Latest / The Story of Italy: Rome, Renaissance, and the Birth of Modern Europe — Fexingo History / The Sack of Rome 410: When the Goths Broke the Eternal City
Transcript
- Lucas: So, we've talked a lot about the fall of the Western Roman Empire in bits and pieces — the economic decline, the political chaos, the barbarian migrations. But there's one event that really crystallizes the end of an era: the Sack of Rome in 410 AD. Not the 1527 sack we covered earlier — that was a Renaissance tragedy — but the original one, when the Goths stormed the Eternal City itself. Luna: Wait, the original sack? I thought Rome hadn't been sacked since the Gauls in 390 BC. Lucas: Exactly right. That was the first time — the Gallic sack under Brennus, back when Rome was just a regional power. For nearly 800 years after that, no foreign army actually broke into the city. Even during the worst civil wars or invasions, the city itself remained untouched. So when Alaric and his Visigoths poured through the Salarian Gate on August 24, 410, it was apocalyptic news for the whole Mediterranean world. Lucas: And the lead-up is such a tangled story of betrayal, broken promises, and sheer desperation. Alaric was a Visigothic king, but he wasn't just some marauding barbarian from the north. He had served Rome as a military commander, fighting alongside Roman legions. He wanted a homeland for his people within the empire — land they could farm, settle down on. And time and again, the Roman government promised it and then reneged. Luna: So he was trying to negotiate, not just destroy? Lucas: Exactly. In fact, Alaric had been a key ally of the Roman general Stilicho, who was half-Vandal himself. Stilicho was the real power behind the throne of the young emperor Honorius, based up in Ravenna. Stilicho had used Alaric's Goths to fight other barbarian groups. But in 408, Stilicho was executed in a political purge, accused of plotting to put his own son on the throne. And with him gone, the hardliners at court decided they'd rather fight Alaric than give him what he wanted. Lucas: So Alaric marched on Rome. He besieged it three times over the next two years. The first time, the Roman Senate paid him a huge ransom — gold, silver, silk, pepper — to go away. He lifted the siege, but negotiations over land went nowhere. The second siege, in 409, he set up a puppet emperor, a senator named Priscus Attalus, hoping that would force Honorius to negotiate. But Attalus turned out to be useless — he refused to let Alaric send Gothic troops against Honorius in Africa, which was the grain supply for Rome. So Alaric deposed him and tried again. Luna: And Honorius still wouldn't budge? Lucas: Nope. Honorius was in Ravenna, well fortified and surrounded by marshes. He had a bizarre stubbornness. There's a famous story — probably apocryphal but telling — that when a messenger informed him that Rome had perished, he thought they meant his pet chicken, also named Rome. He was relieved when they clarified it was the city. But in any case, Alaric's patience ran out. He marched on Rome for the third time, and this time he meant business. Luna: How did he get in? The walls were enormous. Lucas: The Salarian Gate — Porta Salaria — on the north side of the city. There's a story that Gothic sympathizers inside the city opened the gates at night, but the most reliable account, from the historian Procopius, says Alaric had already weakened the city's defenses by cutting off supplies and creating a famine. Some accounts say a group of Gothic soldiers, perhaps slaves, opened the gate. Either way, on the night of August 24, 410, the Goths streamed in. Lucas: For three days, they looted the city. They burned buildings, they stripped palaces and temples of their gold, they slaughtered civilians who resisted. But Alaric was a Christian — of the Arian sect — and he ordered his men to spare those who took refuge in churches. So churches like St. Peter's and St. Paul's became sanctuaries. Even so, thousands were killed, and tens of thousands were taken into slavery, including the emperor's own sister, Galla Placidia. Luna: That's incredible — the sister of the emperor, taken captive. Lucas: And she ended up marrying Alaric's successor, Ataulf, and eventually becoming empress again. But the psychological impact of the sack itself was immense. St. Jerome, who was in Bethlehem at the time, wrote that the whole world had perished in one city. Augustine in North Africa began writing his masterpiece City of God partly as a response to pagans who blamed Christianity for the fall of Rome — they said the old gods had abandoned the city when people turned to Christ. Lucas: Alaric didn't stay long. After three days, he marched south, hoping to take the grain supplies in Africa. But his fleet was destroyed in a storm, and he died later that year. His body was buried under the Busento River in southern Italy, with the slaves who dug the grave killed to keep the location secret. The Visigoths then settled in Gaul and Spain, but Rome would never be the capital of an empire again. The western emperors holed up in Ravenna until the last one was deposed in 476. Luna: So in a way, 410 was the real end of ancient Rome. Lucas: It was the symbolic end. The city itself continued — it was sacked again by Vandals in 455, and by Normans in 1084 — but the idea of Rome as the eternal, invincible city was shattered. And that's the story we often miss: Alaric wasn't a mindless destroyer. He was a king trying to secure a future for his people, caught in the crumbling machinery of a dying empire. The sack of 410 was as much a product of Roman betrayal and incompetence as it was of Gothic aggression.