A votive crown belonging to Recceswinth (653–672), as found in the treasure of Guarrazar, Spain. (National Archaeological Museum of Spain).

The Visigoths (Latin: Visigothi, Wisigothi, Vesi, Visi, Wesi, or Wisi) were one of two main branches of the later Goths, the Ostrogoths being the other. These tribes were among the Germanic peoples who spread through the late Roman Empire during Late Antiquity or the Migration Period. The Visigoths emerged out of the Gothic groups who entered the Roman Empire in and after 376 and defeated the Romans at the Battle of Adrianople in 378. The Visigoths invaded Italy under Alaric I and famously sacked Rome in 410 AD, eventually settling in Spain and Portugal, where they founded a powerful Kingdom.

After numerous years of migration, which led the Visigoths to compare themselves to the Biblical Hebrew people wandering for 40 years in the Sinai Desert, the Visigoths settled in southern Gaul as foederati of the Romans in 418. For unknown reasons, they soon fell out with their hosts and established their own kingdom with its capital at Toulouse. Extending their authority into Hispania at the expense of the Vandals, their rule in Gaul was ended by the Franks under Clovis I at the Battle of Vouillé in 507. Thereafter the only territory north of the Pyrenees that the Visigoths held was Septimania, such that their kingdom became limited to Hispania. The province came to be dominated by the Visigothic small governing elite at the expense of the Byzantine province of Spania and the Suebic Kingdom of Galicia.

In or around 589, the Visigoths, under Reccared I, converted from Arianism to the Nicene faith, gradually adopting the culture of their Hispano-Roman subjects.^[1] Liber Iudiciorum (completed in 654) abolished the old tradition of having different laws for Romans and for Visigoths, so that legal distinctions were no longer made between Romani and Gothi, coalescing them into Hispani. The century that followed was dominated by the Councils of Toledo and the episcopacy. Historical sources for the 7th century are relatively sparse. In 711 or 712 the Visigoths, including their king and many of their leading men, were killed in the Battle of Guadalete by a force of invading Arabs and Berbers. The kingdom quickly collapsed in the aftermath. Gothic identity survived the fall of the kingdom, however, especially in Marca Hispanica and the Kingdom of Asturias, which was founded by the Visigothic nobleman Pelagius after his victory over the Moors at the Battle of Covadonga.

In Spain and Portugal, the Visigoths built several churches and left an increasing number of archaeological finds, but most notably a large number of Spanish, Portuguese given names and surnames. The Visigoths were the only people to found new cities in western Europe after the fall of the Roman Empire and before the rise of the Carolingians. Until the Late Middle Ages, the greatest Visigothic legacy, which is no longer in use, was their law code, the Liber iudiciorum, which formed most notably the basis for court procedure in most of Christian Iberia for centuries after their kingdom's demise.

Division of the Goths: Tervingi and Vesi[link]

The first record of the Tervingi is from around that same date; the Greuthungi, Ostrogothi, and Vesi are all noted no earlier than 388.^[2] The first mention of the Tervingi occurs in a eulogy of the emperor Maximian (285–305), delivered in or shortly after 291 (perhaps at Trier on 20 April 292)^[3] and traditionally ascribed to Claudius Mamertinus,^[4] which says that the "Tervingi, another division of the Goths" (Tervingi pars alia Gothorum) joined with the Taifali to attack the Vandals and Gepidae. The term "Vandals" may have been erroneous for "Victohali", for around 360 the historian Eutropius reports that Dacia was currently (nunc) inhabited by Taifali, Victohali, and Tervingi.^[5]

