Early Middle Ages

What was the Sack of Rome in 410?

In 410 CE, Alaric's Visigoths sacked the city of Rome, the first time the city had fallen to a foreign enemy in eight centuries.

Question & answer

Short answer

The Sack of Rome in 410 CE was the capture of the city of Rome by Alaric’s Visigoths. The Visigoths entered the city on August 24, 410, and held it for three days. It was the first time in roughly eight centuries that the city of Rome had fallen to a foreign enemy, and the event had an enormous psychological impact across the Roman world.

A longer answer

The sack of Rome in 410 is one of the most famous events in the history of the late Roman Empire. It marked the end of a long series of humiliations for the western Empire and was a powerful symbol of the world turned upside down: the eternal city, which had ruled the Mediterranean for centuries, was now at the mercy of a Germanic army.

The background

By 410, the Western Roman Empire had been in crisis for several decades. The emperor Honorius was a weak ruler, dominated by his father-in-law, the Vandal general Stilicho, until Stilicho’s execution in 408. The eastern Empire, ruled by Honorius’s brother Arcadius, was unable or unwilling to provide significant help. The Visigoths, a Germanic people who had entered the Empire in 376, were restless and angry. They had been settled in the Balkans as foederati in 382, but they had rebelled repeatedly under their king Alaric.

In 401, Alaric invaded Italy, and in 402 he was defeated by Stilicho at the battles of Pollentia and Verona. Alaric was then drawn off into the Balkans, where he fought against the eastern Empire. In 408, after Stilicho’s death, Alaric invaded Italy a second time. He demanded a ransom and then invaded the city itself. Twice he negotiated a peace and then broke it, eventually marching on Rome when his demands were not met.

The sack

On August 24, 410, the Visigoths entered the city of Rome through the Salarian Gate. The city had been betrayed by slaves who opened the gate in return for promises of silver, and possibly also by disgruntled Roman officials. The Visigoths held the city for three days.

The sack itself was less destructive than later tradition suggested. The contemporary historian Orosius, a Christian apologist, claimed that Alaric ordered his men to refrain from bloodshed and to spare the Christian churches. Modern historians, who do not generally trust Orosius, have offered more sober assessments. There is evidence of looting, killing, and the violation of religious sanctuaries, but the destruction was probably not as systematic as the Vandal sack of 455 or the later sacks by the Ottoman Turks in 1453.

Alaric was not, however, interested in ruling Rome. He was a military leader in search of a homeland, and he marched south soon after the sack, planning to invade Africa. He died of fever later that year, before the invasion could be carried out. His successor, Athaulf, eventually led the Visigoths into Gaul, and from there into Spain, where they established the Visigothic kingdom that would last until 711.

Why the sack mattered

The sack of Rome in 410 was a turning point in the late Roman world, and the response to it was enormous. Saint Augustine of Hippo, then the bishop of Hippo in North Africa, began his great work The City of God in response to the sack. In twenty-two books, Augustine argued that the fall of earthly cities, including Rome, was of no ultimate importance compared with the heavenly city, the community of the saved, which was the true home of the Christian. The City of God would become the most influential work of Christian political philosophy of the Middle Ages.

The pagan response was also significant. Many pagans blamed the sack on the Christian abandonment of the old gods, and there was a brief revival of paganism in some quarters. The Christian apologist Orosius wrote his History Against the Pagans in response, arguing that the moral and physical evils of pagan times had been far worse than those of Christian times.

The poet Claudian, who had praised Stilicho as the defender of Rome, wrote a bitter poem about the emperor Honorius, who allegedly learned of the fall of his city while at a chicken farm and initially thought that his prized chicken had died. Whether or not the anecdote is true, it captures the perceived absurdity of the situation: the emperor, on whom the safety of Rome depended, was too feeble even to understand the disaster that had befallen his capital.

The sack of Rome in 410 was the first in a series of disasters. The Vandal sack of 455 was even more thorough. The Ostrogothic wars of the 530s and 540s devastated Italy. The Lombard invasion of 568 broke the recovery that the eastern Empire had established. The political and military crisis that produced these disasters is told in the The Last Western Emperors, and the broader context in the The Fall of the Western Roman Empire.

Conclusion

The Sack of Rome in 410 was the first time in eight centuries that the city had fallen to a foreign enemy. It marked a profound break in the Roman sense of the world, and it provoked the most important works of Christian and pagan political thought of the late Roman world. The Visigoths who sacked Rome went on to found a kingdom in southern Gaul and Spain that would last until the Muslim conquest of 711.