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By Root 364 0

and he seems either not to have realized, or to have willfully ignored, how much his position depended on Alaric. Very soon after his proclamation, Attalus began refusing to take Alaric’s advice. He did not act quickly enough to secure Africa and its grain supply and then his first attempt at seizing control of the province failed when his general Constans was defeated and killed by the pro-Honorian comes Africae Heraclian. Yet having failed, he still refused to allow Alaric to send a small force of 500 Goths – all Alaric believed it would take – to conquer Africa and with it Rome’s grain supply. Instead, Attalus marched on Ravenna and, with Alaric at his side, opened negotiations from Rimini. When Honorius offered some sort of collegiate rule as a compromise – an astonishing concession for a legitimate emperor to make and proof of the weakness of his position – Attalus proved stupidly intransigent, insisting that Honorius should be deposed and go into exile on an island.[246]

We cannot know why Attalus was so adamant. Perhaps he mistrusted the good faith of the Ravenna government, and genuinely believed that Rome’s interests could not be safe while Honorius occupied the throne. Perhaps it was misplaced arrogance, the unsheathed contempt of a Roman aristocrat for the upstart dynasty of Theodosius and the present, supine incumbent. Or perhaps, with Alaric at his back, it just seemed foolish not to push for the highest prize of all, sole rule over the western empire. Suddenly, though, his grand plans collapsed. Nearly 4,000 eastern soldiers arrived at Ravenna by ship. These had been requested so long before – while Stilicho was still in power – that no one could possibly have expected their arrival. Ravenna, surrounded by marshes and thus difficult to assault, could now be actively defended as well. Honorius thus had no more need to negotiate at all. Alaric by now clearly regretted his choice of puppet, Attalus having proved neither competent nor pliable. Indeed, for us as for Alaric, it is hard to decide whether Honorius or Attalus was less suited to the task of ruling an empire. Honorius at least possessed the one sole merit of legitimacy, and so early in 410, Alaric deposed Attalus, perhaps as a result of secret negotiations with Ravenna, perhaps as a precondition for opening them.[247]

The Third Siege and the Sack of Rome

This produced results. Alaric led his forces to within sixty stades – just under 13 kilometres – of Ravenna, at a location whose name has been lost in the corrupt textual tradition. He hoped to bring two years’ worth of fruitless half measures to some permanent conclusion. As we saw in our prologue, the position of his men was deteriorating, and continued delays could only make matters worse. All might have gone well, but for yet another chance complication. While Alaric prepared to negotiate in good faith, he was attacked by the Gothic general Sarus, a man who had been in imperial service since the days of Stilicho. We do not know why Sarus intervened at precisely this moment. One source tells us that he regarded the prospect of Alaric’s coming to terms with Honorius as a danger to his own position.[248] It thus does not look as if he was acting on the instructions of Ravenna, though he might have been. As became clear in the years that followed, Sarus bore a grudge against Alaric’s brother-in-law Athaulf, and he may have detested Alaric as well. Regardless of Sarus’ reasons, Alaric interpreted the attack as evidence of Honorius’ bad faith. Dropping all further effort to negotiate, he turned from Ravenna and marched back on Rome for the third and last time.

This time Rome was not going to be a prop to negotiation. Time and time again that had failed and Alaric’s patience was at an end. Alaric put the eternal city to the sack and we have already seen what that meant. For three days, Alaric’s Goths sacked the city, stripping it of the wealth of centuries. We may be sure that his followers enjoyed themselves. But for Alaric the sack of Rome was an admission of defeat, a catastrophic failure.