Rome’s Foe and Friend: The Dual Roles of Alaric the Visigoth
Reading Time: 17 minutes Alaric was king of the Visigoths, a Germanic tribe. Though he was an enemy of Rome, his history with the empire is more complex than just that. Alaric’s father and other Visigoths had served Rome as federates (foederati), fighting as allies to hold back other barbarians. His tribe had allied itself with Rome in a treaty, but as the Roman government’s power in the west waned, it began to turn against Rome.
The political and economic upheavals of the late Roman Empire saw the Visigoths go from allies to enemies. As Rome became weaker, the Visigoths gained power and influence. During his leadership, they served both as allies and enemies of Rome.
The Formative Years of Alaric: A Gothic Chieftain’s Emergence
Young Alaric grew up in the lands on the fringes of the Roman Empire in a region that the Romans considered a “backwater.” For the earlier Roman poet Ovid, writing four centuries before Alaric’s birth, the lands of the Danube and the Black Sea, where he would grow up and mature, were those of “barbarians” on the outer edge of the civilized world. It was on the outer edge of the civilized world that the future king’s personality would be formed against a backdrop of the Balkans and a Gothic past that both respected and challenged Roman power.
Young Alaric would have heard the stories and legends of Gothic warriors from his youth and would have been influenced by the Gothic victory at the Battle of Adrianople in 378. The battle resulted in the near-complete destruction of the Eastern Roman army and the death of the Eastern Roman Emperor Valens. His Gothic warrior forebears would have had a strong influence on Alaric, especially the older men, who were the recipients of stories of Gothic warriors’ success against the Romans at Adrianople, which would have been told as Alaric was growing up.
The uneasy peace that followed after the bloodshed at Adrianople was formalized in 382 when a treaty granted the Goths lands within the Empire. The agreement that followed in 382 was the first time in the Empire’s history that a treaty had been concluded on imperial soil and as a result, the Visigoths, into which Alaric was born, were given a semi-independent status, with the right to supply troops to the Roman army, in return for the right to cultivate the empire’s rich lands and to live under their own rulers, rather than under the supervision of a Roman civil administration.
It would have been in this context that the new relationship between the Goths and the Empire developed, with many of his people, Alaric included, joining the eastern field army, while others served as auxiliaries in Theodosius’s military operations. It was a time of transition in which the Goths were evolving in status from foreign auxiliaries to members of the Roman imperial aristocracy. The improved relationship with the Empire provided the circumstances in which Alaric was able to rise in the military under the Gothic soldier Gainas.
Alaric’s first steps in leadership came as early as 391, at which time he led a Gothic force mixed with his allies against the Romans in Thrace. He was defeated and his incursion into the Roman territory was stopped by the Vandal Roman General Stilicho. This period in Alaric’s life showed the first signs of his leadership skills and his potential to become the leader of the Goths.
Alaric’s force grew strong enough to prevent the famed Roman Emperor Theodosius from crossing the Hebrus River. The Alaric that had entered the territory of the Roman Empire was being noticed as a power to be reckoned with. Despite being called by the poet Claudian “a little-known menace”, his interactions with the Roman Empire in its early years foreshadowed a new era for the Goths, in which Alaric was no longer just a Gothic chieftain but a key player in Rome’s history.
An Ambivalent Alliance: The Visigoth’s Service to Rome
392 was a year of great importance for Alaric. He joined the Roman military, and Gothic-Roman relations drastically improved. In 394, Alaric, as the leader of the Goths in the Roman military, fought in the Battle of Frigidus as the force of the Eastern Roman Emperor Theodosius I.
His Gothic troops were used as fodder against the Frankish usurper Arbogast. The Visigoths were sacrificed by the thousands, as Theodosius sent them into a meat grinder against his enemy. Despite the horrific loss of his people, Alaric managed to survive the battle. He received no reward for his actions, which were greatly disregarded by Theodosius. After seeing ten thousand of his own people massacred, he must have begun to question his loyalty to Theodosius, as well as the futility of his loss.
On January 17, 395, Theodosius died, and the Roman Empire began a slow decline. His two sons, Arcadius and Honorius, were both incompetent. It was during this period that the Visigoths were led by Alaric, as Peter Heather notes. The time of Alaric’s ascension is unknown, but historians know it occurred. Jordanes noted that Alaric called his people to take up arms and gain a kingdom through their own efforts, rather than remain slaves.
