The Sack of Rome and the Fall of an Empire

For fifteen years, an uneasy peace holds between the Visigoths and the Roman Empire, though tensions remain high. Clashes occasionally erupt between Alaric, the ambitious Visigothic leader, and the Germanic generals who wield real power in the Eastern and Western Roman armies.

The fragile balance collapses in 408 CE, when Honorius, the ineffective Western Roman emperor, orders the execution of Stilicho, his most capable general. In the aftermath, the Roman legions massacre the families of 30,000 barbarian soldiers serving in the imperial army, igniting Visigothic fury. This act of betrayal compels Alaric to declare full-scale war against Rome.

The Road to the Sack of Rome

Alaric initially suffers two defeats in Northern Italy, but he remains undeterred. He marches south and besieges Rome, forcing the city’s desperate leaders to negotiate a payoff to lift the siege. However, after being cheated by another faction within the Roman court, Alaric abandons diplomacy and shifts to a decisive military strategy.

Recognizing Rome’s strategic vulnerability, he captures Portus, the city's vital harbor on the Tiber, cutting off its food supply and forcing its gates open. On August 24, 410, Visigothic troops enter Rome through the Salarian Gate, unleashing a devastating three-day sack of the city.

The Shock of Rome’s Fall

Though Rome is no longer the official capital of the Western Roman Empire—the imperial court had relocated to Ravenna for its defensibility—its fall shakes the empire to its core. The city, long considered the eternal heart of Roman civilization, has not been breached by a foreign enemy in nearly 800 years. Its sack marks a symbolic rupture, signaling to contemporaries that the empire is no longer invulnerable.

The impact reverberates across the Mediterranean world. In the Eastern Empire, Saint Jerome laments: "The city that had conquered the world has itself been conquered." Meanwhile, pagans blame Christianity for Rome’s downfall, prompting Augustine of Hippo to pen The City of God, defending the Christian faith against accusations that abandoning the old gods had led to Rome’s ruin.

Though Alaric dies later in 410, his sack of Rome accelerates the decline of the Western Roman Empire, demonstrating that its military and political structures are collapsing under the weight of internal decay and external pressure.