According to the interpretation of Herwig Wolfram, the Notitia Dignitatum equates the Vesi with the Tervingi in a reference to the years 388–391.^[2] The Greuthungi are first named by Ammianus Marcellinus, writing no earlier than 392 and perhaps later than 395, and basing his account of the words of a Tervingian chieftain who is attested as early as 376.^[2] The Ostrogoths are first named in a document dated September 392 from Milan.^[2] Claudian mentions that they, together with the Gruthungi, inhabit Phrygia.^[6] According to Wolfram, the primary sources either use the terminology of Tervingi/Greuthungi or Vesi/Ostrogothi and never mix the pairs.^[2] All four names were used together on occasion, but the pairing was always preserved, as in Gruthungi, Austrogothi, Tervingi, Visi.^[7] That the Tervingi were the same people as the Vesi/Visigothi and the Greuthungi as the Ostrogothi is also supported by Jordanes.^[8] He identified the Visigothic kings from Alaric I to Alaric II as the heirs of the 4th-century Tervingian king Athanaric and the Ostrogothic kings from Theodoric the Great to Theodahad as the heirs of the Greuthungian king Ermanaric. This interpretation, the most common among scholars today, is not universal.

Herwig Wolfram concludes that the terms Tervingi and Greuthungi were geographical identifiers used by each tribe to describe the other.^[7] This terminology therefore dropped out of use after the Goths were displaced by the Hunnic invasions. In support of this, Wolfram cites Zosimus as referring to a group of "Scythians" north of the Danube who were called "Greutungi" by the barbarians north of the Ister.^[9] Wolfram concludes that this people were those Tervingi who had remained behind after the Hunnic conquest.^[9] On the other hand, he argues, the terms "Vesi" and "Ostrogothi" were used by the peoples to boastfully describe themselves.^[7]

The nomenclature of Greuthungi/Tervingi fell out of use shortly after 400.^[2] In general, the terminology of a divided Gothic people disappeared gradually after they entered the Roman Empire.^[7] The last indication that the Goths whose king reigned at Toulouse considered themselves Vesi is found in a panegyric on Avitus by Sidonius Apollinaris dated 1 January 456.^[7] The term "Visigoth", however, was an invention of the 6th century. Most recent scholars (notably Peter Heather) argue that Visigothic group identity emerged only within the Roman Empire.^[10] Roger Collins believes the Visigoths were a creation of the Gothic War of 376–382 and began as a collection of foederati (Wolfram's "federate armies") under Alaric I in the eastern Balkans, composed of largely Tervingi with Greuthungian and other barbarian contingents.^[11] They were thus multiethnic and cannot lay claim to an exclusively Tervingian heritage. Collins points out that no contemporaries directly link the Tervingi and Vesi.^[11]

Cassiodorus, a Roman in the service of Theodoric the Great, invented the term "Visigothi" to match that of "Ostrogothi", which terms he thought of as signifying "western Goths" and "eastern Goths" respectively.^[7] The western–eastern division was a simplification (and a literary device) of 6th-century historians. Political realities were more complex.^[12] Further, Cassiodorus used the term "Goths" to refer only to the Ostrogoths, whom he served, and reserved the geographical term "Visigoths" for the Gallo-Spanish Goths. This usage, however, was adopted by the Visigoths themselves in their communications with the Byzantine Empire and was in use in the 7th century.^[12]

Other names for other Gothic divisions abounded. A "Germanic" Byzantine or Italian author referred to one of the two peoples as the Valagothi, meaning "Roman Goths", and in 469 the Visigoths were called the "Alaric Goths".^[12]

Etymology of Tervingi and Vesi/Visigothi[link]

The name Tervingi may mean "forest people".^[7] This is supported by evidence that geographic descriptors were commonly used to distinguish people living north of the Black Sea both before and after Gothic settlement there, by evidence of forest-related names among the Tervingi, and by the lack of evidence for an earlier date for the name pair Tervingi–Greuthungi than the late 3rd century.^[13] That the name Tervingi has pre-Pontic, possibly Scandinavian, origins still has support today.^[13]

The Visigoths are called Wesi or Wisi by Trebellius Pollio, Claudian, and Sidonius Apollinaris.^[14] The word is Gothic for "good", implying the "good or worthy people",^[7] related to Gothic iusiza "better" and a reflex of Indo-European *wesu "good", akin to Welsh gwiw "excellent", Greek eus "good", Sanskrit vásu-ş "id.".^[15] Jordanes relates the tribe's name to a river, though this is most likely a folk etymology or legend like his similar story about the Greuthung name.^[13] The name Visigothi is an invention of Cassiodorus, who combined Visi and Gothi under the misapprehension that it meant "west Goths".