Alaric’s rise to kingship was coupled with a great rise of the Goths. The death of Theodosius left the Roman Empire with a fractured, weak military. The Empire once again split in two, and both generals, Stilicho and the Eastern general, were working to gain control over the entire Empire. This placed great emphasis on the Goths, who were trying to find their place in a realm of egos and possible conquests. Collins notes that while Alaric’s ascension by his people gave him power, it may have lacked practicality for the Goths, who were still in need of Roman supplies and trade.
This need was the basis for what Claudian later described as the “razing campaign,” which was at least unofficially tolerated by Rufinus of the Eastern Roman government. The incursion into Greece and the sacking of Athens, as archaeological evidence has confirmed, was one of the boldest moves to force a change of the peace with Rome. Only the campaigns of Stilicho in 396 were able to check the Gothic progress and drive them back up into Epirus. There was much destruction on both sides, and in the end, Stilicho’s men let Alaric’s army go back across the mountains with their plunder. This was to have serious consequences.
The power plays within the Empire came to a head. Gainas and his Gothic army arrived in Constantinople, and Rufinus was assassinated. Gainas took a position of great military authority in Thrace, a move that underscored the Goths’ place in the Roman power structure. Alaric, however, was becoming politically unsettled, as Stilicho’s efforts to secure the Eastern Empire from threats on several fronts and bring it under his control were met with Gothic resistance.
In 397, while Eutropius was celebrating his successes against Hunnic invaders and was therefore in a position to make his own demands, Alaric was made magister militum per Illyricum. This provided him with a reliable food supply and some hope of a more formal and lasting agreement with Rome. This respite from events was to be temporary, however, as the power changed hands once more in 399 with the removal of Eutropius.
Alaric’s Italian Campaign: The First Incursion
In the spring of 402, Alaric turned his attention to the Italian peninsula, beginning his first invasion of Italy. The reasons for his decision to invade the Italian peninsula are unknown, and ancient sources do not record a reason. Kulikowski guesses that it was “caused by an acute need for supplies”.
That is not much different from Thomas Burns’s thesis that “Gothic decision making was based primarily upon economic and military necessity”. According to Guy Halsall, Alaric’s invasion of Italy began in late 401, but the first engagement with the Roman general Stilicho occurred the following year, as Stilicho was occupied in Raetia, dealing with frontier security matters.
Alaric’s route into Italy followed those recorded in Claudian’s verse and led him to cross the Alpine frontier near Aquileia. For months, the roads of northern Italy were heavily traversed by Gothic invaders, and Alaric made his presence known to the Roman people. It was on the Via Postumia that Alaric and Stilicho first met. Two battles were fought, the first on Pollentia on Easter Sunday. In this battle, Stilicho won a major victory. Alaric’s wife and children were captured by the Romans as well as a large amount of Gothic treasure built up over years of raiding.
Unbroken, Alaric still would not be defeated, even after he suffered a second crushing defeat at Verona. Why Stilicho granted Alaric a truce and let him escape when he could have utterly ended the Gothic menace is something that has confused many in the years since. Kulikowski and Halsall suggest that he thought of Alaric as a potentially useful pawn in the wider power games he was playing, especially with regard to Constantinople.
The intricacies of Alaric’s connections with the Roman Empire are compounded by a report by Zosimus that an agreement was reached in 405 placing Alaric in the employ of the Western Roman Empire. During his stay in Pannonia, Alaric ensured he could continue to play the Eastern and Western Empires against each other, with the ability to threaten both.
The Gothic menace was quieted only for the moment. As A.D. Lee writes, Alaric’s exit from Italy “hardly made for long-term stability.” In 405, a large group of barbarians under the leadership of Radagaisus poured into northern Italy, leaving a swath of destruction in its wake. Stilicho was able to handle the Radagaisus situation (divide and conquer near Florence), but Alaric was biding his time in Pannonia, once again with an official title of magister militum from Stilicho.
Alaric’s Second Italian Campaign: A Tenuous Alliance and Its Aftermath
406 and 407 were disastrous years for the Western Empire. The Rhine frontier was breached by large groups of Vandals, Sueves, and Alans, and a usurper movement under a common soldier, Constantine, flourished in Britain and spread into Gaul.
As a result of this, Alaric once more turned his eyes on Italy and, after appearing in Noricum, he demanded an enormous ransom in order to avert an invasion. In fury at being asked to pay tribute to a barbarian, the Roman Senate argued that asking for money was no different from enslavement. Stilicho, however, felt that the payment to Alaric was a price worth paying in the light of the state of the Empire and so paid the 4,000 pounds of gold.
