Yet Rome’s Christian ascetic movement continued without him. Just before the end of the fourth century a young couple brought it back to life: Valerius Pinianus and his wife Melania, whose grandmother – Melania the Elder – had been one of Jerome’s circle. Melania the Younger, after nearly dying in childbirth, became determined to give up all her worldly goods. A glance at what she and her husband sought to be rid of reveals how astonishingly unequal late Roman society had become. At a time when most Romans lived on handouts and many lacked even these, Melania’s husband alone had an annual income of at least 2,000 pounds of gold. This was half the amount that Alaric sought for all his Visigoths from the Western Roman Empire. Pinianus owned a house on the Caelian Hill in Rome that was so valuable it was beyond the means even of the Western Emperor Honorius’ niece. Between them Melania and Pinianus possessed estates that extended across the Western Roman Empire, in southern Italy, Sicily, Spain, Tunisia, Algeria, Morocco and Britain.
Melania and Pinianus’ desire to give it all away played a part in bringing Alaric to Rome. Their efforts were blocked in the courts, which were run by their fellow aristocrats, which decided that Melania, though twenty years old, was still too young to make such a rash decision. Frustrated, Melania and Pinianus decided to pull a few strings. In late 407 or early 408 AD, when the imperial court paid its rare visit to Rome, they asked Stilicho’s wife Serena to appeal to Emperor Honorius on their behalf. Serena was sympathetic and managed to win Honorius round. It was at the very same meeting of the Senate, where Stilicho gained the senators’ agreement to pay off Alaric – with their own gold – which elicited Lampadius’ famous outburst that it was not peace but servitude, that the Senate also found itself approving Melania and Pinianus’ act of class betrayal. By making high-ranking enemies Serena’s intervention may well have contributed to her husband Stilicho’s downfall, which in turn left Alaric a patronless loose cannon.
Melania and Pinianus did not linger. Having tried and failed to sell Pinianus’ sumptuous town house to the emperor Honorius’ niece, they set in motion the sale of their Italian, Gallic, Spanish and British estates and then sailed away to Africa. By this point they were probably far from welcome in Rome. As events turned out, their timing could not have been better. Just a few months after they left, Alaric and his Visigoths had sealed off the city and cut all traffic on the Tiber.
III
The Romans were baffled by the vast horde that appeared below the city walls. The Visigoths had moved so rapidly that they arrived without warning, and at first the Romans wondered if they were a force of Roman auxiliaries that one of Stilicho’s generals was leading against the Empire. Even when they realized the truth, the Romans were optimistic. It was true that, thanks to Emperor Constantine having spitefully disbanded the city’s cavalry regiment and the Praetorian Guard a century previously, they had no garrison, yet they were confident that the Empire would come to their rescue. How could it not when it had itself been created by Rome? It seemed unimaginable that the city would be left to its fate. There was also the matter of who was in Rome. Alaric’s arrival had been so sudden that nobody had had a chance to escape. As well as some of the wealthiest landowners in the Empire, there were several celebrities of the era, including Stilicho’s widow, Serena, the widow of the emperor Gratian, and also Galla Placidia, emperor Honorius’ sister.
But nobody came to Rome’s rescue. Emperor Honorius did not dare intervene. A new usurper, Constantine III from Britain, had recently set up camp in Arles, just over the Alps, ready to pounce into Italy, and Honorius feared – probably rightly – that if he sent troops to Rome he would give Constantine his chance. With 800,000 or more Romans in the besieged city, conditions quickly began to deteriorate. The city prefect cut the bread ration to half and then to a third. People went hungry. After eight centuries of ladling out punishment to enemies near and far, the Romans, who had thought themselves immune from disaster, now found they were at the sharp end of things. The shock must have been tremendous. Romans’ first instinct was to find a scapegoat. Stilicho’s widow Serena, who was doubtless still resented by wealthy Romans for having helped Melania and Pinianus with their great inheritance giveaway, was accused, groundlessly, of having drawn the enemy to Rome and, in the hope that Alaric might lose interest once she was gone, she was strangled to death. But, of course, Alaric had not come for Serena: he had come for treasure and to win a settlement for his people. The siege went on. Emperor Gratian’s widow and her mother distinguished themselves by distributing food but, with hundreds of thousands of mouths to feed, charity could not do much. Hunger turned to famine and then, as people grew weaker, disease struck. As ancient laws forbade burials within the city, bodies were left in the open and a terrible stench filled the air.