History[link]

Migrations of the main column of the Visigoths

War with Rome (376–382)[link]

The Goths remained in Dacia until 376, when one of their leaders, Fritigern, appealed to the Roman emperor Valens to be allowed to settle with his people on the south bank of the Danube. Here, they hoped to find refuge from the Huns. Valens permitted this, as he saw in them "a splendid recruiting ground for his army."^[16] However, a famine broke out and Rome was unwilling to supply them with either the food they were promised or the land; open revolt ensued leading to 6 years of plundering and destruction throughout the Balkans, the death of a Roman Emperor and the destruction of an entire Roman army.

The Battle of Adrianople in 378 was the decisive moment of the war. The Roman forces were slaughtered and the Emperor Valens was killed during the fighting. Adrianople shocked the Roman world and eventually forced the Romans to negotiate with and settle the tribe within the empire's boundaries, a development with far reaching consequences for the eventual fall of Rome.

Reign of Alaric I[link]

The new emperor, Theodosius I, made peace with the rebels, and this peace held essentially unbroken until Theodosius died in 395. In that year, the Visigoths' most famous king, Alaric I, took the throne, while Theodosius was succeeded by his incapable sons: Arcadius in the east and Honorius in the west.

Over the next 15 years, an uneasy peace was broken by occasional conflicts between Alaric and the powerful Germanic generals who commanded the Roman armies in the east and west, wielding the real power of the empire. Finally, after the western general Stilicho was executed by Honorius in 408 and the Roman legions massacred the families of 30,000 barbarian soldiers serving in the Roman army, Alaric declared war. After two defeats in Northern Italy and a siege of Rome ended by a negotiated pay-off, Alaric was cheated by another Roman faction. He resolved to cut the city off by capturing its port. On August 24, 410, however, Alaric's troops entered Rome through the Salarian Gate, to plunder its riches in the sack of Rome. While Rome was no longer the official capital of the Western Roman Empire (it had been moved to Ravenna for strategic reasons), its fall severely shook the empire's foundations.

Visigothic kingdom[link]

Europe in 526

Greatest extent of the Visigothic kingdom of Toulouse in orange dark and light, c. 500

The Visigothic Kingdom was a Western European power in the 5th to 7th centuries, created in Gaul when the Romans lost their control of their empire. In response to the invasion of Roman Hispania of 409 by the Vandals, Alans and Suevi, Honorius, the emperor in the West, enlisted the aid of the Visigoths to regain control of the territory. In 418, Honorius rewarded his Visigothic federates by giving them land in Gallia Aquitania on which to settle. This was probably done under hospitalitas, the rules for billeting army soldiers.^[17][18] The settlement formed the nucleus of the future Visigothic kingdom that would eventually expand across the Pyrenees and onto the Iberian peninsula.

The Visigoths' second great king, Euric, unified the various quarreling factions among the Visigoths and, in 475, forced the Roman government to grant them full independence. At his death, the Visigoths were the most powerful of the successor states to the Western Roman Empire.

The Visigoths also became the dominant power in the Iberian Peninsula, quickly crushing the Alans and forcing the Vandals into north Africa. By 500, the Visigothic Kingdom, centred at Toulouse, controlled Aquitania and Gallia Narbonensis and most of Hispania with the exception of the Suevic kingdom in the northwest and small areas controlled by the Basques and Cantabrians. However, in 507, the Franks under Clovis I defeated the Visigoths in the Vouillé and wrested control of Aquitaine. King Alaric II was killed in battle.

After Alaric's death, Visigothic nobles spirited his heir, the child-king Amalaric, first to Narbonne, which was the last Gothic outpost in Gaul, and further across the Pyrenees into Hispania. The center of Visigothic rule shifted first to Barcelona, then inland and south to Toledo. From 511 to 526, the Visigoths were ruled by Theodoric the Great of the Ostrogoths as de jure regent for the young Amalaric.

