THEME: The end of Antiquity

ATTACK OF
THE END OF THE ROMAN EMPIRE IN THE WEST
THEME

THE VISIGOTHS
ROMAN EMPIRE, AD 400 – 500
500 AD

On 24 August 410, the order was given: no arson, no killing, no destruc-

A pair of beautiful eagle- tion. Then troops were unleashed on the city of Rome for a three-day
shaped fibulae from
Tierra de Barros (Spain),
merry-go-round of looting and pillaging. As far as the sacking of cities
made of bronze covered went, this operation could almost have been called ‘civilized’.
with sheet gold and in-
laid with amythysts and
By Jeroen Wijnendaele ally culminating in the end of western Ro-

C
garnets. They date to the
sixth century and were man emperorship a century later.
used to fasten a cloak hristians seeking asylum in However, the exact nature, organiza-
at either shoulder. The
eagle was adopted from churches were consciously left in tion, and aims of the Visigoths have been
1 AD

the Romans during the peace. And yet at the end of those
Migration period. Similar three days, the entire operation
fibulae have been found
was nothing but an unmitigated disaster for
in both Visigothic graves
(Spain) and Ostrogothic the ambitions and plans of the leader of the
graves (Italy). soldiers, the Goth Alaric. His troops had
© Walters Art Museum
been stationed in front of the gates of Rome
for over eighteen months. If it had been his
desire to storm the city, he could have done
so at any previous point in time. Instead, he
marched his forces south after the event and
would shortly afterwards die as ‘king of the
Visigoths’ – a position he had never craved.
The sack of Rome in 410 is one of the most
500 BC
fiercely contested in the renewed surge of
literature over the past decade debating the
end of the Roman Empire. This piece will
look at the different phases of the ‘genesis’
of the Visigoths and their itinerary, from
their origins in the Balkans, to their upris-
ing under Alaric, their move to Italy, and
their eventual settlement in southwestern
Gaul and Spain. We will see that these var-
ious episodes cannot be seen as the long
trek of an ever-wandering mass of barbar-
ian hordes, but rather the movements of an
army constantly changing in composition

symbolic events in the history of the end of
the Roman Empire in the West. And yet at
that time it was one that did not dramati-
cally alter the political or military stalemate
Goths and Romans had been locked in for
years. More importantly, it could have been
avoided all together.
Ever since Edward Gibbon’s History of
the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire,
barbarian migrations have loomed large in
popular perceptions and scholarly discus-
1000 BC
due to political circumstances. The Visig-
oths only came into being as a force be-
cause of Roman power games, and were
only able to forge a kingdom when the Em-
pire became a failed state in its transalpine
provinces long after their settlement.
Origins of the Goths
The earliest contemporary sources make it
clear that the Goths emerged in the third
century AD north of the Black Sea and

sions concerning ‘the Fall of Rome’. In par-
ticular, the arrival of Gothic tribes into Ro-
man territory, crossing the Danube in 376,
has usually been interpreted as the starting
point of the ‘Great Migration Era’, eventu-
along the lower Danube. They were one of
several new formations, such as the Franks
and Alamanni in the West, that had united
several smaller tribes after having felt the
impact of empire over the previous two