In forestalling immediate disaster, Stilicho had made a fateful concession. Honorius and his ministers were now even more estranged from Stilicho, who had twice failed to rid himself of Alaric and who had allowed Radagaisus to approach Florence. In addition, Stilicho’s support within the Roman government was ebbing away: the firm political structure he had so carefully created was quickly crumbling. The situation at the Eastern court, following the death of Arcadius on May 1, 408, and the succession of Theodosius II, seemed to offer Stilicho a way to regain the balance of power.
Stilicho began to consider options for including Alaric within the Roman structure and using his warriors against the rebels in Gaul. Before Stilicho could act, however, he was removed in a coup at Honorius’s court. Instigated by the minister Olympius, it involved acts of betrayal and treachery and ended in Stilicho’s assassination and the massacre of his family and of the Gothic federate troops by Olympius’s troops. The families of the federate troops who had been massacred by Olympius’s troops, on the grounds that they were suspected of being Stilicho’s friends, drove the survivors into the arms of Alaric, adding thousands of alienated barbarian auxiliaries to his army. The rank of magister militum was also revoked from Alaric.
Alaric was now formally declared an enemy of the emperor. Honorius’s government had deprived Alaric of the recognized authority he needed to tax or billet his warriors. The effect of his current status was to leave Italy undefended: Alaric, the useful Foederati leader and potential ally, was now friendless, and the relationship between Alaric and the Roman court was irretrievably changed.
In these circumstances, Alaric offered to move his people to Pannonia for a small payment and the title of Comes. The offer was rejected: it had been made by the enemy of the new regime and would have admitted the leader of the Visigoths to a form of honor that would not otherwise have been possible. Without any indigenous defense, Italy was open to attack, and Alaric would be free to further ruin it.
Alaric’s First Siege of Rome: Starvation and Submission
At this time, the promises made to him by the Western Roman establishment were not honored, and, further, Alaric and his people were again driven by the desire for revenge and the frustration and hunger of his Gothic army. Alaric decided to march on Rome with the force at his disposal, which had grown to about 30,000, most of them men who were looking to avenge their family members who were killed by Roman forces. Alaric’s army entered the vicinity of Rome in September 408 but instead of attacking the city, he besieged it, hoping to starve it into submission.
Roman envoys were sent by the Senate to negotiate a deal with Alaric, who counteracted their implicit threats with bravado: the besieged city was at its most vulnerable, its starving population a potent bargaining chip in Alaric’s hands. After a long period of hunger, the citizens of Rome were finally ready to talk: they would pay Alaric a ransom of gold and silver, along with treasures and other goods, in exchange for a promise to leave. The Goths were also provided with 40,000 slaves, which they freed to join the Gothic army. The siege was over.
The Emperor’s Recalcitrance and Alaric’s Puppet Emperor
Peace, however, did not last long. Emperor Honorius, from the safety of his court in Ravenna, refused to uphold his part of the deal- most importantly, naming Alaric commander of the Roman Army, which he sought and was denied, and so Alaric was provoked into further action. He besieged Rome once again late in 409 and placed the deposed Priscus Attalus, a high-ranking senator, on the throne.
The new “emperor”, Attalus, proved completely ineffectual in the role, dependent upon the whims of Alaric, and having lost the timely grain shipments that were once promised to him from Africa. In the end, the powerless Attalus and Alaric himself advanced on Ravenna. The move extracted exceptional concessions from the now-desperate Honorius, who was on the verge of exile; however, Honorius’s resistance stiffened when he was supplied with a strong body of reinforcements from Constantinople.
The reversal came quickly. Displeased with what he had gained, or perhaps recognizing the error of putting a usurper on the throne, Alaric deposed Attalus in a move to restore the situation to its status before the coup, and recommenced negotiations with a more powerful Honorius. However, this was easier said than done.
A Precarious Stalemate
The conqueror of Italy, the man who held the keys to Rome in his hands, was caught up in the shifting politics of an imperial game. The Empire was divided and in disarray, staggering under the weight of civil wars, but when it was pushed to its limits, it could still strike back hard. The man who had engineered the events in and around Rome had shown the ability to combine military might and political acumen, using warfare, sieges, starvation, and even the crowning of emperors as his tools. However, the game he was playing carried an element of uncertainty, and his desire for status within the Roman order remained tantalizingly out of reach.
But Alaric had found himself in a situation, again, where, after much toil and effort, he was left, once again, with his aspirations unfulfilled. The power and might of his army and the awe he could command had not proven enough to secure the gold and status he had been led to believe he would.
