The Fall of the Roman Empire Read Online Free Page A

the capital of the West, and there, after refusing to allow his German bodyguard to come to his protection, he surrendered to the Emperor Honorius and was executed. An Imperial edict pronounced him a brigand who had worked to enrich and incite the barbarian nations. For half a century to come, no German was able to assume the position of the Western commander-in-chief again.
    In the wave of anti-German feeling that accompanied Stilicho's death, the Roman troops massacred the wives and children of their German federate fellow-soldiers, who consequently went over en masse to the Visigoths. Alaric, lacking the helpful contacts he had hitherto maintained with Stilicho, demanded money and land for his men, and when these were refused, marched on Rome and cut off its food supply, only raising the siege and withdrawing when the Senate paid him large quantities of gold, silver and copper. In the next year, after the government had again refused to grant his demands, he descended once more upon Rome, where he established a transient Emperor, Priscus Attalus.
    In 410, in the face of continued intransigence from the imperial authorities, Alaric besieged the city for the third time. The gates were treacherously opened to admit him, whereupon, to the horror of the Roman world, his soldiers moved in and occupied the ancient capital, which had not been taken by a foreign foe for nearly eight hundred years. Much wealth was plundered, and some buildings were burnt - but not very many. For this was not quite the final downfall of the Roman Empire which Renaissance historians subsequently pronounced it to be, since the Visigothic troops only stayed for three days.
    Evacuating Rome, and taking the Emperor's twenty-year-old half-sister Galla Placidia with him, Alaric marched on to the southern tip of Italy. From there, he planned to invade north Africa. But his ships were wrecked, and he turned back. When he reached Consentia, the modern Cosenza, he died. His body, adorned with many spoils, was buried deep in the bed of the River Basentus (Busento), so that it should never be found, and might remain free of desecration for evermore.

    CONSTANTIUS III
    The dominant Roman military leader of the next decade was Constantius, a general from Naissus (Nis) in what had formerly been Upper Moesia and was now the province of Dacia Mediterranea (Yugoslavia). Entrusted with the supreme command by Honorius, he later, for a few months, became the Emperor Constantius in. We know all too little about the details of his remarkable career, but a description of his personal appearance and habits has come down from a contemporary Greek historian, Olympiodorus.
. . . On his progresses Constantius went with downcast eyes and sullen countenance. He was a man with large eyes, long neck and broad head, who bent far over toward the neck of the horse carrying him, and glanced here and there out of the corners of his eyes so that he showed to all, as the saying goes, 'an appearance worthy of an autocrat'.
At banquets and parties, however, he was so pleasant and witty that he even contended with the clowns who often played before his table.
    In the year after the sack of Rome, Constantius invaded Gaul, where he put down no less than three usurpers, including Constantine in whose earlier recognition Honorius had by this time withdrawn. Constantius then established himself at the defeated man's former headquarters of Arelate (or Constantia, now Aries), which now replaced the ravaged Treveri (Trier) as capital of the Western provinces. In 413, he granted one of the invading German tribes, the Burgundians, the status of allies or federates. They were allowed to dwell on the west bank of the middle Rhine, where they established their capital at Borbetomagus (Worms).
    Meanwhile, Ataulf, successor of his brother-in-law Alaric as leader of the Visigoths, had marched northwards out of Italy and occupied south-western Gaul, where his people settled in the fertile lands between Narbo