, Arcadius, nether the apparent influence of those hostile to Stilicho, commanded him to go out Thessaly.

Stilicho obeyed the orders of his emperor past sending his Eastern troops to Constantinople and leading his Western ones back to Italy.^{[21] [22]} The Eastern troops Stilicho had sent to Constantinople were led by a Goth named Gainas. When Rufinus met the soldiers, he was hacked to death in November 395. Whether that was done on the orders of Stilicho, or maybe on those of Rufinus' replacement Eutropius, is unknown.^[23]

The withdrawal of Stilicho freed Alaric to pillage much of Hellenic republic, including Piraeus, Corinth, Argos, and Sparta. Athens was able to pay a ransom to avoid being sacked.^[21] It was only in 397 that Stilicho returned to Greece, having rebuilt his army with mainly barbaric allies and believing the eastern Roman government would at present welcome his arrival.^[24] After some fighting, Stilicho trapped and besieged Alaric at Pholoe.^[25] And then, once more, Stilicho retreated to Italian republic, and Alaric marched into Epirus.

Why Stilicho one time again failed to acceleration Alaric is a matter of contention. Information technology has been suggested that Stilicho'due south mostly-barbarian ground forces had been unreliable or that some other order from Arcadius and the Eastern government forced his withdrawal.^[24] Others propose that Stilicho made an understanding with Alaric and betrayed the East.^[26] Whatsoever the example, Stilicho was declared a public enemy in the Eastern Empire the aforementioned year.^[25]

Alaric's rampage in Epirus was enough to make the eastern Roman government offer him terms in 398. They made Alaric magister militum per Illyricum, giving him the Roman control he wanted and giving him free rein to take what resources he needed, including armaments, in his assigned province.^[24] Stilicho, in the concurrently, put down a rebellion in Africa in 399, which had been instigated by the eastern Roman empire, and married his daughter Maria to the 11-year-old Western emperor, Honorius, strengthening his grip on power in the Due west.^[24]

First Visigothic invasion of Italy [edit]

Aurelianus, the new praetorian prefect of the east subsequently Eutropius' execution, stripped Alaric of his title to Illyricum in 400.^[27] Between 700 and 7,000 Gothic soldiers and their families were slaughtered in a riot at Constantinople on July 12, 400.^{[28] [29]} Gainas, who at one betoken had been fabricated magister militum, rebelled, but he was killed past the Huns under Uldin, who sent his head back to Constantinople as a souvenir.

With these events, particularly Rome'southward use of the feared Huns, and cut off from Roman officialdom, Alaric felt his position in the East was precarious.^[28] So, while Stilicho was busy fighting an invasion of Vandals and Alans in Rhaetia and Noricum, Alaric led his people into an invasion of Italy in 401, reaching it in November without encountering much resistance. The Goths captured a few unnamed cities and besieged the Western Roman capital Mediolanum.

Stilicho, now with Alan and Vandal federates in his army, relieved the siege, forcing a crossing at the Adda river. Alaric retreated to Pollentia.^[30] On Easter Sunday, April 6, 402, Stilicho launched a surprise attack which became the Boxing of Pollentia. The battle concluded in a depict, and Alaric barbarous dorsum.^[31] After cursory negotiations and maneuvers, the ii forces clashed again at the Battle of Verona, where Alaric was defeated and besieged in a mountain fortress, taking heavy casualties.

