Alaric I. (Al-ric, 'all rich') belonged to one of the noblest families of the Visigoths. He makes his first appearance in history in 394 A.D., as leader of the Gothic auxiliaries of Theodosius in his war with Eugenius; but after the death of the former, he took advantage of the dissensions and weakness that prevailed in the Roman empire to invade
Thrace, Macedon, Thessaly, and Illyria, devastating the country (395). Rufinus, the minister of Arcadius, appears to have sacrificed Greece in order to rescue the capital, and Athens was obliged to secure its own safety by ransom. Alaric proceeded to plunder and devastate the Peloponnus, but was interrupted by the landing of Stilicho in Elis with the troops of the western empire. Stilicho endeavoured to hem in the Goths on the Peneus; but Alaric broke through his lines, and escaped with his prisoners and booty to Illyria, of which he was appointed governor by the Emperor Arcadius, who hoped thus to make him a peaceful subject instead of a lawless enemy (396). The eastern emperor was also rendered jealous by the interference of the western empire in his affairs. In 402 Alaric invaded Upper Italy, and Honorius, the emperor of the West, fled from Rome to the more strongly fortified Ravenna. On the way to Gaul, Alaric was met and defeated by Stilicho at Pollentia on the Tanarus; but it was not till the following autumn that the result of the battle of Verona forced him to retire into Illyria. Through the mediation of Stilicho, Alaric concluded a treaty with Honorius, according to which he was to advance into Epirus, and thence attack Arcadius in conjunction with the troops of Stilicho. The projected expedition did not take place, yet Alaric demanded indemnification for having undertaken it; and Honorius, by the advice of Stilicho, promised him 4000 pounds of gold. When, after the death of Stilicho (q.v.), Honorius failed to fulfil his promise, Alaric advanced with an army, and invested Rome, which he refused to leave till he had obtained the promise of 5000 pounds of gold and 30,000 of silver. But neither did this negotiation produce any satisfactory result, and Alaric again besieged Rome (409). He took Ostia, and so stopped the food supplies of Rome. Famine soon compelled submission; and the senate allowed Alaric to appoint Attalus, the prefect of the city, emperor instead of Honorius. But Attalus displayed so little discretion, that Alaric obliged him publicly to abdicate. The renewed negotiations with Honorius proved no less fruitless than the former, and Alaric was so irritated at a perfidious attempt to fall upon him by surprise at Ravenna, that for the third time he advanced on Rome. His victorious army entered the city on August 24, 410, and continued to pillage it for six days, Alaric strictly forbidding his soldiers to dishonour women or destroy religious buildings. The prohibition served little to mitigate the horrors of the dreadful week. When Alaric quitted Rome, it was only to prosecute the conquest of Sicily; the occurrence of a storm, however, which his ill-constructed vessels were not able to resist, obliged him to abandon the project for the time; and his death, which took place at Cosenza, in Calabria, soon after (410), prevented his resuming it. He was but 34 years of age. Legend tells that, to hide his remains from the Romans, they were deposited in the bed of the river Busento, and the captives who had been employed in the work were put to death. Rome and all Italy celebrated the death of Alaric with public festivities; and the world enjoyed a momentary repose. But Alaric himself was much less barbarous than his followers. He admired those monuments of civilisation with which the Eternal City abounded, and sought to preserve them; he checked the excesses of his fierce soldiery, and at times gave indications that the lessons of Christianity which he had learned from the Arian missionaries had not been altogether forgotten. Yet through him, the Goths learned the way to Rome.