In 554, Granada and southernmost Hispania Baetica were lost to representatives of the Byzantine Empire (to form the province of Spania) who had been invited in to help settle a Visigothic dynastic struggle, but who stayed on, as a hoped-for spearhead to a "Reconquest" of the far west envisaged by emperor Justinian I.

Visigothic Hispania and its regional divisions in 700, prior to the Muslim conquest.

The last Arian Visigothic king, Liuvigild, conquered the Suevic kingdom in 585 and most of the northern regions (Cantabria) in 574 and regained part of the southern areas lost to the Byzantines, which King Suintila reconquered completely in 624. The kingdom survived until 711, when King Roderic (Rodrigo) was killed while opposing an invasion from the south by the Umayyad Muslims in the Battle of Guadalete on July 19. This marked the beginning of the Muslim conquest of Hispania in which most of the peninsula came under Islamic rule by 718.

A Visigothic nobleman, Pelayo, is credited with beginning the Christian Reconquista of Iberia in 718, when he defeated the Umayyads in battle and established the Kingdom of Asturias in the northern part of the peninsula. Other Visigoths, refusing to adopt the Muslim faith or live under their rule, fled north to the kingdom of the Franks, and Visigoths played key roles in the empire of Charlemagne a few generations later.

During their long reign in Spain, the Visigoths were responsible for the only new cities founded in Western Europe between the 5th and 8th centuries. It is certain (through contemporary Spanish accounts) that they founded four: Reccopolis, Victoriacum, Luceo, and Olite. There is also a possible fifth city ascribed to them by a later Arabic source: Baiyara (perhaps modern Montoro). All of these cities were founded for military purposes and three of them in celebration of victory.

Culture[link]

Belt buckle. Gilt and silvered bronze and glass paste, Visigothic Aquitaine, 6th century. Found in 1868 in the Visigothic necropolis of Tressan, Hérault, Languedoc (Musée national du Moyen Âge)

Law[link]

The Visigothic Code of Law (forum judicum), which had been part of aristocratic oral tradition, was set in writing in the early 7th century— and survives in two separate codices preserved at the Escorial. It goes into more detail than a modern constitution commonly does and reveals a great deal about Visigothic social structure.

One of the greatest contributions of the Visigoths to family law was their protection of the property rights of married women, which was continued by Spanish law and ultimately evolved into the community property system now in force in part of the United States.

Religion[link]

Capital from the Visigothic church of San Pedro de la Nave.

Prior to the Middle Ages, the Visigoths, as well as other Germanic peoples, followed what is now referred to as Germanic paganism. While the Germanic peoples were slowly converted to Christianity by varying means, many elements of the pre-Christian culture and indigenous beliefs remained firmly in place after the conversion process, particularly in the more rural and distant regions.

The Visigoths, Ostrogoths, and Vandals were Christianized while they were still outside the bounds of the Roman Empire; however, they converted to Arianism rather than to orthodox Catholicism, and were soon regarded as heretics.

There was a religious gulf between the Visigoths, who had for a long time adhered to Arianism, and their Catholic subjects in Hispania. The Iberian Visigoths continued to be Arians until 589. For the role of Arianism in Visigothic kingship, see the entry for Liuvigild.

There were also deep sectarian splits among the Catholic population of the peninsula. The ascetic Priscillian of Avila was martyred by orthodox Catholic forces in 385, before the Visigothic period, and the persecution continued in subsequent generations as "Priscillianist" heretics were rooted out. At the very beginning of Leo I's pontificate, in the years 444–447, Turribius, bishop of Astorga in León, sent to Rome a memorandum warning that Priscillianism was by no means dead, reporting that it numbered even bishops among its supporters, and asking the aid of the Roman See. The distance was insurmountable in the 5th century.^[19] Nevertheless Leo intervened, by forwarding a set of propositions that each bishop was required to sign: all did. But if Priscillianist bishops hesitated to be barred from their sees, a passionately concerned segment of Christian communities in Iberia were disaffected from the more orthodox hierarchy and welcomed the tolerant Arian Visigoths. The Visigoths scorned to interfere among Catholics but were interested in decorum and public order.^[20]