At this indicate, a number of Goths in Alaric's army started deserting him, including Sarus, who went over to the Romans.^[32] Alaric and his regular army so withdrew to the borderlands side by side to Dalmatia and Pannonia.^[33] Honorius, fearful later on the near capture of Mediolanum, moved the Western Roman capital to Ravenna, which was more than defensible with its natural swamps and more escapable with its access to the ocean.^{[34] [35]} Moving the capital to Ravenna may have disconnected the Western court from events beyond the Alps towards a preoccupation with the defense of Italy, weakening the Western Empire every bit a whole.^[36]

In time, Alaric became an ally of Stilicho, like-minded to help merits the praetorian prefecture of Illyricum for the Western Empire. To that cease, Stilicho named Alaric magister militum of Illyricum in 405. Withal, the Goth Radagaisus invaded Italy that same yr, putting any such plans on concord.^[37] Stilicho and the Romans, reinforced by Alans, Goths under Sarus, and Huns under Uldin, managed to defeat Radagaisus in Baronial 406, merely only later the devastation of northern Italy.^{[38] [39]} 12,000 of Radagaisus' Goths were pressed into Roman armed services service, and others were enslaved. So many were sold into slavery by the victorious Roman forces that slave prices temporarily collapsed.^[40]

Only in 407 did Stilicho plough his attending dorsum to Illyricum, gathering a fleet to back up Alaric's proposed invasion. Just then the Rhine limes collapsed nether the weight of hordes of Vandals, Suebi, and Alans who flooded into Gaul. The Roman population there thus attacked rose in rebellion under the usurper Constantine III.^[37] Stilicho reconciled with the Eastern Roman Empire in 408, and the Visigoths nether Alaric had lost their value to Stilicho.

Alaric and so invaded and took control of parts of Noricum and upper Pannonia in the spring of 408. He demanded 288,000 solidi (4 thousand pounds of gilt), and threatened to invade Italia if he did not get information technology.^[37] This was equivalent to the amount of coin earned in holding acquirement by a single senatorial family in one year.^[41] Only with the greatest difficulty was Stilicho able to become the Roman Senate to concur to pay the ransom, which was to purchase the Romans a new alliance with Alaric who was to go to Gaul and fight the usurper Constantine Iii.^[42] The debate on whether to pay Alaric weakened Stilicho's relationship with Honorius.^[43]

Ivory diptych of Stilicho (right) with his married woman Serena and son Eucherius, ca. 395

Before payment could exist received, nevertheless, the Eastern Roman Emperor Arcadius died on May one, 408, of illness. He was succeeded by his young son, Theodosius II. Honorius wanted to go East to secure his nephew's succession, but Stilicho convinced him to stay and allow Stilicho himself to become instead.

Olympius, a palatine official and an enemy of Stilicho's, spread imitation rumors that Stilicho planned to place his own son Eucherius on the throne of the East, and many came to believe them. Roman soldiers mutinied and began killing officials who were known supporters of Stilicho.^[44] Stilicho's barbarian troops offered to assault the mutineers, merely Stilicho forbade it. Stilicho instead went to Ravenna to meet with the Emperor to resolve the crisis.

Honorius, now assertive the rumors of Stilicho's treason, ordered his abort. Stilicho sought sanctuary in a church building in Ravenna, but he was lured out with promises of safety. Stepping exterior, he was arrested and told he was to be immediately executed on Honorius' orders. Stilicho refused to permit his followers to resist, and he was executed on Baronial 22, 408. Stilicho's execution stopped the payment to Alaric and his Visigoths, who had received none of it.^[42]

The half-Vandal, half-Roman general is credited with keeping the Western Roman Empire from crumbling during his xiii years of rule, and his expiry would have profound repercussions for the West.^[44] His son Eucherius was executed shortly afterwards in Rome.^[45]

Olympius was appointed magister officiorum and replaced Stilicho as the ability backside the throne. His new government was strongly anti-Germanic and obsessed with purging any and all of Stilicho's former supporters. Roman soldiers began to indiscriminately slaughter allied barbarian foederati soldiers and their families in Roman cities.^[46] Thousands of them fled Italy and sought refuge with Alaric in Noricum.^[47] Zosimus reports the number of refugees equally xxx,000, just Peter Heather and Thomas Burns believe that number is impossibly high.^[47] Heather argues that Zosimus had misread his source and that 30,000 is the total number of fighting-men under Alaric's command later the refugees joined Alaric.^[48]

2d Visigothic invasion of Italy [edit]

First siege of Rome [edit]