24 Ancient History 11

ahm_11.indd 24 22/06/2017 14:13

 centuries. All of these were essentially
agrarian societies ruled by a warrior aris-
tocracy. Their tribal leaders often led war-
bands on raids and expeditions against
their neighbouring tribes or, if they dared,
the Empire. The aim of these raids was to
gather wealth and slaves, which could be
used to enhance their position and reward
their followers.
The new coalitions of the third century
may have been larger and slightly better-
equipped than the tribes Augustus and his
early successors faced, but they were often
no match for Rome’s professional armies. It
is only during the third century that these
were able to inflict any meaningful dam-
age on Rome, usually when emperors were
distracted by civil wars or the challenge of
Sassanian Persia – the only other imperial
power it had to contend with.
Raiding the Roman Empire was a haz-
ardous operation that sometimes achieved
spectacular success, but also could end in
equally spectacular failure. Around 250,
one such Gothic force had plunged itself
into the Balkans and gathered large amounts
of booty. On their retreat to their home-
lands, the Emperor Decius tried to cut off
their passage, but instead ran into an am-
bush himself and went down fighting with
many of his soldiers. Thus the Goths could
claim to have been the first people to have
ever killed a Roman emperor in battle. Nev-
ertheless, when the Empire did strike back,
the damage could be felt for generations.
Clients of Empire
The new order that emerged in the Ro-
man Empire, after various reforms during
the reigns of the emperors Diocletian and
Constantine (284–337), was one that found
its barbarian neighbours to be very useful
in several ways. After the final suppression
of usurpation and the achievement of an
equilibrium with Persia, at the end of the
third century, the soldier-emperors of the
fourth century were usually able to bring
down the full weight of their field armies
into Barbaricum should they wish to do so.
ahm_11.indd 25
Conquest of territory was
never an envisioned aim, but
conquest of human resources
certainly was. The depiction
of slaughtered and sur-
rendered barbarians was
a very popular theme,
both in the arena, on
imperial coinage, and in
the rhetoric of court poets. A
message was broadcast to im-
perial elites and citizens that the
emperors took great care to ensure
their safety, especially considering the in-
creased taxes they had to pay in order to
maintain an enlarged army and imperial
bureaucracy to cater for multiple emperors.
But just as important was the acquisition of
barbarians for the army.
When Constantine scored a momen-
tous victory over the Goths in the early
330s, he set up a treaty with them in which
they were forced to supply recruits on a
regular basis. Contrary to older perception,
the large-scale enrolment of barbarians in
the imperial army was never regarded as
a reason for concern in this era, and the
practice continued all the way into the
seventh century. Other instances are also
known of defeated barbarian groups, who
were settled inside the Empire’s borders to
farm deserted lands. The Gothic defeat was
so complete that no hostilities between
them and the Empire were recorded for
over thirty years. As frontier peoples, they
essentially became clients and were even
one of the first barbarian groups exposed
to Christianity. Therefore, when several
Gothic tribes requested to be settled in
the Balkans in 376, this was nothing that
should have been out of the ordinary.
The fiasco of Adrianople
We do not know exactly what drove the
tribes of the Greutungi and Tervingi to
request to cross the Danube. A combina-
tion of inter-tribal wars and the first tidings
of the Huns arriving on the steppe lands
north of the Black Sea, may have motivat-
Dating from
between AD 400-
450, this gold bracelet
is worked with a female image repre-
senting the city of Rome (Roma). Such
personificaitons were popular during
this period. The piece was originally
part of a hoarde found on the Capito-
line Hill, and was likely hidden during
the sack of the city by either the Visig-
oths (410) or the Vandals (455). Now
in the Metropolitan Museum of Art.
© Public domain
π DID YOU KNOW?
The word ‘barbarian’ is derived
from the Greek word barbaros,
which refers to a speaker of a
‘bar-bar‘ language – that is to say,
a language other than Greek. It
did not initially have any nega-
tive connotations and simply
denoted the person in question
as non-Greek. Today, whenever a
group of actors, on the stage or
on screen, is supposed to make
a noise similar to speaking (but
without actually saying anything
that can be understood), they
simply repeat the word ‘rhubarb’
over and over, at different speeds
and intonations, so that it resem-
bles the unintelligible murmur of
a crowd (‘bar-bar’ sounds).
Ancient History 11 25
22/06/2017 14:13