The Arian Visigoths were generally intolerant of Judaism^{[citation needed]} and its adherents, a tradition that lingered in post-Visigothic Septimania^{[citation needed]}, exemplified by the career of Ferreol, Bishop of Uzès (died 581)^{[citation needed]}. Jewish communities had prospered here under the Roman empire^{[citation needed]} and to some extent under the later Christian Orthodox (Byzantine) rule^{[citation needed]}, but under the Visigoth kings a Roman Catholic church-state policy of systematic anti-Semitism was pursued^{[citation needed]}. A succession of royal ecclesiastical councils at Toledo, brushing aside Orthodox Christian policy^{[citation needed]}, either decreed the forcible baptism of the Jews^{[citation needed]} or forbade circumcision^{[citation needed]}, Jewish rites and observance of the Sabbath and festivals^{[citation needed]}. Throughout the seventh century, Jews were flogged^{[citation needed]}, executed^{[citation needed]}, had their property confiscated^{[citation needed]}, were subjected to ruinous taxes^{[citation needed]}, forbidden to trade^{[citation needed]} and, at times, dragged to the baptismal font^{[citation needed]}. Many were obliged to accept Christianity^{[citation needed]} but continued privately to observe the Jewish laws.^[21]

In 589, King Reccared converted his people to Catholicism. With the Catholicization of the Visigothic kings, the Catholic bishops increased in power, until, at the Fourth Council of Toledo in 633, they took upon themselves the nobles' right to select a king from among the royal family. Visigothic persecution of Jews began after the conversion to Catholicism of the Visigothic king Reccared. In 633 the same synod of Catholic bishops that usurped^[22] the Visigothic nobles' right to confirm the election of a king declared that all Jews must be baptised.

In the eighth through 11th centuries the muwallad clan of the Banū Qāsī claimed descent from the Visigothic Count Cassius.

Kings of the Visigoths[link]

Terving kings[link]

These kings and leaders, with the exception of Fritigern, and the possible exception of Alavivus, were pagans.

• Athanaric (369–381)
  • Rothesteus, sub-king
  • Winguric, sub-king
• Alavivus (c. 376), rebel against Valens
• Fritigern (c. 376–c. 380), rebel against Athanaric and Valens

Balti dynasty[link]

These kings were Arianist (followers of the theological teaching of Arius). They tended to succeed their fathers or close relatives on the throne and thus constitute a dynasty.

• Alaric I (395–410)
• Athaulf (410–415)
• Sigeric (415)
• Wallia (415–419)
• Theodoric I (419–451)
• Thorismund (451–453)
• Theodoric II (453–466)
• Euric (466–484)
• Alaric II (484–507)
• Gesalec (507–511)
  • Theodoric the Great (511–526), regent
• Amalaric (526–531)

Non-Balti kings[link]

The Visigothic monarchy took on a completely elective character with the fall of the Balti, but the monarchy remained Arian until Reccared I converted in 587 (Hermenegild had also converted earlier). Only a few sons succeeded their fathers to the throne in this period.

• Theudis (531–548)
• Theudigisel (548–549)
• Agila I (549–554)
• Athanagild (554–568)
• Liuva I (568–572), only ruled in Narbonensis from 569
• Liuvigild (569–586), ruled only south of the Pyrenees until 572
  • Hermenegild (580–585), sub-king in Baetica
• Reccared I (580–601), son, sub-king in Narbonensis until 586, first Catholic king
  • Segga (586–587), rebel
  • Argimund (589–590), rebel
• Liuva II (601–603), son
• Witteric (603–610)
• Gundemar (610–612)
• Sisebut (612–621)
• Reccared II (621), son
• Suintila (621–631)
  • Reccimer (626–631), son and associate
• Sisenand (631–636)
  • Iudila (632–633), rebel
• Chintila (636–640)
• Tulga (640–641)
• Chindasuinth (641–653)
• Recceswinth (649–672), son, initially co-king
  • Froia (653), rebel
• Wamba (672–680)
  • Hilderic (672), rebel
  • Paul (672–673), rebel
• Erwig (680–687)
• Egica (687–702)
  • Suniefred (693), rebel
• Wittiza (694–710), son, initially co-king or sub-king in Gallaecia
• Roderic (710–711), only in Lusitania and Carthaginiensis
• Agila II (711–714), only in Tarraconensis and Narbonensis
  • Oppas (712), perhaps in opposition to Roderic and Agila II
• Ardo (714–721), only in Narbonensis

Notes[link]

Sources[link]

External links[link]

Wikimedia Commons has media related to: Visigoths

Ancient Germanic culture portal

• Lex Visigothorum. The preface was written in 1908 and should be read with reservations.