Attempting to come to an agreement with Honorius, Alaric asked for hostages, gold, and permission to move to Pannonia, but Honorius refused.^[47] Alaric, aware of the weakened state of defenses in Italy, invaded in early October, six weeks after Stilicho's death. He as well sent give-and-take of this news to his blood brother-in-law Ataulf to join the invasion as soon every bit he was able with reinforcements.^[49]

Alaric and his Visigoths sacked Ariminum and other cities every bit they moved s.^[50] Alaric's march was unopposed and leisurely, equally if they were going to a festival, co-ordinate to Zosimus.^[49] Sarus and his band of Goths, still in Italia, remained neutral and aristocratic.^[46]

The urban center of Rome may accept held as many as 800,000 people, making it the largest in the world at the fourth dimension.^[51] The Goths under Alaric laid siege to the metropolis in late 408. Panic swept through its streets, and there was an attempt to reinstate pagan rituals in the even so religiously mixed city to ward off the Visigoths.^[52] Pope Innocent I fifty-fifty agreed to it, provided it be washed in private. The pagan priests, all the same, said the sacrifices could only be done publicly in the Roman Forum, and the idea was abased.^[53]

Serena, the wife of the proscribed Stilicho and a cousin of emperor Honorius, was in the city and believed by the Roman populace, with picayune testify, to be encouraging Alaric's invasion. Galla Placidia, the sister of the emperor Honorius, was besides trapped in the urban center and gave her consent to the Roman Senate to execute Serena. Serena was so strangled to expiry.^[54]

Hopes of help from the Imperial authorities faded equally the siege continued and Alaric took control of the Tiber River, which cut the supplies going into Rome. Grain was rationed to half and so one-third of its previous corporeality. Starvation and disease rapidly spread throughout the city, and rotting bodies were left unburied in the streets.^[55]

The Roman Senate then decided to send two envoys to Alaric. When the envoys boasted to him that the Roman people were trained to fight and set for war, Alaric laughed at them and said, "The thickest grass is easier to cut than the thinnest."^[55] The envoys asked under what terms the siege could be lifted, and Alaric demanded all the gold and silvery, household goods, and barbaric slaves in the city. One envoy asked what would be left to the citizens of Rome. Alaric replied, "Their lives."^[55]

Ultimately, the metropolis was forced to give the Goths 5,000 pounds of aureate, xxx,000 pounds of silver, iv,000 silken tunics, 3,000 hides dyed scarlet, and iii,000 pounds of pepper in exchange for lifting the siege.^[56] The barbaric slaves fled to Alaric as well, swelling his ranks to nigh forty,000.^[57] Many of the barbarian slaves were probably Radagaisus' former followers.^[1]

To raise the needed money, Roman senators were to contribute according to their means. This led to corruption and abuse, and the sum came up short. The Romans then stripped down and melted pagan statues and shrines to make up the departure.^[58] Zosimus reports i such statue was of Virtus, and that when it was melted down to pay off barbarians it seemed "all that remained of the Roman valor and intrepidity was totally extinguished".^[59]

Honorius consented to the payment of the ransom, and with information technology the Visigoths lifted the siege and withdrew to Etruria in Dec 408.^[46]

Second siege [edit]

Alaric and the Visigoths in Athens. Illustration from the 1920s

In Jan 409,^[60] the Senate sent an embassy to the imperial courtroom at Ravenna to encourage the Emperor to come to terms with the Goths, and to give Roman aristocratic children as hostages to the Goths as insurance. Alaric would then resume his alliance with the Roman Empire.^{[46] [61]} Honorius, under the influence of Olympius, refused and called in five legions from Dalmatia, totaling six thousand men. They were to go to Rome and garrison the metropolis, but their commander, a human named Valens, marched his men into Etruria, believing it cowardly to go around the Goths. He and his men were intercepted and attacked by Alaric's full strength, and almost all were killed or captured. Simply 100 managed to escape and achieve Rome.^{[sixty] [62]}

A second Senatorial embassy, this time including Pope Innocent I, was sent with Gothic guards to Honorius to plead with him to have the Visigoths' demands.^[63] The imperial regime besides received word that Ataulf, Alaric's brother-in-law, had crossed the Julian Alps with his Goths into Italia with the intent of joining Alaric.