By now word of what was happening had spread. The Empire had suffered its fair share of catastrophes during previous decades, but still the news caused profound shock. The Christian thinker Augustine of Hippo at first refused to believe the rumours. By contrast, ascetic Jerome in the Holy Land was happy to enjoy a little Schadenfreude towards the Romans who had flung him out, and decided that their hunger was a just punishment for having lived so extravagantly. They were certainly suffering. The pagan historian Zozimus wrote, ‘… the distress was now arrived in such an extremity that they were now in danger of being eaten by one another. They tried all methods of support which are abominable in the eyes of mankind.’4 No rat or cat was safe. Eventually the city’s desperate authorities decided to send an embassy to Alaric. The Romans took an aggressive line, claiming that the city’s inhabitants had been training for war and were ready to sally forth and attack. The encounter inspired an account that offers a rare, brief glimpse of Alaric’s personality, though whether it holds much truth is doubtful, as it seems a cliché of barbarian arrogance that could have been ascribed to Brennus, eight centuries earlier:
When Alaric heard … that the people had been training to fight and were ready for war, he remarked, ‘The thickest grass is more to easy to cut than the thinnest.’ He then laughed immoderately at the ambassadors … He declared that he would raise the siege only if he was given all the gold and silver in the city, all the household goods, and all the Barbarian slaves. When one of the ambassadors observed, ‘If you take all these, what will you leave for the citizens?’ Alaric replied, ‘Their Souls.’5
It was at this moment that the Roman authorities did something rather interesting. They looked to their past. As Zozimus wrote,
Pompeianus, the prefect of the city met by chance with some people who had come to Rome from Tuscany, and who explained how their town, Neveia had saved itself from great danger. The Barbarians were driven back from it by storms of thunder and lightning, which had come because of the inhabitants’ devotion to the ancient gods. Having talked with these men, he performed all that was in his power according to the books of the chief priests.6
Pompeianus then got cold feet. Realizing that he could find himself in a good deal of trouble for what he had done, he consulted the bishop of Rome, Innocentius. Rather surprisingly, Innocentius gave the nod to making an appeal to the devil’s agents. Things must have been very bad. The sources differ as to what took place next, each picking a narrative that showed their religion was not to blame for what happened afterwards. According to pagan Zozimus, when senators realized that tradition required them to make public sacrifices on the Capitoline Hill and in markets of the city, they lost heart. By contrast the Christian writer Sozomen claimed the sacrifices were made but were useless.
Reluctantly the Roman authorities sent a second delegation to Alaric. They returned with the news that, like Brennus before him, Alaric was willing to be paid off, though his price made Brennus’ demand seem a bargain. Alaric wanted 5,000 pounds of gold, 30,000 pounds of silver, 4,000 silk robes, 3,000 scarlet fleeces and 3,000 pounds of pepper. He also wanted all slaves of barbarian origin in the city, who would have included Radagaisus’ captured Goths. Additionally, he wanted the sons of a numbe
r of high imperial figures as hostages. There was nothing for the Romans to do but pay. The only ones who could come up with such a ransom were the city’s wealthy and an emergency tax was calculated on their estates, but Rome’s rich obfuscated, hiding their fortunes. Desperate, Pompeianus resorted to an act that appalled Zozimus:
The evil genius who presided over the human race at that time then incited the persons employed in the transaction to the highest pitch of wickedness. They resolved to supply the deficiency from the ornaments that were about the statues of the gods . . . they not only robbed the statues of their ornament, but also melted down those that were made of gold and silver. Among these was that of Valour or Fortitude, which the Romans call Virtus. This having been destroyed, all that remained of the Roman valour and intrepidity was wholly extinguished.7
Yet the melted statues did the trick. Alaric was paid and Rome was saved. The crisis, though, was far from over. During the next year it went through a number of complex evolutions in which the city was always the loser. Alaric took his loot, and his forces, swelled by freed Gothic slaves, withdrew to Tuscany, only to find that the imperial court at Ravenna was still locked in belligerence: Emperor Honorius refused to make a peace deal and would not even hand over hostages. In the autumn of AD 409 Alaric marched south and besieged Rome for the second time in a year, but this time he tried a new tack and appealed to the Romans to take his side against their emperor. The Romans, faced with another dose of famine, agreed. So the Senate chose their own usurper emperor, an ambitious aristocrat from the east named Attalus.