Alaric I (Gothic: Alareiks; 370 - 410) was the King of the Visigoths from 395–410. Alaric is most famous for his sack of Rome in 410, which marked a decisive event in the decline of the Roman Empire.

Born c. 370 on Peuce Island at the mouth of the Danube in present day Romania, Alaric belonged to the noble Balti dynasty of the Tervingian Goths. After their setbacks against the Huns, Alaric was probably a child during the Goths mass-migration across the Danube and their subsequent war with Rome. Alaric's first appearance was as the leader of a mixed band of Goths and allied peoples who invaded Thrace in 391, who were stopped by the half-Vandal Roman General Stilicho. Later joining the Roman army, he began his career under the Gothic soldier Gainas. In 394 Alaric led a Gothic force of 20,000 that helped the Eastern Roman Emperor Theodosius defeat the Frankish usurper Arbogast at the Battle of Frigidus. Despite sacrificing around 10,000 of his men, Alaric received little recognition from the Emperor. Disappointed, he left the army and was elected chief of the Visigoths in 395, and marched toward Constantinople until he was diverted by Roman forces. He then moved southward into Greece, where he sacked Piraeus (the port of Athens) and destroyed Corinth, Megara, Argos, and Sparta. As a response, the Eastern emperor Flavius Arcadius appointed Alaric magister militum (“master of the soldiers”) in Illyricum.

In 401 Alaric invaded Italy, but he was defeated by the Roman half-Vandal general Flavius Stilicho at Pollentia (modern Pollenza) on April 6, 402. A second invasion also ended in defeat at the Battle of Verona, though Alaric forced the Roman Senate to pay a large subsidy to the Visigoths. During the invasion by the Pagan Goth Radagaisus, Alaric remained idle in Illyria. In 408, Western Emperor Flavius Honorius ordered the execution of Stilicho and his family, and incited the Roman population to massacre of tens of thousands of wives and children of Goths serving in the Roman military. Subsequently, around 30,000 Gothic soldiers defected to Alaric, and joined his march on Rome to avenge their murdered families.

Moving swiftly along Roman roads, Alaric sacked the cities of Aquileia and Cremona and ravaged the lands along the Adriatic Sea. The Visigothic leader thereupon laid siege upon Rome in 408. Eventually, the Senate granted him a substantial subsidy. In addition, Alaric forced the Senate to liberate all the 40,000 Gothic slaves in Rome. Honorius, however, refused to appoint Alaric as the commander of the Western Roman Army, and in 409 the Visigoths again surrounded Rome. Alaric lifted his blockade after proclaiming Attalus as Western Emperor. Attalus appointed him magister utriusque militiae (“master of both services”) but refused to allow him to send an army into Africa. Negotiations with Honorius broke down, and Alaric deposed Attalus in the summer of 410, and besieged Rome for the third time. Allies within the capital opened the gates for him on August 24, and for three days his troops sacked the city. Although the Visigoths plundered Rome, they treated its inhabitants humanely and burned only a few buildings. Having abandoned a plan to occupy Sicily and North Africa after the destruction of his fleet in a storm, Alaric died as the Visigoths were marching northward.

Early life[link]

Portrait of Alaric in C. Strahlheim, Das Welttheater, 4. Band, Frankfurt a.M., 1836

Born c. 370 on Peuce Island at the mouth of the Danube in present day Romania, Alaric belonged to the noble Balti dynasty of the Tervingian Goths. After their setbacks against the Huns, Alaric was probably a child during the Goths mass-migration across the Danube and their subsequent war with Rome.