A copy of one half of an ivory diptych
that portrays the Roman general Stili-
cho (ca. 359–408). Flavius Stilicho was
half Vandal and married the niece of
Emperor Theodosius. He later served as
regent for the young Honorius. Stilicho
demonstrates how deeply intertwined
the Germanic and Roman peoples had
become in the Later Empire. Museum of
Roman Civilization, Rome.
© Karwansaray Publishers
26 Ancient History 11
ahm_11.indd 26
ed their tribal leaders to request realloca-
tion in Roman territory. It has to be firmly
emphasized, however, that this not meant
the mass migration of all Goths, and some
tribes continued living in their home terri-
tories for generations to come. Indeed, the
Gothic language was still attested in the
Crimea well into the Early Modern era.
The eastern emperor Valens was resid-
ing in Syria to monitor the situation with
Persia, but was allegedly delighted with
the prospect of receiving many thousands
of new recruits and additional farmer-
producers (essentially another pool of tax-
payers). We are left unaware of the exact
terms agreed upon, but in the end that did
not matter. The local authorities sanctioned
to organize the settlement demonstrated
an alarming mixture of incompetence and
corruption. They may have been ill-pre-
pared to process an unknown large num-
ber of settlers, ranging well into the tens of
thousands, but it certainly did not alleviate
mounting pressure that they sold the starv-
ing Goths over-charged and spoiled food.
Some Goths were even forced to sell their
children into slavery.
When one of the Roman commanders
tried to eliminate the Gothic leaders, the
Goths rose up in armed revolt in 377–378.
Valens ceased his eastern campaign and
returned with a field-army to meet the
Gothic rebels on the plains of Thrace near
the city of Adrianople. Even at this stage,
the Goths were still willing to come to
terms, while Valens’ army was on stand-by
under the scorching summer sun. Instead
of coming to terms, or waiting for western
reinforcements and properly scouting the
terrain, Valens desired a pitched battle to
seize easy victory laurels. Instead, he suf-
fered one of the most humiliating defeats
since Cannae, fought all the way back in
216 BC. Two thirds of the eastern field
army, perhaps as many as 10,000 soldiers,
including several of the highest-ranking
commanders and officers perished. Valens
himself was left on the battlefield and his
body was never recovered.
Imperial ballista fodder
It took Valens’ successor Theodosius three
years of skirmishing – winning and losing
some battles in the process – to eventually
come to a settlement with the Goths. The exact
nature of this settlement has been hotly dis-
puted, but frankly we do not know any of the
terms discussed. What we do know is that not
a single Gothic leader arose from the agree-
ment. Instead, the Goths were allowed to re-
side on imperial soil in the lower Danube area
and were integrated into its military structures.
Several former tribal leaders even managed to
rise through the ranks and achieve general-
ships in the eastern chain of command.
Meanwhile, Emperor Theodosius put
the new Gothic auxiliaries to good use in
two of the civil wars he fought with the
west. It did not go unnoticed that they
paid a particularly high price for this dur-
ing the second one in 394. One Roman
author, writing a generation after the Bat-
tle of the Frigidus, claimed that on the first
day of battle, 10,000 Gothic soldiers were
slaughtered by the western field army, and
triumphantly claimed this as a victory for
the Empire. For civilian Romans, who over-
whelmingly represent the viewpoint of our
sources, the Goths always remained fickle,
savage barbarians. We almost never get
to see the Gothic perspective, which may
have seriously questioned who exactly the
‘untrustworthy party’ was in this conflict.
Alaric, one of the Roman officers at the
Frigidus, would dextrously fuel Gothic re-
sentment to trigger a mutiny after Theodo-
sius’ unexpended death in 395, only one
season after his final victory.
Cold war auxiliaries
In the early sixth century, a mythologi-
cal genealogy was composed for the Os-
trogothic kings governing Italy. This work
has not survived, but was consulted by
the clerk Jordanes in Constantinople, who
had Gothic roots himself. His Gothic His-
tory is still influential to this day and has
fuelled perceptions of Gothic peoples
roaming from Scandinavia all over the Eu-
22/06/2017 14:13
 ropean continent until they separated as
‘Visigoths’ and ‘Ostrogoths’, respectively
in Southern Gaul and Spain, and in Italy,
forging kingdoms in the process. Contem-
porary sources, however, never used these
labels and only spoke of ‘Goths’.
Similarly, the idea that Alaric was a
mighty king uniting all the Goths in the
Balkans after Theodosius’ death is at odds
with his actions. In 395, he raised a mu-
tiny in Thrace among the Gothic regiments
that had served at the Frigidus. Over the
next few years his troops pillaged Greece,
while Alaric pressured the government in
Constantinople to grant him a proper gen-
eralship. Theodosius’ sons, who ruled the
western and eastern halves of the Empire,
were essentially ceremonial figureheads,