Honorius summoned together all bachelor Roman forces in northern Italy. He placed 300 Huns of the purple guard under the command of Olympius, and mayhap the other forces as well, and ordered him to intercept Ataulf. They clashed well-nigh Pisa, and despite his force supposedly killing ane,100 Goths and losing but 17 of his ain men, Olympius was forced to retreat back to Ravenna.^{[63] [64]} Ataulf and so joined Alaric.

This failure caused Olympius to autumn from power and to flee for his life to Dalmatia.^[65] Jovius, the praetorian prefect of Italy, replaced Olympius every bit the power behind the throne and received the championship of patrician. Jovius engineered a mutiny of soldiers in Ravenna who demanded the killing of magister utriusque militae Turpilio and magister equitum Vigilantius, and Jovius had both men killed.^{[65] [66] [67]}

Jovius was a friend of Alaric's and had been a supporter of Stilicho, and thus the new government was open to negotiations.^[65] Alaric went to Ariminum to meet Jovius and offer his demands. Alaric wanted yearly tribute in gilt and grain, and lands in the provinces of Dalmatia, Noricum, and Venetia for his people.^[65] Jovius likewise wrote privately to Honorius, suggesting that if Alaric was offered the position of magister utriusque militae, they could lessen Alaric's other demands. Honorius rejected the demand for a Roman office, and he sent an insulting alphabetic character to Alaric, which was read out in the negotiations.^{[68] [69]}

Infuriated, Alaric broke off negotiations, and Jovius returned to Ravenna to strengthen his human relationship with the Emperor. Honorius was at present firmly committed to war, and Jovius swore on the Emperor's head never to brand peace with Alaric.

Alaric himself presently inverse his mind when he heard Honorius was attempting to recruit 10,000 Huns to fight the Goths.^{[65] [70]} He gathered a group of Roman bishops and sent them to Honorius with his new terms. He no longer sought Roman role or tribute in gold. He now but requested lands in Noricum and every bit much grain as the Emperor found necessary.^[65] Historian Olympiodorus the Younger, writing many years later on, considered these terms extremely moderate and reasonable.^[69] But it was as well late: Honorius' government, jump by oath and intent on war, rejected the offer. Alaric then marched on Rome.^[65] The 10,000 Huns never materialized.^[71]

Alaric took Portus and renewed the siege of Rome in late 409. Faced with the return of starvation and disease, the Senate met with Alaric.^[72] He demanded that they engage ane of their ain as Emperor to rival Honorius, and he instigated the election of the elderly Priscus Attalus to that end, a heathen who permitted himself to be baptized. Alaric was and then made magister utriusque militiae and his brother-in-constabulary Ataulf was given the position comes domesticorum equitum in the new, rival authorities, and the siege was lifted.^[65]

Heraclian, governor of the food-rich province of Africa, remained loyal to Honorius. Attalus sent a Roman force to subdue him, refusing to send Gothic soldiers there as he was distrustful of their intentions.^[73] Attalus and Alaric then marched to Ravenna, forcing some cities in northern Italia to submit to Attalus.^[69]

Honorius, extremely fearful at this turn of events, sent Jovius and others to Attalus, pleading that they share the Western Empire. Attalus said he would just negotiate on Honorius' identify of exile. Jovius, for his part, switched sides to Attalus and was named patrician by his new main. Jovius wanted to have Honorius mutilated as well (something that was to become mutual in the Eastern Empire), but Attalus rejected it.^[73]

Increasingly isolated and now in pure panic, Honorius was preparing to flee to Constantinople when 4,000 Eastern Roman soldiers appeared at Ravenna's docks to defend the urban center.^[74] Their inflow strengthened Honorius' resolve to await news of what had happened in Africa.

