Alaric's Goths do what no enemy had done in 800 years
What happened
In August 410 CE the Gothic king Alaric marched his army through Rome's Salarian Gate and sacked the city, the first time in nearly eight centuries that Rome itself had fallen to a foreign enemy. His troops spared the churches of Saint Peter and Saint Paul, but burned the old Senate House, destroyed pagan temples, and carried off Emperor Honorius's own sister, Galla Placidia, as a captive. Alaric died of illness shortly after leaving the city; his burial site has never been found.
Why it matters
Rome and even the wider Western Empire survived this sack for another 66 years, but contemporaries on both sides, Roman and Gothic, treated it as a genuine shock, proof that the city that had gone unconquered since the fourth century BCE could fall after all. It is the moment the empire's invincibility stopped being something anyone could simply assume.
How we know
The sack is described by multiple contemporary writers on both the Roman and Christian sides, including authors who were alive and writing in its immediate aftermath, and their accounts agree closely on which specific buildings and districts were spared versus destroyed.
Sources
- World History Encyclopedia. Sack of Rome 410 CE · Reputable sourceworldhistory.org · The domain "worldhistory.org" is on our Reputable source registry. · Link is live and its text matches the event's key terms (Jul 2026)
See something wrong? . Corrections with a source get fixed fastest.
Part of a timelineAncient Rome30 events · From a legendary fratricide on the Palatine Hill to a teenage emperor's quiet deposition twelve centuries later, told through the battles, plagues, and one bridge-crossing that ended a republic.View all →