and Alaric was able to exploit the ten-
sions and conflicts between their regents
to achieve his goal.
Yet, Alaric was not the only Gothic
commander in the eastern army at this
time, never mind the leader of some kind
of united group of Balkan Goths. In the
ahm_11.indd 27
aftermath of a palace coup in 399, which The Aurelian Walls near Piramide Ces-
saw anti-Gothic reprisals, he found himself tia and Porta San Paolo. Built between
271 and 275 AD, these city walls were
stranded without a legitimate command. At the main protection of Rome during
this point he may have taken the title of the attack by the Visigoths, and for
rex (the Latin word for ‘king’), but this was centuries after.
© teldridge+keldridge (Flickr)
a temporary measure to lead his groups.
Then, in 401, he marched them to Italy,
where he flexed his military muscle against
the western Roman court to achieve a new
position. After two stalemate battles, he
had to retreat into the western Balkans, but
eventually did receive a command.
It is not a coincidence that the sources
make almost no mention of Alaric for the
periods of 397–400 and 403–407. All this
time, he was acting as an official Roman
commander of an auxiliary army. The com-
bination of the defeat at Adrianople, the
civil wars of Theodosius, and the inception
of Hunnic hegemony in Europe’s barbari-
cum, had a profound effect on the Empire’s
European forces. Fifth-century western
field-commanders realized the precarious
nature of their military resources and were
constantly strapped for recruits. This lesson
Ancient History 11 27
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This illustration from a French manu-
script dates from 1413 - 1415 and prob-
ably relates to the story of Radagaisus,
a leader of the Ostrigoths who invaded
Italy but was beaten back and defeated
by the Romans (this shows the Roman
army feasting while the Goths outside
starve). The corresponding text con-
trasts Radagaisus to Alaric, who man-
aged to successfully sack Rome four
years after these events. It is implied
that because Alaric promised to spare
all of the Christians in the city, his
campaign was more successful. Ms. 63,
fol. 268, now in the Getty Museum.
© Public domain
28 Ancient History 11
ahm_11.indd 28
was not always heeded by certain imperial
factions, with dire consequences.
Violence as a tool
In August of the year AD 408, the west-
ern Roman supreme commander, who
had been acting as the de facto leader of
government following Theodosius’ death,
succumbed to a palace coup and was ex-
ecuted. The new government was steered
by Italian aristocrats who had no desire to
deal with ‘foreign ruffians’ and implement-
ed their traditional anti-barbarian rheto-
ric into policy. They launched large-scale
pogroms against barbarian auxiliaries and
their families stationed in Italian cities.
Consequentially, thousands of furious
recruits flocked to Alaric’s banner. Even at
this point, Alaric still tried to seek a set-
tlement with the new regime, and only
requested that the terms of his service
be reaffirmed. When this was refused, he
marched on Rome. The surviving sources
make it abundantly clear that Alaric at this
point was leading a motley crew of soldiers
who had families in tow (a phenomenon
already established in the Roman army it-
self since the third century).
Even more importantly, the negotia-
tions with the western court that followed
always revolved around
military commands and
provisions for his sol-
diers. At no point do the
sources even hint that
Alaric and his men were
regarded as a ‘foreign
nation’, who desired
‘independence’ or even
territory for a ‘separate
state’. True, the core of
his followers would have
been Goths, but these
originally hailed from
at least three different
tribes, most of them sec-
ond-generation. More
importantly, a significant
proportion of his men
would have consisted of other barbarian
groups, such as Alans or Huns, and even
‘proper’ Romans. The only thing uniting all
these men was Alaric himself.
Indeed, Alaric and his successors
throughout the fifth century never added
an ethnic label to their kingship. They were
not ‘kings of Goths’ but merely ‘kings’,
since they were dependent on every armed
man willing to follow them, regardless
of background. Alaric was also very con-
scious of how far he could use intimida-
tion as a tool for negotiation. At his lowest
bid, he did not even ask for a command
any more, but simply for the impoverished
province of Noricum and food supplies for
his men, on the specific assignment of de-
fending it. Alaric played this game as a Ro-
man powerbroker, employing the senate,
bishops, and even an imperial usurper to
achieve his goals.
It was only when all of these had failed,
and the western court had even dared to
allow a Gothic rival to ambush his final
negotiating party, that Alaric realized that
a threat is meaningless unless you are will-
ing to carry it out. Thus the city of Rome
was finally sacked in August of 410.
The Visigothic Kingdom
It would take almost a decade for the group
that had followed Alaric to be settled in
Aquitaine, between the cities of Bordeaux
and Toulouse. During that time, they had
intermittently entered and left the service
