Alaric I
Alaric I (Alaric or Alarich, in Latin
Alaricus) was likely born about
370 on an island named Peuce (the Fir) at the mouth of the
Danube, became king of the
Visigoths from
395–
410, and was the first
Germanic leader to take the city of
Rome.
He was well born, his father kindred to the
Balti, considered next in worth among Gothic fighters to the
Amali. He was a
Goth and belonged to the western branch, called the
Visigoths, who at the time of his birth dwelt in what is today
Bulgaria, having fled beyond the wide estuary marshes of the
Danube to its southern shore so as not to be followed by their foe from the
steppe, the
Huns.
During the
4th century it had become common practice with the emperors to employ
foederati; Germanic
irregular troops under Roman command, but organized by tribal structures. The provincial population, crushed under a load of taxation, could no longer furnish soldiers in the numbers needed for the defence of the empire. Moreover, the emperorsâ€"ever fearful that a brilliantly successful general of Roman extraction might be proclaimed
Augustus by his followersâ€"preferred that high military command should be in the hands of one to whom such an accession of dignity was as yet impossible. The largest of these contigents were the Goths which had in
382 been allowed to settle within the imperial frontier with a large degree of autonomy.
In
394 Alaric served as a leader of foederati under
Theodosius I in the campaign in which he crushed the usurper
Eugenius. As the
Battle of the Frigidus, which terminated this campaign, was fought at the passes of the
Julian Alps, Alaric probably learned the weakness of
Italy's natural defences on its northeastern frontier at the head of the
Adriatic.
Theodosius died in 395, leaving the empire to be divided between his two sons
Arcadius and
Honorius, the former taking the eastern and the latter the western portion of the empire. Arcadius showed little interest in ruling, leaving most of the actual power to his
Praetorian Prefect Rufinus. Honorius was still a minor; as his guardian, Theodosius had appointed the
magister militum Stilicho. Stilicho also claimed to be the guardian of Arcadius, causing much rivalry between the western and eastern courts.
In the shifting of offices which took place at the beginning of the new reigns, Alaric apparently hoped he would be promoted from a mere commander of federates to generalship of one of the regular armies. This was denied him, however. Among the Visigoths, settled in Lower
Moesia, the situation was ripe for rebellion. At Frigidus they had suffered disproportional high losses, according to rumour a convenient way of weakening the Gothic tribes. Their rewards after the campaign had also been lacking. So they raised Alaric on a shield and proclaimed him king; leader and followers both resolving (says
Jordanes the Gothic historian) "rather to seek new kingdoms by their own work, than to slumber in peaceful subjection to the rule of others."
Alaric struck first at the eastern empire. He marched to the neighbourhood of
Constantinople but, finding himself unable to undertake the siege of that superbly strong city, retraced his steps westward and then marched southward through
Thessaly and the unguarded pass of
Thermopylae into
Greece.
The armies of the eastern empire were occupied with
Hunnic incursions in
Asia Minor and
Syria. Instead Rufinus attempted to negotiate with Alaric in person. The only results was suspicions in Constantinople that Rufinius was in league with the Goths. Stilicho now marched east against Alaric. According to
Claudian, Stilicho was in a position to destroy the Goths, when he was ordered by Arcadius to leave
Illyricum. Soon after Rufinus was hacked to death by his own soldiers. Power in Constantinople now passed to the eunuch chamberlain
Eutropius.
The death of Rufinus and departure of Stilicho gave Alaric free reins. He ravaged Attica but spared Athens, which at once capitulated to the conqueror. Then he penetrated into the
Peloponnesus and captured its most famous citiesâ€"
Corinth,
Argos, and
Spartaâ€"selling many of their inhabitants into slavery.
Here, however, his victorious career ended. In
397 Stilicho crossed by sea to Greece and succeeded in shutting up the Goths in the mountains of
Pholoe on the borders of
Elis and
Arcadia in the peninsula. From thence Alaric escaped with difficulty, and not without some suspicion of connivance on the part of Stilicho, who supposedly again had received orders to depart. Alaric then crossed the
Gulf of Corinth and marched with the plunder of
Greece northwards to
Epirus. Here his rampage continued until the eastern government appointed him
magister militum per Illyricum, giving him the Roman command he had desired and authority to resupply his men from the imperial arsenals.