For a short time, Rome was not the besieged but the besieger, as Attalus, Alaric and the Visigoths surrounded Honorius in Ravenna. Honorius was on the point of fleeing when he received reinforcements from the Eastern Empire. Safe now behind his swamp, he began to squeeze his attackers, ordering the governor of Africa to stop food convoys sailing to Rome. So, for the second or third time in just over a year, Romans starved, now thanks to the efforts of their own emperor. Merchants hoarded grain to force prices even higher and so add to their profits, and as Zozimus recounts, ‘By these means the city was reduced to such extremities that some persons, as if they wished that human flesh might be eaten, cried out in the Hippodrome, “Fix a price on human flesh.”’8
Alaric was as far as he ever was from gaining the peace deal he wanted. In July 410 AD he sacked his puppet emperor, Attalus, and travelled north to negotiate directly with Honorius, but instead of gaining a deal he was ambushed. As he waited outside Ravenna to begin negotiations he was attacked by a fellow Visigoth named Sarus, who was probably an old rival for the Visigothic throne. Whether Honorius had sent Sarus against him is unknown but Alaric, who emerged unscathed, clearly thought so. In August he once again marched on Rome. This time, finally, he got inside. As to how the Visigoths overcame Rome’s high new walls, the church historian Sozomen tells us that, ‘Impelled by rage and terror at this incident, Alaric retraced his steps, returned to Rome and took it by treachery.’9 The Visigoths did not need to break down walls or dig tunnels or climb scaling ladders. Somebody opened the gates and let them in.
As to who it was, the only narrator who offers an answer is Procopius of Caesarea, an Eastern Roman historian who wrote a century and a half after the events, though he offers too many answers. According to Procopius, Alaric, finding himself thwarted outside Rome once again, came up with an ingenious plan. He gathered together 300 Visigothic beardless youths who were chosen both for their courage and their good birth. Ambassadors were then sent to the Roman Senate to explain that Alaric was so impressed by the senators’ bravery that he had decided to raise the siege and give them each some beardless youth slaves as a gift. The senators, suspecting nothing, accepted their presents and watched as the Visigoths outside the walls began to pack up to leave:
But when the appointed day had come, Alaric armed his whole force for the attack and held them in readiness close by the Salarian Gate where they had been encamped from the beginning of the siege. At the time agreed upon, the youths came to the gate and, taking the guards by surprise, killed them all. They then opened the gates and received Alaric and the army into the city at their leisure.10
Perhaps realizing that this story might seem a little far-fetched, Procopius then offered an alternative:
But some say that Rome was not captured in this way by Alaric, but that Proba, a woman of unusual eminence in wealth and fame among the Roman senatorial class, felt pity for the Romans who were being destroyed by hunger and other suffering. For already they were tasting each other’s flesh. And seeing that every good hope had left them, since both the river and the harbour were held by the enemy, she commanded her domestics, they say, to open the gates by night.11
This second version may seem far more plausible than the first, yet it, too, is open to doubt. It could have been fabricated by Proba’s enemies, of whom she would have had many. Anicia Faltonia Proba, to give her full name, was a member of one of Rome’s wealthiest families, the Anicii, who had opposed the selection of Attalus as emperor. She was also a Christian ascetic and kept a small colony of virgins in her home; some suspected she was intending to follow Melania’s example and give away her fortune. Yet even if Proba was innocent, Procopius’ second account may offer some truth as to what happened. Whoever opened the gate may have done so because they could not endure the prospect of yet another siege.
