Alaric Takes Rome

About this same time it happened that Rome was taken by the barbarians. A certain Alaric, a barbarian, had been an ally of the Romans and had served with the emperor Theodosius in the war against the usurper Eugenius, and for that he had been honored with Roman ranks. But he could not bear his good fortune. He did not choose to claim imperial power for himself; instead he withdrew from Constantinople and went into the western regions, and when he reached Illyricum he at once laid the whole country waste. As he marched, however, the Thessalians opposed him at the mouths of the river Peneus, where there is a pass over Mount Pindus to Nicopolis in Epirus. In the battle that followed, the Thessalians killed about three thousand of his men. After this the barbarians with him destroyed everything in their way, and at last they took Rome itself. They pillaged it and burned most of the magnificent buildings and other admirable works of art it held. The money and valuables they plundered and divided among themselves, and they put many of the leading senators to death on one pretext or another. [a]

Moreover, in mockery of the imperial dignity, Alaric proclaimed a certain Attalus emperor. He had him attended with all the trappings of sovereignty on one day, and paraded in the dress of a slave the next. After these exploits he retreated in haste, because a report had reached him that the emperor Theodosius had sent an army to fight him. Nor was the report false, for the imperial forces really were on their way. But Alaric did not wait for the rumor to come true; he broke camp and escaped. It is said that as he was advancing on Rome, a devout monk urged him not to take pleasure in carrying on such atrocities, and no longer to rejoice in slaughter and blood. Alaric answered him: “I am not going on in this course of my own will. There is something that drives me on irresistibly every day, saying, ‘Go on to Rome, and lay that city waste.’” Such was the career of this man.