It was probably in the year
400 that Alaric made his first invasion of Italy, cooperating with another Gothic chieftain named
Radagaisus. Supernatural influences weren't lacking to urge him to this great enterprise. Some lines of the Roman poet inform us that he heard a voice proceeding from a
holy grove, "Break off all delays, Alaric. This very year thou shalt force the Alpine barrier of Italy; thou shalt penetrate to the city." But the prophecy wasn't to be fulfilled at this time. After spreading desolation through North
Italy and striking terror into the citizens of Rome, Alaric was met by
Stilicho at
Pollentia, today in
Piedmont. The battle which followed on
April 6,
402 (coinciding with Easter), was a victory for Rome, though a costly one. But it effectually barred the further progress of the Goths.
Stilicho's enemies later reproached him for having gained his victory by taking impious advantage of the great Christian festival. Alaric, too, was a Christian, though an
Arian rather than a
Catholic. He had trusted to the sanctity of Easter for immunity from attack.
The wife of Alaric is said to have been taken prisoner after this battle; and there is some reason to suppose that he was hampered in his movements by the presence with his forces of large numbers of women and children, having given to his invasion of
Italy the character of a national migration.
After another defeat before
Verona, Alaric left Italy, probably in
403. He hadn't indeed "penetrated to the city" but his invasion of Italy had produced important results. It had caused the imperial residence to be transferred from
Milan to
Ravenna, it had necessitated the withdrawal of
Legio XX Valeria Victrix from Britain, and it had probably facilitated the great invasion of
Vandals,
Sueves, and
Alans into Gaul, which lost Gaul and the provinces of
Hispania to the Empire.
We next hear of Alaric as the friend and ally of his late opponent Stilicho. The estrangement between the eastern and western courts had in
407 become so bitter as to threaten civil war, and Stilicho was actually proposing to use the forces of Alaric in order to enforce the claims of Honorius to the
prefecture of Illyricum. The death of Arcadius in May
408 caused milder counsels to prevail in the western cabinet, but Alaric, who had actually entered Epirus, demanded in a somewhat threatening manner that if he were thus suddenly bidden to desist from war, he should be paid handsomely for what in modern language would be called the expenses of mobilization. The sum which he named was a large one, 4,000 pounds of gold. Under strong pressure from Stilicho the Roman senate consented to promise its payment.
But three months later Stilicho himself and the chief ministers of his party were treacherously slain in pursuance of an order extracted from the timid and jealous Honorius. In the disturbances that followed, throughout Italy the wives and children of the foederati were slain. The natural consequence of all this was that these men, to the number of 30,000, flocked to the camp of Alaric, clamouring to be led against their cowardly enemies. He accordingly led them across the Julian Alps and, in September
408, stood before the walls of
Rome (now with no capable general like Stilicho as a defender) and began a strict blockade.
No blood was shed this time; hunger was the weapon on which Alaric relied. When the ambassadors of the
Senate, in treating for peace, tried to terrify him with their hints of what the despairing citizens might accomplish, he gave with a laugh his celebrated answer: "The thicker the hay, the easier mowed!" After much bargaining, the famine-stricken citizens agreed to pay a ransom of more than two thousand pounds in weight of gold, besides precious garments of
silk and leather and three thousand pounds of
pepper. Thus ended Alaric's first siege of Rome.