Heraclian had defeated Attalus' forcefulness and cut supplies to Rome, threatening another famine in the city.^[74] Alaric wanted to ship Gothic soldiers to invade Africa and secure the province, but Attalus again refused, distrustful of the Visigoths' intentions for the province.^[73] Counseled by Jovius to do abroad with his boob emperor, Alaric summoned Attalus to Ariminum and ceremonially stripped him of his imperial regalia and title in the summer of 410. Alaric then reopened negotiations with Honorius.^[74]

Third siege and sack [edit]

An anachronistic fifteenth-century French miniature depicting the sack of 410

Honorius arranged for a meeting with Alaric about 12 kilometres outside of Ravenna. As Alaric waited at the meeting place, Sarus, who was a sworn enemy of Ataulf and now allied to Honorius, attacked Alaric and his men with a modest Roman force.^{[74] [75]} Peter Heather speculates Sarus had also lost the ballot for the kingship of the Goths to Alaric in the 390s.^[75]

Alaric survived the attack and, outraged at this treachery and frustrated by all the by failures at adaptation, gave up on negotiating with Honorius and headed back to Rome, which he besieged for the tertiary and final time.^[76] On August 24, 410, the Visigoths entered Rome through its Salarian Gate, co-ordinate to some opened past treachery, according to others by want of food, and pillaged the city for three days.^{[77] [78]}

Many of the city'due south smashing buildings were ransacked, including the mausoleums of Augustus and Hadrian, in which many emperors of the by were cached; the ashes of the urns in both tombs were scattered.^[79] Whatsoever and all moveable goods were stolen all over the city. Some of the few places the Goths spared were the ii major basilicas connected to Peter and Paul, though from the Lateran Palace they stole a massive, two,025-pound silver ciborium that had been a gift from Constantine.^[76] Structural damage to buildings was largely limited to the areas near the old Senate house and the Salarian Gate, where the Gardens of Sallust were burned and never rebuilt.^{[80] [81]} The Basilica Aemilia and the Basilica Julia were also burned.^{[82] [83]}

The city's citizens were devastated. Many Romans were taken captive, including the Emperor's sister, Galla Placidia. Some citizens would exist ransomed, others would exist sold into slavery, and withal others would be raped and killed.^[84] Pelagius, a Roman monk from Britain, survived the siege and wrote an account of the experience in a letter to a young woman named Demetrias.

This dismal calamity is just merely over, and you yourself are a witness to how Rome that commanded the world was astonished at the warning of the Gothic trumpet, when that vicious and victorious nation stormed her walls, and made her way through the breach. Where were then the privileges of nascence, and the distinctions of quality? Were not all ranks and degrees leveled at that fourth dimension and promiscuously huddled together? Every house was and then a scene of misery, and as filled with grief and confusion. The slave and the homo of quality were in the same circumstances, and everywhere the terror of death and slaughter was the aforementioned, unless we may say the fear made the greatest impression on those who had the greatest interest in living.^[85]

Many Romans were tortured into revealing the locations of their valuables. One was the 85-year-old^[86] Saint Marcella, who had no hidden gold as she lived in pious poverty. She was a close friend of St. Jerome, and he detailed the incident in a letter to a adult female named Principia who had been with Marcella during the sack.

When the soldiers entered [Marcella'southward firm] she is said to take received them without whatsoever look of alarm; and when they asked her for gold she pointed to her coarse dress to prove them that she had no buried treasure. However they would not believe in her self-chosen poverty, but scourged her and beat her with cudgels. She is said to have felt no pain only to accept thrown herself at their anxiety and to have pleaded with tears for you [Principia], that you might not exist taken from her, or owing to your youth take to endure what she equally an old woman had no occasion to fright. Christ softened their hard hearts and even among bloodstained swords natural amore asserted its rights. The barbarians conveyed both you and her to the basilica of the apostle Paul, that y'all might find there either a place of prophylactic or, if non that, at least a tomb.^[87]

