That same year also saw the death of the Emperor Theodosius the Great, after which the Roman Empire was divided into eastern and western halves under his sons, Arcadius in the east and the ten-year-old Honorius in the west. In the early s Alaric, who had been attacking the Romans in the Balkans, turned to repeated invasions of Italy, which Stilicho repelled. He hoped to draw the Visigoths into an alliance against the eastern Romans, but now hordes of other Germanic warriors invaded the western empire across the Rhine.
What Alaric really wanted was land on which his people could settle and an accepted place within the empire, which the authorities in Ravenna would not give him. Needing to keep his followers well rewarded, he marched on Rome and besieged it until the Roman senate paid him to go away. In he attacked Rome again and was able to set up a temporary emperor, Priscus Atallus, who did not last long. In , with the authorities in Ravenna still refusing his demands, Alaric led his warriors against Rome once more.
The Visigoths appeared outside the city in force and the senate prepared to resist, but in the middle of the night rebellious slaves opened the Salarian Gate to the attackers, who poured in and set fire to the nearby houses. But it was no longer seen as impregnable and, decades later, would be sacked again.
A gradual depopulation began. From the April issue: Underground Rome. When their fury was spent, the Goths followed the Via Appia south, then veered off into the toe of Italy.
The intended destination was North Africa, the breadbasket of Rome, where the Goths hoped they might find a place to call their own. They never made it: Storms forced their ships to turn back. Alaric suddenly took ill—with what, no one knows—and in a few days was dead. His mode of burial, apparently following Gothic tradition, became the stuff of lore. A river near the present-day city of Cosenza was momentarily diverted and a grave dug in the riverbed.
Alaric was interred, along with a trove of valuables. Then the river was restored to its course. The slaves who did the work were executed, consigning the whereabouts of the site to oblivion. Over the years, treasure-hunters including Heinrich Himmler have searched for the hoard of Alaric. In , Cosenza launched a search of its own. Was there a Ravenna Ideas Festival? It never invokes modern times explicitly. But the linguistic anachronisms are inescapable.
Intended perhaps to be slyly allusive, they come across as winks. The 21st century is not the fifth. But history should provoke, and Boin has a point. Migration flows around the world today are unremitting. Group allegiance is fluid, and the distribution of power capricious. General James Mattis once recalled interrogating a jihadist in Iraq —formerly Mesopotamia, that graveyard of Roman dreams. The man had been caught planting a roadside bomb. As he was led off to prison, he asked Mattis a question: When he got out, would it be possible to emigrate to America?
Mattis appreciated the irony. Alaric might have too. Skip to content Site Navigation The Atlantic. Popular Latest. The Atlantic Crossword. His men entered the city a few days later and commenced with an orgy of rape and pillage. Buildings were burned or plundered of all their valuables, and most of the Roman senate was put to the sword at the Forum. While the Gauls wreaked havoc on the rest of the city, the surviving Romans fortified themselves atop the Capitoline Hill.
They repelled several Gallic attacks, but after several months of siege, they agreed to pay 1, pounds of gold in exchange for Brennus and his army leaving the city. Legend has it that Brennus used rigged scales to weigh out the ransom.
The Romans rebuilt after the Gauls departed, but the defeat at the River Allia left deep wounds. For the rest of Roman history, July 18 was considered a cursed day. Sack of Rome by the Visigoths led by Alaric I. Rome recovered from the Gallic debacle and went on to flourish for nearly years, but its second sacking in A.
At the time, the Roman Empire was divided and on the decline. Marauding Germanic tribes had begun making incursions across the Rhine and Danube, and one of them, a group of Visigoths led by a king named Alaric, had already besieged Rome on two separate occasions. When the barbarians returned for a third siege, a group of rebellious slaves opened the Salarian Gate and allowed them to pour into the city. Three days later, having stripped the city of all its valuables, they withdrew from Rome and disappeared along the Appian Way.
The Visigoth sacking had been relatively controlled. Peter and St. Nevertheless, news that the Eternal City had fallen sent shockwaves across the Mediterranean. The raid was triggered by the assassination of the Roman Emperor Valentinian III, who had previously pledged his daughter Eudocia to the son of the Vandal King Genseric as part of a peace treaty.
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