of both the dynastic court in Italy and Gal-
lic usurpers, to eventually be employed
again as auxiliaries against other barbar-
ian groups who had broken into Gaul and
Spain. This settlement was completed by
419 and has often been seen as the start of
the Visigothic kingdom.
Again, it has to be noted that none of
the contemporary sources regarded it in
this way; instead they saw this as the end
of a long process of civil wars. Alaric’s suc-
cessors did not even achieve as much as
he had in his early career, since they never
received an imperial command. Instead,
22/06/2017 14:13
 they were dependent on the imperial ad-
ministration for supplies while serving as
garrison forces and auxiliaries for Roman
campaigns. Of those Goths that were set-
tled in 418, very few, if any, will have been
part of the original group that fought at
Adrianople forty years earlier.
While some Gothic kings resorted to
Alaric’s tactics throughout the fifth century,
by occasionally besieging the city of Arles
(headquarters of the Gallic civil administra-
tion) in order to achieve new or better terms,
they never tried to expand beyond their
originally assigned quarters. The few times
they actually went to war with the western
Roman army, it was almost consistently as
a consequence of power-struggles within the
court and its high command. This was the
most pervasive root-cause for the decline of
imperial power in the fifth century, allowing
other groups such as the Vandals to profit
and acquire territory in northern Africa, the
imperial west’s economic linchpin.
When the Theodosian dynasty died out
in 455, most western emperors did not
manage to maintain their position for more
than a few years. In this downward spiral
of governmental breakdown, the Goth-
ic kings were constantly forced to back
changing sides. Only in the 470s, when it
was crystal clear that the imperial regime
in Italy was relegating itself into nonexist-
ence, did they finally start annexing terri-
tory in Gaul and Spain. When the last le-
gitimate western emperor was eventually
murdered in 480, the Gothic kings in Gaul
had to go beyond their military role and
start governing themselves. Only then did
a Gothic kingdom finally come into being
to fill the Imperial power-vacuum.
Agents of Empire
The Goths left almost no imprint on the ma-
terial culture in southwestern Gaul, during
the ninety years they were stationed there
until their defeat by the Franks at the Bat-
tle of Vouillé in 507. Archaeologically, they
are quasi-indistinguishable from the local
population. More importantly, in those few
ahm_11.indd 29
sources coming from
Gothic Aquitaine,
such as coins, inscrip-
tions, and laws, the
kings consistently rep-
resented themselves as
subject to the eastern Ro-
man emperor.
The Goths were always
soldiers first and foremost,
and a ‘Visigothic culture’ only
finally emerged in the kingdom
they re-forged around Toledo, on
the Iberian peninsula, during the
sixth century. Their movements in the
fifth century were not the invasion of a The idea that barbarians were mind-
barbarian nation looking for new territory. less savages that roamed around,
obsessed with inflicting violence upon
The Visigoths did not cause the fall of the
others, is a myth. Over the course of
western Roman Empire, and their genesis many years, the Visigoths had become
was essentially a symptom of that political romanized, and this fragment of a
revolution, whose root causes have to be column capital that was once part of
a Christian church is a fine example
sought elsewhere. ATH of a piece of Hispano-Visigothic art.
Museo Monográfico de Conimbriga in
Dr Jeroen W.P. Wijnendaele is a Post- Condeixa-a-Nova (Portugal).
© User ‘Elisardojm’ (Wikimedia)
Doctoral Fellow at Ghent University. He
has lectured and worked in Australia, Bel-
gium, Ireland, and Italy. His main research
areas are the Late Roman military, barbar-
ian communities, and Imperial policy (ca.
AD 200–600). His books include The Last
of the Romans: Bonifatius – Warlord and
comes Africae (2015).
(Following pages) Scorned by the impe-
FURTHER READING rial court, and with outraged soldiers
in tow, whose families were recently
• T.S. Burns, Barbarians Within the
persecuted, Alaric’s army pillaged the
Gates of Rome: A Study of Roman provisions they needed along the way
Military Policy and the Barbarians, and were ready to use might to make
right. The challenge for Alaric was
ca. 375–425 AD (1994).
maintaining enough pressure to land
• C. Delaplace, La fin de l’Empire ro- the deal he needed to find security for
himself and his men, without overplay-
main d’Occident: Rome et les Wis-
ing his hand. Contrary to popular
igoths de 382 à 531 (2015). perceptions, Alaric’s Goths would
have been dressed and equipped in a
• P.J. Heather, Goths and Romans, similar fasion to regular Late Roman
332–489 (1995). soldiers (chain mail, long swords,
and so on). A court poet explicitly
• M. Kulikowski, Rome’s Gothic states that Alaric had access to state
Wars: From the Third Century to arsenals during his stint as magister
Alaric (2007). militum and thus would have armed
his soldiers accordingly.
© Vilius Petrauskas
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