Marcella died of her injuries a few days later.^[88]

The sack was yet, by the standards of the age (and all ages), restrained. There was no general slaughter of the inhabitants and the ii main basilicas of Peter and Paul were nominated places of sanctuary. About of the buildings and monuments in the urban center survived intact, though stripped of their valuables.^{[76] [79]}

Refugees from Rome flooded the province of Africa, as well as Egypt and the East.^{[89] [ninety]} Some refugees were robbed every bit they sought aviary,^[ninety] and St. Jerome wrote that Heraclian, the Count of Africa, sold some of the young refugees into Eastern brothels.^[91]

Who would believe that Rome, congenital up by the conquest of the whole earth, had collapsed, that the mother of nations had become besides their tomb; that the shores of the whole Eastward, of Arab republic of egypt, of Africa, which once belonged to the regal city, were filled with the hosts of her men-servants and maid-servants, that we should every day be receiving in this holy Bethlehem men and women who once were noble and abounding in every kind of wealth just are at present reduced to poverty? We cannot relieve these sufferers: all we can practice is to sympathize with them, and unite our tears with theirs. [...] There is not a single 60 minutes, nor a single moment, in which we are not relieving crowds of brethren, and the repose of the monastery has been changed into the hurry of a guest house. Then much is this the example that nosotros must either close our doors, or abandon the study of the Scriptures on which nosotros depend for keeping the doors open. [...] Who could boast when the flying of the people of the West, and the holy places, crowded as they are with penniless fugitives, naked and wounded, apparently reveal the ravages of the Barbarians? We cannot see what has occurred, without tears and moans. Who would have believed that mighty Rome, with its careless security of wealth, would exist reduced to such extremities as to need shelter, food, and clothing? And yet, some are and so difficult-hearted and roughshod that, instead of showing compassion, they intermission upwardly the rags and bundles of the captives, and expect to discover gold about those who are nothing more than prisoners.^[90]

The historian Procopius records a story where, on hearing the news that Rome had "perished", Honorius was initially shocked, thinking the news was in reference to a favorite chicken he had named "Rome":

At that time they say that the Emperor Honorius in Ravenna received the message from one of the eunuchs, plainly a keeper of the poultry, that Rome had perished. And he cried out and said, 'And yet it has just eaten from my hands!' For he had a very large cock, Rome past proper noun; and the eunuch comprehending his words said that it was the city of Rome which had perished at the hands of Alaric, and the emperor with a sigh of relief answered quickly: 'But I thought that my fowl Rome had perished.' So great, they say, was the folly with which this emperor was possessed.^[92]

Backwash [edit]

The chaotic political state of affairs of the Roman Empire at the cease of 410

 Legitimate Western Roman Empire under Honorius

 Area in defection confronting Constantine III

 Surface area controlled by the usurper Maximus

After three days of looting and pillage, Alaric rapidly left Rome and headed for southern Italy. He took with him the wealth of the urban center and a valuable hostage, Galla Placidia, the sister of emperor Honorius. The Visigoths ravaged Campania, Lucania, and Calabria. Nola and perhaps Capua were sacked, and the Visigoths threatened to invade Sicily and Africa.^[93] Yet, they were unable to cross the Strait of Messina as the ships they had gathered were wrecked by a storm.^{[74] [94]} Alaric died of affliction at Consentia in tardily 410, mere months subsequently the sack.^[74] According to legend, he was buried with his treasure by slaves in the bed of the Busento river. The slaves were then killed to hide its location.^[95] The Visigoths elected Ataulf, Alaric's brother-in-police, as their new king. The Visigoths then moved north, heading for Gaul. Ataulf married Galla Placidia in 414, but he died one year later on. The Visigoths established the Visigothic Kingdom in southwestern Gaul in 418, and they would go along to aid the Western Roman Empire fight Attila the Hun at the Boxing of the Catalaunian Fields in 451.^[96]