A long, arduous road still lay ahead of him, and there were still many steps to take, but of one thing there could be no doubt: Alaric was not a man to take a back seat and be led about by the nose by events in the Roman world. He was going to play a heavy hand in determining the future of the Roman world through his actions and command of the Gothic nation.
The Final Act: Alaric’s Sack of Rome
The precarious diplomatic thread that had held together the idea of a peaceful settlement between Alaric and Honorius was severed by the belligerence of Sarus, an Amal and thus an enemy of Alaric. Believing it to be a tacitly approved attack from Ravenna, Alaric had been goaded beyond any point of reason and into doing something. He moved his forces to launch a third siege, and this time, not to negotiate, but to fight.
On August 24, 410, Alaric’s army descended upon Rome. Over the next three days, Alaric’s army not only collected as much treasure as they could carry but also killed thousands of Romans. Exact figures are impossible to come by. Contemporary accounts were vague and inconsistent. Many unreliable sources would claim death tolls in the tens or even hundreds of thousands, while others were more restrained. Regardless, thousands of Roman citizens and nobles were killed in the streets by Gothic soldiers.
Exact figures of the looting are also impossible to know. However, it is known that Alaric’s army collected a significant amount of treasure. The Visigoths looted treasures that had been built up over centuries of empire-building and conquest. An innumerable amount of artifacts, relics, and gold and silver wealth were left in Rome. This was the tangible remains of Rome’s past material glory.
Some Romans were killed in the fighting in the stricken city, but a number had sought sanctuary in the city’s churches, which Alaric had ordered to be spared. This underlined the paradox of the Visigothic monarch’s personality: despite the pillage, he did not allow his men to desecrate Christian sites. The preservation of the churches did not prevent the other damage or the large number of deaths that resulted from the capture of the “Eternal City”.
It is said that the sack was ruinous in its aftermath; Rome itself, its population, and the streets which had filled with sellers and celebrants, were in disarray and disorder. The buildings that had defined the Eternal City had been used as strongholds for invaders and sacked for their treasures by them.
The amount of treasure taken is still debated, but it is said to be in its hundreds. All accounts, however, indicate that Rome had suffered great material and human losses at this point. The sack of Rome was now in the process of becoming a turning point in the history of the world, with its once-feared capital brought to its knees by one of its own former generals.
Alaric’s Final Journey and Enduring Legacy
The sack of Rome in 410 was a traumatic event in its own right, but the effects were magnified by the fact that it came on top of years of fear, hunger, and plague experienced by the inhabitants of the Empire. However, Alaric was in Rome for only a short time. He turned his army south to Campania only three days after the sack, and he planned to cross over to Sicily to forage for supplies.
On the return trip through Italy in early 411, Alaric was delayed by a storm that destroyed his fleet. He fell ill and died of a fever in Consentia, Bruttium. The funeral of the Gothic King was in the Visigothic style: his body and his riches were buried under the Busento River, and the grave’s existence was covered by the murder of the workers who dug it.
Alaric was succeeded by his brother-in-law Ataulf, who had become King of the Visigoths during Alaric’s reign, and who married Galla Placidia, uniting Gothic military might and Roman Imperial authority. Ataulf’s Visigoths further organized and integrated into the Empire, finally settling in the Roman province of Aquitaine. Michael Kulikowski notes that Alaric’s leadership provided his people with a collective memory that has endured to the present day: after years of migration and conflict, Alaric’s Goths were eventually allowed to establish the first independent Gothic kingdom on Roman soil.
The two most important results of Alaric’s actions are those that continued to appear after his death. The most significant result is that the invasion and seizure of Rome was only the beginning of a mass exodus of Germanic barbarian peoples across Western Europe. The Visigoths in Spain and Aquitaine, the Vandals in Spain and later in Africa, the Burgundians on the Rhine, and the Franks in the north would eventually all follow the new path that Alaric helped carve.
Alaric can be viewed in several ways. He is viewed as the barbarian king who sacked and destroyed the eternal city of Rome, marking the end of a thousand-year-old civilization. He is also regarded as the spark that ended the Roman Empire, an empire that would be replaced by those he and his fellow barbarians had created. He is also the symbol of the fall of Rome and the ushering in of the turbulent Middle Ages. He is also considered a savior of his people for helping them be included in the Roman Empire without having to assimilate into Rome, but rather as a people accepted within the Roman Empire as the Goths.
The sacking of Rome, in the long run, can be viewed as both an end and a beginning. It can be seen as the end of the uncontested might and power of Rome and its institutions, and as the beginning of the loss of the Roman name’s power and the rise of the barbarians who had long attacked the Empire’s borders.