In Roman service[link]

During the fourth century, the Roman emperors commonly employed foederati: Germanic irregular troops under Roman command, but organized by tribal structures. To spare the provincial populations from excessive taxation and to save money, emperors began to employ units recruited from Germanic tribes. The largest of these contingents was that of the Goths, who in 382, had been allowed to settle within the imperial boundaries, keeping a large degree of autonomy.

In 394 Alaric served as a leader of foederati under Theodosius I in the campaign which 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.

According to Edward Gibbon in The History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire, during the shifting of offices that took place at the beginning of the new reigns, Alaric apparently hoped he would be promoted from a mere commander to the rank of general in one of the regular armies. He was denied the promotion, however. Among the Visigoths settled in Lower Moesia, the situation was ripe for rebellion. They had suffered disproportionately great losses at Frigidus. And according to rumour, exposing the Visigoths in battle was a convenient way of weakening the Gothic tribes. This, combined with their post-battle rewards, prompted them to raise Alaric "on a shield" and proclaim him king; according to Jordanes (a Gothic historian of varying importance, depending upon who is asked), both the new king and his people decided "rather to seek new kingdoms by their own work, than to slumber in peaceful subjection to the rule of others."

In Greece[link]

Alaric in Athens by Ludwig Thiersch, 1894

Alaric struck first at the eastern empire. He marched to the neighborhood of Constantinople but, finding himself unable to undertake a siege, 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, which only aroused 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' own soldiers hacked him to death. Power in Constantinople now passed to the eunuch Chamberlain Eutropius.

Rufinus' death and Stilicho's departure gave free rein to Alaric's movements; he ravaged Attica but spared Athens, which capitulated at once to the conqueror. In 396, he wiped out the last remnants of the Mysteries at Eleusis in Attica, ending a tradition of esoteric religious ceremonies that had lasted since the Bronze Age. Then he penetrated into the Peloponnesus and captured its most famous cities—Corinth, Argos, and Sparta—selling many of their inhabitants into slavery.

Here, however, his victorious career suffered a serious setback. In 397 Stilicho crossed the sea to Greece and succeeded in trapping the Goths in the mountains of Pholoe, on the borders of Elis and Arcadia in the peninsula. From there Alaric escaped with difficulty, and not without some suspicion of connivance by Stilicho, who supposedly had again received orders to depart. Alaric then crossed the Gulf of Corinth and marched with the plunder of Greece northward to Epirus. Here his rampage continued until the eastern government appointed him magister militum per Illyricum, giving him the Roman command he had desired, as well as the authority to resupply his men from the imperial arsenals.

First invasion of Italy[link]

It was probably in 401 that Alaric made his first invasion of Italy,^[1] Supernatural influences were not lacking to urge him to this great enterprise. Some lines of the Roman poet Claudian inform us that he heard a voice proceeding from a sacred 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 was not 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 effectively halted the Goths' progress.

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, not Orthodox. He had trusted to the sanctity of Easter for immunity from attack.

Alaric's wife was reportedly taken prisoner after this battle; it is not unreasonable to suppose that he and his troops were hampered by the presence of large numbers of women and children, which gave his invasion of Italy the character of a human migration.

After another defeat before Verona, Alaric left Italy, probably in 403. He had not "penetrated to the city" but his invasion of Italy had produced important results. It caused the imperial residence to be transferred from Milan to Ravenna, and necessitated the withdrawal of Legio XX Valeria Victrix from Britain.

Second invasion of Italy[link]

Alaric became the friend and ally of his late opponent, Stilicho. By 407, the estrangement between the eastern and western courts had become so bitter that it threatened civil war. Stilicho actually proposed using Alaric's troops to enforce Honorius' claim to the prefecture of Illyricum. The death of Arcadius in May 408 caused milder counsel to prevail in the western court, but Alaric, who had actually entered Epirus, demanded in a somewhat threatening manner that if he were thus suddenly requested to desist from war, he should be paid handsomely for what modern language would call 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 and the chief ministers of his party were treacherously slain on Honorius' orders. In the unrest that followed throughout Italy, the wives and children of the foederati were slain. Consequently, these 30,000 men flocked to Alaric's camp, 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; Alaric relied on hunger as his most powerful weapon. When the ambassadors of the Senate, entreating for peace, tried to intimidate him with hints of what the despairing citizens might accomplish, he laughed and gave his celebrated answer: "The thicker the hay, the easier mowed!" After much bargaining, the famine-stricken citizens agreed to pay a ransom of 5,000 pounds of gold, 30,000 pounds of silver, 4,000 silken tunics, 3,000 hides dyed scarlet, and 3,000 pounds of pepper.^[2] Along came 40,000 freed Gothic slaves. Thus ended Alaric's first siege of Rome.

