“Rome, once the capital of the world, is now the grave of the Roman people,” wrote Saint Jerome of a cataclysm that no one could have predicted. After several generations of Roman superiority and arrogance, Visigothic mercenaries entered Rome on August 24, 410 ce, and reminded their erstwhile masters of where the real military power lay.
Alaric, leader of the Visigoths, had been left embittered by the experience at the Battle of Frigidus. For years he waged war on the Eastern Roman Empire; yet the Western Empire feared the Visigoths’ anger, so much so that in 402 the Romans moved their capital from Rometo the more readily defensible city of Ravenna, in northeastern Italy. That same year, Alaric invaded Italy, but was turned back by the great general Flavius Stilicho at Pollentia in Piedmont. Another Gothic warlord, Radagaisus, was stopped by Stilicho in 406, but the Visigoths kept coming. By 408 Alaric was back in Italy, besieging Rome, now unchecked by Stilicho, who had been executed for suspected treason that year.
Even now, the Romans hoped to bring the tenacious Visigoths back into harness as defenders of the empire. Several barbarian peoples, from Germanic warriors such as the Vandals and Sueves to Asiatic nomads such as the Alans and the Huns, had crossed the Rhine and now roamed and ransacked at will beyond the Alps. Alaric was ready to compromise with Rome: he offered to spare the city in return for the promise of an annual payment and a place in the official military hierarchy of the empire. Yet, even with Rome itself at stake, Emperor Honorius haughtily refused.
On the night of August 24, 410, some unknown person or persons quietly opened the gates of Rome to admit the Visigoths. Exacting vengeance for Honorius’s slight, as well as the money they were owed, they embarked on a three-day spree of plunder, raiding the treasury and imperial palaces. Throughout, Alaric and his forces, Christians all, were respectful of ordinary Roman citizens and confined destruction to a handful of public buildings. Alaric then marched south, planning to conquer Roman North Africa, but died of illness soon after entering Calabria. His army marched on for Spain, where the Visigoths would settle.
Much of the symbolic significance of the Sack of Rome owes to Augustine of Hippo, whose City of God, begun in 413, treats it as a sign of the moral decay wrought by earthly power.
Losses: Unknown.