So, in the heat of a summer’s night, on AD 24 August 410, Alaric’s stinking, lice-ridden Visigoths poured through the Salarian Gate and into the city. As to what happened next, the sources who describe the actual sack – all of whom were Christian – agree that the occupation was brief, lasting only three days. That, though, is about the only thing they agree on. Their accounts are so much at odds, in fact, that one could be excused for wondering if they are describing the same event.
The church historian Socrates of Constantinople, writing three decades after the sack, reports that numerous senators were killed and that most of the city’s monuments were burned. Likewise, Procopius, writing a century later again, states that the Visigoths destroyed most of the Romans. It is ascetical Jerome, though, writing in his home in the Holy Land just two years after the sack, who offers the most apocalyptic version of what took place. He states that by the time Alaric’s Visigoths entered the city most of the inhabitants had already died of famine:
A nineteenth-century imagining of Alaric’s entrance into Rome.
In their frenzy the starving people had recourse to hideous food and tore each other limb from limb that they might have flesh to eat. Even the mother did not spare the babe at her breast. In the night was Moab taken, in the night did her wall fall down. Oh God, the heathen have come into your inheritance. Your holy temple they have defiled. They have made Jerusalem an orchard. The dead bodies of your servants are meat for the fowls of the heavens, the flesh of your saints is taken by the beasts of the earth. Their blood they have shed like water round about Jerusalem, and there were none to bury them. Who can tell of the carnage of that night? What tears are equal to its agony? A sovereign city of ancient date has fallen, and lifeless in its streets and houses lie numberless bodies of its citizens.12
Another source, Orosius, who wrote eight years after the sack, probably in Spain, painted a very different picture, reporting that the sack involved little if any loss of life, and was instead a remarkable example of Christian charity. Orosius claims that Alaric went to great lengths to protect the Romans, especially Christian Romans, from danger:
[Alaric] gave orders that all those who had taken refuge in sacred places, especially in the basilicas of the holy Apostles Peter and Paul, should be permitted to remain inviolate and unmolested; he allowed his men to devote themselves to plunder as much as they wished, but he gave orders that they should refrain from bloodshed.13
Orosius then tells a story of a Visigoth who found an elderly Christian virgin taking refuge in a church and demanded she give him her gold and silver. The elderly virgin brought out gre
at quantities of both but then warned the Visigoth that they were the sacred plate of Saint Peter, and that if he took it, he would be punished by God. The Visigoth then
ordered that all the vessels, just as they were, should be brought back immediately to the basilica of the Apostle, and that the virgin also, together with all Christians who might join the procession, should be conducted thither under escort. The building, it is said, was at a considerable distance from the sacred places, with half the city lying between. Consequently the gold and silver vessels were distributed, each to a different person; they were carried high above the head in plain sight, to the wonder of all beholders. The pious procession was guarded by a double line of drawn swords; Romans and barbarians.14
The church historian Sozomen, writing a little after Orosius, offered another story of a Visigoth with a good heart. Having drawn his sword to rape a beautiful Christian woman, he was taken aback when she offered him her neck:
For she preferred to die in her chastity than to survive, after having consorted lawfully with a husband, and then to be attempted by another man. When the barbarian repeated his purpose, and followed it with more fearful threats, he accomplished nothing further; struck with wonder at her chastity, he conducted her to the church of Peter the apostle, and gave six pieces of gold for her support to the officers who were guarding the church, and commanded them to keep her for her husband.15
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