Second siege of Rome[link]

The Sack of Rome by the Visigoths on 24 August 410 by J-N Sylvestre (1890)

Throughout his career, Alaric's primary goal was not to undermine the Empire, but to secure for himself a regular and recognized position within the Empire's borders. His demands were certainly grand— 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—. Immense as his terms were, the Emperor would have been well advised to grant them. Honorius, however, refused to see beyond his own safety, guaranteed by the dikes and marshes of Ravenna. As all attempts to conduct a satisfactory negotiation with this emperor failed, 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, the prefect of the city, a Greek named Priscus Attalus.

Third siege of Rome[link]

Alaric cashiered his ineffectual puppet emperor after eleven months and again tried to reopen negotiations with Honorius. These negotiations might have succeeded had it not been for the malignant influence of another Goth, Sarus, an Amali, and therefore hereditary enemy of Alaric and his house. Alaric, again outwitted by an enemy's machinations, marched southward and in deadly earnest, began his third siege of Rome. Apparently, defence was impossible; there are hints, not well substantiated, of treachery; surprise is a more likely explanation. 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 Porta Salaria on the northeast of the city. Rome, for so long victorious against its enemies, was now at the mercy of its foreign conquerors.

The contemporary ecclesiastics recorded with wonder many instances of the Visigoths' 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 was not entirely spared the horrors which usually accompany the storming of a besieged city. Nonetheless, the written sources do not mention damages wrought by fire, save the Gardens of Sallust, which were 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: the archaeological evidence was provided by coins dating from 410 found melted in the floor. The pagan emperors' tombs of the Mausoleum of Augustus and Castel Sant'Angelo were rifled and the ashes scattered.

Death and funeral[link]

The burial of Alaric in the bed of the Busento River. 1895 lithograph

Alaric, having penetrated the city, marched southwards into Calabria. He desired to invade Africa, which, thanks to its grain, had become the key to holding Italy. But a storm battered his ships into pieces and many of his soldiers drowned. Alaric died soon after in Cosenza, probably of fever,^[3] at the age of about forty (assuming again, a birth around 370 AD), and his body was, according to legend, 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, who married Honorius' sister Galla Placidia three years later .

Sources[link]

The chief authorities on the career of Alaric are: the historian Orosius and the poet Claudian, both contemporary, neither disinterested; Zosimus, a historian who lived probably about half a century after Alaric's death; and Jordanes, a Goth who wrote the history of his nation in 551, basing his work on The Trojan War. The legend of Alaric's burial in the Buzita River comes from Jordanes.

See also[link]

• Alaric II

Notes[link]

References[link]

• Henry Bradley, The Goths: from the Earliest Times to the End of the Gothic Dominion in Spain, chapter 10. Second edition, 1883, New York: G.P. Putnam's Sons.
•  This article incorporates text from a publication now in the public domain: Chisholm, Hugh, ed. (1911). Encyclopædia Britannica (11th ed.). Cambridge University Press. 
• Erik Durschmied, From Armageddon to the Fall of Rome, chapter 17. 2002, London: Coronet.
• Peter Heather, The Fall of the Roman Empire: A New History of Rome and the Barbarians, Oxford University Press (2006)pg.151
• Ammianus Marcellinus, The Later Roman Empire: AD 354-378 Book XXXI

External links[link]

Wikisource has original works written by or about: Alaric

• Alaric I
• Edward Gibbon, History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire, Chapter 30 and Chapter 31.
• The Legend of Alaric's Burial