Search results
Results from the WOW.Com Content Network
Imaginative portrait of Alaric in C. Strahlheim, Das Welttheater, 4.Band, Frankfurt a.M., 1836. According to Jordanes, a 6th-century Roman bureaucrat of Gothic origin—who later turned his hand to history—Alaric was born on Peuce Island at the mouth of the Danube Delta in present-day Romania and belonged to the noble Balti dynasty of the Thervingian Goths.
Alaric, aware of the weakened state of defenses in Italy, invaded in early October, six weeks after Stilicho's death. He also sent word of this news to his brother-in-law Ataulf asking him to join the invasion as soon as he was able with reinforcements. [58] Alaric and his Visigoths sacked Ariminum and other cities as they moved south. [59]
The Visigoths now came into conflict with the Franks under their King Clovis I, who had conquered northern Gaul. Following a brief war with the Franks, Alaric was forced to put down a rebellion in Tarraconensis, probably caused by recent Visigoth immigration to Hispania due to pressure from the Franks.
The Montagne d'Alaric (Alaric's Mountain), near Carcassonne, is named after the Visigoth king. [16] Local rumour has it that he left a vast treasure buried in the caves beneath the mountain. [17] The Canal d'Alaric (Alaric's Canal) in the Hautes-Pyrénées department is named after him. [18]
The Visigoths were never called Visigoths, only Goths, until Cassiodorus used the term, when referring to their loss against Clovis I in 507. Cassiodorus apparently invented the term based on the model of the "Ostrogoths", but using the older name of the Vesi, one of the tribal names which the fifth-century poet Sidonius Apollinaris, had already used when referring to the Visigoths.
Taking the advice of Priscus Attalus—the former emperor whom Alaric had set up at Rome in opposition to Honorius at Ravenna, and who had remained with the Visigoths after he'd been deposed—Athaulf led his followers out of Italy. Moving north into a momentarily pacified Gaul, the Visigoths lived off the countryside in the usual way.
"More serious than the destruction of the Gothic army," writes Herwig Wolfram, "than the loss of both Aquitanian provinces and the capital of Toulose, was the death of the king." [2] Alaric had made no provision for a successor, and although he had two sons, one was of age but illegitimate and the other, Amalaric, the offspring of a legal ...
Gutthiuda, the country of Visigoths (Thervingi) Based upon the medieval writer Jordanes who described the Visigothic kings from Alaric I to Alaric II as the heirs of the 4th-century Thervingian "judge" (iudex) Athanaric, Visigoths have traditionally been treated as successors of the Thervingi. [21]