At this time, and indeed throughout his career, Alaric's primary goal wasn't to pull down the fabric of the empire but to secure for himself, by negotiation with its rulers, a regular and recognized position within its borders. His demands were certainly large— the concession of a block of territory 200 miles long by 150 wide between the Danube and the Gulf of Venice (to be held probably on some terms of nominal dependence on the empire) and the title of commander-in-chief of the imperial army—but, great as these terms were, the emperor would probably have been well advised to grant them. Honorius, however, was one of those timid and feeble folk who are equally unable to make either war or peace, and refused to look beyond the question of his own personal safety, guaranteed as it was by the dikes and marshes of Ravenna. As all attempts to conduct a satisfactory negotiation with this emperor failed before his impenetrable stupidity, Alaric, after instituting a second siege and blockade of Rome in
409, came to terms with the senate. With their consent he set up a rival emperor and invested the prefect of the city, a Greek named
Priscus Attalus, with the diadem and the purple robe.
Attalus, however, proved quite unfit for his high position; he rejected the advice of Alaric and lost in consequence the
province of Africa, the granary of Rome, which was defended by the partisans of Honorius. The weapon of famine, formerly in the hand of Alaric, was thus turned against him, and loud in consequence were the murmurs of the Roman populace. Honorius was also greatly strengthened by the arrival of six legions sent to his assistance from Constantinople by his nephew
Theodosius II.
Alaric therefore cashiered his puppet emperor, after the latter's eleven months of ineffectual rule, and once more tried to reopen negotiations with Honorius. These negotiations would probably have succeeded but for the malign influence of another Goth,
Sarus, the hereditary enemy of Alaric and his house. When Alaric found himself once more outwitted by the machinations of such a foe, he marched southward and began in deadly earnest his third, his ever-memorable siege of Rome. No defence apparently was possible; there are hints, not well substantiated, of treachery; there is greater probability of surprise. However this may be—for our information at this point of the story is meagre—on
August 24,
410, Alaric and his Visigoths burst in by the Salarian gate on the northeast of the city. She who had been mistress of the world now lay at the feet of foreign enemies.
But in their plundering of the city, the Visigoths weren't absolutely ruthless. The contemporary ecclesiastics recorded with wonder many instances of their clemency: Christian churches saved from ravage; protection granted to vast multitudes both of pagans and Christians who took refuge therein; vessels of gold and silver which were found in a private dwelling, spared because they "belonged to St. Peter"; at least one case in which a beautiful Roman matron appealed, not in vain, to the better feelings of the Gothic soldier who attempted her dishonor. But even these exceptional instances show that Rome wasn't entirely spared those scenes of horror which usually accompany the storming of a besieged city. Nonetheless, the written sources do not tell of any damage wrought by fire, save in the case of
Sallust's palace, which was situated close to the gate by which the Goths had made their entrance; nor is there any reason to attribute any extensive destruction of the buildings of the city to Alaric and his followers. The
Basilica Aemilia in the
Roman Forum did burn down, which perhaps can be attributed to Alaric, based on evidence from archaeologists: coins dating from 410 found melted in the floor.
 |
The burial of Alaric in the bed of the Busento River. 1895 lithograph |
His work being done, his fated task, and Alaric having penetrated to the city, nothing remained for him but to die. He marched southwards into
Calabria. He desired to invade Africa, which on account of its corn crops was now the key of the position, but his ships were dashed to pieces by a storm in which many of his soldiers perished. He died in 410 in
Cosenza soon after, probably of fever, at the early age of about forty (assuming again, a birth around 370), and his body was buried under the riverbed of the
Busento. The stream was temporarily turned aside from its course while the grave was dug wherein the Gothic chief and some of his most precious spoils were interred; when the work was finished the river was turned back into its usual channel and the captives by whose hands the labor had been accomplished were put to death that none might learn their secret.
Alaric was succeeded in the command of the Gothic army by his brother-in-law,
Ataulf.
Our chief authorities for the career of Alaric are the historian
Orosius and the poet
Claudian, both strictly contemporary;
Zosimus, a somewhat prejudiced pagan historian, who lived probably about half a century after the death of Alaric; and
Jordanes, a Goth who wrote the history of his nation in the year
551, basing his work on the earlier history of
Cassiodorus (now lost), which was written about
520.
*
Alaric II*
*Edward Gibbon,
History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire,
Chapter 30 and
Chapter 31.
Preceded by:
Early kings | King of the Visigoths
395–410 | Succeeded by:
Ataulf | -
|