The Visigothic invasion of Italy caused land taxes to drop anywhere from one-fifth to 1-ninth of their pre-invasion value in the affected provinces.^[97] Aristocratic munificence, the local support of public buildings and monuments by the upper classes, ended in s-central Italy after the sack and pillaging of those regions.^[98] Using the number of people on the food dole as a guide, Bertrand Lançon estimates the city of Rome's total population fell from 800,000 in 408 to 500,000 by 419.^[99]

This was the first time the city of Rome had been sacked in almost 800 years, and it had revealed the Western Roman Empire'southward increasing vulnerability and military weakness. It was shocking to people across both halves of the Empire who viewed Rome every bit the eternal city and the symbolic eye of their empire. The Eastern Roman Emperor Theodosius II declared three days of mourning in Constantinople.^[100] St. Jerome wrote in grief, "If Rome tin can perish, what can be prophylactic?"^[101] In Bethlehem, he detailed his shock in the preface to his commentary on Ezekiel.

[...] intelligence was suddenly brought me of the death of Pammachius and Marcella, the siege of Rome, and the falling asleep of many of my brethren and sisters. I was so stupefied and dismayed that day and night I could recollect of nothing only the welfare of the customs; it seemed as though I was sharing the captivity of the saints, and I could not open my lips until I knew something more definite; and all the while, full of anxiety, I was wavering between hope and despair, and was torturing myself with the misfortunes of other people. But when the bright low-cal of all the earth was put out, or, rather, when the Roman Empire was decapitated, and, to speak more than correctly, the whole world perished in one city, 'I became dumb and humbled myself, and kept silence from skillful words, simply my grief broke out afresh, my heart glowed within me, and while I meditated the burn was kindled.'^[90]

The Roman Empire at this time was yet in the midst of religious conflict between pagans and Christians. The sack was used past both sides to eternalize their competing claims of divine legitimacy.^[102] Paulus Orosius, a Christian priest and theologian, believed the sack was God'south wrath against a proud and cursing urban center, and that it was simply through God's benignancy that the sack had not been too severe. Rome had lost its wealth, merely Roman sovereignty endured, and that to talk to the survivors in Rome i would remember "nada had happened."^[103] Other Romans felt the sack was divine penalty for turning away from the traditional heathen gods to Christ. Zosimus, a Roman pagan historian, believed that Christianity, through its abandonment of the aboriginal traditional rites, had weakened the Empire's political virtues, and that the poor decisions of the Imperial government that led to the sack were due to the lack of the gods' intendance.^[104]

The religious and political attacks on Christianity spurred Saint Augustine to write a defence force, The City of God, which went on to become foundational to Christian thought.^[105]

The sack was a culmination of many terminal problems facing the Western Roman Empire. Domestic rebellions and usurpations weakened the Empire in the face up of external invasions. These factors would permanently harm the stability of the Roman Empire in the west.^[106] The Roman ground forces meanwhile became increasingly barbarian and disloyal to the Empire.^[107] A more severe sack of Rome past the Vandals followed in 455, and the Western Roman Empire finally collapsed in 476 when the Germanic Odovacer removed the last Western Roman Emperor, Romulus Augustulus, and declared himself King of Italia.

See too [edit]

• Gothic War (376–382)
• Visigothic Kingdom
• Fall of the Western Roman Empire
• Sack of Rome

References [edit]

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Farther reading [edit]

• The Histories of Olympiodorus of Thebes
• New History of Zosimus
• Michael Kulikowski, Rome'southward Gothic Wars: From the 3rd Century to Alaric, Cambridge Academy Press, 2007.
• Kovács, Tamás. "410: Honorius, His Rooster, and the Eunuch (Procop. Vand. ane.2.25–26)." Graeco-Latina Brunensia 25, no. ii (2020): 131–48. https://doi.org/10.5817/GLB2020-2-10.

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Source: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sack_of_Rome_(410)

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